New England's Megalithic Mysteries

Other Vermont chambers

As we said above, there are over forty chambers in Vermont (that's just how many we measured). This one is one of the few circular chambers. Most are rectangular. A few are "L" shaped. In the nineteen-seventies, many people suspected that they were built by the Celts. This round chamber certainly is similar to so-called Celtic beehive huts found along the West coast of Ireland. But there really are not many different ways to construct a circular hut using stone without mortar or cement.

Here is a chamber that has a town road running over its roof! (Please notice that I am not saying specifically where these chambers are. This is an agreement I have had with the landowners since the 70's. Most are on private land. Some have code names like Calendar II.)

This chamber is code named "Eagle." It was the focus of an intensive dig in the early 80's by the National Geographic. The earliest material that Peter Reynolds, the archaeologist, found dated to about at the beginning of the 19th century, when white colonists first came in to that area.

This is a stone on the lintel above and just to the right of the front door of the above chamber. Note the straight horizontal line and one slash below and then two slashes below. This could be Celtic Ogham - the writing of the Celts.

Like Hebrew, Ogham has no vowels, so some say, here on a chamber in central Vermont is the name of one of the major Celtic Gods - BEL (in the Bible, he was called Baal). The Celtic Cross-Quarter Holiday Beltane (May Day) is named after him, so is "Belgium." You can learn more about Ogham here. In the nineteen seventies, due primarily to the work of Barry Fell and his book America B.C., it was felt that the Celts built these chambers. Some still feel that they did. I personally feel that it was the Native Americans who were here when the White Man arrived.

Not everyone (including myself) believes that the Celts built these chambers. While I have no doubt that the Celts were in the New World before Columbus, the evidence for their contact is to be found elsewhere in the United States.

This chamber in in central Vermont one field away from the birthplace of Joseph Smith, founder of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (the Mormons). You can just make out their memorial in the right hand horizon as small patches of white. One of the things that sacred space can do is to assist in the having of visions, something Joseph Smith had a number of.

But, not all underground chambers in Vermont are sacred spaces.

This is a receiving vault in Barnard, Vermont, where they put the dead in the winter because the frost is too deep into the ground to dig the grave, so they keep the bodies here until the spring thaw.	This receiving vault in Glover has a facade similar to many of the other older chambers in Vermont; however, it is obviously much more recently constructed.