At one time or another, many of us have dreamed of finding buried treasure, like something out of an adventure film. While most are never lucky enough, some find treasure hiding right in their own backyard! Matthew Emanuel, a Staten Island resident, is one of the lucky few. However, his treasure wasn’t buried. Instead, a rusted, locked safe hid in plain sight in Emanuel’s backyard!
Emanuel assumed that the rusted box was merely a random electrical cabinet. For years, he left it alone, never touching it. But, when the family started doing some renovations, Emanuel needed to take a closer look at what he thought was just a rusted box. When he opened it, Emanuel’s heart stopped. What he discovered triggered a chain of events that would have far-reaching results…
1. A Life in Staten Island
For a little over four years, Matthew Emanuel lived with his beautiful family, wife Maria and son Alex, in the exclusive greenbelt neighborhood of Todt Hill, Staten Island. At the time, Emanuel worked as a finial adviser, and the family lived in a beautiful home. They all enjoyed an incredible, peaceful life in suburbia.
Over the years, the family decorated and explored almost every inch of their large home. However, throughout that time, one small corner of their backyard remained untouched. Emanuel never realized that a part of the family’s garden hid a massive secret. Soon, this secret would change his family’s life forever…
2. One Little Corner
While the family enjoyed their house for nearly half a decade, they never imagined something hid in their garden that could make a remarkable difference in their lives. Not only that, but the secret that hid in their backyard contained a treasure like something right out of a pirate movie!
Surprisingly, the treasure hadn’t even been buried. It lie, tucked away in the shadows in the corner of the Emanuel family backyard, waiting for someone to stumble across it. However, the hidden object contained a lot more than treasure. It also held the answer to a years-old mystery in their neighborhood…
3. A Mysterious Rusted Box
In the Emanuel family’s backyard, nestled in the ground by the side of their fence, a great mystery lie waiting for someone to find it. It was a random box, one that no one in the family had seen before. Also, it had clearly not been moved or touched in a long time, as it was beaten up and covered in dust and dirt.
Furthermore, tons of poison ivy had grown all over the box. So, no one in the family even went near the box, wanting to avoid the ivy’s stinging burn. At one point gardeners had even dropped buckets of mulch on the box, without taking a second glance! However, a random event would bring the mysterious object to the Emanuels’ attention.
4. Winter Storms
In the winter of 2018, New York state experience some particularly harsh storms. During one storm, the heavy snow caused trees lining the Emanuel family’s yard to topple over. The trees not only knocked over some fencing but also brought the rusted box out into the open.
Matthew Emanuel first noticed the box the morning after the storm, as some deer munched on the vegetation covering it. After the deers left, he got a better view of the large, rusty object partially submerged in the ground. However, Emanuel didn’t feel the need to investigate it further. “I just thought it was some kind of electrical box,” he later recalled. So, he went on, continuing to ignore it.
5. Under Their Nose
Time went on, and the Emanuel family continued to ignore the rusted box. After all, they had much bigger things to worry about: most noticeably, winter storms had caused some severe damage to their backyard! Now, as spring came along and the storm had died down, they would no longer leave their garden in that state.
It seems crazy to think that the Emanuels had a valuable mystery hiding right under their nose. If the Emanuels had any idea what the mysterious rusted object contained, they likely would never have let it sit there for so long. But sometimes, the most incredible things hide in plain sight! Soon, Matthew Emanuel would discover why someone hid the box so well…
6. A Glance Away
For years, the box hid right under the Emanuels’ noses, completely visible, albeit tucked away, from their family room window. Later, they realized they could also see it from the front deck, as it hid in a corner! In fact, you can even spot the box in some of their family photos from the years before they found it.
Now, the Emanuels had finally discovered the hidden box. Still, even though the beginnings of the garden renovations, they ignored the strange box. “It was just a rusty box,” Matthew Emanuel said. “Behind some trees.” However, while Emanuel didn’t think much about it, someone else would…
7. Garden Restorations
As a result of the extensive damages that winter caused, Matthew Emanuel had to completely redesign his family’s back garden. Still thinking the box was electrical, Emanuel realized he would need to work around the box during his renovation. As the work grew and the difficulty increased, he made the decision to call in some outside help.
