Speaker 1: One Saturday morning in nineteen fifty four in Virginia in
Speaker 1: the USA, a twelve year old boy wearing oversized surgical
Speaker 1: scrubs was sat in the corner of an operating theater,
Speaker 1: riveted by the scene unfolding before him. In those days,
Speaker 1: as a way to encourage the young into the profession,
Speaker 1: physicians were allowed to bring their children into hospital to
Speaker 1: watch them work. The boy's father, doctor Abe Schwartz, was
Speaker 1: an anesthesiologist and that morning, had been tasked with helping
Speaker 1: to put a teenage girl to sleep for a routine operation.
Speaker 1: His son, Stephan, was given the simple instructions to sit
Speaker 1: behind him, stay quiet, and not touch anything. It might
Speaker 1: seem a strange thing for a twelve year old boy
Speaker 1: to do on a Saturday morning, but Stephen was an
Speaker 1: unusual boy with an irreligious and analytical mind fostered by
Speaker 1: his atheistic parents. All seemed to be going well when
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, the medical staff became gravely concerned
Speaker 1: and began to hurry around the girl. Her heart had stopped.
Speaker 1: Stephan stared widely as they quickly pulled off the girl's
Speaker 1: gown and began steadily administering c p R. Despite what
Speaker 1: we might see on film and TV, cardio pulmonary resuscitation
Speaker 1: is very rarely successful. Thankfully, however, this patient was one
Speaker 1: of the lucky ones. Having come round, there was no
Speaker 1: chance of completing the operation, and so Stephan's father accompanied
Speaker 1: her as he was wheeled off to an adjoining room
Speaker 1: to recover, while Stephen was instructed to go and change. Later,
Speaker 1: having disrobed and showered, Stephen was waiting for his father
Speaker 1: in the staff room when Abe came out of the
Speaker 1: shower with a strange look on his face. Soon after,
Speaker 1: as Stephen and his father drove into town for their
Speaker 1: regular post operation ritual, a get together with Abe's colleagues
Speaker 1: at the local delicatessen, it was clear that something was
Speaker 1: troubling his father. It was only when they were seated
Speaker 1: at the delicatessen that Abe finally began to unburden himself.
Speaker 1: As Abe explained to his colleagues, shortly after the girl
Speaker 1: had come round, she began to speak to him about
Speaker 1: an unusual experience she just had. She claimed that while
Speaker 1: she was under sedation, she suddenly found herself floating above
Speaker 1: her body, which she could clearly see stretched out on
Speaker 1: the operating table below her. But when she tried to
Speaker 1: call out to the medical staff, nobody seemed to see
Speaker 1: or hear her. I'm sure what to do. She made
Speaker 1: herself drift out into the hallway, where she then claimed
Speaker 1: to have seen a doctor in a blue and white
Speaker 1: shirt with a loosened tie around his neck talking to
Speaker 1: a nurse. The young girl went on to describe the
Speaker 1: nurse in great detail, including a very specific hairstyle that
Speaker 1: she wore, which the teenager had greatly admired. Then all
Speaker 1: of a sudden, the girl was back in her own body,
Speaker 1: staring at the ceiling and gasping for air as a
Speaker 1: team of doctors stared down at her from above. Abe,
Speaker 1: not want to believe even such things as near death experiences,
Speaker 1: paused for a moment, a little unsure of what he
Speaker 1: was about to say next, while the other doctors listened
Speaker 1: with abated breath. Then Abe continued, Having dismissed the whole
Speaker 1: thing as some kind of fever dream, He politely said
Speaker 1: goodbye to the girl, then stepped into the hallway and
Speaker 1: stopped suddenly in his tracks. There standing before him was
Speaker 1: a junior male doctor in a blue and white striped
Speaker 1: shirt with a somewhat disheveled looking tie around his neck,
Speaker 1: while only meters away from him was a female nurse
Speaker 1: with a rather elaborate hairstyle, exact in every detail as
Speaker 1: the teenage patient had described it incredibly. After hearing the story,
Speaker 1: the other doctors present, many of whom, like Abe were
Speaker 1: World War Two veterans, began to relate similar stories. Each
Speaker 1: had had a patient who'd clinically died or been on
Speaker 1: the point of death, only to be revived time and
Speaker 1: time again. Some of the revived patients related how they
Speaker 1: believed they were able to see around them shortly after
Speaker 1: they'd lost bodily consciousness, with each of them saying it
Speaker 1: had felt as though they were very much still present
Speaker 1: and aware, as though they had been fully conscious. The
Speaker 1: twelve year old Stephen could only sit silently, soaking it
Speaker 1: all in. How could some one be dead, he thought,
Speaker 1: yet still be conscious. It didn't make any sense you're
Speaker 1: listening to unexplained and Richard McClean smith. The surrounding desert
Speaker 1: was mostly featureless and scorching in the full heat of
Speaker 1: mid afternoon. As an Egyptian archeologist and his assistant watched
Speaker 1: on from the shade of some nearby trees. Two men
Speaker 1: were wandering seemingly aimlessly back and forth across the dusty terrain,
Speaker 1: as a camera crew followed close behind. On the ground,
Speaker 1: and all around them, the weathered walls of an ancient
Speaker 1: settlement could be seen jutting up through the sand, the
Speaker 1: ruins of the ancient Egyptian port city of Maria. The
Speaker 1: city was located around forty kilometers southwest of modern day
Speaker 1: Alexandria on Egypt's north coast, and it's thought to have
Speaker 1: last been populated sometime in the thirteenth to fourteenth centuries.
