#25. Gold Coins Worth 10 Million Dollars
It was a normal day for a couple in Sierra Nevada, California. They were walking their dog on their property when all of a sudden they spotted a top of a rusty canister poking out of the ground. The couple took it home the canister which contained a bunch of gold discs.
So, these gold discs happened to be $20 well preserved gold coins dating back to the 1890s. The couple returned to the location where they found the canister and discover eight more cans containing 1,427 coins with a face value of $27,980. Coins were restored and evaluated with the aid of coin dealer Don Kagin and numismatist David McCarthy. It was estimated that the coins worth about 10 million dollars. Check what they found in #18!!
#24. An Ancient Stone
Any Outlander fans out there? This amateur historian Stephen Davis from England was doing some history research of his own home when he discovered a reference to an ancient stone from the Bronze Age dating back to about 2,500 BCE that was thought to have marked a funeral plot.
David started looking for the stone bearing in mind the description found in the historical documents. It was after some time when he found the stone for real in his backyard. It was all covered with ivy. The Historic Buildings and Monuments Commission for England was expected to declare the stone a scheduled ancient monument. Don’t worry, Davis didn’t disappear nor travel through time.
#23. Church Bells
It was in 2013, Czech Republic when a man while excavating his backyard to install some pipes bumped into unusual metal objects. What were they? After some digging, he discovered two large church bells about 400 years old.
Eventually, he found out that the bells had been stolen 11 years earlier from a church nearby. It seems that the thief was trying to hide the stolen bells by burying them. For some reason, he didn’t get to have them back.
#22. A Loaded Machine Gun
A man from northeast Calgary, Canada was quite astonished after making an unconventional discovery in his backyard. It was between his garage and the fence where he found out a plastic bag with a pillowcase in it. What was it?
After taking a look inside the pillowcase, he discovered a fully-loaded machine gun along with a cell phone. Unfortunately, it wasn’t part of GTA’s special mission, the gun was for real. It’s still uncertain how the gun ended up in his backyard or who placed it there.
#21. A 1700’s Cemetery
In New Orleans, Louisiana a man named Vincent Marcello wanted to build a swimming pool in his backyard. So, he made up his mind and started digging a plot, and guess what? He ended up discovering an ancient cemetery that dates back to the 1700s.
Thirteen caskets with human remains were exhumed by some workers. Even so, this was not the first time bodies were found underground in the area. During the construction of an apartment complex, thirty-six corpses were discovered in 1984.
#20. A Mastodon Vertebra
This discovery took place in Detroit, Michigan in a creek that flows through the backyard of two boys, Eric and Andrew. They were building a dam when Eric spotted an odd-looking rock sticking up from the ground. Their family assumed it was a bone, so they called a paleontologist.
It was John Zawiskie from the Cranbrook Institute of Science in Bloomfield Hills who later gave details about the bone Eric and Andrew found. It was a vertebra that belonged to a mastodon of approximately 13,000 years old.
#19. An Alligator Swimming In A Pool
We all know the state of Florida is packed with alligators. So, finding one in a backyard cannot be regarded as an uncommon story. However, alligators taking a dip in a backyard swimming pool is really something else. This bizarre scene was what Sharon Bente and her husband from Bradenton witnessed when they heard a noise in their backyard in the middle of the night.
There was an 8-feet gator swimming in circles together with a little floating toy. Later, the gator was taken to a farm in Arcadia after reporting the incident to the Sheriff’s office. You won’t ever imagine this other animal in #6 that also enjoys the swimming pool!
#18. 150,000 Dollars In Cash
Wayne Sabaj was an unemployed 51-year-old man from Illinois who was picking broccoli in his backyard in August 2011. To his surprise, he discovered a nylon bag with $150,000 stockpiled. The man reported this finding to the police knowing that he’d be able to keep the money if the money was not claimed by anyone else by the end of 2012.
Dolores Johnson, an 87-year-old Sabaj’s neighbor, claimed the money alleging she had got rid of the money because she believed it was “cursed.” In the end, the court gave a portion of the money to Johnson’s daughter and part it was granted to Sabaj as a reward. Unfortunately, Sabaj died just 10 days before receiving the prize.
