Golddiggers!

Thar's gold in them thar caves. Or that thar cave. Maybe.

As the rumor has it - or had it - in 1863, a deployment of Union soldiers transporting gold bars from Wheeling, WV to the U.S. Mint in Philadelphia got lost in them thar Pennsylvania hills. 

There was a war on, and things got murky. The party's guide took off with some of the horses. There were Confederate

sympathizers all over the area who had been seizing gold shipments. The lieutenant in charge took ill. Some members of the party went scouting for help. The lieutenant and a trusty sergeant stayed behind with the gold. And that was the last of the men or the gold.

Well, who doesn't like a good story about finding lost treasure?

And sometimes it even happens.

Years ago, a friend of mind acquired a throw-away Edward Hopper painting for a couple of bucks at a yard sale on the Cape. The painting was nothing much - no Night Hawks, no Cape Cod Morning, no Portland Light.  If the painting had lived as something Hopper wanted to show and/or sell, it would have been one of his New York City works. The painting was grey, gloomy. An early (and discarded) try. But there was something there.

When I saw it hanging on my friend's wall, something about it caught my eye, and I kept going back to it. Not that I have such a great eye, but there was something that stood out about the composition.

I asked my friend about it and he told me the yard sale story. And how it turned out the house where he bought it was one that Hopper had summered in. 

It's not a major work. It's not signed. But it's something. And it's worth plenty.

So, there are treasures to be found.

And Dennis and Kem Parada, a pair of father-and-son treasure hunters, thought they'd found one. A big one. That Union gold, sitting there idly in a Pennsylvania cave for 150+ years. 

Story in hand, they reached out to the FBI for help, meeting with special agent Jacob Archer - and is that a great Fed special agent name or what? - hoping that, by working with the Feds they could get around any state claims to the gold. Archer found the story credible enough that he applied for a federal warrant to seize the gold. 

In 2018, the Paradas told the FBI they’d heard rumors about hidden gold in the area for decades, according to the FBI’s warrant request. The story of “Lieutenant Castleton” and how the alleged gold got to be there came from a story titled “The Lost Gold Ingot Treasure,” which they found in the Army Heritage and Education Center at the Military History Institute in Carlisle, Pa. The story was written down for first time on “the centennial anniversary of the Civil War,” it says, according to the FBI request.

The Paradas used clues from this somewhat meandering text to center on a cave near the Dents Run area of Elk County. After getting permission from the Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources to search it, they found a “turtle-shaped cave,” which initial tests indicated had man-made walls and a large quantity of metal on the other side. A colleague, who was allowed to do a small amount of drilling, said he briefly saw a flash of gold and what appeared to be gold dust on the drill bit.

On Jan. 31, 2018, the Paradas — referred to as “Person 1” and “Person 2” in the new documents — led the FBI to the cave, which they had visited hundreds of times over the years, where agents performed a few tests that confirmed the Paradas’ finding: There was something large and metal a few feet underneath them in the cave. The next month, the FBI used highly sensitive equipment to determine that whatever was behind the wall weighed up to nine tons and had the density of gold.

Gold of that quantity would be worth hundreds of millions, according to the AP, and the Paradas may have been entitled to a cut. (Source: WaPo)

The FBI conducted a search and claim that they came up with nada. The Paradas initially shrugged and left it at that. Then they thought about it, and now they're saying not so fast. They believe the FBI is lying. They "have now retained an attorney, who is fighting for thousands of pages of FBI documents and video footage of the dig."

When the dig occurred in 2018, the Paradas were supposed to have been allowed to view the dig, But they were kept at  such a distance they really couldn't see much of anything going on. 

Day One of the dig ended early; on Day Two, the Paradas were shown the dig site with nothing in it. Case closed.

What the Paradas didn't know at the time is that people in the 'hood claimed that, once the Paradas has left, the FBI had gone back to their golddigging.

That night, neighbors said they saw bright lights and heard backhoe and jackhammer noises. They also say they saw armored vehicles and a convoy of black SUVs.

Hmmmm.

This is almost as good as a UFO story. 

I'm hoping that it turns out to be true that the FBI found gold in that thar cave. I'm hoping that the Paradas end up filthy rich. 

Who's with me?