What is most outrageous treasure hunting legend you have ever read?

Charlie P. (NY)

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Knights Templar having anything to do with Oak Island, Canada or the U.S.

But there is another forum here for that legend stuff.
 

NWMP

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Knights Templar having anything to do with Oak Island, Canada or the U.S.

But there is another forum here for that legend stuff.

Should be called Choke Island. I'm sure that keeping the story alive is an economic golden egg for the locals.
 

NWMP

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Knights Templar having anything to do with Oak Island, Canada or the U.S.

But there is another forum here for that legend stuff.

Should be called Choke Island. I'm sure that keeping the story alive is an economic golden egg laying goose for the locals.
 

Tom_in_CA

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Nachos, to answer your question: NONE of the various treasure legends, stories, lores, etc.... are "outrageous" They're all iron-clad true. To call them "myths" or "superstition" is an insult to the faithful.

Haven't you ever picked up any old treasure mags from the 1960s & '70s? Every issue was packed full of "lost mine" , and bank or stagecoach robbery type legends. Oh, and of course, each one was bullet-proof true. Heck, throw in some faded newspaper clippings, an artist depiction of a miner posed next to his buro, then, IT MUST BE TRUE!

They all sort of sounded the same after awhile: "The dying miner drags himself into the wild west saloon. The lone survivor of an indian attack. As curious patrons gather around him, he spills the story of fabulous riches at his mine in the hills. The miner was rushed to the doctors office, but ...... unfortunately, died of his injuries before being able to reclaim his wealth. The 4 clues he left are these: blah blah blah.". Fun reading though :)
 

etex

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Blah Blah Blah, that is only three clues, you left out the last clue and that was the most important one :treasurechest::treasurechest::treasurechest::treasurechest:
 

Boatlode

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jeff of pa

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Knights Templar having anything to do with Oak Island, Canada or the U.S.

But there is another forum here for that legend stuff.

at the Risk of sounding obsessed or a Broken record I have to agree,
This one seems to be the Most Impossible / imporbable
of course the Beale Treasure is a Close Second
 

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gollum

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In the last twenty-odd years, I have seen some unbelievable things.

It would be easy for me to poopoo stories I haven't put a whole of time researching. When I first started researching Jesuit Treasure, I gave it a better than average chance of being BS. The more I read, and the more I learned, I don't believe that Jesuit Treasure exists. I KNOW IT DOES! Same thing with the Lost Dutchman Mine. So many people have been looking for it in that little 15 x 20 mile range for the last 150 years, someone would surely have found it by now. Right? And then I started reading and talking to people, and the first time I actually hiked into the Supers, I could completely understand why it might not have been found. Story after story. Some turned out to be completely untrustworthy. Some had a basis in fact, but nothing to hang your hat on. Some of them kept coming at me. I find one thing to cast a negative spin, then three things opposite.

Just because something has been lost for a long time and unfound, or doesn't have a strong documentary provenance, don't just blow it off. Sometimes research shines a light you might not expect.

All that said, if I had to pick a most outrageous:

Beale might or might not be true. Definitely not the most outrageous.

Lue is getting there, but I haven't spent any time looking into it, so I wouldn't pick it.

I know of several I don't believe exist, but they are not outrageous. For sheer size, I know the KGC existed. I know they accrued wealth. I just don't believe in the amounts some people give them credit for. Maybe several caches. I highly doubt in the hundreds of millions though. Again, I haven't delved too deeply into the subject, so I can't say for sure.

OKAY! I would have to say that the most outrageous story (for me) is a toss up between Ophir in the US, and Templar Treasure in the US. I think that the Templar Wealth is in Switzerland. I believe that Switzerland was founded by the remnants of the Knights Templar. Think its a coincidence that the Templar Banking System and the Swiss Banking System were so similar? What we know about Swiss History lends a lot of credence to the idea that the Templars settled in what is now Switzerland after their suppression:

1. The founding of the embryonic Switzerland conforms exactly to the period when the Templars were being persecuted in France.


2. Switzerland is just to the east of France and would have been particularly easy for fleeing Templar brothers from the whole region of France to get to.


3. In the history of the first Swiss Cantons there are tales of white coated knights mysteriously appearing and helping the locals to gain their independence against foreign domination.


4. The Templars were big in banking, farming and engineering (of an early type). These same aspects can be seen as inimical to the commencement and gradual evolution of the separate states that would eventually be Switzerland.


5. Even the Swiss don’t really know the ins and outs of their earliest history (or suggest that they don’t.) They are famous for being secretive and we don’t have to tell interested readers that this is something they share absolutely with the Templars.


6. The famous Templar Cross is incorporated into the flags of many of the Swiss Cantons. As are other emblems, such as keys and lambs, that were particularly important to the Knights Templar.


7. The Swiss were and are famous for their religious tolerance – and so were the Templars.

Sooooo, there's my outrageous treasure story. TEMPLAR TREASURE IN AMERICA!

Mike
 

Charlie P. (NY)

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That I would go with.