#17. A 1000-year-old Human Remains
There was a man in Salt Lake City, Utah who was digging up a pond in his backyard when all of a sudden he discovered something very gruesome, he found human bones. The man was so frightened by such an unexpected find that he called the police.
The police later sent the human bones to the state medical examiner to have them tested. The examiners’ results showed that the bones once belonged to a Native American who lived in Utah about 1,000 years ago. What a relief that they were not of a recent murder!
#16. Meteorites
What are the chances of you finding a piece of meteorite in your backyard? What about a meteorite hitting your yard six times in a row? You may think that there are like zero chances. But this happened to a Serbian man.
It seems that this man’s property located in a little village in Northern Bosnia is a magnet for space rocks. There may be a scientific explanation to explain why this happened. The man believes that this might be the work of aliens trying to bombard his house.
#15. A 650-year-old Treasure
Guess who found a treasure in his house? No, it was not a twenty-first-century pirate. It was an unidentified man from Wiener Neustadt, Austria who found this treasure trove estimated to be about 650 years old.
The man discovered the treasure while doing some digging to expand a garden pool back in 2007. Inside the trove, there were more than 200 rings, brooches, ornate belt buckles, gold-plated silver plates and other pieces or fragments, many encrusted with pearls, fossilized coral and other ornaments.
#14. WWII Bombs
There is an area of over 12,000 acres in Orlando, Florida that it used to be a World War II bombing range. Thousands of homes have been built in that place. In 1998, the first bomb was discovered near the running track of a local middle school.
That was the beginning of the following discoveries. Over a hundred rockets and bombs have been found on the school property and in backyards of nearby housing developments. It seems that the cleanup of the area launched by the Army Corps of Engineering fell short, so the danger of stumbling across a bomb left behind is still pretty high.
#13. A Dinosaur Bone
John Lambert from Ipswich, U.K. was building a fence in his backyard back in 1997 when he discovered an unusual and large bone. Thinking that it could be an important paleontological discovery, he stored the bone in his shed for 16 years.
It was in 2013 when he finally made up his mind to take the bone to Ipswich Museum. The experts, astounded, confirmed it to be the bone of a 250-million-year-old pliosaur. This finding became even more mysterious because the pliosaur was not native to the English sea. In #11 and #3 there were found more buried bones.
#12. A Famous Actress
Back in 1996, the late actress Margot Kidder who became famous for her performance as Lois Lane in the Superman film movies was found in someone’s backyard in Glendale, California. The actress, who was 47 years old at the time, was struggling with health and financial problems.
Kidder had been missing for three days before she was found. The police said that she was wearing dirty clothes and missing some teeth. She was also frightened and paranoid. The actress had been suffering from bipolar disorder which caused her to be put under psychiatric care.
#11. A Whale Fossil
Back in 1978, Gary Johnson from California found a large rock emerging out of the ground with a bone pattern in it near his backyard. Johnson thought that it could be an important discovery, so he called an expert to evaluate it. Unfortunately, the expert reached the conclusion that it had no value. The stone, then, remained untouched for over 35 years.
It was in February 2014 when Johnson was watching the news and saw a huge piece of a 12-million-year-old sperm whale skull found very close from where he had found the stone. He resorted to a paleontologist at the Natural History Museum. His luck was different this time. The paleontologist concluded that the fossil was the 14-16 million years old remains of a very rare baleen whale.
#10. A Cheetah
The mother of this nine-year-old boy from Hamerton, Cambridgeshire, U.K. couldn’t help to distrust her son when he ran to her shouting that there was a cheetah in the garden. Of course, she thought that it was all about a childhood excitement.
To her surprise, when she looked out of the kitchen window, she realized her son was telling the truth! The 6-foot-long predator had escaped from an animal sanctuary located nearby. This cheetah was quickly taken back home by the keepers.
#9. A Mysterious Object
These two sisters from Kitchener, Canada were digging up their backyard looking for worms to take on an upcoming fishing trip when they stumbled upon a peculiar object. What they found deep in the ground was something shiny with a bluish hue and transparent. The sisters thought that it was part of a meteorite, but an earth sciences professor named Phil McCausland had a different opinion.