So, Matthew Emanuel started looking for an expert landscaper. But first, he needed to discuss with his wife what they wanted. After some time, they decided to go with bamboo as it’s stronger during storms. However, Emanuel and his wife had picked a plant that would force them to deal with the rusted box in the corner of their garden.
8. Time to Unfold
After some time searching for a landscape expert, Emanuel finally found one that suited his needs. Bamboo is not the easiest plant to grow, and can often affect neighbors, so they needed someone who knew what they were doing. Soon, Emanuel called the bamboo expert and made an appointment to discuss the details of how he wanted their garden to look after completion.
Emanuel decided to hire the expert to do the job, and soon the restorations would begin to take place. However, what Emanuel didn’t know was he was about to hire quite the character. Thankfully, this landscape expert would be a little more interested in the family’s hidden rusted box than Emanuel was…
9. Bamboo Bob
Emanuel found a horticulturist who specializes in exotic plants to help him plant bamboo on the side for more privacy. The landscaper, Robert Foley, goes by the nickname “Bamboo Bob.” In fact, he insists that even interviewers call him Bamboo Bob, instead of Mr. Foley or Robert. Despite his oddities, Emanuel hired Bamboo Bob, who then made the trip to Staten Island in late April 2018.
As an experienced landscaper, Bamboo Bob has come across plenty of bizarre landscape features. However, on April 28th, when he arrived at the Emanuels’ property, Bamboo Bob admitted he had never seen anything like the Emanuels’ odd, rusted box. What exactly was he looking at?
10. The Hard Work Begins
As Bamboo paced around the Emanuels’ back garden, Bamboo Bob noticed the mystery rusted box, about 2 feet wide and 1.5 feet deep, buried in a few inches of dirt. Immediately, he needed to know more. “You never know what’s under the ground,” Foley said. “Every job, I’ve got to know what’s going on.”
So, Bamboo Bob asked Emanuel what he knew about the box. “He said, ‘I don’t know,’ ” Foley remembers. “I said, ‘How long have you lived here?’” The box looked like it had been there for a lot longer than four years. Bamboo Bob couldn’t resist the temptation of figuring out what the box held. Furthermore, he had some suspicions that the Emanuels had no idea what they had…
11. Nothing Adds Up
Bamboo Bob has been turning over soil for decades as a landscaper hired for gardens, zoos, and backyards all over New York and New Jersey. Despite all the bizarre sights that he had witnessed throughout his years of work, he had never seen something even close to what was laying in the Emanuels’ backyard. However, he knew one thing for sure: it was no electrical box!
Bamboo Bob also could tell he had one of the most interesting finds of his career. As he waited for his crew to arrive with the proper tools, Bob continued to look at the box. The first thing he noticed was that no cables came out of the box. Furthermore, not only did it stick halfway out of the dirt, but it also seemed poorly buried. Whoever had tried to bury this box had not been a professional. What could it be?
12. Unearthing the Treasure
Bamboo Bob had been in enough backyards to witness many bizarre situations. That’s why he couldn’t resist digging up the box and finding out what was its true purpose. So, as soon as his crew arrived, Bob got to work uncovering the box. They needed to be careful, on the off-chance that it did connect to the electrical grid.
After an hour or so, Bob and the workers uncovered the rusted box. Once free, the workers turned it over, revealing a dial. The rusted box turned out to be a locked safe, made out of thick metal, rusted from the years outside. Now, after so many years hibernating just 20 feet from the Emanuels’ door, someone had discovered it.
13. Not A Regular Box
Bamboo Bob and his workers showed the rusted safe to Emanuel. The homeowner could not believe the find; it seemed like something out of an adventure film! “I had seen it the whole time,” Emanuel said. “I have been throwing mulch on it!” Since moving into the house, Emanuel had always assumed the “rusted box” was merely an electric cabinet attached to his fence. He never once thought it could be anything else, let alone something valuable!
