RACE FOR THE RELICS OF THE INNER EARTH

By ANDREW GOUGH

July 2020

Earth is over four and a half billion years old. Reflect upon that and ask yourself, is it realistic to think that the human race is its first and only civilised inhabitants? Accounts of the inner Earth, the civilisations that allegedly reside there, and the chambers of ancient relics that are purported to be preserved in their kingdoms, are subjects that have been relegated to folklore, fantasy and fiction. But what if they are real? What if their knowledge is advanced, and coveted by shadowy factions who seek to exploit it today? Sounds absurd? Perhaps, but the evidence is mounting. My investigation will explore the possibility that there is, in fact, a race for the relics of the inner Earth.

Woolpit village sign

 

Legends of the Green People

The twelfth-century account of the green children of Woolpit is perhaps the earliest and best-documented case for the presence of intelligent life beneath the surface of the planet. The legend states that two young children, a brother and sister, were discovered by villagers beside one of the wolf pits that gave the English village its name (wulf-pytt in Old English). Much to the bewilderment of the villagers, the children lacked any resemblance to the other boys and girls; their skin was green, they dressed oddly, spoke an unknown language and struggled to digest food. Before long the boy died of malnutrition, but his sister persevered. She survived, learned English and lived a relatively normal life – except for her allegedly wanton behaviour.

The tale of the green children of Woolpit is thought to have taken place in Suffolk, England, during the reign of King Stephen (1135-1154), but had it not been for William of Newburgh’s Historia rerum Anglicarum (1189) and Ralph of Coggeshall’s (?-1227) Chronicum Anglicanum (1220), we may never have heard of it. Newburgh (1136-1198), in particular, was the blogger of his day, and was a young man during the time of the Woolpit incident. What he reported of their story is enthralling.

Newburgh stated that after learning English the children offered an insight into their homeland:

We are inhabitants of the land of St Martin, who is regarded with peculiar veneration in the country which gave us birth.

When asked where St Martin’s land was and how they had arrived in Woolpit, they replied:

We are ignorant of both those circumstances; we only remember this, that on a certain day, when we were feeding our father’s flocks in the fields, we heard a great sound, such as we are now accustomed to hear at St Edmund’s, when the bells are chiming; and whilst listening to the sound in admiration, we became on a sudden, as it were, entranced and found ourselves among you in the fields where you were reaping.

Upon being questioned further the children added:

The sun does not rise upon our countrymen; our land is little cheered by its beams; we are contented with that twilight, which, among you, precedes the sunrise, or follows the sunset. Moreover, a certain luminous country is seen, not far distant from ours, and divided from it by a very considerable river.

Newburgh claimed his account was based on ‘reports from a number of trustworthy sources’, while Coggeshall’s report cites his source as Sir Richard de Calne of Wyke, who is said to have provided refuge for the green children in his nearby manor. Ralph adds a similar account, but with a slightly different twist to Newburgh’s story:

The girl enjoyed continual good health and becoming accustomed to various kinds of food, lost completely that green colour, and gradually recovered the sanguine habit of her entire body. She was afterwards regenerated by the laver of holy baptism, and lived for many years in the service of that knight (as I have frequently heard from him and his family), and was rather loose and wanton in her conduct. Being frequently asked about the people of her country, she asserted that the inhabitants, and all they had in that country, were of a green colour; and that they saw no sun, but enjoyed a degree of light like what is after sunset. Being asked how she came into this country with the aforesaid boy, she replied that as they were following their flocks they came to a certain cavern, on entering which they heard a delightful sound of bells, ravished by whose sweetness they went for a long time wandering on through the cavern, until they came to its mouth. When they came out of it, they were struck senseless by the excessive light of the sun, and the unusual temperature of the air, and they thus lay for a long time. Being terrified by the noise of those who came on them, they wished to fly, but they could not find the entrance of the cavern before they were caught.

Both accounts are extraordinary, and one could be forgiven for seeing veiled similarities to the ancient tale of Jack and the Beanstalk, the story of an innocent child’s ascent up a giant green beanstalk to a world of giants, folklore that is now thought to date back over five thousand years.

Intriguingly, in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries there was an affliction known as ‘green sickness’, which was described as a condition peculiar to virgin women, especially those approaching puberty. Pills for young, love-deprived women were sold to address the ‘green sickness’, but the fastest cure was believed to be intercourse, since semen was thought to ‘settle’ the womb, dislocate the blood and cure the depression. The accounts of the green children of Woolpit are fascinating, yet merely skim the surface of the green-people prototype.

Green Osiris. British Museum © Andrew Gough

 

Throughout history many iconic figures have been portrayed as green skinned, such as Osiris, the Egyptian god of the underworld. Many believe Osiris was the inspiration for the pagan ‘green man’ fertility motif that is found in almost every ancient culture, and which is still celebrated today. Even the Egyptian Pyramid Texts refer to Horus as ‘Lord of the Green Stone’.

Was Osiris the prototype for the pagan ‘green man’? © Andrew Gough

 

Fast forward to the time of the Green Knight, as featured in the fourteenth-century romance, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Here, the protagonist acquires his name due to his green skin and clothes. Adding to his mystique, the Green Knight performs dazzling party tricks by regenerating his head after he has been decapitated. Around this time, Michael Pacher’s painting of a green devil reinforced the notion that the colour green carried a universal significance to those who portrayed otherworldly creatures. Poetic contemporaries such as Chaucer also made associations between the colour green and the devil – but why?

Michael Pacher’s fifteenth-century depiction of a green devil

 

Mythical animals, such as dragons, are also depicted as green, or blue. In many languages the words used to describe the colours ‘blue’ and ‘green’ are interchangeable. For instance, the ancient Egyptian word wadjet describes the range of colours comprising blue, blue-green and green. With that in mind we turn to the Ramayana – one of two major Sanskrit epics of ancient India – where we learn of the blue-skin Rama who came from the inner Earth and who arrived on the surface in a chariot. Is it any wonder that green is used to embody the supernatural or spiritual world?

Rama, portrayed in blue

 

References to ‘St Martin’s Land’ appear in the most unexpected of places – such as the map of La Coruña, a drawing created by Sir Frances Drake (1540-1596, the famed initiate and explorer of the Elizabethan era), depicting a city in north-western Spain. However, Brenda Greenslade, a friend of mine and highly respected researcher, believes the map does not identify a location in Spain, but rather Oak Island, and has highlighted the fact that a location on the map is called St Martin’s Platform. Might this be an entrance to the inner-Earth region where the children of Woolpit were from?

The peculiar mention of ‘St Martin’s Platform’ on the La Coruña map. Library of Congress

 

References to St Martin’s are often associated with important lineages, such as the British royal family, whose parish church in London is St Martin-in-the-Fields. Prince Charles is a patron and, serendipitously, Charles’s advocacy of the British countryside has earned him the reputation of being ‘green’.