He considered that the visible layer of the object should have been much darker if it really was part of a meteorite. Later, a gem expert, Gary Winkler, was asked to analyze the object. He concluded that it was definitely not a gem of any known kind. He also thought that a person intentionally buried it thinking that the object was not of natural origins. We still don’t know what it was, but the sisters kept it.
#8. A Fallout Shelter
This family from Neenah, Wisconsin always knew there was a metal door hidden in the ground in their backyard. The Zwick family never picked up the courage to explore it until one day they opened the metal hatch to see what was inside.
That metal hatch buried in the backyard turned out to be a Cold War-era fallout shelter. There was a ladder leading down into a bunker where there were items from the past including medical supplies, tools, clothing, flashlights, batteries, among other items needed for a temporary stay in the shelter.
#7. A Gold Nugget
It seems that this Californian man knew deep inside that he was about to find something precious in his backyard, so thanks to a metal detector and a shovel the man discovered an 8.2-pound lump of gold in 2011. The nugget was sold at auction for the modest amount of $460,000 given its extraordinary size.
It is still unknown the identity of the lucky finder of the nugget. Geologists said the chances that there is more gold on that land is 100 percent, so the finder may have remained anonymous to prevent a literal gold rush onto his property. This Californian has the rest of his life to keep digging up his backyard.
#6. Foxes Jumping On A Trampoline
If you thought that alligators were the only ones that knew how to appreciate a good bath in a swimming pool, you haven’t heard about this other animal. A couple of adorable foxes found their way in overnight to enter into the backyard of an anonymous man.
The man had just woken up when he found evidence of these not-so-common intruders. These nocturnal trespassers took advantage of the slumbering homeowners to have some fun on the swimming pool’s trampoline. These foxes sure know how to have fun!
#5. Marijuana Worth 175,000 USD
This discovery took place in Los Angeles when a man called Mack Reed was trying to install solar panels in his backyard. Little did he know that he would find $175,000 worth of marijuana hidden underneath a hot tub. The man knew that he could make a good profit from it.
But Reed was also aware that it was likely that the person who hid the drugs would want it back. So, the man decided to report his findings to the police and then he placed a sign saying, “We found it and the called police. They confiscated it and are now watching the place. Sorry.”
#4. A Giant Earthworm
This worker named Li Zhiwei from China was hanging some clothes to dry out in his backyard when he saw what he thought was a snake. But then he decided to take a closer look at the animal and there he realized that he was wrong.
it wasn’t a snake, but a ginormous, almost 20 inches, or half a meter, the long earthworm. Such discovery posed a question for biologists who cannot explain how this earthworm was able to grow so long in a built-up area because its size is usually closely related to the environment.
#3. A Mammoth Bone
Back in 2010, there was a family from Iowa doing some fruit picking in the wooded backyard of their house when all of a sudden they saw a white object sticking out of the ground. After digging the object out, they discovered it was a femur.
Later, a group of scientists from a local university identified the object as a 12,000 years old wooly mammoth bone. It was after paleontologists went to the site when they found out that there were more bones buried there, only the mammoth skull was missing.
#2. Grenades And TNT Explosives
This discovery took place in the Czech Republic in May 2013. A 39-year old man was digging out some tree stumps from his backyard when he saw there was something hidden under them. The man took precautions so he decided to call the police.
It was after excavating the mysterious objects that the police found out that the man’s backyard happened to be full of hand grenades together with several TNT explosives from the Second World War. This man’s instinct didn’t fail him!
#1. A Ferrari
Two kids from Los Angeles were digging for fun in a backyard back in 1978 when they found a Dino 246 GTS Ferrari. When the car was fully excavated, they kept “digging” for information and it turned out that the Ferrari had been stolen. Thieves buried it several years ago.
The story keeps getting weird because none of the residents who had lived in the area in the time of the burial recalled noticing anything. Maybe it was all part of an insurance scam. The thieves were supposed to destroy the car but they were too attached to it so they decided to bury with the intention to retrieve it later.