by Vincent H. Gaddis

BELOW the surface of the earth, stretching for countless miles, lie the archaic tunnels of the Old Ones. Cut in the primal rock by methods unknown, they turn and twist in a complex labyrinth, shrouded in the darkness of the ages, their walls blackened by an incredible antiquity. It is true! Long, long ago, their very existence forgotten in the rise and fall of empires and the surging migrations and passings of peoples during the long centuries, there lived a mighty race of subterranean builders who wrought wonders in stone.

Here and there we can catch a glimpse of the mysterious realm hidden below our feet that they left behind them. There are the artificial caves of Malta, built “at a period when history is all mystery,” which lie below the puzzling so-called “cart-ruts” that crisscross the island in every direction, and terminate on the brink of cliffs or lead directly into the sea. There is the elusive North African-Gibraltar tunnel, and the half-legendary connecting links between the islands of Hawaii that were known to the native kings and kahuna of old. Martinique, too, has its lost prehistoric shafts, and Tecpan in Guatemala, and Agra in India. In the heart of Central Asia, Dr. Ossendowski tells of Agharti, and Prof. Roerich awaits the coming of Maitreya, Lord of the New Era, from concealed Shambhala.

But it is in South America, past hoary Tiahuanacu, from the crumbling monuments of old Cuzco to the weird desert of Atacama, below the soil on which the Incas honored the sun and fell before Pizarro and his greed-crazed conquistadors, that our survey of the tunnels of the long-gone Titans assumes its most interesting and concrete picture. Hundreds of miles in length, these astonishing sub-surface avenues have been used in historical times, and may conceal much of the lost treasure on the Incas. But who can say how much greater Wealth — relics of dim millenniums and beings who have passed away like wisps in a dream — awaits the eyes of tomorrow’s explorers.

Who were these Titans, the Old Ones, of earth’s youth — Lords of the Flame who inspired traditions of great airships — giants who transported colossal stones weighing tons hundreds of miles to erect structures “half as old as time”? With what strange tools did they cut the endless roads deep in the heart of our planet’s rocky foundation? Who can say?

There are the legends of Atlantis, Mu, Lemuria, and the even more mysterious continent of the southern seas — Gondwanaland. The ancient lore of Asia tells us that old Atlantis had a network of cyclopean underground passages running in all directions that were used for black magical purposes, and that colonies were established by the Atlanteans in many parts of the world.

And in the America to our south a great civilization once flourished, a culture of bearded white men, believed to have come from the east. They built great cities along the inland rivers that now lie in silent ruins deep in the green hell of the jungles. But from the north came the Colloas, a pre-Inca race, and in a battle on an island in Lake Titicaca they killed the last survivors of America’s prehistoric white race.

Even earlier there was another culture, baffling, remote, incredibly aged, and linked with strange traditions of antediluvian giants. Arriving, apparently, from the west, these artisans of a dawn era built old Tiahuanacu. Perhaps, too, they built the tunnels. Then, later, came the titanic cataclysms that rocked the earth in agony and left its mark in the memories of all earth’s races. The mountains were raised, and the continents, to the east and to the west, were swallowed beneath the seas.

Building upon the mute remains of massive masonry that had been erected by a previous race in America’s puzzling and confusing past, the Incas established their civilization along the western coast of South America. A culture of peace and socialistic idealism, with the symbol of the sun denoting their conception of spiritual realities, they tended their fields and built their homes and temples in quiet, gentle contentment. There was little crime among the Incas — a man could leave his possessions openly with safety, and gold was not a medium of exchange, but an element for artistic ornamentation.

Then, in the sixteenth century, came Don Francisco Pizarro and his cruel, gold-mad Spanish conquistadors. They seized Atahualpa, last of the Inca emperors of the sun, and promised to release him upon receiving a ransom — gold that would fill a room seventeen by twenty feet, and nine feet in height. It is estimated that this ransom consisted of 600 tons of gold and jewels with a current value of 835 million dollars. While awaiting the ransom, which was to be collected within three days, the conquistadors busied themselves stripping the gold-plating and water pipes from the Cuzco temple walls.

