Hello everyone, my name is Peter Krees and you're listening to Into the Void, a show where I dedicate myself to finding the who, what, when, where, and hows in a world full of whys.
Today I'm joined by a special guest, he has a doctorate in archaeology and Egyptology. Now under the guise of anonymity he wants to remain anonymous, so instead of using his real name we'll call him Dwight for the purposes of this interview.
Dwight, you on the line?
Yes I am, how are you doing Peter?
I'm doing great, thank you so much for taking the time out of your busy schedule to call into the show and tell us your story, which is a harrowing story by the way.
Yeah, of course, I'm not too busy right now, I'm actually not able to leave the country. So yeah, I came here to Egypt actually, as you said I'm an archaeologist and an Egyptologist.
Before you get started, you were currently in Egypt now?
Yes, that's correct, I'm actually not able to leave due to some ulterior circumstances that I quite don't understand right now and I'm trying to figure it out while kind of laying low at the moment.
Okay, well why don't you just hop right into it, tell us how you got into these circumstances of being trapped in this country.
Yeah, of course Peter, my team and I, we actually had an opportunity to come to Egypt, we were doing some anthropological research in Thebes, the Valley of Kings region, well known.
And we got here and ended up in Cairo and decided to spend a little time on the town, we got off the plane and when we got in we decided a couple of us could use a drink to be honest.
And we ended up just kind of set into a little booth there and we were talking over what our excavation plans were when an interesting conversation caught our ear from the bar area.
Now your team consists of you and how many members? Just a small group I assume?
It's a small group, yeah, there's four of us, myself included, just to tackle as much ground as we can to really spread ourselves out within reason as far as monetary reasons go.
And we were sitting there and at the bar we overheard a little bit of a piece of conversation about, it seems like they were treasure hunters, believe it or not.
Didn't know they were still around.
No, no, that's news to me.
Yeah, yeah, they were talking to each other and the name Hamanoptra come up and they were talking about that area and they, we heard something about that.
Now for those who don't know, Hamanoptra is?
Hamanoptra is a mythical city that resides right off the west bank of the Nile.
Okay, so there's no way they could know this city actually exists. It's a myth, a legend.
No, it's absolutely a legend. Yeah, well that's what we thought.
So we decided to take a little detour once we actually got to the same area.
We went to bed, got all of our stuff ready for the next day and when we got to it we took some trucks and just went right down to the area.
Now something absolutely fascinating about that is once we got down there we found a fireball of a riverboat.
Apparently the riverboat that we later found out was actually the vessel that these people that we overheard took was their boat.
I assume everyone was okay. You are laughing, I mean.
I know, I mean that was nervous laughter. I don't know if everybody made it out. I'm hoping so, but at least the people that we knew did.
Now riverboat, that's, is that a... Yes, that's an old time, I couldn't believe that they decided to take it.
There was absolutely the resources that they could have used to get down there a little more economically.
It sounds more like they were more leisure hunters, so to say. They weren't very serious about their plans to say, quote unquote, grave rob.
I don't know what you would call what they were planning to do.
You hear the term treasure hunter, you assume that maybe they're up to something a little bit...
Nefarious, if you will.
I wouldn't say nefarious. Yeah, yeah, you did say it, but maybe something a little bit outside of the normal bounds of traditional excavating.
Gotcha, copy.
Yes, and the law, yes. Yes, quite the folks.
And so we end up down there and where we're driving and we see, we actually didn't head out as soon as they did.
I think they started out immediately, so they were a little bit ahead of us, shows how, you know.
As far as you can get on antiquated transportation.
Yes, but they were still ahead of us.
So, yeah, we saw the wreckage and it was unbelievable.
But the people that we presume treasure hunters and a bunch of other people aboard the boat seem to have the same destination.
We ended up on the side of the river with the people that were on the correct side of the river towards the actual destination of Hamanoptra.
And the other side had a bunch of horses and they were both laughing at each other thinking like, oh, well, we have the advantage.
