(A/N: In case you guys don't know (because you haven't read my Scooby-Doo/Teen Titans crossover or haven't been to my profile), "The Curse of Civil War Gold" is one of my favorite shows and "Scooby-Doo" is one of my all time favorite franchises. So with all that combined, this story was born! It also takes a little (and I mean little) inspiration from the DTV "Scooby-Doo Meets the Boo Brothers" and "Scooby-Doo and the Loch Ness Monster."
Nobody start to freak out, but instead of Mystery Incorporated being high school graduates, I'm going to make them in their twenties. I'm doing so because in the United States you have to be 21 or older to drink and anyone who watches "Oak Island" and "Civil War Gold" knows that Marty Lagina owns a vineyard. I really don't need to say anymore. So no one say that they can't be drinking, as long they're 21 at the very least and don't drink too much, they'll be fine. When I say "don't drink too much" I mean alcoholism, just to be clear and nothing like that will happen in this story.)
0~V-o-V~0
May 10, 1865 Irwinville, Georgia
It was the evening hours and a large group of wagons and soldiers arrived in a random location to set up camp and rest. They had just crossed a river and made sure to over tip the ferry captain. They still had a long way to go before they reached their final destination: Mexico.
A man and his wife jumped down from one of the wagons. That man was Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederate States of America. He, his wife, soldiers, and followers were traveling South with every last piece of the Confederate Treasury, which consisted of mostly gold bars.
Why were they traveling South with fourteen wagons full of gold, silver, and other priceless items? Because this war was not over; not yet. The money was to fund the Knights of the Golden Circle. Together with the members of this secret society, they would take down the Union and make America in the way their Founding Fathers would have wanted it.
"Sir!" a soldier came up to them. "It's far too dark to continue, we will have to set up camp here!"
He nodded, "Alright. Tell your commander that we shall split up the wagons. Six will continue to Mexico." The soldier gave a salute and ran off to find his commanding officer and inform him of what he was told.
Davis' wife, Varina, asks him, "Are you sure splitting up the wagons is a good idea?"
"Absolutely," he said. "If something were to happen, I can be assured that at least some of the money will make it to Mexico."
Half of the soldiers began to set up camp for the night, while the other half were packing up to move out with the seven wagons. Before long, the camp was set up and the wagons were long gone.
A few hours later, while it was still pitch black out, everyone in the camp was awakened by the nearby sounds of galloping horses and gunfire. The soldiers immediately grabbed their rifles and ammunition.
A young Sergeant ran to the Davis' tent to alert them. He opened the tent by moving aside the fabric entrance. "Mr. President!" he shouted in a panic. "The Yankees are here, sir!"
"I know," he said calmly, a little too calmly. The Sergeant saw that he and his wife had already packed up their things, but what confused him was that Mrs. Davis was helping her husband put on a dress. The Sergeant left their tent and rushed back to assist his fellow soldiers against the Yankees.
Davis and his wife left their tent with their belongings in hand, but they soon set them down when they saw that they're chances of escaping unnoticed would be impossible. Varina gave him her black shawl so that he could use it to conceal his face.
They made a rush for the wagons, while stepping over the bodies of the dead and injured soldiers; Confederate and Union alike, some of which were killed in "friendly fire". They didn't get far though, they didn't get two hundred yards away from the tent when someone commanded them to be captured.
One of the major leaders of this ambush, Lieutenant Colonel Benjamin Pritchard of the 4th Michigan Cavalry, came up to them with his gun in hand. He removed the shawl from Davis' face, almost like groom lifting his bride's veil. He gave a victorious grin, "Jefferson Davis, I presume?"
Davis said nothing and gave him nothing but a look of scorn, but in his eyes was a glare of disappointment and look of cold command directed at his men. Pritchard handed him and and his wife over to a couple of his men, but not before taking a button from the dress he wore as a trophy.