Then the gold flowed in, arriving by caravans from various parts of the empire. Dazzled by the ever-growing display of boundless wealth, Pizarro demanded to know of the source, and it is said “that he had heard that the Incas possessed a secret and inexhaustible mine, or enormous depository of mysterious character, which lay in a vast, subterranean tunnel or road, running many miles underground beneath his imperial dominions. Here was kept the accumulated wealth of the country” (Wilkins). In return for this knowledge, Pizarro would give the emperor his freedom.

But Pizarro had now broken his first promise. The Inca queen decided to consult the oracles of the priests of the sun, and by a mystical means, a method of scrying said to have come from old Egypt, she learned that whether the secret was given to Pizarro or not, the emperor was doomed. Orders were issued. Under the direction of the high priest, the entrance to the great tunnel was sealed and hidden from view.

Beneath the brilliant light of a great comet that gleamed in the southern skies at this time, the empire of the children of the sun came to its tragic end. Atahualpa was strangled and his queen committed suicide. As news of the emperor’s death spread through the empire, caravans, en route to Pizarro’s camp near Cuzco with treasure for their ruler’s ransom, stopped and quickly buried their burdens. All the wealth of the Incas rapidly went underground.

ONLY a few decades later, Cieza de Leon wrote: “If, when the Spaniards entered Cuzco they had not . . . so soon executed their cruelty in putting Atahualpa to death, I do not know how many great ships would have been required to bring such treasures to old Spain, as is now lost in the bowels of the earth and will remain so because those who buried it are now dead.”

And where are these Inca caches? Concealed in fortress vaults, hidden in forests and under hills, and sealed in caves “to which mystic hieroglyphs whose key is possessed by one descendant of the Inca, at a time, in each generation, give the open sesame, and in strange ‘subterraneans,’ thousands of years old, which must have been made by a mysterious and highly civilized vanished race of South America in a day when the ancient Peruvians, themselves, were a mere wandering tribe of barbarians . . . or still living, perhaps, in some long-disrupted Pacific continent, from which they came in ships” (Wilkins).

A few of these caches have been found in the four centuries that have elapsed since those cruel, bloody days, but the primary source of Inca wealth remains locked within the earth. The Quichua Indians of today are the direct descendants of the Incas of old, and their traditions insist that in each generation one, perhaps two, of their number, unknown to the rest, possess the ancient secret. Fifteen years after the conquest of Peru, they told the soldier-priest, Cieza de Leon, that “the treasure is so concealed that even we, ourselves, know not the hiding place.”

Today the Quichuas, down-trodden and melancholy, remember with fanatical devotion the grandeur of their ancestral past, and they dream of a tomorrow when the old glories shall return, and when, with reincarnated leaders, the empire of the sun will again raise its shining banners beneath Andean skies. Against this day, they preserve their secrets, and dream. . . .

With eternal vigilance they watch the treasure hunters. Any large-scale attempt to locate the ancient tunnels would almost certainly start a revolution and, as we shall see, only a great undertaking, with government support, would be successful. It is to be regretted that the archaic tunnels were used as a depository for Inca wealth, for now, due to the brutality of the conquistadors, they are cut off from modern archaeological investigation.

IN 1830 the Peruvian authorities picked up rumors of the existence of the tunnels, and sent out investigators, posing as scientists, among the natives, but this official attempt to obtain additional information or locate the concealed opening failed and was finally abandoned.

About fifteen years later an old native priest was called to hear the final confession of a dying Quichua Indian, one of the descendants of the Incas who possessed the long-kept secret. Under the seal of the confessional, the dying man told his priest of the astonishing tunnels, used by the Incas, but built by a far older race. Later this priest, carelessly, let fall a hint regarding his knowledge, and was forced, by trickery on the part of an Italian traveler, to state what information he possessed.

Then, about the year 1850, Mme. Helena Blavatsky, the Russo-American founder of the Theosophical Society, came to Peru. With her world-wide reputation as a mystic and student of ancient lore, she was able to pick up various bits of information on the old Inca mystery, and in Lima she met the Italian traveler who had forced the priest to reveal what he knew. The Italian said that he thought he had found one of the tunnel openings but, lacking time and funds for an investigation, he had no immediate plans for forcing an entrance.

Later, leaving Lima, Mme. Blavatsky traveled south. She writes: “We reached Arica, near sun-set, and at a certain point on the lovely coast we were struck by the appearance of an enormous rock, nearly perpendicular, which stood in mournful solitude on that shore, and apart from the cordillera of the Andes. As the last rays of the setting sun strike the face of the rock, one can make out, with an ordinary opera glass, curious hieroglyphics inscribed on the volcanic surface.”

