Digging for Gold in the Kitchen

Digging for Gold in the Kitchen – by Liam Sweeny.

Have you ever wanted to dig for gold? In your house, that usually means digging through boxes for forgotten old coins, but every once in a while, the search becomes real.

For 71-year-old Brazilian man João Pimenta da Silva, the treasure he was looking for was one he would have to dig for. In his kitchen. You heard me right. He was digging in his kitchen for gold based on a dream he had that there was gold buried deep underneath his house.

I’m trying to wrap my head around this, whether or not he was truly inspired by Oak Island, because the tunnel he dug was the depth of a 12-story building. In fact, the average tunnels they did in Oak Island aren’t that deep, and they’re looking for actual, honest to God treasure. Forty meters. That’s how far he dug, with the help of friends.

I can’t imagine having that good a dream, that my kitchen floor would be fair game for the pickaxe. And just so you don’t think he was an amateur, the tunnel was perfect at forty meters because he had experience with tunnels.

I have to wonder how de Silva managed to convince his friends to help him dig, based off a dream he had, but I’ve learned to never underestimate the power of boredom. And maybe free beer.

De Silva died, by the way. You guessed it: he fell down the tunnel. Massive trauma, it was a mess. But try falling off a twelve-story building.

This kind of reminds me of Al Capone’s vault with Geraldo Rivera. If you don’t remember that, you have most of your good years ahead of you. Made a big, televised to-do, and ended up with a crevasse of beer bottles instead of Capone’s treasure.

I can’t imagine having that good a dream, that my kitchen floor would be fair game for the pickax. And just so you don’t think he was an amateur, the tunnel was perfect at forty meters because he had experience with tunnels.

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