The Union soldiers rounded up all the Confederate soldiers, officers, and other followers, everyone who was captured was chained up. They watched as their tents and the eight remaining wagons were raided.
Pritchard could care less about the Confederates and ordered his men to inform him of anything with any value. Most of what was found in the tents were worth no more than the bricks of the average poor man's farm house, but some soldiers decided to take the worthless items as trophies. The wagons, however, were a completely different story.
A soldier came up to the Lieutenant Colonel, "Sir, we found that six of the eight wagons contain primarily gold bars." Pritchard nodded at this information, it was just as Colonel Minty and Hackley had told him. "What are we to do with the bars, sir?"
The Lieutenant Colonel walked over to the wagons, he then took a handle of goin coins from one of the crates. Then he did something very unexpected; he dropped the coins onto a rock and stomped on them with his boot. After several minutes of stomping on the coins and thus obliterating their origins, he picked them up and gave them to the soldier.
"Gather some men, hide these wagons out of sight and give them these coins as pay," he commanded. He was about to walk away and towards the other men, before he added in almost a threatening voice, "And be sure they take nothing out of those wagons, you hear?"
The soldier nodded frantically, "Y-Yes sir!"
After a few hours of hiding wagons, raiding the tents and rounding up people loyal to the Confederacy, the Union troops were ready to take off. They made certain to either take or to destroy everything they found, which included the tents, horses, and mules.
About twenty miles into their journey back to Virginia, where Davis and his followers would be imprisoned, Pritchard ordered his troops to stop and make camp. When they were finished with setting up camp, his men decided to spend the evening celebrating the capture of Jefferson Davis.
While his men were celebrating, Pritchard grabbed a shovel and axe, then mounted his horse. His horse galloped as fast as it could back down to the capture sight. He wanted to go back to the sight because of some unfinished business he needed to attend to.
He returned to the capture sight late into the evening hours. He got off his horse and walked in the direction of where he saw his men take the wagons with his shovel and axe in one hand and the other hand leading his horse.
It did not take him long to find the wagons, fortunately they did not appear to have any damage to them. He tied his horse to a tree and set his shovel right next to his steed.
He removed the tarps from the wagons and opened the crates with his axe. The soldier had been true to his word, six of the eight wagons contained primarily gold bars, while everything else was no real significance.
Aside from gold bars in these wagons there was also silver coins and bars and jewelry, some of which looked like they could have come from the era of the American Revolution and perhaps even older. With everything he found in these wagons and from what he learned from Minty and Hackley, he really should not have been surprised by the amount of money Davis had in his treasury.
He grabbed the shovel and started to dig shallow holes between two and four feet deep. He estimated the total amount of money he was burying was between half a million and two million dollars. He also destroyed the wagons and burned them to destroy all the evidence, the evidence burned while he worked.
Minty never told him what they were going to do with the Confederate Treasury other than it would make them rich. He never did understand why a wealthy man like Hackley would want Confederate gold.
When the plan was first brought to him, he thought Hackley had to have been a Copperhead and perhaps even a rebel. Not exactly something someone would call a good friend. But he ended up agreeing in the end, after all it was the perfect opportunity to steal all they could and blame it on the Rebels.
After a couple of hours of burying the Confederate Treasury and burning evidence, it was time for him to return to his cavalry. He put out the large fire he created using his tin to pour water from a nearby spring on the flames.
Before leaving he did a search of the area for anything he could have missed. Near where the Davis' tent stood before it was torn down, he found a silver chalice lying on the ground. If this was something Davis and wife owned and possibly drank out of it would definitely be something worth keeping.
He put the chalice and axe in the satchel attached to his horse's saddle. He decided to leave the shovel in case someone in his cavalry questioned him about it. He untied his horse from the tree then mounted it and went back to his men.
