Swannanoa Mansion Part I - Meeting Place of the Illuminati?

Mysterious mansion in Nelson County, Virginia with a reputation for being haunted, and linked to international and ancient secrets.

In the foothills of Virginia a beautiful mansion sits atop Afton Mountain. It is of Italian design, made of marble, and is one of the most mysterious and beautiful places in Virginia. Millionaire James H. Dooley built it originally as a summer home for his wife. It is closest to Waynesboro, Virginia. The more standard information about it may be found here. Swannanoa.

Swannanoa - aka "The Palace"

I am going to tell you some of the non-standard things about Swannanoa. It first came to my attention when a reader of a newsletter I once published told me that some group called Star Bourne was holding an 11:11 Doorway Opening ritual at the mansion called Swannanoa not far from her home in Waynesboro, Va. She gave me some of their literature and I found some of what they said more than a little scary. I detected what I felt at the time was something like a cult, with mind-control overtones going on.

Investigating the Star Bourne and the 11:11 Ritual

A paranormal investigation team I had assembled at that time agreed we should attend this ritual and check out this UFO connected cult and see what we could find out. We arrived at the mansion the day of the ritual and were astonished at the large number of very expensive cars with personalized license plates parked there for the event. Mercedes, Lincoln Continentals, Cadillacs, and all manner of makes and models of expensive new cars were there, with names like Angel, Angelic, Angel Wings, Seraphim and so on as their personal license plate names. If they were kooks, they were extremely wealthy kooks.

At the same time the group at Swannanoa was enacting their ritual, their group's leader, a woman named Solara was leading a second group at the base of the Great Pyramid in Egypt. This was all freaky stuff at the time, and I was sure I had found an Illuminati related group, or at least an Illuminati financed group.

The 11:11 Ritual

The ritual consisted of our joining hands and circling in the garden of Swannanoa to the beat of this chiming tone, broadcast from a speaker from the top floor of the Swannanoa mansion. People called "Anchors" who seemed to act more like security details watched us intently from the walls of the garden. We finished the main ritual and were free somewhat to walk the grounds of the mansion. My team wanted to go way out back; one member, Annette, had strong Native American blood which seemed to give her strong natural sensitivity, and said she felt something was drawing her in that direction, so we all went with her. We walked quite a ways up the hills behind the mansion. We found old ruins of what may have been an 18th century tavern, one that was frequented a lot by Thomas Jefferson who had a home in the area. This fact was told to me by a local historian. Beyond that we found these winding paths to nowhere in the woods and they were about the size of sidewalks and perfectly geometrically squared but no lawnmower could be gotten up there and what would be the point of making such paths? It puzzled my entire group. These winding paths that went everywhere and nowhere made no sense. And they were too perfect to be natural in any way. Furthermore we found places where tons of PVC pipes were dumped in huge piles, places where there were no roads to drive so large and so many pipes up there; the only way to have gotten them to those locations as far as we could tell would have been to have dropped them from a helicopter.

Afton Mountain and Swannanoa may be Above a SAC Airbase

One of the members of my group later did some research and did find that back in the 1960s there was talk of building a SAC Airbase under that area known as Afton Mountain. Maybe the building of a SAC underground airbase would explain all the leftover PVC pipes, and maybe not. The trees up there in that area of the odd winding rectangular paths all seemed to be distorted and mutated in some way which made us fear for our own health, not knowing what we were getting in to.

Walter and Lao Russell

Among other things on the grounds were a 2-story horse stable with the upstairs stalls having some sort of flushing system. Very expensive stables even for the times this place was built.
We returned to the mansion to check out the gift shop and the museum dedicated to Walter and Lao Russell, the couple who had rented the mansion for many years and died there. They were fascinating people. I had never heard of them before. I have since learned that Walter Cronkite had said of Walter Russell upon his death that Walter was this generation's Leonardo da Vinci. He was clearly a genius. Students of conspiracy theories though will note the name Russell is one associated with so-called Illuminati Bloodline families.
(Note: I am not fully in agreement with most of the extremist anti-illuminati websites and groups at this time but this is typical of what is out there on this subject for now.)
However this man, Walter Russell, if an Illuminati makes my case for them not being such bad guys but rather people we should all aspire to be like. He was an accomplished painter and sculptor, an accomplished horseman and ice skater and thinker ahead of his time. He predicted the existence of plutonium and two isotopes of hydrogen, deuterium and tritium. I personally saw a slew of letters laid out in a large glass covered display case that had been written between Walter Russell and Albert Einstein. He was an accomplished scientist without a doubt: he wrote his letters to Einstein in fluent German.
Walter Russell was a man way ahead of his time and so very accomplished. If he is an example of the typical Illuminati then we need more of them. He and his wife seemed to have enemies, so there is likely some other group out there that may well be somewhat evil. It would be nice to have a score card on these various competing groups.

Dark Things Do Happen at and Near Swannanoa

But the usual darkness one thinks of in association with the Illuminati surfaced at this mansion. However it was long after Walter Russell's death and seemed to be of a far darker nature than anything linked to this brilliant and talented man and his sweet wife. Their neighbors the Edwards spoke of it to me and Virginia Edwards wrote a book on all that went on there. Her book was titled "The Conspiracy of 30" and subtitled The Misuse of Music from Aristotle to Onassis. It is hard to find copies and is somewhat of a rare book.
The property sitting right next door to Swannanoa belonged to a delightful couple named Edwards, William Bennett Edwards and wife Virginia Davis Edwards. They knew Lao Russell quite well. They invited me and some of my team into their home in 1992 to discuss some of what they had seen going on around Swannanoa. They had even gone to the Washington Post trying to go public with what they knew. They were sure a conspiracy of international reach was being hatched at Swannanoa. In my investigations since that time I would be inclined to agree with them. They reported seeing the Queen of England visit the mansions also called The Palace, quite often. A symbol with a quote inside The Palace links it with The Knights of the Garter and therefore the Queen of England. The Edwards told me they often saw military and government people going up the driveway to the mansion, citing Henry Kissinger as one of the more frequent visitors. They recognized many world leaders among the throng of regular visitors and were harassed and terrorized by alleged security personnel guarding these motorcades of powerful people in their limousines.
There is far more to this place than meets the eye. It is tied to possibly a mystery pertaining to the star system Cygnus. It may have links to another castle named for Swans in Europe, Neuschwanstein which means "New Swan Stone" and overlooks the Rhine River in Bavaria. Meanwhile take the video tour of Swannanoa. And a video tribute to Walter and Lao Russell by actor Eddie Albert.

Part 2