LOS ANGELES (AP) Robert Hunter, the man behind the poetic and mystical words for many of the Grateful Dead's finest songs, has died at age 78. Klaus Dona before settling in the Philippines We stopped on the outskirts of town in front of an old schoolhouse. Scientists competed in their attempt to somehow prove that a soul left the body at the time of death. When Marcos discovered that the photo had been widely published he made the CIA pressure Cheatham into signing an affidavit certifying that the golden buddha was not gold, or else face certain death in Vietnam. He found the whole thing rather ridiculous and naive, and hastily threw the flyer in the rubbish bin beneath his desk. Fred C. Dobbs, the protagonist of B. Traven 's 1927 novel, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre and the movie of the same name. His shirt read Trust me, I do this all the time.. The three men went out hiking, but there is no evidence that they ever made it out of the mountains. Ive already invested a lot of my time, my energy and money on this. Real or imagined? Roxas reported the incident to the police, who predictably ignored his pleas. The buddha was decidedly Burmese in style: 22 carat gold and of a type produced in Asia prior to 1940. A notoriously horrific acid trip that Robert Hunter endured in June 1969, thanks to apple juice dosed with "probably a full gram of crystal LSD worth perhaps $50,000," was the lyrical impetus for "Black Peter.". From what? Might the answer be gold; trillions of dollars worth of gold bullion? Nearby, in a man-made chamber measuring ten feet by thirty feet, Roxas found more gold, this time packed into hundreds of small wooden boxes. Not bad for a sixty-nine-year-old. I nodded and reflected on how pathetically difficult I found traversing the tunnel to be. While he was talking a hostile player started attacking me, which caused the npc to run away. The rods always seemed dead. Despite numerous eyewitnesses and various first-hand accounts, most historians doubted the existence of the Black Eagle Trust, let alone the buried treasure hoards, and so I travelled to the Philippines to investigate the story for myself. It was not a sense of being claustrophobic. What are you waiting for? the caretaker shouted, as though I should have known what was expected of me. At two hundred and fifteen feet Klaus was literally on the doorstep of a discovery. 0000001447 00000 n Back on the surface the cameraman filmed various objects that Klaus had found in the tunnel backfill: symbols such as seashells, leaves, gold dust and other assorted items that should not exist at that depth in the earth, and certainly not with man-made cement and gold dust embedded in them. I was also looking forward to seeing Patrick again, a larger-than-life friend of Klauss whom I had met on my first trip. Im sorry what was that? I retorted apologetically. About us | Our programming | Become a supporter | Privacy. Unfortunately, my role in the narrative would be minimal. They used the same water from the streams as everyone else and unwittingly infected many of the other men. In the early 1960s, Hunter volunteered as a test subject for a psychedelic chemicals research program (MKULTRA) sponsored by the CIA and was paid . That is exactly what United States Captain Edward Lansdale and Intelligence Officer Santa Romana are alleged to have done to those loyal to Japanese General Yamashita Tomoyuki, who was posted to the Philippines at the end of the Second World War. In a now infamous moment of stubborn, albeit courageous, resolve Roxas returned to Baguio, and in the presence of lawyers and the media, defiantly proclaimed the golden buddha to be a fake. Andrew Gough. The implausibilities pile higher and higher. 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. Estimates of the total buried treasure start at $100 billion and soar to a high of $2 trillion in gold bullion, a figure cited by a respected Manila columnist, Hilarion Henares. It was impossible for any man in my position to control every action of his subordinate commanders, let alone the deeds of individual soldiers. He had a PhD in theology and had his work presented in multiple Christian publications, including a terrifying pamphlet that claimed that the Antichrist was coming. I was lying on a table in my underwear with a sheet laid over my body. I arrived late, dined with Klaus, and the following morning he and his trusted colleague picked me up in the quintessential Philippine vehicle of choice, a motorised tricycle. 