However, he couldn’t have been more wrong! The safe that lay in his yard would become the greatest find he, or Bamboo Bob and his workers, ever discovered. However, now they had a brand new mystery to solve: what hid inside the locked safe? And, perhaps more importantly, who did it belong to?
14. Playing the Guessing Game
The safe was roughly two feet wide and one-and-a-half feet high. Also, it was heavy, weighing somewhere between 80 and 100 pounds, by the workers’ guesses. Regardless of its weight and height, Emanuel had to find out the contents of the rusted box he ignored all those years.
Emanuel rocked it back and forth, wondering if maybe he could hear the jingling of coins inside, but no luck. Still, that didn’t necessarily mean that the safe was empty and Emanuel felt no desire to stop there. All he needed was a little more time to figure out a way he could break it open.
15. Breaking the Box Open
Emanuel instructed the workers to move the safe to the deck of the house, so they could further investigate it. The rusted box remained there for days as the landscapers worked on the back garden. Meanwhile, Emanuel focused himself on an entirely different assignment.
At first, Emanuel tried to learn how to open safes and looked into getting a locksmith. However, eventually, he and Bamboo Bob grew tired of waiting and decided to open it. Once they finally pried it open, using some construction equipment no less, the contents stunned Emanuel to his core. He could not believe that such a treasure had hid in his backyard for years…
16. A Wonderful Treasure
Once they were able to break it open, Emanuel and the landscapers could scarcely believe their eyes. “The first thing we saw was stacks of hundreds, about 3 inches thick, wet and stuck together,” Bamboo Bob said.
The safe contained small zipped plastic bags of gold, diamond rings, earrings, and other jewelry. “It is like a childhood dream that you find treasure,” said Emanuel. Emanuel could not believe his luck! He and the landscapers had just stumbled across a real-life treasure, right in the middle of the fallen trees of his Staten Island home. Nevertheless, Emanuel immediately noticed something wrong with his treasure haul…
17. Weather Damages
Unfortunately, by the time Matthew Emanuel discovered the safe in his back yard, it was too late. As it turns out, the safe was not waterproof. After years of sitting in the backyard of his Staten Island home, many of the bills continued in the safe had almost disintegrated.
Not only that, but some of the large wads of bills had stuck together after many seasons of soaking and drying. If Emanuel even tried to lift one bill off the stack, they might all rip. However, Emanuel admits that, at the moment, he didn’t care much. After all, the safe contained much more than just the bills! Plus, Emanuel didn’t want to touch any of it until he could figure out what to do with it.
18. Keeping the Treasure Safe
Over the next few days, Emanuel peeled apart some of the wet dollar bills and set them aside to dry. The project took longer than he expected, but he went above and beyond, doing whatever he could to keep the treasure safe. As he began working, Emanuel started to believe he could save some of the bills.
Still, Emanuel knew that it would take hard work to see how many dollar bills there were. He continued working tirelessly only to find out it wouldn’t be as easy as he thought it would be. For every step forward he took, it felt like he took two steps back. It started to seem too hard to salvage most of the bills, let alone all of them.
19. Not As Easy As He Thought
As he continued to work, Matthew Emanuel realized that he could only manage to salvage a small part of the cash. Unfortunately, the weather had simply done too much damage to the majority of the tender. Still, Emanuel managed to save a small portion of the bills, which put him considerably in the black.
Furthermore, the bills only made up a small portion of the safe’s contents, and Emanuel didn’t know how much some of the jewelry would go for. However, he was about to find out more information about the mystery box’s origins that would, once again, change the course of events.
20. A Burning Question
Matthew Emanuel knew he needed to determine the worth of the rest of his newly-discovered treasure. However, another question burned in the back of his mind, one he didn’t think he wanted to know the answer to: how much money had he lost? Nevertheless, Emanuel set out to answer his question.
