A Brazilian man tragically lost his life by plunging down a deep shaft he had dug in his kitchen after dreaming that there was gold buried deep under his house.

71-year-old João Pimenta da Silva’s dream of enrichment ended as a nightmare that claimed his life. His lifeless body was found at the bottom of an exceptionally deep well he and his neighbors had dug under his kitchen in Ipatinga, a municipality in Brazil’s Minas Gerais state. The man had reportedly dreamt that there was gold deep under his home, and that all he had to do was dig to get to it. He even told his neighbor about his dream and even though he was laughed at in the beginning, da Silva was actually able to convince the man to assist him with the digging. Unfortunately, the treasure hunt ended in disaster when the 71-year-old plunged to his death while trying to exit the 40-meter-deep hole.

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A group of treasure hunters that has been searching for the fabled “Lemminkäinen Hoard” treasure in Finland since 1987 claims that they are finally just “meters away” from finding it.

Known as the Treasure Twelve, the group of treasure hunters has spent every summer since 1987 looking for the Lemminkäinen Hoard, the whereabouts of which were revealed to them by a mystic just before their death. Apparently, a labyrinthine cave complex near Helsinki is home to the most valuable treasure the world has ever known, with an estimated value of over $15 billion. Now, 34 years after their search for the Lemminkäinen Hoard began the Treasure Twelve are closer than ever to finally getting their hands on it.

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After seeing his business affected by the Covid-19 pandemic, a Michigan jeweler decided to close shop and make money by using about $1 million in precious metals as treasure for would-be treasure hunters willing to pay for clues.

Johnny Perri has been a jeweler his whole life, after learning the business from his father, but the economic crisis caused by the coronavirus proved too hard for his shop in Macomb County, Michigan. He had to options: either sell everything and retire, or find a new way to make money using the jewelry. Perri and his wife chose option two, allegedly burying or otherwise hiding around $1 million-worth of jewelry in dozens of spots, from the Detroit metropolitan area through the Upper Peninsula. Now the jeweler is challenging people to go hunting for his treasures and claim them for themselves, if they can find it.

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For over two centuries, treasure hunters, computer scientists and even the US military have been trying to crack a set of three ciphers and reveal the location of a legendary treasure worth tens of millions of dollars. All have failed, but maybe you can do better?

Thomas J. Beale’s fabled treasure – thousands of pounds of silver gold and precious jewels worth an estimated $60 million – is supposedly buried somewhere in Virginia. Over the last hundred years, many have tried and failed to pinpoint its exact location. Beale, a 19th century adventurer, is said to have discovered his coveted treasure on a hunting trip near the modern New Mexico-Colorado border, and brought it back to his home state of Virginia, where he buried it for safe keeping. He then created three separate ciphers to conceal the exact location, heirs and details of his treasure. So far, only one of the three codes has been solved.

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The Crater of Diamonds State Park, in Murfreesboro, Arkansas, is the world’s only diamond mine open to the public. Visitors get to go on a real-life treasure hunt and keep whatever they find!

According to park officials, over 600 diamonds of various colors and grades are found by visitors each year. Over 75,000 diamonds have been unearthed since the mine was discovered in 1906 – 19,000 of them since the mine became a state park in 1972.

Scientists believe that these diamonds were formed three billion years ago in the earth’s mantle, 60 to 100 miles below the earth’s surface. The precious rocks were brought up to the surface about 100 million years ago, by a rising column of magma. A huge volcanic eruption resulted in an 80-acer crater, filled with fragments of mantle rock that contained diamonds. Over the years, the rocks have eroded, leaving the diamonds and other semi-precious gems loose in the soil.

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If you believe millionaire art collector Forrest Fenn, there’s actually a real treasure buried somewhere in the Rocky Mountains, just waiting to be found. The 84-year-old author claims he hid a chest full of gold and jewelry – worth millions of dollars – in the mountains five years ago, and even left clues in his book The Thrill of the Chase. Tens of thousands of people have joined the hunt, but no one has managed to find the coveted treasure so far.

Fenn, a native of New Mexico, moved back to Santa Fe with his wife in 1970. He has always had a strong sense of adventure, but he didn’t get the idea to hide his treasure until 1988, when he was diagnosed with kidney cancer. He was told that his chances of survival were slim, so he started thinking of creative ways to share his wealth. That’s when he thought of a treasure hunt.

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