Alabaster Isle sat, vacant and subject to the elements for years, overgrown and scarce, until a new group of New York businessmen purchased it in 1929. According to records, theywere planning to buildsomethingthere, though the surveyor was unsure of exactly what.
It took a lot more digging, and by that point, the surveyor considered himself a bitobsessed, for lack of a better word. He’d inadvertently tossed himself down into a rabbit hole of this mysterious island and its fascinating, if clandestine, history.
Eventually, the pieces of the 1929 puzzle came together…
The partial structure, the storage shed, the house, and the tower were all elements of an elaborate distillery, to be set up on this secluded island. An illegal operation, because, as we know, prohibition was alive and well at this time.
The surveyor was amazed. It was truly a compelling part of history. But more than that, he was curious as to why the distillery itself, like so many other prior attempted projects there, had never been completed.
In looking further into the businessmen, he found that they, too, had gone missing before finishing their venture. Presumed dead. No bodies found.
Sound familiar?
Construction work performed under the table, thus providing no paper trail to anyone who may have had information on what truly happened.
It was a mystery that reeked of tragedy. Lost souls, unfulfilled dreams, and behind it all… An island.
The final item the surveyor found in his research was an old black and white polaroid of the businessmen on the island. From the looks of it, before any construction had begun. And in the background, right around where the partial structure would end up, a small, makeshift cemetery.
The next day, the surveyor quit his job.
And so foraged on the team in New York, having found a new surveyor—one who was less concerned with the history of theodd location of the job, and more concerned with a government paycheck.
The FBI green-lit the project for their own purposes, and left the logistics to the officials in New York and the private investors, one of whom was a wealthy Manhattan developer and art connoisseur who sat on the board of the Guggenheim as well. He convinced the others to agree to hire his friend as head architect on the project, who would go on to design the research facility.
A man by the name of John James Josephson III.
Josephson, born in Switzerland in 1933, moved to the States with his family when he was four, where they took up residency in the small town of Peabody, Massachusetts, just outside of Boston. The son of a journalist and a haberdasher, Josephson became consumed by his mother’s work covering the Vietnam War, and even more swept up by the newly fashionableprotest movement. As was the time, Josephson also became a believer infree love, and subsequently a frequent user of psychedelics and hallucinogenic drugs.
He had enrolled in a post-grad psychology program at Harvard University when he met Timothy Leary—yes,thatTimothy Leary—who invited him to participate in a research study he was conducting wherein thirty-two prisoners at a maximum security prison in Concord, Massachusetts were given psilocybin, a synthetic psychedelic drug like that of LSD, and then monitored extensively.
Oh, did we mention that the researchers wouldalsobe taking the psychedelics? I mean, this is Timothy Leary we’re talking about, so it only makes sense. Never one to deny himself a good time…
And neither was John Josephson, because he agreed. Rather enthusiastically.
The Concord Prison Experiment went on for two years, from 1961 to 1963. Two years of habitual psychedelic drug use and psychological research inside a prison…
The results of the experiment were more or less inconclusive—go figure—proving once and for all that Timothy Leary just really fuckingloveddropping acid.
Shortly after, Josephson’s friend offered him a job designing an institution of his own.
Now, the purposes of this facility were widely unknown, to everyone who wasn’t FBI. The only stipulations for the design of the building itself were that it have facets of a lab, a prison, and an asylum—though they were careful not to actually usethat word—but most importantly, that its construction not go a cent over budget.
This would, of course, mean utilizing the small chunk of building that was already there.
Most other architects would be perturbed by such broad instructions and narrow financial limitations. But not John James Josephson III. No,hewas excited.Thrilled, even, to be finally putting his formerly meaningless architecture degree to use.
He was just…sohigh. All the time, even when he wasn’t actively taking drugs, the years of consistent LSD use had most definitely burned holes in his brain, putting him on an endless trip through time and space. And after having just spent two years getting high inside aprison, and the better part of his adult life being just anunbridledhorny madman, who better thanhimto design a top-secret government-funded institution where scientists and doctors would be working…Right??
But despite the endless billowing of red flags attached to this project, the facility had been built. Its development and construction werefinallycomplete.
When all was said and done, every last one of the contractors were either divorced, suffering from severe substance abuse issues, or both.
But the building was done, and John Josephson was happy.
His friend, the wealthy developer, inevitably left his wife, and he and Josephson bought a yacht they planned to sail to Cozumel. They’d barely made it to Cape May when Josephson jumped off the boat chasing a blue heron that wasn’t there, was sucked into the propeller and killed on impact.
But no matter!The new facility was finally up and running, and the FBI went to work hiring doctors under the guise of their top-secret research project, code-namedProject Alabaster.
