Every summer, the shadowy Bohemian Club — a private gentlemen’s society based in San Francisco — hosts a clandestine retreat called “Bohemian Grove” in Monte Rio, California, where highly influential men in politics, business, media, culture, and entertainment gather for two weeks on a secluded 2,700-acre private property deep in the redwood forests.

The event is shrouded in mystery — no paparazzi, no women, no entry without an invitation, and lots of whispers of strange rituals and elite networking.

Twenty-five years ago, Infowars founder Alex Jones snuck in and secretly recorded one of Bohemian Grove’s most cherished rituals: the "Cremation of Care.”

On a podcast with Glenn Beck, Jones shared the wild tale of his Bohemian Grove infiltration.

The Cremation of Care is a theatrical ceremony, where attendees burn an effigy before a large owl statue to symbolically banish worldly concerns for the duration of the retreat. It’s similar to how Burning Man attendees set fire to the “Temple” on the final day of the festival to represent letting go of personal burdens.

“It’s occultic, and there’s vibes of that everywhere,” says Jones of the event. He explains that Mark Twain founded Bohemian Grove in the late 1800s, but it was later taken over by the Republican establishment and Skull and Bones (a secret society at Yale University), which is what gives the gathering its secretive, Germanic, druidic, and Masonic character.

After sneaking in with Jon Ronson, a British journalist and documentary filmmaker, who gained access via an insider, Jones, having narrowly escaped inquisitive Secretive Service guards, hid under the deck of one of the cabins.

“I got into the woods, got to the first camp and nobody was there, and I climbed up underneath the log cabin deck, and there were like literally centipedes and spiders. It was like 'Indiana Jones Temple of Doom,'” he laughs.

At nightfall, he emerged from his hiding place and stealthily joined a large crowd walking toward the lake.

And then he beheld it: the infamous stone owl.

Jones paints a chilling scene straight from a thriller’s darkest frame — “big crowds of men coming in hundreds and hundreds,” descending a shadowy hill, dwarfed by towering redwoods so colossal their trunks could swallow cars whole. “Bats and frogs” stir the murky air with restless flutters and croaks, their eerie chorus blending with a live symphony’s foreboding rendition of “In the Hall of the Mountain King.”

Jones, trying to fly under the radar, then climbed into a redwood tree and recorded the “dramatic footage” of the burning ritual.

“They mixed in Babylonian, druidic, Canaanite, faustian stuff in the hour. They bring out a hearse that's horse drawn with the effigy of a child. They then call on the goddess to come and they call these other gods to come,” Jones recounts. “So it's kind of an amalgamation like the Bible says of all these religions.”

In retrospect, especially after receiving Bohemian Grove annals years later, Jones says he realized that famous people, including American broadcaster Walter Cronkite, played the voice of the owl. These voice actors were stationed inside the statue where they controlled sounds, such as amplified voices or eerie effects, to enhance the theatrical atmosphere.

“I'm not saying they're all devil worshipers ... it's more of a crazy art festival, but there is an occultic thing to it,” he tells Glenn.

The duo speculate that the majority of attendees are there just to have a good time, but the inner ring of people who control the event are indeed hosting legitimate pagan rituals, even if their guests aren’t aware.

Jones says the masterminds orchestrating the retreat use these two weeks to assess who among their guests might be of use to them. Jones recalls how most of the Bohemian Grove crowd was just having fun, but there were some, especially the official Bohemian Club members, who clearly took the ritual seriously. One man — “some billionaire,” he says — practically growled “this is a very important ritual” when Jones suggested it was a “neat” spectacle.

The members “were trying to transmute their problems onto this ritual” in hopes that “Karma” or some other vengeful deity would “pass over them,” he explains, calling the burning “very hardcore.”

“It was very sophisticated, very dark, [and] beyond black magic,” he says, explaining that the burning, like many ancient pagan rituals, aimed at casting one’s sins into an “interdimensional cauldron” before “[sending] it to another plane.” In other words, it’s the satanic version of Christ’s ultimate sacrifice that atoned for the sins of man.

To hear Jones’ full recount, watch the interview above.

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