Irwinville, Georgia 1870
Five years after the war ended, Pritchard, whom had been brevetted out of service after achieving the rank of brigadier general, returned to the location where he buried the gold. He knew his shovel would have been found so he made a cross out of a couple tree branches he found to mark the location. He brought with him a few wagons full of empty crates and more than half of his former soldiers from the 4th Michigan Cavalry. All of the former soldiers were dressed in the same uniform they wore when Jefferson Davis was captured. To some it was an odd thing to do, but to others it was to relive the day they helped to bring an end to the Rebels.
He and his men dug up the rebel treasure using both shovels and their bare hands. Every piece that was found was put into the empty crates and nailed shut. He wasn't very worried about the possibility of leaving any coins or jewels behind since they were in an area controlled by the former Confederacy and the state of Georgia is where multiple battles took place.
He lead his former troops back to his home in Allegan, Michigan. Approximately two weeks and one thousand miles later, they arrived at the Pritchard household.
He ordered half of the men to bring it down into his basement, while the other half stood guard both in front of and behind the house. A couple of his men dug a six foot deep void in the dirt section of his basement.
The money would stay in his basement for only a short while, at least until the construction of his new bank was completed. Afterwards, he would keep Hackley's share of the money in the bank vault until a secret railroad along the coastline of Lake Michigan had been completed.
The Michigan Lake Shore Railroad was the only way to get Hackley's share of the money to Muskegon in secret. He doubted that anyone would ever suspect that they conspired to steal from the Confederacy and had some highly illegal plans for it. The two men were highly respected and no one would ever think they were up to anything like what they had in mind.
After many weeks of digging and laying bricks over the area of the floor where the void was, it was time to pay his accomplices. Just like he had done five years earlier, he obliterated the origins of the coins by crushing them. He gave the crushed coins to his former troops and made them swear to never tell anyone about what was going on in the basement of the respected Civil War veteran.
Frankfort, Michigan 1921
An elderly man lay in bed, he was fading in and out of consciousness; he was dying, he could feel it. He could feel death approaching him.
Next to him, sitting in a chair by his bedside, was the pastor of a local church. The man, whom was a former lighthouse keeper turned banker, was able to stay away long enough to see his friends and family standing in the room.
The pastor takes this opportunity to ask him, "Do you have anything you want to confess?"
The man looked at him, then looked at his loved ones, then looked back at him. He closed his eyes and took in a deep breath, "Yes, I do." He then proceeded to tell everyone something he had been keeping to himself for the past three decades. "Thirty years ago, when I was working as a keeper for a lighthouse, I saw someone push a boxcar off a cargo ship into the lake."
"Lake Michigan?" someone asked, just to be specific.
"Yes," he said.
"Do you know what was inside?" the pastor asked again.
He took in another deep breath, "I heard from someone boarding the ship that it was full of gold. He said that the gold was stolen from Jefferson Davis after he was captured." He closed his eyes and took in his final breath. He could rest peacefully knowing that a secret kept for so long was finally let off his chest.
Although the man's family members would want to respect the fact that he kept this secret for so long and not tell anyone, that doesn't mean that any of the late man's associates would have the same amount of respect. One of the man's former co-workers from the bank he worked at found this story to be very interesting.
March 2019, Lake Michigan - off the coast of Frankfort
Two men were on a boat just a little less than five miles out on the lake. They were two of the only people out on the lake because of all the precipitation and cold weather that often occurred that time of year. Spring was around the corner which meant that more people would be going out onto the lake.
Why were they out on the lake at all? Simple. They wanted to take all the fabled Confederate gold at the bottom of the lake for themselves. They hadn't found any yet, but they blamed that on the constantly shifting lake bed.
This trip would be very difficult since their boat didn't have any type of sonar equipment nor did they have any metal detecting equipment except for one metal detector and it was cold and dark out. But they wanted all that gold and they wanted it right at that second.
One of the men laughed as he tossed gold painted bricks in the water, "That idiot-stick Dykstra will never tell the difference."
"Well, those pro divers couldn't tell the difference," the other said.