One land that is undeniably green and which is named after its purported colour is Greenland, and here we find another curious tale of the inner Earth. Greenland was settled by Vikings from Iceland in the tenth century, beginning with the voyage of Erik the Red in 985, who arrived with a fleet of fourteen long ships. The Norsemen soon established two settlements with hundreds of farms, and at their peak comprised over three thousand settlers. However, by 1450 the inhabitants were gone, without a trace. Where did they go? We find a clue in an Eskimo tradition, which recounts how the Vikings migrated north to the land of the endless summer and descended into a land of eternal bliss inside the earth, the inner Earth. This tale is fascinating, but arguably the most spectacular account of the inner Earth is one that goes by the name Agartha.

It is recorded that Vikings in Greenland conducted a marriage in the church of Hvalsey in 1408. Four decades later they had disappeared.

 

Legends of the Inner Earth

There are many legends of the inner Earth, and their heyday in literature seems to have peaked between the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The tradition commences with the author Jules Verne (1828-1905), an initiate of many esoteric disciplines, who penned A Journey to the Centre of the Earth in 1864. In Verne’s classic tale a German professor by the name of Otto Lidenbrock believes volcanic tubes lead toward the centre of the Earth, and takes a group of researchers underground via an entrance in the Icelandic volcano, Snæfellsjökull. While inside the Earth the group encounter prehistoric animals, including a mammoth, as well as many natural hazards, before resurfacing in southern Italy at the Stromboli volcano. For all practical purposes, however, it is the English writer and politician Edward Bulwer-Lytton (1803-1873) who gets the Agartha party started with his vivid and allegedly real-life account of miners who discover an entrance to the inner Earth beneath their camp.

Jules Verne’s epic tale of the inner Earth

 

Bulwer-Lytton was a prolific writer who coined the line, ‘the pen is mightier than the sword’. His seminal work, however, was Vril: The Power of the Coming Race, which he published in 1871. In Bulwer-Lytton’s account, miners observe a bright light beneath their encampment and investigate, only to discover an ancient lost race known as Ana, who descended ‘many thousands of years before Noah’. The idyllic land is powered by Vril, a primal energy that can both heal and destroy, and which fuels the technology of an ancient Aryan race. It is no wonder the work is believed to have influenced Adolf Hitler’s (1889-1945) manifesto, Mein Kampf.

Edward Bulwer-Lytton

 

William Reed (1830–1920) is another golden-age inner-Earth author who promoted the existence of an inhabited inner Earth in his 1906 book, Phantom of the Poles. Reed’s controversial work proposed that Earth is hollow and can be entered at the poles, where vast continents, oceans, mountains and rivers exist alongside races unknown to surface dwellers. Reed also featured Fridtjof Wedel-Jarlsberg Nansen (1861–1930), a Norwegian explorer, scientist, diplomat, humanitarian and Nobel Peace Prize laureate whose three-year (1893–1896) expedition to the North Pole produced numerous discoveries, and anomalies, which he documented in his 1897 best-selling book, Farthest North. With respect to Nansen’s detailed diaries, which chronicle many unexplainable observations about the appearance of the day and night-time skies, Reed concludes:

The fact is, Nansen was going into the interior of the Earth, while he was under the impression that he was going north.

The respected explorer Fridtjof Wedel-Jarlsberg Nansen

 

In 1908 the American novelist, newspaperman, lawyer, politician and promoter Willis George Emerson (1856-1918) penned what he claimed to be a true account of a journey to the inner Earth: The Smoky God; A Voyage to the Inner Earth. The tale elaborates on the adventures of Olaf Jansen, a Norwegian who sailed with his father through an entrance to the Earth’s interior at the North Pole, having been forced off course by a terrible storm. For two years Jansen lived with the inhabitants of an underground network of colonies who were twelve feet tall and whose world was lit by a smoky central sun. Their capital city was known as the Garden of Eden and consisted of an elder race who lived up to eight hundred years old. Jansen and his father rode on fast objects with revolving wheels that defied gravity. Ultimately they escaped, but in the process Olaf’s father died. Jansen was rescued by fishermen, recounted his sensational story, and was swiftly placed in an asylum for the insane for the next twenty years of his life.

The French occultist and author Alexandre Saint-Yves d’Alveydre (1842-1909) builds on the popular inner-Earth tradition with a significant contribution. Saint-Yves d’Alveydre was an influential writer who had a great influence on a number of esoteric notables, from Gérard Encausse, who described him as his ‘intellectual teacher’, to esoteric-thought leaders Helena Blavatsky, Rudolf Steiner and René Guénon. In 1885 Saint-Yves d’Alveydre was visited by Eastern initiates, who taught him the ancient language of Sanskrit and the mysteries of the lost inner-Earth kingdom of Agartha. The following year he published a book, Mission of India in Europe (republished as The Kingdom of Agarttha: A Journey into the Hollow Earth), about the whole affair, and it included some fascinating insights, especially with regard to the conditions upon which the people of inner Earth will return. He states that the secret world of Agartha and all of its wisdom and wealth ‘will be accessible for all mankind when Christianity lives up to the commandments which were once drafted by Moses and God’ and when ‘the Anarchy which exists in our world is replaced by the Synarchy’.

Alexandre Saint-Yves d’Alveydre

 

Saint-Yves d’Alveydre added that the civilisation of Agartha transferred underground around 3200 BCE and that millions of inter-terrestrials remain there, ruled by priest-kings, their language being Vattan/Vattanian. He also cited many physical attributes of the Agarthans: for instance, the fact that they have two tongues and can speak different languages simultaneously. I will return to the insights of Saint-Yves d’Alveydre, for they are vital to our understanding of the so-called race for the relics of the inner Earth.

Shortly after the publication of his book Saint-Yves d’Alveydre feared he had revealed too much and set about destroying every copy he could find. It seems he was successful in eradicating all traces of the book; except for one, a copy owned by his publisher, Gérard Encausse (1865-1916), the founder of the Martinist Order and pioneer of all things occult, who published the work in 1910.

The tradition of Agartha continued to evolve and in 1922 a Polish scientist by the name of Ferdinand Ossendowski (1876-1945) published his own account, Beasts, Men and Gods, which featured the prophecy of the return of the inter-terrestrials to the surface of the Earth. His account stated that the King of the World, who lives in Agartha, met with the Lamas (gurus and/or spiritually advanced leaders in Tibetan Buddhism) in 1890 and informed them of the events that would precede his people’s return. These included:

• fifty years of strife and misery
• seventy-one years of happiness under three great kingdoms
• eighteen years of war, followed by the appearance of the Agarthans in 2029.

