He simply slit her open with his fingers. Privacy Policy. The weather was only suitable for mosquitos and snakes. It was not a sense of being claustrophobic. McDougald, C. Asian Loot: Unearthing the Secrets of Marcos, Yamashita and the Gold. They began holding press conferences to try to raise more money in which they claimed to have found tunnels stacked to the ceiling with gold bars (but hadn't thought to take any pictures or bring back any evidence), and these claims sufficiently irked the government to the point that his team was expelled from the country in 1975. It was a very difficult meeting to secure and I was essentially vetted before being granted an audience. I followed Klaus down the third descending vertical shaft only to find myself standing in nearly a foot of water. The process was known as sanctifying, and via a series of chance encounters Marcos was led to the American metallurgist, Robert Curtis. Beyond that is where the cyanide is hidden.. There, some say, it remains today waiting for someone possibly for you to find it and walk away. The six-hundred-pound gorilla at the site was a guy whose mother had been alive when the Japanese had arrived and asked if they could create a tunnel complex in their back garden for the purpose of depositing large quantities of boxes. The men asserted that they had been blindfolded and taken to a warehouse, where they had been shown an enormous stash of gold bars. . In January 2016, 54-year-old Randy Bilyeu wanted to find the treasure. His remains were not found until seven months later.[5]. The director simply said, whenever you are ready, and he proceeded to speak uninterrupted for over an hour. Things became even worse. Kidd originally left $500,000 behind. It was almost a year to the date of my first visit and now, like then, I had managed to arrive in the middle of the monsoon season. They decided it would be fun to go on a road trip to look for the Lost Dutchman Gold Mine. As we stood around discussing the stone and the bent tree, I noticed an elderly woman walking through the rice paddies and suggested we approach her and ask if she remembered the Japanese coming to the area. Torn Treasure Map 1: On the far left side of the map, at the start of the Little Creek River, inside a drawer of a wooden hut. He finished and I sat up, slightly dazed and in disbelief. The leaves of the bogtalay tree were placed in the cement backfill of the treasure tunnels by Japanese Shinto priests After Oihara departed, Roxas and his brother Danilo began prising the head of the golden buddha with a wooden plank and hammer to determine if it was detachable. In August I flew to Manila and was greeted by a group of treasure hunters, including ex-military men, who transported me to a site to the north east. Andrew Gough. Could these mysterious deaths have been murder, or as some believe, could something supernatural have been afoot? Roxass life was not his own. #673 I was excited to hear what Jose had to say about Japanese treasure in the Philippines, but was informed by the director that my presence was not welcome in the interview room. About us | Our programming | Become a supporter | Privacy. In the Philippines treasure reclamation requires a permit that entitles the government to 30% of the findings. A few days after the update released I came across that treasure hunter npc encounter where you can buy a map from him. In order to protect himself from further abuse, he formed the Golden Buddha Corporation (GBC) with Felix Dacaney, a childhood friend who was living near Atlanta, and assigned his interest in the case to the GBC. The healer, operating with nothing but his fingers His cabin had been burned to the ground. Ultimately, Valmores gave up forty of the lesser site maps that he had in his possession, in order to save his life. Andrew Gough. I could not believe my eyes. Although Roxas presented no evidence whatsoever other than personal testimony from many of his associates all of whom had banded together as the "Golden Buddha Corporation" which existed only to pursue this lawsuit they somehow managed to win the case, and were awarded over 40 billion dollars. Roxas would need more time and money in order to proceed, and thus he sold seven of the gold bars and initiated the sale of the golden buddha. Rather, Klaus and others embark on a more laborious, albeit secure and spiritually attuned, process using a hammer and chisel, while observing the symbols that the Shinto priests had left behind, and heeding the vital guidance that they provide. As I was banned from listening to the conventional historian do this thing, I became more convinced than ever that the director was orchestrating a hatchet job for the two-hour season premiere of the show. I could hardly move. I returned to England and became engulfed by life and my time-consuming corporate job. The Seagraves seminal whistle-blowing book, Gold Warriors. In Red Dead Redemption 2, you can run out of money fast as there are many things that you need to buy to progress further. It is not a pleasant journey to the bottom of the tunnel complex: three descents down makeshift ladders and three separate crawls on ones hands and knees. His mother had told him that she and his father felt honoured to have had their property chosen, and when the Japanese finished they joined in a ceremony that celebrated the completion of the project, and the sacredness of what was buried