Myth Hunters

The legend of Yamashita's Gold is one of the greatest stories of war loot in history. During WW2, as the Japanese Imperial Army conquered country after country across South East Asia, it's said they had a covert, systematic looting operation in place and amassed a huge fortune.

This programme follows the story of German journalist Paul Badde on a journey of discovery to learn about the 'face of God' discovered in Manoppello. This image on a transparent cloth, seemingly not made by human hands, is believed to be the only existing image of the living face of Jesus and could potentially revolutionise Christian beliefs and concepts. Historically the 'face of God' has been linked to the one of the greatest Catholic relics 'the Veil of Veronica', a similar miraculous image, created on the day of Christ's crucifixion. When stumbling under the weight of the cross, his brow was mopped by St. Veronica and an imprint of his face was left on her cloth.

A desert in California is said to hold something truly astonishing. According to the myth, somewhere in the Mojave Desert is a ship wreck with a precious cargo. In 1870, Charley Clusker, a Mexican War veteran, seasoned traveller and California Gold Rush prospector, would risk everything to find the legendary Lost Ship of the Mojave Desert.

According to legend, somewhere in Texas lies buried a vast treasure of Spanish gold. At the turn of the 20th century, Dave Arnold was on a mission to find it. Guided by a cryptic map he unearthed 3 mysterious stones. Convinced they were keys finding the treasure, Arnold began a 7-year quest to unravel the mystery of The Spider Rocks.

The dying days of World War Two. Hitler was in his bunker, unable to accept defeat. But most Nazis knew the game was up. It was time to start hiding evidence of their crimes. A unit of SS officers were instructed to transport boxes to the Salzkammergut lake district in the Austrian Alps. Their destination was one of the most remote and deepest lakes in the region: Lake Toplitz. On May 1st 1945, eyewitnesses still alive today saw SS Officers throwing mystery boxes into the lake. Local rumours grew the boxes were full of stolen gold. But what was actually in the boxes was only discovered decades later.

According to legend, a fortune in gold lies buried somewhere in America's Rocky Mountains. The only clue to the treasure's location is a cryptic map, drawn by the sole survivor of a doomed expedition. Colorado folklore states his descendants seek the gold for almost 200 years. But just when it appears to be within their grasp, The Curse of Treasure Mountain strikes.

In the early nineteenth century, stories emerged of mysterious ruins that lay buried and forgotten, deep inside the jungles of Central America. But a lost civilisation in this region was thought to be impossible in the 1800s. Everyone knew that the continent had only ever been peopled by savages, and they couldn't have created such sophisticated structures. But then a young American lawyer named John Lloyd Stephens, and a British artist, Frederick Catherwood, went to seek out these ruins for themselves. They travelled hundreds of miles through the jungles of Mexico, Guatemala, and Honduras and eventually uncovered forty-four buried and forgotten cities. All with a common architectural style that confirmed that there was once a single, vast civilisation that had existed in a place where nobody believed there could be one. But, for all their extraordinary revelations, there was still one question they could not answer. Who were the people who built this place?

This is the story of August Gissler's amazing seventeen year quest to find the pirate treasure on Cocos Island; the home, it is said, to some of the world's most concealed riches. Cocos lies shrouded in mist and isolated in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, 350 miles off the South American coast of Costa Rica.

Whilst on holiday in Spain researching a book, American author and writer Janice Bennett, found herself looking at an exhibit in Valencia Cathedral, claiming to be the Holy Grail. Although initially unimpressed, she decided to find out more and her subsequent research took her on an exciting voyage of discovery, from 1st century Jerusalem to 21st century Spain. By tracing the history of this relic and examining all the supporting evidence she has concluded that it could well be.

In France a tiny village has attracted treasure hunters for the last 70 years. At the end of the 19th Century, priest of Rennes-le-Château, Bérenger Saunière, became fabulously rich. And nobody quite knows how. Some say the priest discovered buried treasure, but others claim Saunière uncovered a secret so profound, it could rock the foundations of the Catholic Church. But was it all just a hoax?

In 1911, Hiram Bingham was a young scholar specialising in modern Latin American history at Yale University, Connecticut. He was thirty-six years old and married to Alfreda Mitchell, an heiress to the Tiffany diamond empire; they had six children and lived in a thirty-roomed mansion on top of a hill. Bingham was a man who seemed to have all the comforts of life, but he was restless and driven. During a field trip to Peru in 1909, he was invited by his guide to see an ancient Inca site high up in the Andes Mountains. This set him on a path that would change his life forever.

In the early 1800s a party of men headed by a Thomas Beale set out from Virginia to the Colorado Rocky Mountains where they discovered gold. After mining a fortune in gold ore they exchanged it for treasure, which they then buried in Virginia's Blue Ridge Mountains. Beale recorded the secret location of the treasure in three numerical codes that when decoded would reveal the treasures value, its location and to whom it belonged.

According to legend, he was Britain's greatest King. His name was King Arthur. He led his Knights of the Round Table from Camelot, a vast, spectacular castle built on a hill, and was supposed to have bravely fought Anglo-Saxon invaders and united the country. But there's very little evidence he really existed. History wasn't written in the Dark Ages, an era said to have been ruled by barbarism and chaos. The only way to really prove he existed was to find something with his name on it, maybe even Excalibur or the remains of the Round Table. Maybe even Camelot itself.