The curious thing about the return of the Agarthans in 2029 is the current belief that 2030 will usher in radical new forms of government, protocols and spiritual awakenings, including the return of the Covid-19 virus. Remarkably, the ‘alleged’ virus was prophesied by the author Dean Koontz in his 1981 bestselling book, The Eyes of Darkness, republished in 1989 with updated details about a virus originating not in Russia, as in the first edition, but in Wuhan, China. Koontz introduces us to a virus named Wuhan-400, a ‘perfect weapon’ that will strike ‘in around 2020’, when a ‘pneumonia-like illness will spread throughout the globe attacking the lungs and bronchial tubes’. Koontz adds that the virus will suddenly vanish as quickly as it arrived, attack again in ten years (circa 2029/2030), and then disappear completely. The prophecy, which defies the statistical odds of mere chance, beckons the possibility of time travel and/or insight into the future that is nothing if not incomprehensible to most of those unversed in such concepts.

Prophesy aside, a few years later (in 1927) René Guénon, follower of both Saint-Yves d’Alveydre and Magus Papus (Gérard Encausse), published the book The King of the World, adding his own twists and turns to the inner-Earth story. The collective works on the controversial subject became a central doctrine to the Nazi’s Thule-Gesellschaft (Thule Society), a German occult group founded in Munich after the First World War.

A few decades later public fascination with the inner Earth and ancient civilisations that existed far earlier than conventionally believed was revived by the work of three European authors, led by Peter Kolosimo (1922-1984), an Italian journalist and writer who challenged academia with his ground-breaking books on forbidden archaeology. The French writer, Robert Charroux, best known as Robert Joseph Grugeau (1909-1978), also joined the fray with his writings on the ancient-astronaut/inner-Earth theories. Rounding out the trilogy was Marcel Francois Raphael Homet (1897-1982 ), a French archaeologist and anthropologist who conducted extensive research on ancient civilisations that he believed were connected to Atlantis. Collectively, the three researchers, who absolutely shook the genre in an age long before the internet, inspired Erich von Däniken (1935 to present), the famous Swiss author whose books about extraterrestrial influences on early human culture are regarded as important and original, even though many believe he lifted his material from Kolosimo, Charroux and Homet (some of whom attempted to sue von Däniken). Today, researchers such as Klaus Dona (1949 to present), Graham Hancock (1950 to present) and Michael Cremo (1948 to present) continue the research tradition of the earlier ancient history genre.

We have reviewed both fictional and real-life accounts of alleged visits to the inner Earth. Of course, there are many other, far older traditions:

• In Ireland medieval knights and saints embarked on pilgrimages to a cave on Station Island, where they descended into the Earth. And in Northern Ireland a tunnel leads to the land of the subterranean Tuatha Dé Danann, who are believed to have introduced Druidism to Ireland and then gone back underground.

 

The bell tower on Station Island stands on a mound that is the site of a cave which, according to various myths, is an entrance to a place of purgatory inside the Earth. The cave has been closed since 25 October 1632.

 

• In Mexican folklore a mountain cave provides access to the inner Earth, and Mexico itself is said to be possessed by devilish creatures who come from inside the Earth.

• In Nordic tradition the inner Earth is known as the home of the evil elves.

• In Turkey and Mongolia the inner Earth is known as Ergenekon and is located in the inaccessible valleys of the Altai mountains.

 

Lake Kucherla in the Altai mountains

 

• In Native American mythology ancient ancestors emerged from a subterranean land through a cave in the Missouri River.

• In ancient German mythology certain mountains conceal a portal to the inner Earth.

• A Russian legend tells of an ancient Siberian tribe which travelled to a cavern-city inside the Earth and settled there.

• In Peru, Inca ancestors are believed to have come from caves east of Cuzco.

• In Cuban tradition, their ancestors (the Taino) are believed to have emerged from two caves in a sacred mountain.

• Brazilian Indians claim that their forefathers emerged from an underground land, and that their ancestors remain inside the Earth.

• In Hindu mythology the underworld/inner Earth is referred to as Patala.

• In Tibetan Buddhist belief the inner Earth was known as Shambhala, or Shangri-La. And in the Altai mountains in Central and Eastern Asia folklore states that Mount Belukha is one of its many gateways.

 

Mount Belukha, gateway to Shambhala

 

While there are many more traditions, the most famous account of the inner Earth remains Shangri-La, a mythical realm inspired by the legend of Shambhala, a civilisation in the inner Earth whose Sanskrit name translates as ‘place of silence’. Intriguingly, in 1985 the 14th Dalai Lama, who is said to be the terrestrial representative of Shambhala, shared something quite extraordinary. He said:

Although those with special affiliation may actually be able to go there through their karmic connection, nevertheless it is not a physical place that we can actually find. We can only say that it is a pure land, a pure land in the human realm. And unless one has the merit and the actual karmic association, one cannot actually arrive there.

This quotation is fascinating and states that the inner Earth is real; civilisations exist there, but unless you are from there, unless your ancestors are connected to it, you cannot go there. In my own quest, and in my confidential conversations with an alleged and seemingly credible representative of the inner Earth, I have been told the same thing. My requests to be shown the inner Earth, to act as its advocate, have been met with the same defiance: your ancestors need to have lived there in order for you to go there.

The 14th Dalai Lama

 

The Nazis’ interest in Tibet and its affiliation with the inner Earth was partly inspired by a Soviet expedition to Tibet in 1925, led by a rather unsavoury agent named Yakov Blumkin. The 13th Dalai Lama is said to have received Blumkin in Lhasa, the capital of Tibet, in 1926. After promising to provide military equipment and a loan, Blumkin was taken to subterranean chambers beneath Potala Palace and shown, amongst other things, gigantic forceps over ten thousand years old, which when heated to high temperatures transmuted into a powder that the rulers consumed in order to extend their lives by hundreds of years. In 1929 the Soviet authorities executed Blumkin because, it is believed, he had divulged to the Germans information about the inner Earth which he had obtained in Tibet.

The Potala Palace in Lhasa

 

The reader will recall that ‘Patala’ in Hindu mythology is the name of the inner Earth, and the name of the palace guarded by the Lamas is Potala Palace. Throughout India there is a belief from ancient times that a subterranean race of serpent people dwells in the cities of Patala and Bhogavati. While the entrance to Bhogavati is said to be located somewhere in the Himalayas, believers assert that Patala can be entered through the Well of Sheshna in Benares, India. Its entrance is said to include forty steps which descend into a circular depression and terminate at a closed stone door which is covered in carvings of cobras.

In the past Maharajas have spoken of the ‘abode of the excellent ones’, ruled by the Naga, a half-human/half-reptilian species with advanced technology. According to the legend the Naga waged war on the kingdom of Agartha. They are described as a highly advanced race that harbour a disdain for humans, who they are said to abduct, torture, interbreed with, and eat.