Speaker 1: The two men were George McMullen, a middle aged Canadian who,
Speaker 1: with his wavy, graying hair, ordinarily spent his week days
Speaker 1: working at a Chrysler dealership in Canada, and the other
Speaker 1: was Stephen Schwartz. Schwartz, who was by then thirty seven,
Speaker 1: had changed little from the twelve year old boy who
Speaker 1: liked nothing more than to accompany his anestatist father to
Speaker 1: work on Saturday mornings. He was still as bright and
Speaker 1: inquisitive as ever, but what he'd been privy to on
Speaker 1: that strange Saturday morning two decades before had never left him.
Speaker 1: It had also made him determined to one day unlock
Speaker 1: the mysteries of human consciousness. In the intervening years, Schwartz
Speaker 1: had graduated high school, served a tour in the US Army,
Speaker 1: and graduated from the University of Virginia. Then in nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy one, he began working for the American government as
Speaker 1: a special assistant for Research and Analysis for the Chief
Speaker 1: of US Naval Operations, as well as being a consultant
Speaker 1: to the oceanographer for the Secretary of Defense. All the while,
Speaker 1: his preoccupation with the nature of human consciousness had been growing.
Speaker 1: Throughout his college years and subsequent government jobs, Schwartz spent
Speaker 1: his spare time devouring parapsychology journals looking for answers, and
Speaker 1: became particularly fascinated with the work of apparent psychic Edgar
Speaker 1: Case back in nineteen thirty five. Case is believed to
Speaker 1: have predicted the coming of World War Two about the
Speaker 1: same time. He is also said to have described what
Speaker 1: were then unknown details about an ancient sect of people
Speaker 1: that were later identified as the authors of the Dead
Speaker 1: Sea Scrolls. Eleven years before the scrolls were discovered. Cases
Speaker 1: work inspired Schwartz to begin his own experiments to test
Speaker 1: what he had come to call distant or remote viewing,
Speaker 1: an ability he believed allowed some people to detect hidden
Speaker 1: or buried objects which they had no prior knowledge of.
Speaker 1: For Schwartz's first experiment, he laid out a grid in
Speaker 1: his backyard with rope, and in each grid square he
Speaker 1: would bury mason jars containing various objects, such as a
Speaker 1: perfume bottle, a vegetable peeler, or a bathroom sponge, to
Speaker 1: name a few. Then he would send out a plan
Speaker 1: of the grid to people in different parts of the
Speaker 1: world and asked that they tell him where on the
Speaker 1: grid they sensed there was an object and what it was.