You know, but I guess those horses were pretty quick.
There must have been a bridge somewhere because apparently they were able to get over the the Nile there.
So we end up.
This is this is where the craziness actually begins to start.
Sorry, I'm a little on edge.
Take your time. Take your time.
There's no rush.
Yeah, it's just been a bunch of crazy stuff going on.
So we end up the all the groups that culminated, we were all together and no one was heading towards the location.
And we couldn't head towards the location because we had no idea where it was.
We didn't have a map. We didn't have anything.
Again, mythical city. You're just going out there in hopes that maybe one of them will lead you to.
Well, I mean, the chance that a new anthropological place to go digging, that would that would be monumental.
And the most bizarre, I'll use that word.
I'll just say bizarre.
OK, OK. Well, we'll let our listeners decide on whether or not this is right.
This the sunrise occurred and it just started to get hazy from the sand up.
Now, is your typical Mirage Hayes or is this is this something you've never experienced before in a desert?
This is nothing I've ever experienced before in the desert.
I honestly haven't experienced much of that because we're well hydrated.
I mean, we have we're we're absolutely sufficiently we have our nutrients and all of a sudden it just looks like,
you know, the phenomenon with the grill, like you see the waves come up.
Well, this is going sideways, sideways, you say downwards and in a spiral.
It was it was unreal.
So not a not a natural weather phenomenon that you are used to seeing or that anyone else has really been used to seeing.
No, no. And we all, you know, give it up to, you know, perhaps it's just a phenomenon with like this certain part of the world.
You see that with other parts of the world.
Absolutely. It's unique, but it's not.
You weren't concerned at the time to see it.
No, no, no, we weren't. But once this phenomenon dissipated, all of a sudden we could see an ancient Egyptian city.
It just came out of nowhere.
No, again, this is this is not a mirage.
This is not an optical. No, this is this is a city that you yourself, I guess, materialize out of out of nothing.
Well, there'd be one hell of a materialization because all of us saw it.
We all started riding towards it.
We definitely beat them there because, again, we still had our trucks and they bet us a couple hours later.
And we decided to just set up camp. We located the entry points to most of the underground civilization.
And while we were doing that, one of the the actually the guy, the guy that we overheard from at the bar came up to us and, you know, kind of question us on what we were doing there.
He didn't seem too threatening. Seemed very nice.
But we could tell that the campfire that he came from, they had a guy with a bunch of, you know, a couple of guns on his waist there, you know, typical American cowboy.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Indiana Jones type. Well, he wants to be more menacing than he probably actually is.
Yeah, I would say so.
But there was something about his his character. It seems like he'd been there before, you know, he had that kind of the kind of or Augusto Augusto Augusto, I would say, isn't that definitely the he had someone who had knowledge of the city before.
Supposedly this being the first time anyone has ever really seen it.
Well, no one had said anything to us, but he seemed to be the person who knew where to go.
He was knowledgeable in the city.
Exactly. Which leads us to the next day.
They start going right into a specific entryway where we're all up. We all see this happen. They just go in.
They know what they're doing. And same with the other group. They go in on an adjacent side and just dive right down into the pit.
And as being just a bunch of scholars, you know, we didn't want to mess around with a bunch of gun toting adventurers.
Makes sense, makes sense.
So we decided to kind of walk around the ruins, look at some of the obelisks, statues, read them, decipher.
So we're more staying above the ground, not going so far down.
Yeah, no, we're not going down into a dark, dank cave with a bunch of people with pistols and rifles, you know, looking for safety.
Safety first, am I right?
Yeah, me and my team, that is our number one priority at all times.
So we are there and we have a day. We go around, we find some interesting things and we end up turning in.
And as soon as I think we had a good point of sleep, which is tough in the desert there, we end up hearing screams.
We just hear just screams, yelling. And we didn't know what was going on.
Could you tell from where you were, where these were the people in the camp?
Was it was outside of the city, just maybe echoing across the desert?