This rock, known as the “Tomb of the Inca,” is at Ylo, northwest of Arica, on the shore. It is cut with ancient hieroglyphs which are said to reveal the key to the secret entrance to the tunnels, which, in turn, is located somewhere near the Los Tres Picos (The Three Peaks) further inland. These oddly-shaped, separate peaks form a curious triangle, and lie near the Rio de Loa, a river which marked the former Peru-Bolivian boundary. But the strange peaks guard well their secret, and who can decipher the puzzling inscription, visible only when the sun is at a certain angle, and carved so long ago?

Likewise, according to Mme. Blavatsky, the secret of the tunnels and the entrances into them were given in symbolized form in the old Sun Temple at Cuzco, and some of this knowledge still exists. As Mr. Wilkins remarks, the old priestly corps of the Incas may have possessed “much curious and secret knowledge about the origin, history and purpose of the amazing, labyrinthine tunnels of ancient Peru, and of other arcana of a very ancient race.”

Two charts of the tunnels are known to be in existence. One was obtained by Mme. Blavatsky from an old Peruvian at the time of her visit, and it is now in the archives of the Theosophical Society headquarters at Adyar, India; the second, based upon his independent sources of Peruvian information and checked by his own inquiries and research, is in the possession of Mr. Wilkins.

This latter chart, a copy of which lies before me, reveals that two Subterranean avenues start from Lima. The first leads to Cuzco, to the southeast, a distance of 380 miles. The second, running southward along the coast to the Atacama Desert, covers the astonishing distance of at least 900 miles — greater than the distance from New York City to Chicago.

SOMEWHERE near Cuzco lies one of the openings, but it is “masked beyond discovery.” The southern terminus of the second is lost in the salty, alkaline waste of the Atacama, in northern Chile, itself an area of mystery, while along its route another concealed entrance, previously referred to, lies somewhere in or near The Three Peaks. This latter opening is to the southwest of Lake Titicaca and Tiahuanacu.

In addition there apparently exists an extension of the tunnels east of Cuzco, through which Tupac Amaru, the Inca leader, with forty thousand soldiers and refugees, in 1533, escaped into the forests from Pizarro and his conquistadors, this route leading into the unexplored jungle territory of northern Bolivia. In 1850, about the time Mme. Blavatsky was gathering her information, the government of Bolivia, like Peru some twenty years earlier, heard rumors about the tunnels and quietly sent out investigators, but all in vain!

Taylor Hansen has recently told us of the amazing Apache tradition that links them with Tiahuanacu, and the great tunnels in that area. He tells us that the Indians of Peru have legends that “caves” in the region held most of the real city (“very little of it was built above ground”), and that the Apache story states that after their ancestors were driven out by enemies that they left by way of the caverns, and wandered “through them in darkness for years.” It is an amazing possibility that the very tunnels used by the ancient ancestors of the Apaches were again used for the very same purpose by Tupac Amaru and his Incas in the sixteenth century — only four hundred years ago!

We return, also, to the previously published report, from Peru, that after every earthquake there puzzling sounds are heard — “sounds that are startlingly like the sound of huge boulders falling far under the surface of the earth . . . distinctly classified as falling objects, as stones falling from the roof of a cave to the floor. . . . It is said that the falling rocks are heard as much as twenty minutes after the quake itself, and that a hollow booming noise is a very dominant characteristic.”

Later races, using these passages as royal tombs to be protected from robbers or as depositories for treasure, have contributed to their concealment, and surrounded them with an aura of occult mystery that the modern archaeologist cannot penetrate. Moreover, the damages inflicted by earthquakes in these later centuries must be considered. That there exist other reasons, more subtle and amazing, for secrecy is a very real possibility.

The remarkable traditions of ancient tunnels that we inherit from the older worlds of Europe, Asia and Africa cannot be ignored, and more than mere tradition supports their existence. Herodotus, for example, tells us of a very mysterious labyrinth, known and used by the ancient kings but built far before even their prehistoric time, that he observed on or near Lake Moeris, of the Western Nile. It has since vanished from the ken of man.