Speaker 1: The study was initially double blind, neither the remote viewer
Speaker 1: nor the person analyzing the data at any prior information,
Speaker 1: to avoid any possibility of his knowledge of what was
Speaker 1: buried influencing what viewers saw. Schwartz later made the study
Speaker 1: triple blind, getting someone else entirely to choose the object
Speaker 1: and where to bury it on the grid. Either way,
Speaker 1: he found the results were the same over a period
Speaker 1: of several years. Schwartz claimed that about twelve percent of
Speaker 1: the people who tried this were reliably able to locate
Speaker 1: and describe the hidden objects, perhaps Even more incredibly, Schwartz
Speaker 1: also claimed that the evidence from his experiments suggested that
Speaker 1: people could describe something that had been hidden for two
Speaker 1: thousand years just as easily as a teacup hidden that
Speaker 1: afternoon in the next room. Schwartz would go on to
Speaker 1: found the Mobious Society, a Los Angeles based private institution
Speaker 1: committed to research in the field of human consciousness. As
Speaker 1: part of his remote viewing investigations, Schwartz also conducted an
Speaker 1: experiment known as Project Deep Quest, explored briefly in Unexplained
Speaker 1: Season six, episode sixteen, in which remote viewers were tasked
Speaker 1: with trying to make predictions while more than three hundred
Speaker 1: feet under water. This, according to Schwartz, also proved to
Speaker 1: be possible. But Schwartz wasn't satisfied. He wanted even more
Speaker 1: rigorous tests of remote viewing, and eventually settled on the
Speaker 1: field of archaeology as the perfect discipline with which to
Speaker 1: put it all to the test, an area of study
Speaker 1: frequently beset by the problem of not knowing where to
Speaker 1: look for ancient things, but Schwartz new people who seemed
Speaker 1: to be able to do just that, and Canadian car
Speaker 1: parts sales manager George McMullen was just one such person,
Speaker 1: and now here in the Egyptian desert. The pressure was on.
Speaker 1: In what was by far their most ambitious archeological mission
Speaker 1: up to that point. In nineteen seventy nine, Schwartz and
Speaker 1: his Mobia's team set out to find the long lost
Speaker 1: remains of key buildings from the ancient city of Alexandria,
Speaker 1: laid out by its namesake Alexander the Great in three
Speaker 1: hundred and thirty one BC. Alexandria was one of the
Speaker 1: first planned cities in history. A confluence of Greek culture
Speaker 1: and the Ferronic East, it represented the pinnacle of sophisticated
Speaker 1: culture at that time. But how successive versions of the
Speaker 1: city were built up century upon century, the location of
Speaker 1: many of the original buildings had become obscured. Incredibly, through
Speaker 1: the Schwartz led experiments, a team of eleven apparent psychic
Speaker 1: seers had supposedly pinpointed the location of legendary sites, including
Speaker 1: the palaces of both Cleopatra and mark Antony, and the
Speaker 1: Ferrest Lighthouse, otherwise known as the Fabled Lighthouse of Alexandria,
Speaker 1: one of the Seven Ancient Wonders of the World. But
Speaker 1: there was a hitch. Stephen Schwartz and his team needed
Speaker 1: formal permissions to conduct the searches that would confirm their findings,
Speaker 1: which included several sites now under water in the modern
Speaker 1: day harbor of Alexandria. The Egyptian authorities and archeological community
Speaker 1: were understandably dubious and demanded proof that Schwartz's unorthodox methods
Speaker 1: worked before any permissions could be granted, and so they
Speaker 1: set out to convince them. Fine arts photographer Hella Hammet
Speaker 1: had no prior knowledge of Alexandria, the region around it,
Speaker 1: or its history, but, like George McMullan, she was said
Speaker 1: to her repeatedly performed outstandingly well on Schwartz's remote viewing tests. Hammit,
Speaker 1: who believed her apparent skills were the result of simply
Speaker 1: being attuned to that other world that exists, as she
Speaker 1: put it, described her process as looking at a map
Speaker 1: not so much with her eyes, but just to get
Speaker 1: a feeling of it. She would then sense what she
Speaker 1: described as a heaviness in certain areas, which suggested to
Speaker 1: her that she was on to something, seemingly putting her
Speaker 1: photographer's eye to good use. Hammit was also very precise
Speaker 1: when outlining the details of buried structures in target locations.
Speaker 1: Not long after the Mobius team arrived in Alexandria, Hammit,
Speaker 1: as one of its supposedly better psychic performers, was selected
Speaker 1: by Schwartz as the best person to help provide evidence
Speaker 1: to the Egyptian authorities that they should be taken seriously.
