Nantucket Hermit To Lose Underground Home

NANTUCKET, Mass. - Tucked away in an island wilderness of bayberry bushes and pine trees, Thomas Johnson's front door lies hidden beneath a mat of twigs and fallen leaves.

Brushing aside the natural camouflage, he opens a wooden hatch and descends a ladder to the stone floor of his home, eight feet below. There, three paneled rooms contain a bed, stove and pantry, and the dreams of a latter-day Thoreau who went to the woods to soothe his soul.

For a decade, Johnson, 38, has lived underground on this charming and desirable island off Cape Cod where others pay a premium for beachside mansions and gray-shingled cottages.

He calls it his "self-help" cocoon, a spiritual retreat for a man uneasy in society. But his underground days may be numbered. In November, a deer hunter stumbled across a black stovepipe sticking out of the earth. A subsequent police investigation and charges of health code violations led to eviction proceedings by the Boy Scouts, who own the land where Johnson built his home. The process could take up to 90 days.

Underground folk hero

In the meantime, the hermit has emerged as a folk hero and eccentric renegade in the tiny community.

Islanders long heard rumors of an "underground man," and Johnson's friends have even visited him. But they kept mum, and the wider community learned of it only after local builder Jack Hallett Sr. discovered it while trying to find a deer stand.

The next morning, Hallett brought back a friend, a part-time police officer. Johnson invited them in. What Hallett saw amazed him: a wonder of craftsmanship, planned and built in five weeks for less than $150. "Absolutely gorgeous," he recalled.

The structure, wrapped in a rubber membrane and layers of insulation, stays dry and warm. Two inches of topsoil and sand cover the roof. There is no running water, electricity or piped-in gas; a chemical toilet takes the place of modern plumbing.

The main room measures 8 feet by 8 feet. Johnson cooks on a small stone stove built atop a Hibachi. He sleeps on a day bunk or a queen-size bed that pulls down, loft-style, from the ceiling. Transom windows provide light and ventilation.

Johnson has built homes for himself for more than two decades, including a stone dwelling in the Catskills and a treehouse in Hawaii.

Publicity apparently forced the hand of Nantucket officials, who were otherwise inclined to let Johnson stay, and of the Boy Scouts, now seeking to evict a man whose outdoor skills could easily earn him merit badges.

Private man, simple tastes

Johnson hardly looks the part of a man who lives underground. Clean-shaven and tidy in khakis and buttoned-down shirts, he has had girlfriends, frequents local establishments and earns a healthy living as a carpenter. Friends describe him as an intelligent man with simple tastes and a volatile temperament, intensely private and introspective.

Raised in an upper-middle-class Catholic household, Johnson grew up in Binghamton, N.Y. His life took a turn for the worse when drug involvement led him to Italy, where he was arrested for smuggling heroin in 1983. After serving 2 1/2 years in prison, he fled the country in October 1985, according to the Italian consulate in Boston. An arrest warrant was issued but extradition is unlikely, officials said.

Nantucket had captured his imagination during visits in the late 1970s and '80s, so Johnson returned for his kind of ideal existence: a solitary life in which he did not have to become what he calls a "social cardboard facsimile" of his real identity. The island became a place where he could commune with nature and face his inner demons to "get right" with himself.

Alone underground, he rode out hurricanes, endured five-day rainstorms and shoveled out from inches of snow.

"The stupidest question I get is: Am I lonely?" he said, his hazel eyes clouding with tears as he nursed a pint of dark beer at a local pub. "Of course I'm lonely."

Some locals say Johnson should be left alone. With seasonal rentals averaging $2,000 to $5,000 weekly, they half-joke that earthbound homes could solve Nantucket's affordable-housing crisis.

Yet some resent Johnson's tax-free existence and protest that he stole - in his own words, "liberated" - some materials to build his home. Court records show two charges of assault and battery in Nantucket in the past decade.

And others have seen his calm demeanor turn to raging storm.

In a recent interview, he bolted upright and screamed at his interviewer in a fury.

"That's the real Tom," observed one diner, who has witnessed similar rants, as the "underground man" headed out the door.