Or even that the Teutonic knights absorbed the Templars. Both orders were hospitallers, of noble birth/blood, and staying on the upper fringe of the Holy Roman Empire would keep them at a safe distance from Rome.
 

BosnMate

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Of course there is always that elusive treasure in the Philippines and Nigeria, all they need is lots and lots of money so they can send you lots and lots of money. And one never wants to forget all the mines the Padres lost, plus Black Barts and Joaquin Murrieta's ill gotten trove, and of course Jesse James wasn't a piker when burying loot. It's out there, go or it.
 

NWMP

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Nachos, to answer your question: NONE of the various treasure legends, stories, lores, etc.... are "outrageous" They're all iron-clad true. To call them "myths" or "superstition" is an insult to the faithful.
:)

I personaly have never dimissed the initial core story of Oak Island, for example. What does seem silly however are people that follow the same techniques, in the same locations for potential retrieval, then fail, over and over and over again. This has been going on at Oak Island for many decades. Literaly millions of dollars have been sunk into the "Money Pit", with consistantly negative results. So watching a TV series were the same failed techniques and locations return the same results makes you wonder if it all isn't a lark, for individuals with ulterior motives. If anything was actually left there, and not retrieved soon after. The definition of insanity is doing the same failed thing over and over again, but expecting a different result. I was told once not to try to make sense out of nonsense. Some of these myths are likely nurtured by locals to enhance tourism in an economic back water. I remember seeing a show about Big Foot. It turned out that a U.S. Forest Ranger ? made up some feet and layed tracks for decades. Hey, if someone wants to pour their resources and time into one of these endeavours, fill your boots. After reading Oak Islands recovery history, I'd rather go for something with better odds....like a lottery ticket.
 

DFX DAVE in M.D.

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Almost all of them sound outrageous , some of the Pirates have treasures buried all over the U.S.A. Everytime a real hoard of treasure is found, it is found by accident, like the recent guy and lady with the gold coins in California, and of course, it can not be explained why it was there in the first place.[h=2][/h]
 

lastleg

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The Tres Piedras yarn is the most ridiculous legend I've ever heard. You know the one with the
renegade French priest who massacres prospectors around Taos for their pokes, then has it
smelted and hauled to the Oklahoma panhandle where it supposedly is buried. If the yarner
had stopped there he might have had a decent chance of believability but does he? No, he
further claims the bad priests with him left markers of granite all the way from Santa Fe to
Oklahoma. Not just ordinary stones but enormous boulders pointing east. I won't break it
down just now but this one takes the cake.
 

ibjeepn

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Oak Island would be my choice as well. Maybe the Tv show has had its part in my decision. The flood tunnels theory has me disbelieving. So you put in flood tunnels as booby traps so that it makes it a death trap and unreachable. Unreachable as well to the people that buried it ? 7 lives must be lost, 6 have died. Make a sacrifice ! lol.. Now , would not this valuable treasures whereabouts be handed down and be more protected than it is by those that buried it ? The Ark of the covenant could be there ? Seriously ?.. I would find more likely, that Capt. Kidds privy stood there once and he may have dropped a coin while pulling up his pants. Thus, Oak Island treasure.
 

gollum

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Almost all of them sound outrageous , some of the Pirates have treasures buried all over the U.S.A. Everytime a real hoard of treasure is found, it is found by accident, like the recent guy and lady with the gold coins in California, and of course, it can not be explained why it was there in the first place.

Dave,

It is VERY easily explainable why there were tin cans with 1427 uncirculated gold coins in them. In the 1800s, miners would accumulate dust and nuggets. After a year, many would take their years accumulation, and ship it to the nearest mint. They would be converted to coins (after taxes taken out), then shipped back to the miner. He would then seal them in tin cans and bury them on his property. The coins found look like a fifty year accumulation (1847 - 1894) of tin cans.

There are literally hundreds of stories from the Mother Lode Area of California of miners stashing either gold coins or nuggets and dust in old hollow trees, under curious shaped rocks, or in the roots of old trees. Another story of a find was from about 1901. A Portuguese man in Sonora, Ca. was cutting down a tree on his property. When the tree fell, he found jewelry and a BUNCH of tin cans filled with gold dust and nuggets. Although he never said exactly how much was there, he told a friend before moving back to Portugal that he could "live like a prince for the rest of his life" at home.


Mike
 

Tejaas

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In Texas, seemingly every one of our 254 counties has a variation of every Frank Dobie treasure tale recollection.

So I'd say 253 variations of every tale are complete hogwash!

Oh, and anything that has had "dowsing" as a method of validation in its past.





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Tom_in_CA

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.....Oh, and anything that has had "dowsing" as a method of validation in its past....

Oh please, you can't be serious? If someone's dowsing rod pointed that way , well ........ then ... ALL THE MORE reason to believe in the validity of the treasure lore !
 

austin

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Tejass, I've stood at the Los Almagres Mine(Lost Bowie) with a geology prof from UT. The Los Almagres is pretty much filled in by the contents fo what folks call the "Boyd Shaft" next to it. In fact, there is a chunk of silver ore sitting on my desk as I type this. Hogwash?
 

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