Speaker 1: A few days of intensive work later, Hammid was certain
Speaker 1: she'd identified a lost ancient site of profound significance at
Speaker 1: the behest of Hella. Hammid, Schwartz, and the rest of
Speaker 1: the team squashed into a Pergo sedan and headed off
Speaker 1: to trawl the city's backstreets in search of what Hammid
Speaker 1: had spent the last few days repeatedly sketching, described as
Speaker 1: a narrowing street or alleyway with high walls on either side.
Speaker 1: For the most part, the team traveled at speeds of
Speaker 1: five to fifteen miles an hour on streets with no
Speaker 1: lanes and no signals, and interweaving animal carts, while the
Speaker 1: constant blowing of car horns, music blaring from radios, and
Speaker 1: overlapping calls to prayer broadcast from the city's many minarets
Speaker 1: were a never ending distraction. After hours of searching. With
Speaker 1: nothing substantial to show for their efforts, the hot and
Speaker 1: frazzled team were on the point of giving up when
Speaker 1: late in the afternoon Hammid yelled for them to stop.
Speaker 1: Relieved for any excuse to be exiting the stuffy car,
Speaker 1: the team swiftly piled out. Although barely visible from the
Speaker 1: street through a rusting wrawtie fence. Some fifteen feet below
Speaker 1: was a narrow alleyway just as Hammid had sketched, that
Speaker 1: appeared to be an abandoned archeological site. It backed onto
Speaker 1: the El Nabbey Daniel Mosque, just to the south of
Speaker 1: the city's downtown district. Standing opposite, Hamid appeared suddenly to
Speaker 1: be lost in thought, as though she was somehow being
Speaker 1: drawn back into the second century BC. She reached for
Speaker 1: a pen and began what was now her ninth supposedly
Speaker 1: remotely viewed drawing of the site. Her sketch showed the
Speaker 1: semi buried site as if seen from above, which included
Speaker 1: a cupola with three levels, each with arches for bodies
Speaker 1: to be placed in. Hammit said it was a large
Speaker 1: dungeon or tomb, around twenty to thirty feet below street level.
Speaker 1: The feeling in that moment, she said later, was like
Speaker 1: sliding through time and seeing a speeded up view of
Speaker 1: the entire tomb's history. The next day, Schwartz was back
Speaker 1: in the same general area with George McMullen, who was
Speaker 1: apparently told nothing of the previous day's events. Like Hammid,
Speaker 1: McMullen also became consumed in thought the moment he arrived
Speaker 1: at the site, McMullan pointed to an area of broken
Speaker 1: marble and rubble, telling Schwartz that it was Greek workmanship.
Speaker 1: When Schwartz asked him what he thought it had been originally,
Speaker 1: McMullan replied that it was a tomb, but one without
Speaker 1: a body. The next thing he said was electrifying. I've
Speaker 1: never been more sure of anything in my life, said McMullen,
Speaker 1: This is Alexander's tomb. The precise location of Alexander the
Speaker 1: Great's tomb has never been ascertained, and is considered by
Speaker 1: many to be among the most sought after prizes in archeology.
Speaker 1: Had George McMullan just identified it as it transpired, this
Speaker 1: wasn't the first time that the area in question had
Speaker 1: been pronounced as the location of Alexander the Great's tomb.
