pyledriver
Junior Member
I'll start off by saying that this is my first post.. Some of y'all might know me though since my name is the same on many forums. Anyway..
THIRTY odd years ago, when I was about 13, we lived at the edge of town in a new development surrounded by cornfields. To the north, down a white rock road there was a huge old farmhouse that was reputed to be haunted, etc. It was an intimidating place to be sure with all the vegetation growing around it, the amazing amount of junk everywhere, including boards with nails, broken glass, busted up furniture...and what I'd call CHAFF for a metal detector nowadays!
My buddies and I had looked inside the house and only ventured maybe a few feet inside the door but always chickened out before going all the way in for a looksee. The reason we got freaked out was that the house was full of stuff as if somebody had been living there one minute, and suddenly just vanished, leaving everything behind. We HONESTLY thought there would be some old skeleton lying in a bed upstairs! Sure was different being a kid back then vs. now!
Anyway, my sister wanted to go see the old house for herself and maybe get some cool old silverware and whatnot. Well, being the big brother, I couldn't be scared! We went inside and spent probably an hour just marveling at all the stuff inside, how old it was, what a shame somebody had smashed this or that, wondering about the people that had lived there and why everything was left.. Now for some strange reason, odd things tend to catch my eye. I noticed that we were standing on a massive rug that was almost the exact dimension of the living area we were in. The odd thing was that the rug has strange brown spots at fairly regular intervals going around it (where I could see). Turns out they were nails! So the next thought..'why in the world would somebody nail down a rug?'. Naturally what somebody wanted stuck down-in a 13yr old's mind anyway-HAD to come up! Peeling the rug back revealed 5 $1 silver certificates!! We were so excited we hooked 'em to the house to show our parents! What followed was the letdown of 'that old house is dangerous' and 'you shouldn't take what isn't yours' and 'don't let me hear about you going back', etc. etc. Bummer. We didn't care much for arse whoopins though, so we didn't go back! How I WISH we HAD! How I WISH that house was still there!! No telling what could have been found.
Over the years, the people that surrounded me always did their best to squash my silly-headed notions about treasure and finding lost things. The typical, waste of time and money searching for what was never really there argument.. I'm so sad to say that it had a profound effect on me and I didn't get back into treasure hunting of any kind till the last few years. It finally occurred to me that I HAD found treasure, that people DID hide treasure just as I knew they ALWAYS had...and always will!
THIRTY odd years ago, when I was about 13, we lived at the edge of town in a new development surrounded by cornfields. To the north, down a white rock road there was a huge old farmhouse that was reputed to be haunted, etc. It was an intimidating place to be sure with all the vegetation growing around it, the amazing amount of junk everywhere, including boards with nails, broken glass, busted up furniture...and what I'd call CHAFF for a metal detector nowadays!
My buddies and I had looked inside the house and only ventured maybe a few feet inside the door but always chickened out before going all the way in for a looksee. The reason we got freaked out was that the house was full of stuff as if somebody had been living there one minute, and suddenly just vanished, leaving everything behind. We HONESTLY thought there would be some old skeleton lying in a bed upstairs! Sure was different being a kid back then vs. now!
Anyway, my sister wanted to go see the old house for herself and maybe get some cool old silverware and whatnot. Well, being the big brother, I couldn't be scared! We went inside and spent probably an hour just marveling at all the stuff inside, how old it was, what a shame somebody had smashed this or that, wondering about the people that had lived there and why everything was left.. Now for some strange reason, odd things tend to catch my eye. I noticed that we were standing on a massive rug that was almost the exact dimension of the living area we were in. The odd thing was that the rug has strange brown spots at fairly regular intervals going around it (where I could see). Turns out they were nails! So the next thought..'why in the world would somebody nail down a rug?'. Naturally what somebody wanted stuck down-in a 13yr old's mind anyway-HAD to come up! Peeling the rug back revealed 5 $1 silver certificates!! We were so excited we hooked 'em to the house to show our parents! What followed was the letdown of 'that old house is dangerous' and 'you shouldn't take what isn't yours' and 'don't let me hear about you going back', etc. etc. Bummer. We didn't care much for arse whoopins though, so we didn't go back! How I WISH we HAD! How I WISH that house was still there!! No telling what could have been found.
Over the years, the people that surrounded me always did their best to squash my silly-headed notions about treasure and finding lost things. The typical, waste of time and money searching for what was never really there argument.. I'm so sad to say that it had a profound effect on me and I didn't get back into treasure hunting of any kind till the last few years. It finally occurred to me that I HAD found treasure, that people DID hide treasure just as I knew they ALWAYS had...and always will!