below. He followed the Japanese into the mountains and watched as they buried the boxes in a tunnel and sealed the entrance. International Precious Metals already has spent $40,000 on its hunt, McDougald revealed. We were all devastated, especially Klaus, as he wanted to open a treasure chamber in time for us to film it for the show. Hunting for topaz was just a hobby for Dametz. A silver lining soon emerged, in that Bruce Burgess, my good friend and creator/director of Forbidden History and many other shows that I contributed to, informed me that the sixth season of the programme had been purchased by Discovery Science and they wanted to do a two-hour feature on Japanese gold in the Philippines. For weeks, nearly a dozen members of Aquinos elite presidential security guard cordoned off the entire fort to keep the treasure hunt a secret and to ensure that the government receives its rightful 75% cut of anything McDougalds group finds. The Japanese are believed to have visited Germany in the late 1930s, where they not only learned the technique of carving tunnels out of sheer earth and stone, but also how to backfill the tunnels with naturally coloured concrete known as German cement, in order to camouflage them, and to ensure that they did not look man made to novice treasure hunters. Out of fear that the maps would be stolen, or thrown out by the cleaning crew, Curtis photographed each one and burned the originals. In one 1999 case hundreds of men signed an affidavit attesting to the fact that they had worked on a so-called restoration project that had covertly performed massive digging operations to recover thousands of metric tonnes of gold, not to mention precious gemstones. Norman Tony Darcus: a Las Vegas investor who visited the Philippines and was shown secret tunnels where gold bullion was awaiting transportation to the United States. Could he have harnessed the legendary viral energy that I had read so much about? He said they were building an extension to the hospital. They followed that with a treasure chamber at around a depth of approximately one hundred feet, knowing that most treasure hunters would consider that the final prize. In his estimation, the only thing that could have caused the electrocution was large quantities of gold, acting as an electrical conduit. You climb down and back up each of these sites twice a day? I asked in disbelief. He shared that he and his wife had their emails and phone calls monitored and had received repeated death threats. President Marcos consults with Las Vegas-based psychic, Olof Jonsson. I will always appreciate your sacrifice. Complications ensued, however, when Klaus, who had permits for the entire region, was stopped from excavating by the Mining Department of the Philippine Government. Ballinger recounted the story to Roxas, who he often visited on his trips to the Philippines, adding that the entrance to the tunnel had been in the vicinity of a concrete pillbox, the name given to a small, partly underground concrete fort used as an outpost. Despite the fact the Klaus always lights incense and states his intentions before descending, they have experienced the same sensation I have plus the even more disturbing impression that someone was tapping them on their shoulder. Find your friends on Facebook. The initial award was $43 billion the largest civil judgement in history. Dunning, B. Andrew Gough. He never came back. Most treasure hunters go searching in the daytime and then return to local motels. The enormity of the tragedy is underscored by the fact that the Roxas family have yet to be paid their settlement. During Fridays Senate hearing, several senators indicated that they plan to pursue criminal charges against the treasure hunters for violating an old law against desecrating national shrines, of which Ft. Santiago is one of the most famous. This time he remained hidden for a year, before being arrested after he returned to Baguio in July 1972. Show that to your doctor back home, the healer would tell them. I inspected it closely and from all angles. Long-lost ship found at the bottom of Lake Huron, confirming story of tragic collision, TikTok to set default daily time limit of up to 60 minutes for minors, Before and after photos from space show storms effect on California reservoirs, Dramatic before and after photos from space show epic snow blanketing SoCal mountains, The chance of a lifetime: Five friends ski the tallest mountain in Los Angeles, Jaguars, narcos, illegal loggers: One mans battle to save a Guatemalan jungle and Maya ruins, Dr. Simi is a TikTok star. Despite the depth, there were still twelve inches of water that needed negotiating. Watch the two-hour special of The Curse of Yamashitas Gold on Forbidden History, Series 6, on Discovery Science and other international channels from April 2020. So he headed to the location with some hiking supplies and his dog. This entire field was part of the Japanese military base, you see., The low-growing tree that points towards the gold The following day we departed for the mountainous, northern resort town of Baguio to meet with Roger Roxass son, Henry, and to examine his museum, which is dedicated to his father. The director reluctantly agreed to film her, but she became tense and anxious in the spotlight of the film crew. "Searching for the lost treasure of Yamashita." Andrew Gough. An image of what appears to be a cement-filled