Then there is the subterranean mystery of the island of Malta—

Paul Wilstach, in his book Islands of the Mediterranean, writes of the astonishing remains that date back to a period where history is all mystery. Crisscrossing across the surface of the island are the parallel “cart-ruts,” from four to six inches wide, and cut as deep as eight inches into the rock. Some end on the brinks of cliffs; others lead to the sea, disappearing under the water, and examples have been observed where, after being interrupted by a geological fault, they continue on another level. Obviously they were made by huge wheels in an era when the island was larger or a part of the mainland, and their extreme age is indicated by the fact that several appear below a tomb of the Phoenician period.

Below these ruts that “scarred the island in days at least very near the Deluge,” and, mysteriously, knew no signs of wear between them, is the subterranean structure known as the Hypogaeum of Hal Saflieni, near Valetta, where “there is unusualness and mystery enough to arouse even a Philistine’s awe.” Cut deep into the island’s foundation rock, it consists of a series of chambers on three levels. At one point there is a funnel-shaped pit that drops to unknown depths. No suggestion as to their original purpose can be found.

Wilstach writes: “One does not wander below the surface of the earth, through architected excavations, with tapers which obscure as much as they reveal . . . without a memorable effect. One does not return to the reality of sunlight without an accentuated sense of a remoteness extending into the twilight of the race.”

To the west of Malta, at the gates to the Mediterranean, lies the Rock of Gibraltar, scene of a half-legendary tunnel by which the Barbary apes travel back and forth from Africa to Spain. There is no doubt that the apes, in some mysterious manner, make the trip, for they have been tagged and kept track of, but no tunnel openings have yet been found. On the other hand, it must be remembered that the famous rock contains over thirty miles of galleries. The mystery has often been discussed in histories and accounts of Gibraltar, and naturalists, like Dr. Raymond L. Ditmars, have puzzled over the matter. North Africa, itself, home of the blood-drinking Troglodytes who lived underground (see The Martyrdom of Man, by Winwood Reade), is the scene of many cave legends.

A book could be filled with accounts of the strange appearance of animals far from their usual habitats that clearly indicate unknown transportational means that might include tunnels. This is particularly true of sea animals and their appearance in inland lakes. An outstanding example of such occurrences is the unexplained appearance of thousands of branded reindeer on the far-northern island of Spitzbergen for over a century, a problem that has caused much speculation in Norway and England.

ALONG the western edge of California’s famed Death Valley lie the bleak and lovely Panamint mountains, scene of a strange tale of a lost, underground city containing great wealth. Even today roamers are still searching for the elusive shaft somewhere near Wingate Pass that will lead them to a subterranean realm filled with mummies and gold. The interested reader will find most of the story in Bourke Lee’s Death Valley Men.

In the old days the Painte Indians, living in that locality, had a legend of a chief who entered a cave and found himself in the world of the dead, a story that was recorded by the famous American ethnologist, J. W. Powell. But later another Indian, the grandfather of Tom Wilson, now a well-known Panamint guide, disappeared for three years and returned to tell of entering a cave, wandering for many miles and finally finding himself in a strange underground country where the inhabitants, very much alive, spoke a strange language, ate queer food, and wore clothes made of leather.

Then, about twenty years ago, a prospector named White, appeared with another tale. He told desert rats that while working on the bottom of an old abandoned mine shaft, the ground suddenly gave way beneath his feet, and he fell into a tunnel. Curious, he followed the tunnel for some distance, and suddenly entered a vast cavern city. It was a realm of the dead. Hundreds of mummified bodies, indicating that death had come suddenly and mysteriously to its dwellers, sat in chairs beside huge stone tables or lay silent upon the rocky floors. The bodies were clothed in leather aprons, large gold statues stood here and there and the cavern was oddly illuminated.

Unable, apparently, to find his way back to the shaft and the city, the prospector’s tale spread rapidly and a number of large searching parties were formed. The mountains were carefully combed. One shaft located in a rather unusual spot was found, but its bottom was solid. And despite the fact that many outstanding Death Valley characters were drawn into the hunt, it ended in failure.

It is said that when John Thorndike, a well-known prospector, returned from the search disappointed, the even more famous Death Valley Scotty was waiting for him. “I could take you right to the place,” Scotty told his friend. Of course, Scotty may have been kidding, but from his own secret mine, which has never been described, he has produced a fortune of close to three million dollars.