Speaker 1: Since the mid eighteen hundreds, several scholars had placed it
Speaker 1: in roughly the same area. One even claimed to have
Speaker 1: discovered not only the tomb but also Alexander's supposed mummy
Speaker 1: inside the Al Nabby Daniel Mosque, but permission to excavate
Speaker 1: was never granted, and so it proved the same for
Speaker 1: the Mobius team. Even an exploratory excavation inside the mosque,
Speaker 1: one of the oldest in Alexandria, would cause an unacceptable
Speaker 1: level of disturbance to public access. Not only that there
Speaker 1: was understandably extreme resistance to foreigners touching even a tablespoon
Speaker 1: of earth on the same acred site. Professor Fauzi Fakarani,
Speaker 1: an Egyptian archeologist in the Department of Classical Civilizations at
Speaker 1: the University of Alexandria, who the Mobius team had been
Speaker 1: consulting with, told them investigations were not going to be
Speaker 1: possible at the site. But while Facarani doubted the existence
Speaker 1: of psychic windows into the ancient past, he was enthusiastic
Speaker 1: about the Mobius team's goals and keen to dive with
Speaker 1: them in the city's eastern harbor in growing desperation, Schwartz
Speaker 1: suggested that Fakarani give him another chance to demonstrate his
Speaker 1: team's psychic techniques really did work at an unpopulated site
Speaker 1: where excavations would be possible. Thankfully, Facarani agreed, but only
Speaker 1: subject to certain conditions. The professor would be the one
Speaker 1: to specify the type of target, which had to be
Speaker 1: located near the surface to make excavation easy. He would
Speaker 1: also choose the site, and settled eventually on Maria, the
Speaker 1: abandoned ancient sister city to Alexandria. Maria had once been
Speaker 1: a freshwater port on the shores of a beautiful lake,
Speaker 1: but the river Nile had shifted its course in the
Speaker 1: Middle Ages. The lake dried up and the city died,
Speaker 1: leaving formerly teeming commercial districts and pleasure palaces across an
Speaker 1: area fifteen miles squared abandoned to wind and sand. Not
Speaker 1: only had none of the Mobius team ever been there,
Speaker 1: but they were given only the crudest of maps and
Speaker 1: no other information to go on. Fakarani wanted them to
Speaker 1: find a nice, important building with some significant remains, mosaics, frescoes,
Speaker 1: or statues to tell him the depth to walls and
Speaker 1: the floor, and describe artifacts that would be found at
Speaker 1: the sight and the culture which produced the building. What
Speaker 1: Fakarani may have omitted to mention was that Egyptian archeologists
Speaker 1: had carried out electronic surveys in the years previously, along
Speaker 1: with a few trial excavations, and they'd found nothing of
Speaker 1: major significance. George McMullan seemed oblivious to the hot wind
Speaker 1: that tugged at his sweat stained shirt as he limped
Speaker 1: across Maria's unimposing and mostly buried ruins. Stephen Schwartz had
Speaker 1: noticed something about mc mullan from previous remote viewing sight work.
Speaker 1: He'd seen that when the apparent psychic was on to something,
Speaker 1: that slight limp disappeared. Three hours after they'd begun, As
Speaker 1: the two men climbed yet another low desert hill, Schwartz
Speaker 1: realized with a start that his companion's limp had gone.
Speaker 1: Neither the hundred degree temperature or the persistent black flies
Speaker 1: seemed to be bothering mc mullan any more, as he
Speaker 1: suddenly stopped, turned and said, let's get that professor. With that.
Speaker 1: The apparent psychic sunk to his knees and began to
Speaker 1: sketch a crude map with his finger in the sand,
Speaker 1: which included the outline of a small hump of land
Speaker 1: near by. Walking over that same hump moments later, he
Speaker 1: declared that within it was the buried wall of a
Speaker 1: structure of some import, as well as buried fire pits
Speaker 1: and more cryptically, a flaw that he said was there
Speaker 1: but also wasn't there. Dressed in jeans and a cotton
Speaker 1: shirt with her short, dark hair crammed under a sun hat,
Speaker 1: Ella Hammered was tired and crabby. She was feeling unwell
Speaker 1: after a day of sitting around and waiting in the
Speaker 1: hot and dry conditions. After finally being called into action,
Speaker 1: she was unaware of what McMullan claimed to have found.
Speaker 1: A schwartz took her to the location that McMullan had
Speaker 1: just identified in the apparent grip of intense concentration. Hammid
Speaker 1: honed in immediately on the same exact spot that McMullan
Speaker 1: had found. Hammid then started to breathe heavily and slowly
Speaker 1: began to describe what lay beneath them. The building was
Speaker 1: from the Byzantine era, she said, pinpointing the location of
Speaker 1: its northwest corner wall, as well as some kind of
Speaker 1: freestanding circular pillar or statue which had long since been broken.
Speaker 1: Convinced that only Roman era structures were present at the site,
Speaker 1: Professor Fakarani nonetheless put his excavation team to work the
Speaker 1: very next day, Estimating that the dig would take six weeks.
