such information as exists as carefully and as thoroughly as possible places a big question mark over Jacob Walz, or Walzer, from whom the mine eventually took its name. Opinions of Walzer range from his being an innocuous old prospector who had just stumbled by chance on the incredible treasure lying within the mine, to his being one of the most callous and ruthless serial killers in that part of Arizona. Was he a man who, like the notorious Charles Peace of Victorian England, camouflaged his ruthless homicidal tendencies behind a convincing veneer of respectability and harmless semi-senility?
Treasures of many types and in many locations seem to attract sinister hazards. Those who have spent any length of time researching the mysteries of Rennes-le-Château at first hand will be swift to agree that Rennes has a number of sinister secrets attached to it and that it is by no means a safe place to explore. Just as the semi-legendary Oak Island, Nova Scotia treasure has already claimed at least six treasure hunters’ lives, so the Lost Dutchman Mine has claimed a series of victims over the years.
One set out way back in the 1930s. A treasure hunter named Adolph Ruth made his way towards a strange, isolated peak known as Weaver’s Needle. Ruth said that he had obtained an accurate map of the location of the Lost Dutchman Mine from certain confidential papers that had come from the Peralta family. When Ruth’s skeleton was finally discovered, the head had been removed and the body shot through by two rounds from a nineteenth-century Colt Peacemaker, or a similar type of heavy-calibre hand gun.
As recently as 1947, James Cravey also believed that he had an accurate map. He hired a helicopter and asked the pilot to set him down — by himself — at a point that he indicated. He also gave the pilot orders to pick him up again two weeks later. The pilot kept the rendezvous faithfully and went to find his charter client as planned — but there was no sign of James Cravey. He had vanished as surely as Benjamin Bathurst vanished when he walked around the horses at Perleberg and was never seen again. Cravey vanished as finally and mysteriously as the three lighthouse keepers from the Flannans, or the captain and crew of the Mary Celeste.
Almost a year later, however, a skeleton that was almost certainly Cravey’s was found near the sinister Weaver’s Needle. He had suffered the same fate as Adolph Ruth had fifteen or sixteen years before — Cravey’s head was missing. Insofar as a mine or its location can be broadly defined as an object, the Lost Dutchman Mine — or the gold allegedly taken from it — is among the most mysterious objects on Earth. Something in the Superstition Mountains produced a supply of gold far greater than most other workings in Arizona. How much did the Peralta family really know about it? What did Walz the Dutchman discover? Who killed Adolph Ruth and James Cravey — and had the two succeeded in finding the Lost Dutchman Mine before its mysterious guardians found them?
CHAPTER SIX:The Statuette of Yemanja
The oldest spells and enchantments often seem to depend upon a picture or three-dimensional image of the subject who is to be healed or hunted, protected or punished. Our earliest ancestors painted remarkably lifelike aurochs on the walls of their dimly lit caves, presumably in the hope of attracting prey into the path of their hunting party. Models of wood or clay representing women, men, and beasts were prominent features of early magic. Sometimes these effigies were burnt, impaled, or crushed underfoot. At other times they were blessed and protected by amulets and talismans in order to keep the subject whom they represented safe.
Today, the territory of the Yoruba nation is located towards the south of modern Nigeria, and the traditional African beliefs in a universe inhabited by spirits are still strong there. Animals and birds, rocks, rivers, and waterfalls, and trees and plant life — especially “healing” and “magical” herbs — are all regarded as the dwelling places of spirits with varying degrees of power. The most powerful spirit of all in the minds of the Yoruba was their great goddess Yemanja. They believed she was the mother of the sun and moon, and one of a dozen gods and goddesses who made up the ancient Yoruba pantheon. The making of small figurines as votive offerings to Yemanja became an integral part of Yoruba worship.
Some four centuries ago, the Portuguese were searching for slave labour to run their new South American plantations, and it was the Yoruba’s tragedy to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Thousands of them were shipped out as slaves. The only (very minor) redeeming feature was that the Portuguese tended on the whole to be less cruel and more tolerant than most other slave owners of that era. Unlike certain more rigidly fanatical Christian slave owners, the Portuguese allowed their captives to practise their own African religion. As the centuries passed, however, well-meaning but theologically blinkered Christian missionaries tried to force their rigid and exclusive ideas about faith on to the Yemanja-worshipping Yoruba descendants. Their attempts to persuade the Yoruba of the importance of Mary the Virgin, however, met with success beyond their wildest dreams — or their worst nightmares. To the Yoruba, this new “Queen of Heaven” figure was simply their beloved Yemanja wearing a thin Christian disguise, so Yemanja s Feast Day on August 15 became Mary’s as well — or vice versa.
Statuettes of Yemanja — perhaps as a kind of “Black Madonna” figure — are ubiquitous throughout Brazil. It is also common practice for offerings to be left out in Brazilian streets for Yemanja, and even the hungriest and most desperate beggars will not touch them; such is the power of Yemanja’s grip on the hearts and minds of her people.
Apart from the large-scale celebrations to honour Mary and Yemanja on August 15, there is an even more spectacular event on Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro on December 31. An enormous crowd of Yemanja worshippers wearing white and carrying candles wade into the sea chanting her praises and throwing flowers into the water.
The true identity of the central character of this strange Yemanja narrative has to be protected, but the records are all in the rigorously kept scholarly archives of the Society for Psychical Research in London. An eminent and trustworthy SPR investigator was working in Brazil a few years ago when the subject (whom we shall refer to simply as “Belinda” to protect her real identity) was brought to his attention. She had studied psychology at the University of Sao Paolo, and this may have led her into a scientific, pragmatic, and, perhaps, rather materialistic paradigm.
One day, however, Belinda accompanied some other members of her family to an attractive beach near Santos, less than one hundred kilometres from Sao Paolo. Here she found a small statuette of Yemanja that had apparently been thrown up by the sea. Very little paint was left on the tiny figurine after its exposure to the action of the sea for so long, but such paint as was left was highly significant when studied in detail in the light of later developments. The jaw and neck still retained some pigment, as did the arms, together with a little more between the shoulder blades. In addition, one eye still retained its bright blue colour. Belinda took the curious little statuette home, despite the remonstrance of the more superstitious members of her family, who believed that it was a votive offering to Yemanja and, as such, should be left severely alone. Within days, Belinda became so ill that she was taken to a hospital and tested for tuberculosis. The test was positive, but she was lucky, and, following some excellent medical treatment, she was cured. The X-ray had revealed what looked like a sinister patch on her right lung, just below the equivalent spot where the statuette had been painted between its shoulder blades.
Her doctor ordered her to take a long rest, and she stayed with her parents for several months, a long way from Sao Pâolo — too far away, some psychic practitioners might suggest, for the Yemanja figurine to influence her. During the time that there were several hundred kilometres between them, the sinister figurine seemed powerless to injure Belinda.
As soon as she returned home, however, her pressure cooker exploded and severely scalded her arms, face, and neck — precisely where the flecks of paint still adhered to the Yemanja figurine. A few days later, her gas oven exploded, much as the pressure cooker had done. But worst of all, she began to feel continual urges to commit suicide