Turning now from the hot, sandy wastes of the desert to far, green Hawaii, again we find the stories of tunnels. Old native legends tell of lost, prehistoric tunnels, known to the kings and kahunas long ago, which connected the islands by undersea passages. These shafts play quite a part in native folklore and may date back to Lemuria or Mu.

Material relating to these tunnels is embodied in a novel entitled Healing Under Tropical Skies, written by Evelyn Whitell in 1938. She suggests that these tunnels are still in existence, and that even today, the secret of a favored few, the old lore has not perished.

IT IS in Central Asia, however, that we reach the climax of tunnel tradition. Although, in a previous article, we referred to the mysterious story of Agharti, the full extent of the report has not been told. In more recent years Nicholas Roerich, famous artist and orientalist, has added the weight of his authority to this story of a subterranean kingdom, reached by shafts hundreds of miles in length, that he call Shambhala. And from this realm he expects Maitreya, the Lord of a New Era in earth’s long history, to emerge and bring order out of the chaos of our times.

Deep and puzzling indeed are these recurrent and never-dying rumors that drift from the Himalayas, and from which James Hilton created his Shangri-La in his novel Lost Horizon. Where so much smoke emerges, a strange fire must burn, and Theodore Illion’s observation of the astonishing shaft in Tibet only increases our wonder.

Harold T. Wilkins tells us of an ancient Hindu tradition that refers to a large island of great beauty which, long ago, existed in the middle of a large inland sea in Central Asia. Perhaps it is the former Gobi Sea (now a desert) that is meant, for it was to a city along its shore, according to another ancient legend, that visitors from the planet Venus arrived in great space ships and taught early man important things. At any rate, the location of this sea was given as “north of the Himalayas,” and on this island dwelt great men of a golden age, a race of nephilim.

Between this island-city and the mainland radiated huge tunnels in all directions, many hundreds of miles in length. It is said that hidden entrances to these tunnels existed, and may still exist, in the older, now ruined cities in India, and also at Ellore, Elephanta, and the Ajunta caverns located in the Chandore range.

It is a matter of record that beneath the fortress and adjoining structures built by the great Moghuls at Agra, India, lay vast subterranean vaults and passages, of great but unknown extent. For reasons that are not clear, these parts of the buildings were closed, and they have been sealed now for long centuries.

Various names have been applied to underground realms in Asia, and there may well be more than one of them. Agharti, the term used by tribes in Inner Mongolia as reported by Dr. Ferdinand Ossendowski (see his book Beasts, Men and Gods), is said to be a world of antediluvian descent, incredibly aged, and located in a recess in the vicinity of Afghanistan. But it is linked by amazing tunnels to other such regions in many parts of the world.

As Mr. Wilkins comments: “Tibetan lamas even assert that in America there live in vast caves of an underworld, reached by secret tunnels, peoples of an ancient world who thus escaped a tremendous cataclysm of thousands of years ago.” The lamas say too that in both Asia and America these realms are under the control of benevolent rulers or king-archons, and that they are illuminated by a strange green luminescence which is conductive to the growth of plant life and greatly lengthens human life.

Dr. Ossendowski, who obtained his information during his flight from Russia to China in 1920-21, writes that the dwellers along the Amyl River say that a certain Mongolian tribe, escaping from the terror of Jenghiz Khan and his hordes, disappeared into Agharti, and that one of the entrances is supposed to be near the Lake of Nogan Kul. He adds that Agharti is “not only a mystery, but a realistic and powerful force capable of influencing the course of the political life of the continent of Asia.”

AGHARTI began some sixty thousand years ago when a Holyman, together with a whole tribe of people, vanished underground. Science has been greatly developed, and there is no crime. Its inhabitants, now numbering millions, travel in cars that rush through the passages at tremendous speeds.

Prince Chultun Beyli, of Mongolia, told Dr. Ossendowski that this underground realm “extends throughout all the subterranean passages of the whole world. I heard a learned lama of China relating to Bogdo Khan that all the subterranean caves of America are inhabited by the ancient people who have disappeared underground. Traces of them are still found on the surface of the land. These subterranean peoples and spaces are governed by rulers owing allegiance to the King of the World.”

