This statue was sculpted by an artist by the name of Bella Lyon Pratt, another Yale alumnus and member of The Society. Some believed that he built the statue to cover up a secret entrance to an underground tomb: a complex network of people and things stretching underneath the city of New Haven—and the assumed site of our newest meeting place. When day turned to night, it was rumored that our members took to this rising world below.

 

Our enemies were determined to force their ways in.

 

As the story goes, in the mid-twentieth century, the CIA snuck into Old Campus in the middle of the night to steal this very statue. Most assumed they wanted the original work for their headquarters to commemorate America’s first intelligence agent. But we know their true intentions. These operatives were former members of opposing societies at Yale. They weren’t trying to steal the statue—they wanted to move it to break into our “underground tomb” to learn more about our order’s presence. They scaled the walls in the middle of the hazy New Haven night, approached the statue, and pushed it to the side, all they saw was dirt and stone. “They’re gone.”