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  • 2020-12-08 (xsd:date)
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  • Did a Man Find a Lost Cave, Enter, and Drop to His Knees? (en)
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  • Since at least 2019, online advertisements have used various images to promote a story about a man purportedly finding a gold mine in a weird cave or a lost cave. One was titled: Man Finds Lost Cave, Enters And Drops To His Knees. Another said: Man Finds Weird Cave in [Your Town], Enters and Drops to His Knees. The man finds lost cave online advertisement sometimes automatically filled in a reader's individual town name, giving the misleading impression that the story was local or familiar. A variation of the ad read: This Mine Was Found In A Man's Land, Turned Out It Will Change His Life Forever. A fourth said: A Mine Was Found In A Man's Property, Turned Out It's More Than Just A [Gold] Mine. We even found a fifth ad: Man Found This Cave In His Property, He Screamed When He Found Out What's Inside. We found evidence that people were searching for the man finds lost cave story in Phoenix, Chicago, Jacksonville, Dallas, Rochester, Philadelphia, Omaha, Seattle, Atlanta, Louisville, Coventry, Denver, Houston, and even Singapore, to name a few: Readers who clicked on the advertisement were led to a story on the website Interesticle headlined: He Thought It Was The House Of His Dreams But It Was Actually A Nightmare. The man finds lost cave story told of a man named Christopher Wanliss who finds an old gold mine on his property and, 101 slideshow clicks later, ends with a man named James digging into an archaeological site where he finds a monster. The story on the viral content website was not true. But we noticed that the fictional article used photographs from at least two real news stories. One of those real news stories was published by realestate.com.au in 2018. Anthony Doolin discovered several abandoned mines after he bought a $1.35 million property in Brisbane, Australia: Unfortunately, Doolin never explored the mines. He and his mother sold the property. In March 2020, the MEAWW blog reported: Doolin had published an asking price of $1.65 million, but no one met that number. Eventually, he settled for the same amount he had initially paid for the property. There was no indication that he entered the lost cave and dropped to his knees after making some dramatic discovery, as falsely suggested by the online advertisements. As for the monster that ended the viral Interesticle story, those photographs were taken from an October 2015 History article that documented a Michigan farmer who dug up woolly mammoth bones: The man finds weird cave or man finds lost cave story about the gold mine bore some similarities to previous headlines that circulated in 2016, when it appeared to some readers that a new Star Wars movie would be filmed soon in their towns. Unfortunately, this was also untrue. (en)
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