Well, it ended up being somebody who had come out of the underground area.
Oh.
Yeah, and we didn't know what happened to them.
But it turns out that they had been eaten.
Eaten?
But not exteriorly. They were actually eaten by a ancient bug.
So you're telling me that encased in this city, there was also a bug, I'm assuming presumed to be extinct by now or something that was carnivorous?
Yes.
And it attacked these men?
It attacked these men. It ate its way into his body and didn't leave.
By this point, we're ready to go. We don't know what's going on here.
We're just looking to get some research. We already had a plan to go to another site.
We were already ready for that.
You already had a day. You thought this is one of the greatest archaeological finds of all time.
And now you're just now learning that a man went into an underground cavern and was eaten alive by ancient bugs?
Yes.
I understand why you would want to to hightail it out of there.
That sounds like a very terrifying prospect because now that's open.
What if those bugs get out? I would want to leave as well. I understand.
So this is the point where we end up in our predicament.
Once we decide to do that, we pack all of our gear. We try to hightail it out of the city.
All of a sudden, this seems ridiculous. I don't expect you to believe me, but it seems almost biblical.
There was a storm on the horizon that came towards us and we had no idea what it was.
It was nighttime. We couldn't discern what was actually happening.
A cloud of locust came down and pretty much just purged the entire camp.
It was the most frightening thing I have ever laid witness to.
Now, swarms of locusts aren't out of the ordinary in certain parts of the world.
Sometimes I know locusts, they sleep for four to eight years.
Sometimes they do all hatch at one time.
They always come in.
Was this one of those times? Or did this seem more...I don't want to use the word paranormal or like a cult?
You're exactly turning upon that.
After this had passed, we all came to our senses.
We figured out that...no, we reasoned that this happens. We just happened to be here.
It was just a little spooky after we had just seen someone perish.
I can see where you stumbled upon a other weather phenomenon that somehow, I wouldn't say, manifested the city.
You saw a crazy weather pattern. A city appeared on the horizon.
Now you're dealing with ancient bugs who killed a man.
I can see where the high strangeness, where your mind might be going to places other than a standard set of coincidences.
Yes, that's exactly where we were.
We were just a little bit fatigued mentally and emotionally.
When all of that came together there, we didn't know what to think of it.
What did we do? We just decided to go home.
We went up back to Cairo and ended up in a hotel there.
This is where it gets undeniably tough to reason with what actually happened.
We're there and it evidently turns out that these other people that we were with at Hominoptra came back to the same hotel.
They seemed shaken beyond belief.
This isn't even the first hotel you met them at or overheard them at the first time around.
This is a whole new location you guys are at?
This is a whole new location, yes.
The chances are...
We couldn't believe when we had seen them.
I think one of my team members saw them entering the lobby.
You made it back from the desert, you go to a hotel in Cairo, you said?
In Cairo, yes.
It just so happens that the other team who was there is also here.
What happens next?
We are not happy to see them there.
We were trying to put this all behind us.
We were trying to go home.
They were definitely unperturbed.
They were absolutely at a point of unrest with what had just happened to themselves as well.
Understandable.
It's a very traumatic situation for everyone, I would assume.
I end up actually passing out.
I am exhausted.
The next thing I know, I'm waking up to...
I don't know how to say this without sounding crazy.
I wake up to people shouting and running around.
There were fireballs falling from the sky, hail, massive hail,
that was just demolishing the city.
I didn't know what would cause that.
It looked like a meteor shower on steroids.
I couldn't understand what was happening.
So not only is it fireballs, it's also hail?
Or are you saying fireballs the size of hail?
Either way, an extremely crazy scenario.
It's an absolute blur.
I can't even fathom what I had seen.
You can chalk this up to maybe, let's say, you see meteorites, comets, what have you,
break up in the Earth's atmosphere all the time.
You wouldn't think this could be shrapnel from, say, a comet blowing up.
It seems like an aerial raid.