tunnel or door, deep underground Eventually, Roxas and his team identified the entrance and discovered various artefacts, such as Japanese bayonets, rifles, and even a human skeleton in a Japanese uniform. But it never works out that way. The director reluctantly filmed it. The wife and daughter of Roger Roxas In another dream, Amelia said she had been contacted by Roger Roxas, who told her that Marcoss real body remained in Hawaii, where he was living after his exile from the Philippines. That evening Klauss team brought some incense, that had been burned by the Shinto priests as they sealed the chambers, that they had found deep in the tunnels that week, and we burned it. This was a game changer. Klaus had briefed me as to what the sites would be like. Curtis, who is now in the Philippines but insists that McDougald act as his spokesman, says that he and 10 other Americans successfully conducted a similar treasure hunt under the regime of. The intimidating entrance to the tunnel shaft The three men went out hiking, but there is no evidence that they ever made it out of the mountains. In fact, treasure hunters die each week in the Philippines, mostly due to the accidental release of cyanide capsules hidden along the tunnel walls. Klaus and I posing with the priest and the artefacts he discovered at a shallow depth in the ground You must be about two hundred and ten to fifteen feet deep. She was greeted by a well-dressed, professional looking man who gave her some medicine for Roger, as he had noticed how poorly he was looking and was concerned for his health. One mans wallet was apparently thrown near his remains. I was not aware that Peggy had passed away the previous year, and that Sterling had only just passed in May 2017, aged 80. Inexplicably, he was being electrocuted. The next morning, Bob reported that his friend was missing. It would later be appealed and reduced to $22 billion, because the court could not be certain of the contents of each and every wooden crate that was removed from the tunnel system behind Baguio Hospital. Andrew Gough. The bad news was that nobody on the production team believed that the Japanese had buried treasure in the Philippines, let alone that Klaus was about to discover some of it. None of the prospecting equipment had been taken. I could hear the priest explaining to others that he had, in fact, discovered a golden buddha of his own, but it was so deep and so heavy that he was unsure how to excavate it. I want to show you something. I struggled to untangle my torso from the back seat and limped over to where Klaus was standing. His bizarre and frightening experience lasted mere seconds. Klaus shared that he felt many were not reputable insomuch as they often claimed to not be feeling it today and concluded I need to come back tomorrow, effectively doubling their income. Hunter died Monday at his Northern California home with his wife, Maureen, at his side, former Grateful Dead publicist Dennis McNally told The Associated Press on . One day he was approached by two men representing Josefa Edralin Marcos, who offered to return a replica of the golden buddha and pay Marcos three million pesos if he publicly acknowledged that their buddha was the one that had been confiscated. He complained at length that none of his journalism colleagues would help him and Peggy with their book. See Photos. Jose was clearly a wind-up-and-go type of historian. %PDF-1.4
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It was January 2016, and my interest in the story had waned once more. This was but the precursor to the sobering conditions I would encounter when I explored Klauss first tunnel-system site. They had written a message that said, We have found a fine prospect. None of their valuables were taken. Dont get me wrong. All content 2006 - 2023 Andrew Gough. Slowly putting his ruined life back together, he moved from Reno to Las Vegas . What interests might the United States have that would enable the Supreme Court decision to be ignored? Tunnels filled with a foot of water In addition, American, French, Belgian, British and Australian divers are spending millions of dollars combing the bottom of the Philippine Sea in search of old Spanish galleons and other commercial ships that sank with thousands, perhaps millions, of dollars in treasure as long ago as the 1500s. They had been in hiding in Manila, where they were awaiting word from Cathcart. See Photos. [7] It was given to the Barrow Neurological Institute of Phoenix, Arizona. Andrew Gough. The idea is that during Japan's imperialist phase before World War II, they looted every country throughout Asia that they invaded, melted down all that booty into ingots of pure gold, and buried it all in Philippine strongholds to wait out the end of the war. Real or imagined, I was perceived as an expert on the subject. I watched a rough cut of the episode and was relieved that Burgess had salvaged it with his skillful editing, and that the tone was objective. They investigated and validated first-hand testimony that corroborated the existence of the golden buddha and the gold bullion. Curtis then used another old miner's trick to attract funding to go back and continue the hunt: he claimed his team's expulsion was the result of being just inches away from a fabulous treasure room worth billions that Marcos wanted for himself. 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