Even the famed Russian philosopher Nicholas Roerich had an experience with the inner Earth in this region. Roerich claimed that an entrance to Shambhala was protected by Lamas and connected via an underground passage to Lhasa. Those who go there need to negotiate extremely dangerous and narrow passages. In his book, Shambhala: In Search of the New Era, Roerich wrote:

Great Shambhala is far beyond the ocean. It is the mighty heavenly domain… Only in some places, in the Far North, can you discern the resplendent rays of Shambhala.

Shambhala is such an adventurous and romantic legend that Hollywood featured it in the 1937 Frank Capra film, Lost Horizon. While not set inside the Earth, the film depicts a hidden and idyllic society in the Himalayas, much like Shambhala/Shangri-La.

 

Pole Position

Of all the inner-Earth adventurers none was as accomplished as Admiral Richard Byrd (1888-1957), an American military hero who received the nation’s highest tribute, the Medal of Honor. To say Byrd was a man of distinction and integrity would be an understatement. His work was trailblazing; from aviator to polar explorer, his assignments were classified as top secret. A summary of his primary missions includes the following:

• 1926: North Pole flight
• 1928: First Antarctic expedition, with two ships and three aeroplanes
• 1934: Second Antarctic expedition
• 1938: Invited to join German expedition
• 1939: Antarctic Service Expedition
• 1946–1947: Fourth Antarctic expedition (Operation Highjump)
• 1955–1956: Last trip (Operation Deep Freeze)
• 1996: His son releases Byrd’s diary

 

Admiral Byrd (around 1955)

 

The release of Byrd’s diary has been the subject of some controversy. Not surprisingly, it chronicles a vivid and astonishing description of events that took place during the 1947 initiative Operation Highjump. I have presented a few of Byrd’s sensational insights below:

Early morning; base camp:

I must write this diary in secrecy and obscurity.

Three hours after Byrd’s 6am take off:

Both magnetic and gyro compasses beginning to gyrate and wobble, we are unable to hold our heading by instrumentation.

An hour later:

There should be no green valley below! Something is definitely wrong and abnormal here.

Four hours and five minutes after Byrd’s 6am take off:

We spot what seems to be a large animal of some kind below. It looks more like a mammoth. This is incredible. Yet, there it is!

Five hours and thirty minutes after Byrd’s 6am take off:

Ahead we spot what seems to be a city… My God!!! Off our port and starboard wings are a strange type of aircraft.

He states they are decorated with swastikas. After the event Byrd adds:

The city seems to be made out of a crystal material… Rose-colored light that seems to be emanating from the very walls themselves!

He meets the master of ‘the domain of the Arianni.’ The master calls the flying machines Flügelrads and explains how they were fired upon in 1945.

Byrd attributes the ‘Master’ to having said:

We see at a great distance a new world stirring from the ruins of your race, seeking its lost and legendary treasures, and they will be here, my son, safe in our keeping. [My bold]

Finally, the ‘Master’ adds:

When that time arrives, we shall come forward again to help revive your culture and your race.

On 11 March 1947, now back on the mainland, Byrd describes the reaction he received when he shared his findings with officials at the Pentagon:

I have just attended a staff meeting at the Pentagon. I have stated fully my discovery and the message from the Master. All is duly recorded. The President has been advised. I am now detained for several hours. I am interviewed internally by Top Security Forces and a medical team. It was an ordeal!!! I am placed under strict control via the national security provision of the United States of America. I am ORDERED TO REMAIN SILENT IN REGARD TO ALL THAT I HAVE LEARNED, ON BEHALF OF HUMANITY!!! Incredible!

A sombre-looking Admiral Byrd during his last mission, Operation Deep Freeze

 

So many aspects of Byrd’s account are interesting, including his reference to having seen a mammoth, just like Jules Verne described in his inner-Earth epic. Byrd also describes a quest for lost and legendary treasures. Upon completion of Operation Highjump, Byrd gave what amounted to his only interview in the 5 March 1947 edition of a Chilean newspaper by the name of El Mercurio. What he shared would certainly have irked the US government and intelligence agencies, for it would be the last interview he ever gave:

Adm. Byrd declared today that it was imperative for the United States to initiate immediate defence measures against hostile regions. The admiral further stated that he didn’t want to frighten anyone unduly but that it was a bitter reality that in case of a new war the continental United States would be attacked by flying objects which could fly from pole to pole at incredible speeds. Admiral Byrd repeated the above points of view, resulting from his personal knowledge gathered both at the North and South Poles, before a news conference held for the International News Service.

Are these claims to be believed? Again, Byrd appears to have embodied uprightness. The last entry in his diary seems to sum up his perspective, while alluding to the truth of his discovery. It reads: “I have seen that land beyond the pole, that center of the great unknown.”  Indeed, it would appear that he had.

Serendipitously, approximately sixty years later, the United States Secretary of State, John Kerry (1943 to present), landed in Antarctica on 11 November 2016, three days after the United States presidential election that saw Donald Trump upset Hillary Clinton. In doing so, Kerry became the highest-ranking US government official to set foot in Antarctica. Kerry was on the second leg of a multi-stop trip that had started in New Zealand and included a stopover at the international climate-change meetings in Marrakech, Morocco, before embarking on the five-hour flight to Antarctica. Kerry fully expected Hillary Clinton to beat Donald Trump and preserve the policies of the Obama administration. Still, the question remains: why, of all times, did he feel compelled to travel to Antarctica? Is there something he needed to share and, if so, with whom, and about what?

Secretary of State John Kerry on a frozen section of the Ross Sea near Scott Base, Antarctica (Agence France-Presse — Getty Images)

 

Antarctica, the only landmass crossed by the Prime Meridian in the southern hemisphere, is not like other continents; it’s a peculiar place and a region with its own unique rules. For a start, you cannot leave Antarctica with a souvenir. This includes rocks, feathers, bones, eggs or any kind of biological material, including traces of soil. But that’s the least of the weirdness. Thanks to the 1959 Antarctic Treaty, Antarctica deploys a distinctive form of governing. The countries that take part in the Treaty include Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Chile, France, Great Britain, Japan, New Zealand, Norway, South Africa, Russia, and the United States. No single country owns Antarctica, but several seek to claim it, such as China. Curiously, in June 2020 US President Trump ordered the building of at least three heavy icebreakers for the Antarctic (and Arctic regions), with the goal of getting a fleet in place by 2029. There’s that year again. It does make one wonder. The United States is not the only country to have obsessed about the north and south poles. Not surprisingly, the Nazis did as well.

Many believe that Hitler sent an expedition to Antarctica. In one curious account of the Third Reich in Antarctica, a letter allegedly written by Karl Unger, a crew member aboard the German U-boat 209, proclaimed that the crew had reached the interior of the Earth and did not want to come back. The letter also mentions the German general Karl Haushofer, and Rudolf Hess, a leading member of the Nazi party, who he says were correct about their inner-Earth theories. The Nazis also provided detailed directions to the inner Earth, via submarine, complete with maps.

