What do you think about this?
For almost two hundred years the Knights Templar were the most powerful men in Europe. They began as a handful of warrior monks guarding pilgrims to Jerusalem, and grew into the richest organization on the continent, the bankers of kings, holders of castles and fleets and a war chest that even monarchs envied.
Then, on Friday the thirteenth of October, 1307, it all came apart in a single morning. King Philip the Fourth of France, deep in debt to the order, sent out sealed orders to be opened at dawn across the country. In one coordinated sweep, hundreds of Templars were arrested, their Grand Master Jacques de Molay among them, and the crown moved to seize everything they owned.
But here is the part that has fascinated treasure hunters ever since. When the king’s men opened the vaults, the legendary Templar treasure was not there. The order’s great fleet, said to have been anchored at the port of La Rochelle, slipped away and was never accounted for. Where it went, and what it carried, no one has ever proven. The trail runs cold into legend, toward Scotland’s Rosslyn Chapel, toward islands in the Atlantic, toward a fortune that may have simply vanished.
What if the wealthiest brotherhood in medieval Europe saw the arrests coming and moved their treasure somewhere it has quietly waited for seven hundred years?
Lost to history, melted into the coffers of kings, or still hidden where the Templars left it? What do you think happened to their treasure?
What do you think about this? On January 20, 1996, three young women in Varginha, Brazil, saw a four foot creature with oily skin and red eyes crouched by a wall. The army was in town that morning. A policeman said to have handled it died a month later. Cover story, or Brazil’s Roswell?
What do you think about this? In 1800 settlers at Conneaut, Ohio, opened a four acre burial ground in rows and reported skeletons over seven feet, jaws that fit over a man’s face, double rows of teeth. The graves were plowed under within a generation. Tall tale, or a people buried twice?
What do you think about this? The Iron Pillar of Delhi is six tons of forged iron from around 400 AD. It has stood outside through 1,600 years of monsoons and never rusted, thanks to a protective film from phosphorus rich iron nobody made again. Lucky recipe, or knowledge lost on purpose?
What do you think about this? North Sea trawlers pull up mammoth teeth, flint tools and a carved harpoon from 120 feet deep. Until 8,000 years ago that seabed was Doggerland, a forested land the size of Britain, drowned by rising seas and a tsunami. The lost land of every old story?
What do you think about this? In 1974 a Florida family found a polished 22 pound steel ball in burned brush. It hummed when a guitar played, rolled across rooms on its own and changed direction. Navy X rays showed objects inside, origin unknown. Valve ball, or something that landed?
What do you think about this? The Whaley House in San Diego was built in 1857 where a man was slowly hanged five years earlier. A baby and a daughter later died inside. Visitors report footsteps in empty rooms and a pressure on the throat where the gallows stood. Old house, or long memory?
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