"Yeah, if we can fool world famous divers, we can do anything!" his friend laughed.
They finished throwing all the fake gold bars overboard and one started to change into a dry suit. The other man helped him put it on then began to put one on himself.
His friend looked at him questionably, "What the hell are you doing?"
"Like hell you're going down there without me," he said.
"One person needs to stay on the boat," the other man said as if it were obvious.
"No way, I'm going down there to get the gold with you, in case you try to bolt," he said.
He eventually complied with his friend coming along and they dived into the cold water. They made their way down to the bottom of the lake with the metal detector and a large flashlight.
They were immediately starting to regret this decision, the lake bed was murky and visibility was near zero. They weren't getting any hits on the detector and their time to resurface was almost up. Now they understood why Kevin Dykstra and his team chickened out when the weather was against them.
Just their time underwater was about to come to an end, the detector got a hit. "I got a hit!" one of them said.
"Great," the other said, "if only we could see it." He glanced at how much time they had left. "We better resurface, we're almost out of oxygen."
"Yeah, but if we don't get this gold bar, Dykstra will get!" his friend argued.
The other dragged his hand down his face, "Fine."
They tried to move the sand from their hit, but it just made the area murkier. The flashlight was of little to no help by that point. One of them thought he saw a rectangular shaped object and was about to reach for it when they heard a hiss-like growl.
"Did you hear that?!" the man holding the flashlight cried.
"Yeah, I did," the other said, scared.
The growl was heard again, but it sounded like it was right in front of them. The man with the flashlight shined it right in front of them and they saw something they had never seen before. Before them was a massive snake creature! It was dark in color and it's lime green, slit-pupil eyes seemed to glow.
"It's the Lake Serpent!" one of them shouted.
They swam up as fast as they could to the surface, not caring if they could get decompression sickness or any other serious medical condition. They climbed onto their boat and tried to make a quick dash for shore, but they couldn't because they were anchored.
The Lake Serpent arose out of the water and growled at them again. By that time, they were convinced that it would either sink them or eat them alive or both! But it did something completely unexpected; it dived back down into the lake, making the already harsh waves even harsher, then rammed the end portion of its tail into the boat. The two men screamed as they went from being out in the lake to being crashed into the marina.
The dark clouds in the sky rumbled and lightning flashed as rain fell over the entire area. A man stood atop a knoll above where the marina stood. He was bald and had a long white beard. He was dressed in a very expensive tuxedo that appeared to be from the late eighteen nineties to the early nineteen hundreds. The two men recognized him because of how important he was to the area. He was Charles Hackley. The supposed ringleader of the stolen gold conspiracy.
"Stay away from the gold! If you are smart, you will do as you are told! Or suffer from the curse of the lake!" he warned them in a threatening and very ghostly voice.
He disappeared in a flash of lightning. As soon as he was gone, the Lake Serpent emerged from the choppy waters. With hissing growl, it unhinged it's jaw, revealing a long row of razor sharp white teeth, and brought its head down as the men let out blood-curdling screams.
0~V-o-V~0
(A/N: Hope you like this so far. I know this chapter didn't have Mystery Inc. in it, but I didn't expect the backstory of the legendary gold to be this long. I apologize if I got anything historically inaccurate and don't even think about calling this story in general to be historically inaccurate. I'm a history buff and I'm also a big researcher on many legends and conspiracies.
The Lake Serpent those men had an encounter with takes heavy inspiration from many known sea monsters and even the 'Lake Ness' monster, which supposedly lives in Lake Michigan. Not much is known about this monster since there have only been blurry videos, pictures of a dark creature underwater near boats, and eyewitnesses. I'm a believer in the supernatural, but I'm 50/50 on whether or not it actually exists.
Whether or not you believe in any of this, you have to admit that it's all very intriguing. Let me know what you think about how this is going so far. And please, please leave at least one review, they make me feel like I'm not a failure at anything. I'm very eager to get writing the next chapter.)