Before he gets much further, Warren Getler splits away and joins us. “He’s finding something,” Denny notes, but then continues with his recounting of events from years earlier. The rest of the group clusters around him. “I need everybody’s opinion here,” Kelly says. Parada describes Kelly as a kind of savant with this ancient if scientifically debunked method of searching for underground metal. “I just think beyond any other treasure hunters,” he says, “because… I’m not going to claim I’m smart, but I do more experiments than anybody.”Īs he speaks, Dwayne Kelly, a member of Parada’s entourage of full-timers, part-timers, and volunteers, is circling a nearby slope with dowsing rods.

The Real Story of Oak Island’s Legendary Money Pit.

A few of us snap photos and turn uphill the elk stays locked on us as we trudge away. It stands unmoving, staring us down, as the group stops to gaze back.

An elk is perched on a steep slope above the trail, 50 feet up. The overgrown road we’re ascending, known locally as Snooks Trail, is a lingering scar from a decades-old logging operation, though most recently it has served as the access point to Parada’s lifelong obsession.Ībout halfway up, Denny’s 37-year-old son and business partner, Kem, hollers and points. We’re on a wooded slope, one knobby vertebra among thousands along the spine of the Appalachians. “Snakes,” he’d explained.ĭents Run is an unincorporated community in Benezette Township in rural Elk County, in northwestern Pennsylvania. He’s wearing a Finders Keepers polo and a camo baseball cap and shorts and has a handgun strapped to his hip. Co-owner Denny Parada, 69, brings up the rear, hobbling a bit and breathing forcefully. The hike up Dents Run is not quite a half mile long, but the six representatives of Finders Keepers LLC, a Pennsylvania-based treasure-hunting business, string out as climbers on Everest. We climb in the humid afternoon up a rutted and overgrown logging road, the sky mostly sealed off by a canopy of tree branches, sunlight leaking through dense greenery in elongated shafts.

The Treasure Hunters by Warren Dean