Speaker 1: He predicted it would end in failure. Six days into
Speaker 1: the dig, however, the excavation team uncovered the top corner
Speaker 1: of a wall at the exact same depth that Hammitt
Speaker 1: had predicted. Two days later, the strange broken column structure,
Speaker 1: which she'd also supposedly seen, was found. Detailed inspection showed
Speaker 1: it to be a chimney like oven built by Bedouins
Speaker 1: after the settlement had been largely abandoned, of a type
Speaker 1: never seen in the area before. Then the fire pits
Speaker 1: mc mullen had predicted were found. Some symbols were also
Speaker 1: uncovered on some of the walls, revealing that the building
Speaker 1: was unequivocally by Zantyne, not Roman after all. It was
Speaker 1: a few days later when the building's chalk sub floor
Speaker 1: was revealed, apparently all that was left after the original
Speaker 1: floor had been removed when the building was abandoned centuries earlier.
Speaker 1: Here the excavation crew found some small, heavy marble objects,
Speaker 1: smooth on one side and rough on the other, which
Speaker 1: appeared to be anchoring elements of a mosaic floor that
Speaker 1: had once been there, evidence, it seemed, for the floor
Speaker 1: that George McMullan described as being there but not there.
Speaker 1: With this demonstrable and resounding success, a delighted Stephen and
Speaker 1: his Mobius team were then given permission to explore the
Speaker 1: seabed under Alexandria's Eastern Harbor, the location where the so
Speaker 1: called remote viewers had almost unanimously indicated significant sites from
Speaker 1: the ancient city would be found. The team first attempted
Speaker 1: to use a kind of sonar, but the murky, sediment
Speaker 1: laden waters made it difficult to get clear readings, so
Speaker 1: divers were brought in to do close searches in the
Speaker 1: churning and turbid harbor waters. Working with direction given every
Speaker 1: day by the remote viewers, they began in an area
Speaker 1: where it was predicted that Timonium would be found the
Speaker 1: Grand Palace of mark Antony. There, through the dark waters,
Speaker 1: the divers found a line of fallen pillars along what
Speaker 1: appeared to have been the facade of an imposing building,
Speaker 1: and in an adjacent area where Cleopatra's palace complex had
Speaker 1: supposedly been located, the team found indications of the uppermost
Speaker 1: remains of a large and impressive structure. Unfortunately, however, most
Speaker 1: of the structure lay buried beneath the seabed, preventing further investigation.
Speaker 1: Then came a more conclusive discovery at a third site
Speaker 1: ear marked by the remote viewers. The team's divers discovered
Speaker 1: a series of massive granite blocks. The blocks had obviously
Speaker 1: been cut with great precision and are now believed to
Speaker 1: be ones from which the towering Lighthouse of Alexandria, the
Speaker 1: tallest building known in antiquity, was constructed Euphoric with success,
Speaker 1: Schwartz and the Mobius team said goodbye to Professor Fakhrani,
Speaker 1: along with George McMullen and HeLa Hammad, who both headed home.
Speaker 1: But before they left Egypt, the team had one more
Speaker 1: job to do. They'd been hired by a film company
Speaker 1: to shoot a documentary unrelated to the other Mobius project work.
Speaker 1: The location for the film was the Coptic Monastery of
Speaker 1: Saint Macarius, one of the oldest Christian communities in Egypt,
Speaker 1: found midway between Alexandria and Cairo. As the team drove
Speaker 1: to the monastery, Schwartz gazed out at the desert and
Speaker 1: at the clouds of roadside dust that kicked up from
Speaker 1: behind them, lulled into a meditative reverie, A memory sprang
Speaker 1: into Schwartz's mind from the days before they came across
Speaker 1: the possible tomb site of Alexander the Great. Shortly after
Speaker 1: the team first arrived in Egypt, Stephen and George McMullan
Speaker 1: were traveling from Cairo to Alexandria. When McMullen began to
Speaker 1: speak at length about Alexander the Great. As he described
Speaker 1: his perception of the man, it seemed to Stephen as
Speaker 1: though his words were coming from a direct memory. McMullan
Speaker 1: declared that Alexander was a funny person who, despite being
Speaker 1: a great statesman and leader, could join in with the
Speaker 1: ordinary soldier and get drunk, act silly. He had no
Speaker 1: fear of dying or anything else. He Schwartz wondered how
Speaker 1: this man could have such insights. Although at odds with
Speaker 1: how most academics viewed Alexander, the description almost exactly mirrored
Speaker 1: the views of the British historian Professor Peter Fraser, whom
Speaker 1: Schwartz happened to be in agreement with. Had McMullen simply
Speaker 1: read about Fraser's theories before Schwartz wandered, or was he
Speaker 1: reading his mind or was he somehow simply reporting what
Speaker 1: he perceived when he focused on Alexander. Continuing on their journey,
Speaker 1: McMullan went on to talk about the postmortem care of
Speaker 1: the body after Alexander had died of a fever in
Speaker 1: Babylon in three hundred and twenty three BC. McMullan said
Speaker 1: that it was Persians who'd taken care of the corpse,
Speaker 1: although when preserving it they hadn't used the more thorough
Speaker 1: techniques practiced by the Egyptians. As the body began to decay,
Speaker 1: according to McMullen, die leaching from the clothing underneath Alexander's
Speaker 1: burial armor had stained the corpse a weird sort of
Speaker 1: reddish color. He also believed Alexander's body had been removed
Speaker 1: from the tomb in which it had been interred in Alexandria.