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. Could he have harnessed the legendary viral energy that I had read so much about? Roxass bodyguards were forced to lie on the floor at gunpoint, along with the rest of the Roxas family, while Marcoss men confiscated not only the golden buddha and the precious stones that had filled its retractable head, but the remaining seventeen gold bars, samurai swords, old coins, and even his childrens piggy bank. I tried not to think about it as I descended the first sixty-foot shaft with a bamboo ladder that afforded my already wet and slippery wellies only about three inches of grip before my toes became jammed against the edge of the tunnel. Perhaps he believed that other men had died from lack of survival training and that his skills at living outdoors would be enough to find the gold mines and make him a rich man. The facts behind the urban legend that billions in Japanese gold lie buried in the Philippines. We said goodbye to Henry and headed out for lunch. His team went and searched and dug but never found anything. I was riveted as Cathcart recalled that tragic day and was leaning forward in anticipation as he spoke, when suddenly his carer abruptly corrected him and blurted out facts about the case that I found startling and incongruous from a healthcare professional who had claimed to know nothing about the affair. But the picture changed with the deaths last month of the two Filipino workers, suffocated in a cave-in that McDougalds engineers now attribute to a booby trap left behind by the Japanese. What is that, I asked. It was bucketing down. Ricardo T. Jose is treated as a rock star in the Philippines Amelia was a Filipino living in Los Angeles, who had gone to high school in Baguio with Roxass sister. They were in their sleeping bags, but their heads were missing. In particular, I was keen to investigate one mans courageous efforts to unearth Japanese buried treasure, and the tons of gold bullion that accompanied it. The Japanese gold heist, however, would dwarf the earlier Nazi thefts and would be exploited by United States presidents from Truman to Trump, representing one of the greatest conspiracies of our time. Over the next few days Klaus took me around his sites; each was different, but equally spectacular. It was time to see an excavation in progress. Thirty years after the disappearance, David Paulides, a former police officer and researcher on missing people, filmed the video above and brought the case to the attention of the Colorado government. Those who tired or died in the process were quickly replaced. Robert Hunter, the man behind the poetic and mystical words for many of the Grateful Dead's finest songs, has died at age 78. Even Imelda Marcos confessed that her husbands wealth had come from Yamashitas gold. We started filming after 11pm and finished at 2am; hardly condusive to peak performance, but it was nice of the director to squeeze me in. The cameraman was brilliant, and not impressed with the fact that he was prohibited from entering the tunnels to do his job. I was intrigued and thought I had nothing to lose, and so I decided to email him one last time. In January 2016, 54-year-old Randy Bilyeu wanted to find the treasure. He stared back defiantly. Skeptoid Podcast. Roxas informed her that Marcoss air-conditioned burial crypt in the Philippines, at the Ferdinand E Marcos Presidential Center in Batac, Ilocos Norte (which was secured twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week by arm guards), contained a fake corpse full of precious stones and diamonds. Can it? As the uniformed men began kicking in the door, they warned Roxas, whose family and friends were acting as bodyguards while he slept upstairs, that they had three minutes to let them in or they would be killed. Jamie founded Listverse due to an insatiable desire to share fascinating, obscure, and bizarre facts. 0000017241 00000 n What I am really being charged with is losing the war. Nor, to be honest, did I. Japan's imperial war efforts were incredibly expensive and Japan had little wealth of its own. Before I could comment Klaus had taken out his dowsing rods and located the entrance shaft to the tunnel system that the bent tree was pointing towards. That would be too dangerous. Thats incredible, but tell me more. Please contact us with any corrections or feedback. Marcos became the mastermind of a covert gold retrieval operation and acted in partnership with both the Japanese and the United States Central Intelligence Agency. But then again, Klaus is five feet five inches tall and I am a foot taller, I defensively mused in my head. 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. It was peculiar and appeared to be a topographical map. Many were husbands and fathers who had traveled in hopes of providing for their families back home. Marcos wanted more and, in addition to Santy, he sought Ben Valmores, whom his people understood to have been the keeper of the treasure maps. 0000001318 00000 n I didn't wana lose the map so I quickly hogtied the npc and stole the map. The causes of these deaths and disappearances range from disease and starvation to mysteries that have yet to be solved. Andrew Gough. When Curtis was finally convinced that the Aquino government was sincere about protecting and encouraging treasure hunters, he organized his company and moved in, McDougald said. 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