Nazi submarine directions to Antarctica

 

Advocates of the Scientific View

It’s one thing to wax on about Nazis and other peculiar accounts of the inner Earth, but what does the scientific community have to say about the audacious notion of civilisations living inside the Earth? Let’s start with the grandfather of modern scientific thought, Edmond Halley (1656-1742), and his views on the inner Earth.

Edmond Halley

 

Edmond Halley was an English mathematician, physicist and astronomer; a renaissance man who influenced many of the scientific advancements of the eighteenth century. Although he is best known for discovering the laws of motion to compute the periodicity of a comet that would later bear his name (Halley’s Comet), one of his most comprehensive theories concerned the inner Earth. In 1692 Halley proposed the idea of a ‘hollow Earth’ consisting of a shell five hundred miles thick, two inner concentric shells and an innermost core. He suggested that atmospheres separated these shells, and that each had its own magnetic pole, with spheres rotating at different speeds. He envisaged each inner region as having an atmosphere and being luminous and – wait for it – possibly being inhabited. Further, Halley believed that escaping gas from the ‘hollow Earth’ formed the aurora borealis, a notion that may not be as far-fetched as it first appears.

A 2-dimensional illustration of Edmond Halley’s ‘hollow-Earth’ theory

 

Another thought leader of Halley’s day was Leonhard Euler (1707-1783), a Swiss mathematician, physicist and astronomer, whose version of the inner-Earth theory lacked the concentric spheres of Halley’s proposal, but added the notion of an interior sun. Euler was well respected and considered to have been one of history’s greatest mathematicians. Thus, the scientific community took notice of his theory about a single hollow sphere that contained a sun six hundred miles wide that radiated heat and light for an advanced civilisation that lived beneath. Euler postulated that the hollow interior could be reached through holes at the North and South Poles. Little did the greater scientific community realise how correct he may have been.

Leonhard Euler

 

Euler and Halley had been influential, and appear to have inspired John Cleves Symmes Jr (1780-1829), an American war hero, trader and lecturer, who in 1818 introduced an inner-Earth theory similar to theirs, despite having claimed to have been unfamiliar with their work. Symmes described the world as consisting of five concentric spheres, with our outer Earth and its atmosphere being the largest. He proposed that polar openings were large enough and gradual enough that it would be possible to actually enter them without being aware of the transition. Symmes added that the inner surfaces are illuminated by sunlight reflected off the outer surface of the next sphere down, and would be habitable: a “warm and rich land, stocked with thrifty vegetables and animals, if not men.”

Although Symmes was a prominent advocate for the existence of an inner Earth, he never published under his own name. Thus, many believe that the 1820 fictional account Symzonia: A Voyage of Discovery was his work. The story recounts the voyage of Captain Adam Seaborn, from the United States, to the centre of the Earth. Travelling up the coast, Seaborn and his crew reach a point where the sky inverts, and where they realise that the stars have changed, an observation echoed by Admiral Byrd and Olaf Jansen. Here, in the centre of the Earth, Seaborn and his crew meet an ancient civilisation called the Symzonians, who are a smallish people with surprising strength, white complexions, advanced knowledge of flight, a remarkable aptitude for the English language and the ability to communicate with Seaborn and his men.

Symmes was keen, to say the least, and attempted to persuade Congress to fund an expedition to find the entrance to the centre of Earth, in the Antarctic. Symmes proclaimed:

I declare the Earth is hollow, and habitable within; containing a number of solid concentric spheres, one within the other, and that it is open at the poles 12 or 16 degrees; I pledge my life in support of this truth, and am ready to explore the hollow, if the world will support and aid me in the undertaking.

Symmes’ map of the inner Earth.

 

A few years later a follower of Symmes by the name of James McBride (1788-1859) featured Symmes’ theory in his book Symmes’s Theory of Concentric Spheres (1826) and corrected the historical context by citing Euler as an earlier proponent of a similar theory. Although Symmes failed in his quest to sail to the South Pole, he picked up a devotee of his own along the way. Jeremiah N Reynolds (1799-1858) was an American newspaper editor, lecturer and author who accompanied Symmes on the lecture circuit and carried on Symmes’ work after his death. Following in Symmes footsteps, Reynolds lobbied the government and succeeded where Symmes had failed by speaking before Congress and winning the support of members of President John Quincy Adams’ cabinet, although Andrew Jackson opposed the project and later cancelled the initiative after he became President. Ultimately, Reynolds won support from private backers and the expedition set out from New York City in 1829. Reports of the expedition reveal that they reached a point where the sky inverted, and the stars had changed, a phenomenon we have encountered before.

Illustration from Symmes’s Theory of Concentric Spheres

 

Yet another notable proponent of the inner Earth was Johann Carl Friedrich Gauss (1777-1855), a German mathematician and physicist known as the ‘the greatest mathematician since antiquity’. Gauss had an exceptional influence in many fields of mathematics and science, and is ranked among history’s most influential mathematicians. Gauss worked out the mathematical theory for separating the inner and outer sources of the Earth’s magnetic field and theorised that the Earth’s history and geography can be explained by the planet being hollow with access at the poles.

Johann Carl Friedrich Gauss

 

Continuing the tradition, Cyrus Reed Teed (1839-1908), a physician and alchemist turned religious leader, proposed an inner-Earth theory that postulates that the Earth and sky exist inside the inner surface of a sphere. Teed proposed a ‘cellular cosmology’ that placed the entire universe inside a shell. He believed that we were living on the inside of the Earth, looking up at the universe, which was itself just an illusion created by a strange solar mechanism.

The scientific community offers unexpected validation for the possibility of life beneath the planet. A modern-day expedition that appears to support their suppositions is Russia’s Kola Superdeep Borehole initiative, which created a hole 23 centimetres (9 inches) in diameter, over 49,000 feet into the Earth. The project, which was started in 1970 and took twenty years to complete, created the deepest artificial hole in history and revealed some truly amazing findings. For instance, at a depth of eight miles beneath the surface of the Earth, the Kola Superdeep Borehole revealed fossils: twenty-four new types of long-thought-dead, single-celled organisms. What are fossils doing at such extreme depths? The project also discovered water far deeper than previously thought possible. Suddenly, the existence of a world beneath ours was no longer a fringe theory – it was a scientific reality. The only problem is that the discovery was ignored – even discredited – by a tabloid sensation which featured an article called ‘The Well to Hell’. The urban legend recounted how a borehole in Russia had been drilled so deep that it had broken through into the biblical Hell. The tale maintained that a team of Russian engineers, purportedly led by an individual named Mr Azakov (in an unnamed location in Siberia) had drilled a hole nearly nine miles deep before breaking through into a cavity. Intrigued by this unexpected discovery, they lowered a heat-tolerant microphone, along with other sensory equipment, into the nine-mile-deep well, at which point they recorded the tormented screams of the damned in Hell. This fictional story was clearly inspired by the Kola Superdeep Borehole and sadly overshadowed (and ultimately undermined) the significance of the project’s impressive findings.

