The New England Grimpendium: Dungeon Rock

For the next month, I’ll be posting photo essays on locations, attractions, and artifacts elaborated on in my new book, The New England Grimpendium (available now) to celebrate its debut...and to convince you that it’s worth buying, I guess. That was directed at you, Mom.

August 26, 2010 — On a hill near the shore of Breed's Pond in the Lynn Woods Reservation (home of Skull Cliff) is a large cleft boulder. Upon entering that cleft, you’ll find an iron door set into the rock. If that door is unlocked and you brought your flashlight, you can explore the 135-foot-long cave. And you’re going to want to when you hear its history, which involves a father and son in the 1800s who made it their lives' work to excavate the tunnel at the urging of psychic mediums channeling a dead pirate who was supposed to have died all treasured up in a cave-in there in the 1600s. There are actually more facts in this story than lore, believe it or not.

Here be the story of Dungeon Rock.

Burial location of one of the two men who excavated the cave.

Located to the side of Dungeon Rock.

Read all about my visit to Dungeon Rock in The New England Grimpendium, which is on sale now.