Trifter

The Holy Blood, aka The Holy Grail… lost in Bruges!

King Arthur’s Knights of the Round Table searched for it… The cup from which Jesus drank wine at the Last Supper and that was later filled with his blood, at Golgotha. Legend says this “Holy Blood”, also known as “the Holy Grail” (Sang Real = San Greal = Saint Grail) was brought to Britain. Treasure hunters are searching the Holy Grail in places like Glastonbury, in southern France, or even in Spain… and that is very strange, because the one and only Holy Blood was found by the Knights Templar and the Count of Flanders on Christmas Day 1148, in the Holy Grave in Jerusalem! They brought it to Bruges, the Venice of the Nord, where you still can see it in the Chapel of the Holy Blood. But some say that it is a false relic, and that the one and only real Holy Grail was hidden somewhere in a house in Bruges. Eat your heart out, Dan Brown!… And start with his article: The Holy Blood of Bruges, a New Jerusalem - or do it when Visiting Bruges-la-Morte, a medieval ghost city!

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The Stolen Panel of the Mystic Lamb

The polyptych known as “The Adoration of the Mystic Lamb” was painted in the 15th century by the “Flemish Primitives” Jan and Hubert Van Eyck. It is regarded as one of the artistic highlights of Western civilisation and you can still visit it in the Saint Bavo Cathedral in Ghent, Belgium. But one of the many oak panels is missing: “The Just Judges” was stolen in April 1934. A certain “D.U.A.” wrote a letter to the bishop of Ghent, stating he would return the panel if he could receive a “fee” of 1 million Belgian francs. Instead of 1 million francs, the bishop only would pay 25.000 francs… Some months later, Arsène Goedertier collapsed after a speech at a political rally. Before succumbing, he could tell a friend that he was the only man who knew where the stolen painting was situated. He had a file on that crime at home. The police investigated the file and did find something that looked like a code, but could not break the code. If you visit the city of Ghent, make sure you go to the Cathedral of Saint Bavo and see its most treasured piece of art, The Mystic Lamb… with the replica of the Just Judges. The whole story is here, and only during the city game that we organize in Ghent, the invaluable treasure can be found by true treasure hunters:

The Treasure of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette

In the spring of 1791, the King of France was a prisoner in his own country.  Marie Antoinette, his wife, begged her brother, the Austrian Emperor, to save them from the revolutionary forces. She wrote her letters in a code that was borrowed from the Prophecies of Nostradamus. In fact they wrote a lot of “new prophecies” that were attributed to Nostradamus, but were meant to communicate with other royalists in order to save the royal family and their “war chest”. The royalist general de Bouillé had an army at his disposition in the fortress town of Montmédy, in northern France. Just across the border with the Austrian Netherlands was the Abbey of Orval, a perfectly safe place for Louis XVI and his family. De Bouillé thoroughly prepared the flight of the royal family from the revolutionary Paris, but he couldn’t possibly imagine at the moment that Louis, his wife and his children would be arrested in Varennes. The French Revolution would lead Louis and Marie Antoinette to the bloody axe of the guillotine, but the fortune of the Bourbons and the jewels of Marie Antoinette reached the Abbey of Orval… where they disappeared without leaving a trace. 

I wrote a book about the whole story (in Dutch), titled Nostradamus in Orval – but you’ll find the highlights here: Nostradamus and the Lost Treasure of the Bourbons.

The Curse of the Superstitions

In many of the legends concerning the Superstition Mountains in Arizona, an Apache curse protects the sacred burial ground and the treasures of the Indians, including the famous Lost Dutchman Gold Mine. According to the author R.G. Babcock, this fabulous treasure was nothing else but the Lost Aztec Treasure of Montezuma. The Legend of the Lost Dutchman goes way back to the 1840’s, when a Mexican family developed some gold mines in the Superstition Mountains and was ambushed by Apaches. Two Peralta’s escaped, they buried their mines with rocks and since then, numerous treasure maps have surfaced… but all the treasure hunters became the victims of all sort of troubles, caused by the Curse of the Superstitions. In the 1870’s, the “Dutchman” Jacob Waltz, who was in fact a German, would have located the mine. He gave the place a name, but he and his partners again had to deal with the Curse of the Superstitions… The whole story starts here: The Lost Dutchman Gold Mine. Or here:

Treasure Island, for real!

Undoubtedly, everybody knows “Treasure Island”, the adventure novel by Robert Louis Stevenson, narrating a tale of pirates and gold, buried on an island.  But is this fictional island based on a real place? Sure it is. The German treasure hunter August Gissler used an old treasure map that once belonged to the infamous pirate Benito Bonito, and searched Cocos Island from 1889 to 1909.  Since then, many treasure seekers have visited Cocos Island, among them Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Felix von Luckner, who had a Cocos treasure map tattooed on his thigh. You’ll find Cocos Island 400 miles off the Pacific Ocean side of Costa Rica, latitude 5°32′57″ N and longitude 87°2′10″ W. Or you can make a short TouTube trip here:

Nazi Treasures, The Amber Room

In World War II the Nazis looted many grand houses in Europe and stole countless art treasures. Some are said to be hidden in underground tunnels in the Russian city of Kalingrad (Königsberg). But this city has now been completely rebuilt over the tunnels. The famous “Amber Room” – a whole room decorated with pictures made entirely from semi-precious stones – also got stolen from a palace near Saint Petersburg. It hasn’t been seen since 1943 and may have been destroyed in the war. Searches were held on the ground, underground and even underwater. In 2003 it was recreated and unveiled in St. Petersburg. But the real thing is still hidden… and waiting for you!

The Gold of Custer’s Last Stand

The Battlefield of General George A. Custer’s Battle of the Little Big Horn (25 Juni 1876) is now a United States National Monument. Major-General Custer, whom the Indians knew as “Long Hair”, was killed alongside his men, almost certainly on what is today known as Last Stand Hill. Just the day before Custer’s Last Battle, a supply boat called the “Far West” was making a difficult upstream journey to the junction of Montana’s Big Horn and Little Big Horn, for a pre-arranged rendez-vous with Custer’s commanding officer General Alfred H. Terry. And about the same time, some fifty miles to the west, a mule-drawn freight wagon from Bozeman, Montana, with a very valuable load of miner’s gold was making its way towards Bismarck, North Dakota. The day after the Custer massacre, Captain Marsh of the supply boat discovered he had missed the rendezvous point. He met the badly frightened driver of the freight wagon, who pleaded Marsh to take over the shipment of gold and silver and deliver it to Bismarck, as he seriously doubted his own chances of getting through alive. Marsh agreed, but because of the continued danger from the Indians, the gold was hidden at some suitable spot on shore… and was never retrieved. Read here more!