The Kola Superdeep Borehole today, welded shut

 

Scientific discoveries about the mysteries of the inner Earth are occurring with increasing regularity. In June 2020 science publications around the world announced an astounding discovery:

A new method of analysing earthquake data has found even more of the previously detected continent-sized zones at the boundary between the planet’s core and mantle… This is showing us that the core-mantle boundary region has lots of structures that can produce these echoes, and that was something we didn’t realise before because we only had a narrow view… And the overall findings suggest that Earth’s guts are rather more blobby than we suspected. (Sciencealert.com)

The implications of the discovery are staggering, but is anybody listening? Scientists have been proclaiming the existence of inner-Earth anomalies for centuries. So far, at least, their insights have been largely ignored.

 

Holes in the Poles

Euler and others believed that the inner Earth could be reached through wide gaping holes at the North and South Poles. Is this audacious postulate even remotely based in reality? Let’s take a look at some photographic evidence that suggests that Euler and company may have been correct.

NASA’s 1967 image of the North Pole appears to show a clear opening

 

Is this image, taken by the Russian Space Station Mir in 1987, showing light emitting from the North Pole?

 

The US Environmental Science Services Administration (ESSA) was created in 1965 as part of a reorganisation of the United States Department of Commerce. Its mission was to oversee the nation’s weather and climate operations. Their photos – if authentic – are compelling, for they depict openings at the poles.

Does this image from ESSA reveal the entrance to the hollow Earth?

 

In many instances NASA images appear redacted and the poles seem to be disguised with nondescript images.

Are these redacted images of the poles?

 

In April 2020 a most peculiar celestial event occurred. The largest ozone hole ever recorded above the North Pole closed almost as quickly as it had formed. Conspiracists claimed it was a portal to the inner Earth. Others credited the newly discovered comet Atlas, which broke into pieces while moving in the general direction of Earth and nearly came into near contact with orbiting satellites.

Ozone portal over the North Pole

 

Just when we think that suspicious-looking images of the poles might be fraudulent, we find the same phenomenon on other planets, such as Mercury and Saturn.

North Pole of Mercury

 

In 2014 the NASA Cassini spacecraft captured a curious anomaly: Saturn’s north-polar vortex was hexagonal. We are told that the hexagon, which is wider than two planet Earths, owes its appearance to the jet stream that forms its perimeter. Are we blinded by science or does the shaded, symmetric region of Saturn’s north pole represent the same thing that polar anomalies on Earth do – access to the inner Earth?

The hexagon shape of Saturn’s North Pole

 

Brian Cox, the English television presenter and physicist, who serves as a professor of particle physics in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Manchester, has suggested that the reason we have not found life on other planets is because it is secured beneath the surface of these planets. Might the access to the realm of these life forces be through the poles?

 

Race for the Relics

Rumours about the existence of the inner Earth have percolated for a long time. We have learned of its presence from a variety of sources, all fascinating, although some more credible than others. The purported concept in these theories is that civilisations exist beneath the Earth, with access points scattered across the planet, in mountains, caves and palaces, but especially at the poles, which appear to be open portals to the subterranean realms. We are told that each region is populated with its own rivers, lakes, oceans and suns, just like they are above the Earth’s surface, ie the Americas, Africa, Europe, Asia, etc. We cannot help but be reminded of the ancient adage, ‘as above, so below’.

We have also seen how the scientific community, the modern-day space programme, and projects like the Russian Kola Superdeep Borehole, suggest that intelligent life beneath the Earth’s surface may not only be possible, but probable. The question remains, what is actually down there? What were the Nazis seeking? What did Admiral Byrd discover? Is there evidence to suggest what we may find if we venture into one of the Earth’s subterranean domains? The answer may lie in the work of one of the writers we reviewed earlier: Alexandre Saint-Yves d’Alveydre.

Alexandre Saint-Yves d’Alveydre’s influential account of the inner Earth

 

The identity of the Eastern initiates who confided in Saint-Yves d’Alveydre remains a mystery, but at least one confidant appears to have been a shadowy Afghan known as Haji Sharif. What Saint-Yves d’Alveydre was told by these emissaries of the inner Earth is sensational and warrants our attention. He shares what he was told about the immense collection of underground chambers that are preserved by the inhabitants of the inner Earth, and the abundance of knowledge they contain:

The reader should picture in his mind a colossal chessboard that extends under the Earth’s surface to cover almost every region of the globe.

The scene is set. We are told the Earth is covered with chambers. Saint-Yves d’Alveydre continues:

For many centuries the archives of Paradesa occupy thousands of miles. For cycles of many centuries, several high initiates possessing the secrets…spend three years carving on stone tablets all the facts concerning the four hierarchies of sciences forming the total corpus of knowledge.

Initiates maintain the tradition of recording and preserving ancient knowledge. Saint-Yves d’Alveydre adds:

The libraries that contain the true body of all the ancient arts and sciences of the last five hundred and fifty-six centuries are inaccessible to any profane sight or manner of attack. They are only to be found in the bowels of the Earth.

We are told that these chambers contain information of the arts and sciences over the last 56,000 years. Saint-Yves d’Alveydre proceeds to add further information about where they are located:

The libraries of earlier Cycles are to be found beneath the seas that swallowed up the ancient Southern continent and in the subterranean constructions of ancient antediluvian America… All the splendours of Humanity’s time on Earth can be found in each square of this chessboard.

The initiate proceeds to talk about how the secrets will be revealed the day when Europe adopts a more spiritual form of leadership:

On the day when Europe finally replaces the anarchy of its general government with Trinitarian Synarchy, all of these marvels as well as a good many others will become spontaneously accessible to the representatives of its first amphictyonic chamber, the chamber of teaching.

We are warned:

But until then, woe to the curious and the careless who endeavour to scour the Earth… What good would come to the profaner who has succeeded in forcing open one of the underground squares of this brain, this integral memory of humanity!… With its dreadful weight, the stone door that seals each of these squares, lacking any kind of keyhole, will fall shut upon him, never to be opened again.

In vain, before realising his terrible fate, he will find himself facing the mineral pages that make up this cosmic book, unable to spell even a single word of it, not able to decipher the least of its mysteries before realising that he has descended forever into a tomb from which his cries will never be heard by any visible being.

The proclamations are clear and sound more like a threat than a warning: enter the sacred chambers and you will be trapped inside for eternity.

