Written by Russell Burrows:
The series of events which I am now going to relate are so strange that they just do not seem real. They could well have been a script from a James Bond movie.
I received a call from my brother; he lives in Virginia and knew about the cave and its contents. He told me that he had been contacted by a fellow who worked at one of the largest museums on the East Coast. The man asked if my brother might be able to arrange a meeting between him and me, claiming that he knew some people who could help.
At this time I would have been willing to discuss the situation with Old Scratch himself. I contacted the fellow.
“Yes,” he said, “I can put you in touch with some of the staff of the Egyptian Antiquities Department, as they are very much interested in your discovery.”
A meeting was arranged at Martinsburg, West Virginia, for the following week. At the appointed time I made contact with the “experts” from wherever they were from.
Thus began the strangest experience of my life, and to this day I do not know who these men were.
At first everything was extremely cordial. I did, however, have to submit to a body search. I thought they were checking that I was unarmed. But, as it happened, they didn’t seem to be concerned that I was in fact armed with a Model 1911 Colt.45, because they handed it back to me after I had been patted down.
What were they looking for? I can only guess, but I think they may have been looking for a “wire”: a listening device or a tape recorder.
They were Near Easterners, no question about it. They had the accent and the appearance. One of these fellows was obviously the leader of the group and said very little as the search was taking place. Afterwards he became very friendly and asked me how I seemed to know so much about the language of the ancients.
I had with me a copy of Barry Fell’s book, America B.C., and when I showed it to him, he snatched it out of my hand, threw it on the floor, stomped on it a few times and said, “Filthy American Imperialist.”
All this was occurring during the period when a ship had been hijacked and sailed into Egypt. All the hijackers were later captured when the airplane upon which they were attempting to escape was forced to land by the U.S. Air Force.
By now, I was getting just a little nervous, and it showed, because the leader of the bunch made an attempt to calm my jumping nerves.
A discovery of Egyptian artifacts had supposedly been found in West Virginia at about this same time and, so I was told, that was the reason these people were in this country.
“Come along with us,” said the leader. “We are going to fly over to Morgantown and pick up some of the artifacts.”
So away we went. They had a helicopter sitting out back of the Holiday Inn, and we took off. I am not too fond of those things and I was really shook by the way the pilot, who was one of the group, was flying the thing, low and fast.
While we were on our way I was asked, at least half a dozen times, where my cave was located, but there was just no way I was going to tell those guys anything about that. By that time I was really uptight with the way they were handling business.
Before we had taken off, I was asked if I had any artifacts with me. I showed the boss man the one stone which seems to have the southern constellations on it.
Well, he snatched that out of my hand, and after looking at it asked me where the other three were.
I asked him if it was important and he replied that it was.
In fact he said, “This is a star map used by the ancient sailors.”
According to him, there should be four of them, one for each constellation, or each quarter of the night sky. I told him I had found only one, but if there are supposed to be four then the other three must be there.
A short while later we landed at their meeting place on the Monongahela River, between Fairmount and Morgantown. We found some young fellows there waiting for us. The ‘copter did not even stop its engines as a crate was loaded in, we took off right away, and we headed back east as if in a hurry.
I want you to understand that I was getting a lot of pressure from these guys to reveal the location of the cave. I guess it was really important to them if they were who they said they were. When the one snatched the “star map” from my hand, he exclaimed, with a lot of emotion, “This is our lost history!” So I guess that, if they are to be believed, it is important.
After things had calmed down and we were on our return flight to Martinsburg, I began to take a good look at the men. I noticed how they were dressed and how they conducted themselves. Most of all I noticed that they were armed, and not with regular handguns, mind you, but with Uzis. For those of you who don’t know much about guns, an Uzi has a lot of firepower. It’s a favored weapon with those folks who go around shooting up places as an act of terrorism.
Upon arriving back at Martinsburg, the ‘copter again didn’t get shut down, and I was told to meet with them again the following day. As I got off the eggbeater, I took note of a couple of men standing off to the side, watching everything that was going on with great interest. I was very suspicious.
I walked up to one of them and asked who in the hell he was.
He pulled an I.D. and said, “Department of Justice.” He did not say FBI, he said, “Department of Justice.” As near as I can determine, if he was what he was claiming to be, that is exactly what he should have said.
Just about then the helicopter took off and as I turned around to watch it go, I noticed that it had no numbers or any other means of identification; it was simply small, and blue and white.
Just think about this for a minute or two. Here we were buzzing around in an aircraft with no numbers on it, everyone on the thing is armed to the teeth and every move being watched by the Justice Department, no less. And what do these federal boys say or do? Nothing!
Now let me take the time to examine this entire situation.
First of all, the helicopter never flew more then two or three hundred feet above ground level all the way to the Monongahela river. When they left Martinsburg, they stayed at a very low altitude. Why? Were they evading radar?
And why was there no identification on the aircraft and why were these men allowed to go around armed with illegal weapons? Why was I permitted to stand there talking to a federal officer while armed with a Colt.45?
The last question is, did I stick around to meet them the next day? Are you kidding? I got the hell out of there as fast as I could.
A final note to this story: the fellow who worked at the institution on the East Coast, the one who lined me up with these fellows in the first place, disappeared. No trace of him has ever been found as far as I know. I never heard from those weird people again, or did I? There was another strange experience later on – it might have been with them.