Speaker 1: When Schwartz asked him what he thought had happened to
Speaker 1: the remains, McMullin without missing a beat, said that they'd
Speaker 1: been taken out into the desert several centuries after Alexander's
Speaker 1: death by people who he described as not being Islamic.
Speaker 1: The only group which could fit George McMullen's description of
Speaker 1: not being Islamic at the time of Alexander the Great
Speaker 1: was one of the Christian sects that had dominated Alexandrian
Speaker 1: life for several centuries before the Islamic takeover. When pressed
Speaker 1: on where Alexander's bones were now, however, McMullan said he
Speaker 1: didn't know. Intrigued as Schwartz was by mcmullan's information, at
Speaker 1: the time, the team didn't even have a fix on
Speaker 1: the possible tomb location, and if the tomb was indeed empty,
Speaker 1: as McMullan had claimed, then there wasn't any possibility of
Speaker 1: ever checking this curious fact out. But the oddity now
Speaker 1: played on Schwartz's mind as the Mobius film crew began
Speaker 1: shooting at the Saint Maccarius monastery. Over the next few days,
Speaker 1: when he could, Schwartz chatted with the monks. They told
Speaker 1: him that for over eighty generations their order had passed
Speaker 1: down the tradition that the bones of Saint John the
Speaker 1: Baptist had been brought there from the Holy Land, but
Speaker 1: the root of these relics had not been a direct one.
Speaker 1: They'd been placed for a while in Alexandria before being
Speaker 1: transported to the monastery, where it was said they were buried,
Speaker 1: although no one knew where exactly. Then in nineteen seventy six,
Speaker 1: a chapel at the monastery had been restored and a
Speaker 1: wall had accidentally been broken through, revealing a hidden crypt
Speaker 1: on the other side. It contained the bones of numerous people.
Speaker 1: Some of the monks had begun researching where in Alexandria
Speaker 1: the bones might have come. From pouring over ancient texts,
Speaker 1: they'd learned that the remains of John the Baptist were
Speaker 1: said to have been buried for many years beneath an
Speaker 1: ancient Christian church, the ruins of which were now buried
Speaker 1: underneath the site of none other than the El Nabby
Speaker 1: Daniel Mosque. The hares began to rise on the back
Speaker 1: of Schwartz's neck. This was the mosque next to the
Speaker 1: site where both George McMullen and Hella Hammet had placed
Speaker 1: Alexander the Great's empty tomb, and Schwartz was remembering once
Speaker 1: again how McMullen had insisted Alexander's remains had been taken
Speaker 1: out into the desert by people who were not Muslims.
Speaker 1: Schwartz was then ushered by one of the monks into
Speaker 1: a cool, yellow stuccoed room, completely empty save for a
Speaker 1: large carved wooden chest in the middle of it. We
Speaker 1: found the bones of twelve bodies in total, said the monk,
Speaker 1: as he lifted the lid of the chest to reveal
Speaker 1: a cloth sack trimmed with gold thread, in which the
Speaker 1: bones were now contained. Schwartz paused for a moment before
Speaker 1: asking his next question. Was there he said, anything special
Speaker 1: or remarkable about the bones, not really, replied the monk,
Speaker 1: except he added that some of them appeared to have
Speaker 1: been stained an unusual shade of red in color. This
Speaker 1: episode was written by Diane Hope. All other elements of Unexplained,
Speaker 1: including the show's music, are produced by me Richard McClane Smith. Unexplained.
Speaker 1: The book and audio book, featuring stories that have never
Speaker 1: before been featured on the show, is now available to
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