Ludwig Straniak (1879-1951) was a German mystic with a unique gift; he was a renowned pendulum dowser. His work was well known in German occult circles, and it did not take the Nazis long to track him down and put his skills to the test. The Nazis’ obsession with the occult is well documented. They were determined to prove their ancient Aryan roots by obtaining relics of power from antiquity and, in the process, justify their  expansionist ideology. To this end they sought individuals with paranormal skills who could aid in their relic quest and military prowess. Straniak was rigorously tested by the Third Reich, who desperately wanted to one-up the allies, who were also enlisting the occult practitioners in their military ranks. The Germans even created a military unit called the Institute for Occult Warfare (IOW), of which Straniak was a member. As the story goes, the German Navy provided him with ocean charts, which he successfully dowsed, pinpointing the precise location of the warship in question, even though it was on a secret mission off the coast of Norway.

Ludwig Straniak

 

Straniak was not the only map dowser of his era, and there continues to be a quest for skills like his in modern times. Look no further than MK-Ultra, the CIA mind-control programme that makes use of occult disciplines such as remote viewing and map dowsing for covert purposes to this day.

Even in modern times, accounts of contact with the inner Earth reverberate through the fringe press, often before being sanitised or suppressed altogether. In 2011, for instance, nearly three hundred people were arrested or detained in Turkey on suspicion of involvement in a national revolutionary movement known as Ergenekon/Agartha. Authorities claimed Deep-State forces, specifically members of Agartha, were planning a coup with the help of senior leaders in the country’s military and security forces. Did they succeed? Only time will tell.

My colleague and good friend Klaus Dona is an authority on ancient history like few others. In recent years he has developed an ability, not dissimilar to Straniak’s, only modernised. As incredible as it sounds, his unique ‘technology’ can locate chambers buried deep underground that were deposited with artefacts many thousands of years ago. Dona’s work has validated subterranean chambers across the globe, from Iran to Crete, and from Russia to England, where we are working together on a number of projects. Together, Dona and I have launched an initiative, called Project Restoration, to unearth the chambers described by Saint-Yves d’Alveydre. At the time of writing, the Covid-19 pandemic has stalled our primary excavation in England. Although I am not at liberty to elaborate on that project, I can share an example of a similar quest that has led to a curious and reaffirming realisation.

In 2019 Dona identified the presence of an underground tunnel over seven miles long, which emptied into a large chamber, approximately 100 by 300 metres in size. In an attempt to validate his findings I entered a private estate in the hope of confirming the precise spot on the ground that he had identified on the map. As best I could ascertain, the chamber spanned a large, mostly wooded area that crisscrossed a nested series of roundabouts. I tracked down the owner of the estate, explained my quest and asked if we could stay in touch. That evening he called and expressed his astonishment at the fact that we had identified the precise spot at the edge of his property. He proceeded to tell me about a sophisticated woman from South Kensington, London, who had moved into a large tent in the centre of the wooded area above the alleged mega-chamber. Most assumed she was homeless, and not of her complete faculties. Nevertheless, the owner of the adjoining estate suspected otherwise, introduced himself and asked her what she was doing there, living in such an inhospitable environment. She replied that it was her honour to have been selected by the Society to guard the site and protect what was buried below. A peculiar reply, to say the least. Sadly, the woman was found dead in her tent, having protected the site for nearly seven years. The cause of death was unknown.

I continued my investigation and knocked on the door of a house just beyond the private estate that our analysis suggested may contain an entrance to the mega-chamber. I was greeted by an eccentric man, approximately 45 years of age, who had lived in the house his entire life. The place was in a bit of a state and as I entered the living room I tripped on some clothes that had been piled on the floor. As I attempted to regain my balance, I shuffled my feet on the carpeted floor and in the process noticed a loud and rather distinctly hollow sound beneath.

In hindsight, I am appalled at the impudence with which I proceeded, for I asked the man if I could pull up the carpet to inspect the wood floor below, in the hope of finding a hatch to the anticipated mega-chamber. I was astonished when he obliged. We quickly moved his furniture to one side and ripped the carpet from the hardwood floor below. There was no hatch in sight. The owner reiterated that he was not surprised, because he would have been aware of one, had it existed. I apologised for the inconvenience and began putting everything back in place when I noticed he had paused, deep in thought. Slowly, he recounted a story, more for his benefit than mine. He recalled the time his father had moved him and his mother into a trailer in the back garden for a few weeks while workers installed a new floor in the house. He remembered standing on the edge of the structure, intriguingly where we had just pulled up the carpet, and looking down at the pit below. He said he remembered being astonished that he could look down at a steep drop-off and an enormous hole in the ground. He recalled how his father rushed over and grabbed him by the back of his neck, pulled him back, and shouted at him to stay away. I gasped as he recalled the story, clearly from the cobwebs of his memory, for thirty meters was the depth we had calculated – and, given his description, that estimate felt about right. As I left I apologised again for the intrusion. To my surprise he thanked me for reminding him of his father and a memory he had forgotten. As I departed I drove into an industrial estate so I could circle back on myself and head home on the London road. There, in front of me, in the middle of the most mundane of car parks, were two demon statues, aligned on the location of the alleged mega-chamber. Was I imagining things? I wondered.

Two daunting statues, aligned on the mega-chamber – as if protecting it © Andrew Gough

 

On the other side of the seven-mile tunnel, I explored multiple sites where Dona had identified the presence of underground chambers. As I investigated the area I stumbled upon an intriguing medieval chapel. I never turn down a chance to explore an old chapel, and on this occasion I would be rewarded for my effort. As I entered, my attention was drawn to a grandiose tomb with exquisite marble carvings in the far corner of the sacristy. After examining it I studied what remained of the original stained glass windows. I was transfixed on an image of a tall, medieval, solemn-looking man with what appeared to be a very contemporary-looking ‘man bag’ slung over his shoulder. There was something unusually sinister about the image. I took several photos and made a note to investigate it later.

Later that night, when I studied the image in my hotel room, I was again drawn to the bag, which appeared to contain sheets of checkerboard maps, with curious symbols in each square. I was reminded of what Saint-Yves d’Alveydre had been told by the initiates of the inner Earth about what had been hidden: ‘a colossal chessboard that extends under the Earth’s surface to cover almost every region of the globe’.I was also intrigued by the long blue strap that secured the bag, and surmised that it must represent the local river. I traced it on the Ordnance Survey map and convinced myself that the river was what the bag strap symbolised. I shared the image with Dona, who noticed that the blue bag-strap connected the so-called checkerboard maps on one end and a yellow shell on the other. He instantly recognised the shape. It mirrored the mega-chamber. The blue man-bag strap was not a river. It was a tunnel.