There was an ex-Air Force pilot in the hotel at the time who did not know what was going on themselves.
They had never seen anything like this, and they had served in a war.
It was unbelievable.
We couldn't make anything of it.
We were trying to get out of there at that point.
We were trying to just leave, and then we were stopped by guards.
They knew that we were out of the country, and they said we couldn't leave right now.
It was unsafe.
So these are government officials that are telling you this?
I'm assuming it's government officials. Absolutely, yes.
Do you know if there's any reason why they would stop you from leaving the country?
I could only imagine it was because of what we bear witness to.
If this is some kind of independent thing that is happening in this one specific area that they don't want to get out,
it's endless. I can't imagine. It ends up that a few team members of the Adventurers there actually ended up dying of unknown causes.
I actually saw a stretcher being moved out, and it looked like there was nothing but a skeleton underneath.
I couldn't imagine what happened.
Really?
Yeah.
Wow, just wow.
Just a bunch of paranormal things happening all at once, and I don't use that word lightly whatsoever.
I don't think I've ever used it definitively in my life.
But you can say definitively right now. This falls under the category of paranormal.
It's not something you can explain. Science can't explain it.
Would you classify what you experienced as paranormal?
As a doctor, being experienced in the field and seeing what I have seen, nothing like this,
especially in correspondence to each other, has ever, ever happened.
I'll be honest, Peter. I'm pretty scared about what's going on,
the fact that me and my team aren't able to leave.
If you can make any sense of this, if any of your listeners can make any sense of this,
I would love to hear it because we're stuck here. We're in a hotel.
I'm only able to get in contact to you through a cell phone that we were able to get a hold of.
I don't think I have too many opportunities to get a hold of you again.
If you can send some words out there and see what you come back with, please try to reach me in time.
We'll definitely get your story out there and we'll get it out.
We'll make sure that people know what's happening.
Just a follow-up question real quick. After the guards told you you couldn't leave the country,
what happened next? Did everything just kind of stop the quote-unquote paranormal activity?
Or were you subject to anything else? Or was that basically you can't leave,
we're going to move you from this hotel to a more quarantined area and that's where you are now?
That's where we are now. Yes, we have orders to leave our hotel room at daylight tomorrow.
I'm calling you right now. What is it in our time right now? It's about 1.28 a.m.
So in just about a few hours we're going to be woken up and moved to a different location.
I don't know what the location is going to be. The guards seem to be pretty civil,
but they also seem to be very strict and reliant on their duties.
Understood. So do you feel like your life is in danger or do you feel that this is something that will be resolved
and you will be free to go?
I feel like I'm in better hands than what is going on outside of the parameters that I'm in.
I think something is actually amiss and I don't know how to classify it.
Everyone is pretty hush hush here, but it just seems like it's getting worse and worse
and I don't know if there is some kind of...I don't know if something is coming.
It feels like something is coming.
This is the first that I'm hearing of this, so that must mean that the Egyptian government has everything pretty hush hush over there.
I feel like something of this magnitude would have gotten out, but if they are quarantining the region
and keeping the mummy's curse under wraps, you would think we would hear something of this.
I just want to thank you for the risk you are taking right now for bringing this story to the world.
I know I am grateful for it, our listeners are grateful for it, and if I can think of any information
or if the listeners have any information on what might be happening right now in Cairo,
please, please, please get in touch with the show and I'll try and forward that information to you.
Please get back home safely. Your safety is one of my top concerns, Dwight.
Thank you very much, Peter.
Alright, well you have, I guess, a wonderful evening or the best you can under these circumstances.
And again, I really appreciate you calling in.
Yes, of course. Thank you for your time.
Wow, wow, what a powerful story.
Alright, well that pretty much wraps up our time. I just want to thank all our listeners for tuning in.
And I want to thank again, Dwight, for calling.
And please tune in next time and hopefully we will have a follow up to this story.
So everyone out there, keep your eyes to the sky and keep your ear to the ground.