Dale Hufford and Mike Peter were two friends that just so happened to stumble across an incredible historic discovery. Mike found some mysterious pipes coming out of the ground near his property.

Dale was overcome with excitement to explore the strange pipes that he had discovered. He dragged his friend along even though Mike was seemingly unimpressed with the prospect of the adventure. Little did they know the real adventure that lay in wait for them.

Dale was thrilled to land in Germany to visit his old friend, Mike. He was much more excited to explore the mysterious pipes than his buddy, so he encouraged them to hatch a plan.

The pair of friends packed their backpacks and flashlight and made their way for the woods on one chilly afternoon shortly after Dale arrived in Germany. The metal pipes certainly did stand out against the surrounding wildlife.

A daunting case of stairs led the men down into a dark hole in the ground. It was something out of a horror movie. The gate at the stairs had a sign on it that read “Betreten Verboten”, meaning “Do Not Enter”.

The gate was locked, but it had been broken. Perhaps they weren’t the first people to explore the depths of the pipes. Or, the lock might have been weathered by the elements. Either way, they took it as a sign to continue down.

Mike suggested that they take care not to make too many unnecessary turns for fear of getting lost. The hallways were something of a maze. It seemed that whoever had built the tunnels had made them intentionally confusing and disorienting.

Mike and Dale wandered aimlessly around the tunnels for hours until they hit a sharp turn in the tunnel. Just the knowledge of how far underground they were was making them feel claustrophobic.

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.