I speculated that the contents of the man bag depicted an inventory of ancient chamber sites across England, and possibly beyond, each square containing a symbol that identified the contents of that particular room. We knew that further insight lay in the identity of the individual depicted. Our research suggested that the curious figure is William Ufford, 2nd Earl of Suffolk (1338 – 1382), an English nobleman in the reigns of Edward III and Richard II. Ufford descended from a line of crusading knights and was awarded the prestigious Order of the Garter for his service to the realm. He fought in the Hundred Years War like his father Robert before him, and became a trusted advisor in national politics. He died childless, and under mysterious circumstances while attending parliament. Reports claim that he collapsed in a fit as he ascended the parliament-house steps, where he was scheduled to represent the grievances of the Commons to the Lords. His title was retired, and his property was dispersed. We looked further and discovered that the image may in fact represent Ufford’s escape from the insurgents of the 1381 Peasants Revolt; an unusual situation in which the angry mob respected and sought his representation. Robert Edmond Chester Waters describes the scene depicted in his 1878 book, Genealogical Memoirs of the Extinct Family of Chester of Chicheley: Their Ancestors and Descendants:

The insurgents designed to carry him with them by force as their leader; but he avoided this dangerous honour by escaping through the mob in the disguise of a servant, and joined the King at St Albans with a wallet on his shoulder.

Bingo! We discover that what our modern eye deems to be a man bag was known in the fourteenth century as a shoulder wallet. Ufford was under siege, and it made sense that he transported the most important documents in his possession directly to the King.

Ufford was an important man, clearly; someone with influence and access to power. We learned why he was dressed in a long brown robe, with his face (bar an unusually large nose) almost completely concealed; he was dressed as a stable hand, enabling him to perform a covert operation for King Richard II (who was a young man of fourteen years of age at the time). Still, I could not explain the peculiar ancient symbols in his ‘wallet’, including a swastika, an ancient religious icon in the cultures of Eurasia. I studied the image once more and noticed that the arched design above his head was coloured green, as was the decoration around his family emblem. I reflected on the fact that, when confronted by the rebels, Ufford was dining in Bury St Edmunds, a short distance from Woolpit – home of the legendary green children from St Martin’s Land, the place where the church bells first alerted the green children to a world above theirs. I wondered…

Was Ufford carrying a wallet of coded treasure maps to King Richard II? © Andrew Gough

 

Another site that Dona’s technology pinpointed was an English port town, a place of strategic importance for over a thousand years. Curiously, the location specified was not in the historic district. Rather, it was across town, in a nondescript industrial centre. I investigated and discovered a peculiar series of high-tech-looking hatches in the ground which unambiguously looked like access points to whatever was beneath. At one end of the series of deep, subterranean chambers that Dona had identified was a high-tech heating and cooling plant with an enormous sculpted tower that defied its industrial location. I was reminded of the Philippines, where the Japanese had hidden looted treasure in deep chambers at the end of the Second World War, and had later returned to build hospitals, schools and cemeteries, for free, as a gift, but really as an excuse to dig for what they knew was buried beneath. I wondered if the same technique had been employed here and, if so, by whom?

Perhaps the best-known quest for buried-treasure chambers is that of Oak Island, Nova Scotia, Canada. I had written about the mysterious ‘treasure island’ in 2007, when an informant named Will had shared snippets of his father’s alleged exploration around the island and the sensational things he had discovered.  In 2019 Dona produced a detailed map of the chambers in and around Oak Island. I approached the executives of the popular television show, The Curse of Oak Island, and offered to provide the precise location of the elusive chambers, only some of which date to the time of the Knights Templar. Project Restoration’s primary focus is on the ancient chambers. In our research, however, we observed that the Knights Templar had deposited their own artefacts close to the older, deeper chambers. Our investigation suggested that the Knights Templar encountered the custodians of the inner Earth in the East and learned of their motive and methodology for burying relics, documentation and artefacts, and mirrored it.

I Skyped with the Curse of Oak Island producers and stressed that we did not need to be filmed or featured in the show, and neither were we looking for riches. We simply wanted credit for discovering the chambers. I also stressed that I was an established voice of reason on countless television shows, and that both Klaus and I had a long history of holding responsible, executive-level day jobs. In other words, we were serious professionals. Still, they passed up our offer. A few months later I was asked to contribute to a programme called The Curse of Oak Island: Drilling Down – The Shakespeare Connection. The episode was featured at the end of Series 7, in 2020, during the late-spring lockdown. Disgruntled fans stormed the show’s many discussion forums to express their disappointment about another season of promise, but no discovery. They had been digging for over seven years and had not found one object of significance in the process – let alone a chamber. I reminded the producers that Project Restoration is willing to reveal its knowledge of the chambers in and around Oak Island at any time.

In parallel to Project Restoration, Dona and I are working with initiates who claim ancestry from the inner Earth, and provide guidance in our quest. One of our inner-Earth confidants (the same individual who had told us where to apply our chamber-finding technology for what would become our primary excavation in England) divulged that the London Crossrail project has been delayed due to the fact that ‘they’ were desperately searching for objects that have been buried deep in the earth in a distant epoch. I could not help but recall the 2017 Tom Cruise film The Mummy, where the London Crossrail project is delayed due to the discovery of an ancient chamber deep underground. Life imitating art, or art imitating life? You decide. Curiously, rumours have also circulated that not one, but two hoards of inner-Earth treasure have been discovered west of London during the 2020 Covid19 lockdown and quickly transported into the appropriate hands. Had the London Crossrail project unearthed a treasure chamber at last?

Tom Cruise’s The Mummy: the secret chamber discovered during the London Crossrail project

 

Another inner-Earth confidant recounted the time when he was a young boy and his father drove him and his mother to a nearby farmstead. As they approached a large storehouse the barn doors opened and several men walked outside to greet them. He recalled the men joking with his father that if they were not careful, the boy would be taken, like the others; a proposition that upset his mother no end. After positioning the car over a metal platform, a hydraulic mechanism lowered it over one hundred metres into the Earth. When they exited they were greeted by men with dark suits – classic Men in Black attire. Conspicuously, the men wore sunglasses to protect their eyes from sunlight reflected from the surface. He remembered being in awe of a massive crystal, the size of a football pitch, that portrayed the regions of the globe, including an island off the coast of Ireland that he was sure no longer existed. He recalled lots of men, busily walking across the crystal, as if working on a project of some sort.

If the inner Earth is real, if it is inhabited, and if it preserves the history of all epochs that have come before us, then might these artefacts represent objects that have been left behind by more advanced races; civilisations that occupied our planet (and perhaps still do) long before humankind? Or are they us – from the future, only advanced, and living in a different realm and frequency on our planet, reaching out to help us avoid extinction? Might the guidance of the inner Earth peoples, and their knowledge, be needed today? If so, who knows what the chessboard chambers contain, and what capabilities they empower. Regardless, it would appear that there is a race for the relics of the inner Earth. Here’s hoping the good guys get there first.