Two Friends Accidentally Discover a Long Lost Item From WWII

Dale Hufford thought his flight was like any other. He was on his way from Baltimore to visit his friend, Mike Peter, who lived in Lobetal, Germany. In their conversation making plans for his visit, Mike happened to mention to Dale that there was a pair of pipes mysteriously protruding from the ground in a secret place near his house.

With Dale’s excitement edging Mike on, the two decided to have a look. Little did they know that Mike’s initial low-level curiosity and Dale’s overt enthusiasm would blossom into an adventure into the woods and deep into an underground spiral leading them to a buried treasure, and even a brush with the law!

The moment Dale stepped a foot off the plane in Germany he could barely contain his excitement. He was happy to see his friend, but he couldn’t wait to go see the mysterious pipes with Mike. He urged Mike to begin making plans to investigate. Mike explained to Dale that he assumed the pipes were part of something larger underground, but he had no idea what.

After making solid plans and packing a few backpacks with a flashlight, the two arrived at the site near Mike’s home to investigate the pipes on an afternoon when the air was crisp and chilly. The metal pipes looked odd sticking up from the ground among thousands of trees in the forest near Mike’s home. They seemed so out of place.

Stairs were leading down from a dark, rectangular hole at ground level. There was an old iron gate that blocked the entrance and a sign that warned, “Betreten Verboten,” in German, meaning “Do Not Enter.”

Fortunately, the gate’s lock was broken, so the two pushed through it and began a descent down the dilapidated stairs. The locals had warned them about munitions at the site, and they had no way of calling for help if they were to get into trouble. Despite all this, they forged on.

Mike suggested that the two avoid taking unnecessary turns down a maze-like hallway to avoid getting lost. They wandered for hours even with this intent, confused and disoriented inside a concrete labyrinth. Whoever had built this thing must have purposefully wanted to make it confusing.

The hallway turned sharply after wandering for hours, and Mike and Dale got nervous. Just knowing they were miles underground was already messing with their heads, making them feel claustrophobic and lost. What was worse, the hallway started to widen and there was a horrid smell that grew stronger the more they ventured forth.

To go with the strange smell, there were weird markings on the walls and indentations that looked like someone or something had punched holes in them. The whole vibe was making their skin crawl. This was such a strange place, and they hadn’t even ventured very far in.

As Mike and Dale continued, they spotted a rusted yellow door ripped from its hinges. When they noticed Cyrillic writing stenciled onto the rusted door, every horror story they’d ever watched came flooding into their minds. The door looked as though it had once opened into a vault, but what it once held they could not determine.

The horrid smell seemed to be coming from sewage water and rot. Dale was so disgusted by the smell he was about to vomit, but they passed through the door that was off its hinges, strangely compelled to move forward.

As they moved through the hallway, Mike slipped in the smelly water, sending waves out. He panicked and his flashlight beam caught a dark figure of someone crouching in the water like Gollum.

They stumbled on a back entrance to the even deeper depths of Lager Koralle, a 1939 WWII bunker built for schooling Navy Intelligence. Rockets were also stored here that once were aimed at Berlin. It was the secretive headquarters of the Oberkommando der Kriegsmarine.

After hours of trudging through this underground, watery, smelly maze, they longed to leave.

They noticed it was getting hard to breathe. The oxygen levels underground were quickly dissipating. Dale was starting to see spots and stars and worried he’d pass out. His brain desperately needed fresh, oxygenated air. His blood pressure was rising too.

Just as the two were about to give up, Dale caught a glimpse of a glinting object just around the corner of the water-filled room. The glint caught his eye. He began to wade toward the object, but Mike tried to stop him.

Determined to find out what was glinting, Dale waded knee-deep through the cesspool with his flashlight in his teeth. The glint seemed to call to him, so he kept wading until he was close enough to stick his hands into the water.

Instinctually, Dale moved toward the west junction, and the two friends backtracked, waterlogged until they could no longer hear water dripping.

Finally, the two emerged into the sunlight. Once they grabbed some fresh air, Dale remembered the object he had slid into his pocket. He reached in, his pants still wet from trudging through the murky water, and thumbed the engraving on it. He then pulled it out for a closer look.

Dale and Mike realized there was something else intriguing about this underground bunker they had just emerged from. Others had ventured into the surrounding area to find WWII-era gold, too. They were not the only people who had been curious about the pipes emerging from underground in the middle of a forest.

Glueck’s search drove him to search for this gold his entire life. He knew that Chief Heinrich Himmler was ordered to empty the Berlin Reichsbank of all its gold and other valuables and send it on a train to the Alps.

In Glueck’s interview with Bavarian TV in 1995, a man gave him a map and said he should look more closely at it. Perhaps Glueck would find something interesting here. Was this a clue?

Dale was admiring his gold treasure when a strange light flicked through the trees. He thought he was still shell-shocked from his and Mike’s journey into the subterranean maze.

Dale knew the police were often looking for people who explored the area snooping around for treasure. The two men didn’t waste time. They hoisted their backpacks on and started to run as fast as they could. The barking sounds of the dogs began to fade the faster they ran.

Finally, the two arrived at Mike’s house in Germany. They unloaded their backpacks onto a sofa, and Dale began wondering what other treasures they might have found in the watery, putrid pit they had just waded through.

Dale’s conscience got the best of him, and he eventually gave the gold bar over to the authorities who knew they had been trespassing in the forest, near the protruding pipes. He wasn’t about to have a run-in with the law in a foreign country.

The two friends heard back from the police that the gold bar they had turned in was 500 grams of pure gold worth more than $18,000.

Dale got a taste for gold in the two friends’ adventure and longed to go back. Mike wasn’t hearing it. They were both inexperienced treasure hunters, but they’d found something special, perhaps a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

When the two looked at the video they had made of their underground adventure, they weren’t able to see the dark shadowy figure in the corner, as the light wasn’t sufficient to capture him on camera, but the gold was very, very real.

Going to the frames where the two had thought a girl’s voice was speaking, the image was grainy and blurred, but once again, they heard the unmistakable sound of a little girl’s laughter.

As mentioned before, the boys were not the only people to enter the area in search of suspected treasure. Though the boys were not there for that specific reason, there are many people who spend a lot of time trying to uncover buried treasure.

A news crew was covering a story in Gotland, Sweden. The news piece centered on the illegal treasure hunting that was being done at the Spilling Farm.

A man named Nick Mead scored big time when he bought a tank off of Ebay for $40,000. Nick, the owner of “Tanks a Lot,” is an avid collector of tanks.

A brother and sister located in New York had been paying their father’s safe deposit box and had become fed up. The deposit box cost $800 annually and they were ready to stop paying it.

A man named Eric Lawes decided to help a farmer who had lost their hammer in a field one day. However, the day ended with Eric walking away with a lot more than just human kindness in his back pocket.

A farmer named Fred Johnson gave Terry Herbert (a metal detector enthusiast) permission to walk onto his land with his equipment. Fred thought at most, Terry would unearth a lost wrench.

In 1958, a man named Ted Seaton decided to head back to her car after a day of trying to uncover treasure. His hunt had not been successful and it was time to call it quits.

A couple in Northern California decided to take their dog for a walk on their own property one day, like any other day. What transpired was anything but normal, however!

Thanks to the use of modern technology, a ship that sank beneath the surface of the sea more than 300 years ago was discovered off the coast of Columbia.

In 1985, workers who were renovating a building in Sroda Slaska stumbled across old silver coins. There were no further searches done for any more treasure and the building was continued to be worked on.