“You know,” the Prince continued, “that in the two greatest oceans of the east and the west there were formerly two continents. They disappeared under the water, but their people went into the subterranean kingdom. In underground caves there exists a peculiar light which affords growth to the grains and vegetables, and long life without disease to the people. There are many different peoples and many different tribes.”

It is apparent from these accounts that Agharti, far from being merely an isolated underground city of Asia, is a vast world-wide domain. It has a capital city surrounded by towns of high priests and scientists. And the agents of the ruler, who control all the forces and powers of nature and science, are called the Goro.

But there is one thing even stranger. It was told to Dr. Ossendowski by the Lama Turgut while they were traveling together from Urga to Peking. He said: “Sometimes the most learned among them (the Goro) send envoys to that place where the human eyes have never penetrated . . . (they) place their hands on their eyes and at the base of the brain of younger ones and force them into a deep sleep, wash their bodies with an infusion of grass and make them immune to pain and harder than stones, wrap them in magic cloths, hind them, and then pray . . . The petrified youths lie with eyes and ears open and alert, seeing, hearing and remembering everything . . . very slowly the bodies lift themselves from the earth and disappear.

“The Goro sits and stares with fixed eyes to the place whither he has sent them. Invisible threads join them to his will. Some of them course among the stars, observe their events, their unknown peoples, their life and their laws . . . In Erdeni Dzu formerly lived Pandito Hutuktu, who had come from Agharti. As he was dying, he told me about the time when he lived according to the will of the Goro on a red star in the east, floated in the ice-covered ocean, and flew among the stormy fires in the depths of the earth.”

Strange indeed are the ways at Agharti. And these are the accounts heard by Dr. Ossendowski in Lamaite monasteries, in the palaces of Mongolian princes, and on the vast Siberian plains. Told with a solemn conviction, often with fear, they “forbade challenge and doubt.” How much is fact, and how much is fantasy? What strange truth may lie behind this widespread belief that grips tightly the very heart of Asia?

We grope toward an understanding of the great mysteries by seeking clues, however slender, however vague, and by linking together reports and events, and seeking a correlation. We have told of the amazing tunnels of ancient Peru, used by the Incas but built by a far earlier race, and now the story of Agharti has been told. And the miles are long between the Andes and the highland of Tibet. . . .

Nevertheless, a few years ago, a strange rumor began to circulate through the occult world. Briefly, it was that the 13th Dalai Lama was not lying in a crypt in Tibet after his supposed death in 1933, but that he had retreated to a sanctuary in the Andes. In Lhasa he had left a pretender to succeed him, the six-year-old Tibetan peasant lad crowned in 1940.

Supporting this report was an American yogi who had spent five years with the Lamas of Tibet, and who asserted that the Dalai Lama, foreseeing coming trouble in Asia, had preferred to disappear rather than become involved in the turmoil. Also, there was the late Brown Landone, who, in his book The Prophecies of Melchi-Zedek, expressed the belief that Lamaism had its origin in the Andes, and that Teleois Circle prophecies in Egypt foretold the return of the Dalai Lama from Tibet to the order’s original home in a far land.

Then, in February, 1944, J.M. Sheppard, the American Weekly correspondent in Ecuador, cabled a story that added weight to the rumor. He told of meeting an American hermit who lives in the Ecuadorean highlands, and who, while climbing a mountain near the Colombian border to investigate strange lights he had been observing at night, was startled by the fall of a heavy boulder. Then a man appeared, garbed as a Quichua Indian, but with Mongolian facial features, and a prayer wheel in his hand. The hermit was politely, but firmly, told, in English, that he must go no further, and he was requested to respect the privacy of a holy man.

Sheppard decided to confirm the story, and following a map given him by the hermit, he located the mountain, and started climbing. Near the top he noticed a jagged hole, almost circular, that looked like the eye of a needle piercing the mountain’s peak. Then, again, came the crash of a boulder, and the arrival of the mysterious man. This time the stranger spoke in Spanish, but he refused to answer any questions, and again insisted on privacy.

On this slender clue hinges the possibility that there may be a connection between Tibet and the Andes, and, perhaps, between Agharti and the archaic tunnels of South America. That great builders of tunnels once existed on this planet, we may be certain, but is it possible that these vast avenues are in use today — that there is a flow of unsuspected life far below our feet? Who can say?