Isn’t that how The Goonies started? In Tampa, man named Mike Lopez and his sister were cleaning out their grandparent’s attic when the stumbled across a mysterious old wooden box with a faded photo of their great-grandparents, an old map, some ancient coins, and what appears to be a human hand all arranged inside. Dun dun DUN.
The map bears the word “Gaspar,” – obviously referring to the 18th century Florida pirate José Gaspar aka “Gasparilla.”
Or maybe not. Says Huffington Post: “Despite Gaspar’s place in Tampa-area culture and folklore, there is no proof he was real, and the myth may have originated with a railroad company advertisement in the late 1800s, according to the Tampa Bay Times.”
But what about that severed hand? THAT’S real, right?
“Well, that certainly is a hand,” Tampa Bay History Center Curator Rodney Kite-Powell says. Kite-Powell said the treasure map is likely a blueprint from the 1920s or 1930s, and the coins look too thin to be authentic Spanish treasure, or even very old.
“I just don’t know what to make of it aside from the fact that it’s probably not José Gaspar’s hand,” he said.
While the hand appears to be real, experts who have seen it are still uncertain. “The jury is still out,” WFLA reporter Jeff Patterson says in the video below.
Well, OBVIOUSLY this Rodney Kite-Powell character is a scheming treasure hunger who’s trying to throw us off the trail so he and the family of criminals he’s in cahoots with can find the treasure for themselves.
Watch the news footage below, then meet me in Tampa tomorrow with a shovel and a metal detector and lets FIND IT OURSELVES!
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