Unfortunately, by Emanuel’s calculations, he lost roughly $5,000 worth of $100 bills due to exposure and damage. Still, he knew he had managed to save at least a dozen or so bills over his long process. So, having figured out how much he lost, Emanuel started to count how many bills he had saved. As it turns out, Emanuel had lost count and preserved quite a few more Benjamins than he thought…
21. Not A Bad Haul
After figuring out how much he lost, Emanuel started counting his slightly faded, newly dried bills. After calculating his gains the first time, he needed to count again. Emanuel could not believe it: he had saved over $16,000! Finally, Emanuel knew how much he had earned from the safe, in cash. And it was a lot more than he had ever dreamed of earning from an old rusty box!
Furthermore, this only accounted for the cash in the safe. He still needed to count the jewelry and the gold. However, soon, Emanuel began to think this might be too good to be true. Perhaps this safe still belonged to someone…
22. Matthew’s Suspicions
The more Matthew Emanuel thought about the safe, the less it made sense. Who would hide a safe in the backyard and then just forget about it? While finding treasure made his life seem like an adventure flick, Emanuel couldn’t help but wonder if something needed the safe back.
Many people would have merely pocketed the riches from the safe and lived a happily ever after. However, Emanuel didn’t want to do the wrong thing or upset the wrong people. So, he decided that, while he counted up the rest of the safe’s contents, he would look for clues to reveal the owner of the safe. And Emanuel found precisely what he was looking for…
23. All That Gold
After he finished counting all the cash, Emanuel proceeded to his next task. He wanted to do an inventory of all the riches and jewelry that were also in the safe box alongside all those dollar bills. Meanwhile, Emanuel kept an eye out for even the tiniest hint at safe owner’s identity. The number of goods and gold he found inside the box surprised him, to say the very least!
The gold kept stacking up, to the point where Emanuel needed to use other tools just to keep track of everything. “It was mind-boggling,” he said. “There was so much gold. I was using my kitchen scale. It probably weighed a pound or more.” While he measured and cataloged the goods, Emanuel came across a piece of paper in a plastic bag that changed everything.
24. Finding the Next Clue
Emanuel put all the jewelry aside and focused his attention on the piece of paper. He opened the plastic bag and unfurled the piece of paper. To his surprise, there was an address on it! He immediately knew he had to look it up online and figure out where it led.
That’s not to say that Emanuel didn’t have second thoughts, as we all likely would. He understood that if the address led him to the original owner, he would probably need to return his newly-discovered treasure. However, Emanuel could never live with himself, knowing that the safe’s owner still lived somewhere out there. So, he went to his computer to try and hunt down the owner of the safe.
25. Stunning Results
For a moment, Emanuel wondered if the address would lead him to a criminal, instead of someone who had simply lost their safe. However, what criminal would leave their home address with their stash? The most likely outcome would be that he would find the people who had lost a safe during a move or had lived in his house previously.
In the end, Emanuel followed his instincts and typed the address into Google Maps. When the results came back, Emanuel felt the same way he had when he opened the safe: absolutely stunned. He even double checked the information, just to be sure. As it turns out, Emanuel was just steps away, literally, from finally solving the mystery of his backyard safe.
26. Right Under His Nose
As it turned out, to Emanuel’s surprise, the address he found on the piece of paper stashed deep inside the safe box wasn’t too far away. Surprisingly, he didn’t even need a car to get there, he could walk! Although this likely meant no treasure for Emanuel, he felt great that he could return the safe to its rightful owners.
After a little more research, Emanuel discovered that address sat right in his neighborhood. In fact, he regularly strolled by the house while walking his dog! Once he realized that safe’s owners sat less than a ten-minute walk from his own home, Emanuel knew what needed to do. He found himself on a new mission.
27. A New Mission
With this new information, Matthew Emanuel figured he couldn’t keep the news of the treasure all to himself. It just wouldn’t be right to know someone might have lost this safe and wondered where it went. After all, it might represent someone’s savings or inheritance. Just a few days after discovering real-life buried treasure in his backyard, he decided to pay a visit to the address that he’d found inside the mysterious rusted box.
Though he wasn’t positive if they were, in fact, the people who the safe box belonged to, something inside told him that he needed to check. Emanuel was determined to find out where that box came from.
28. Knocking On the Door
Emanuel had no way of knowing who would answer the door. Although he had walked by the house before, he had never seen anyone out front. Furthermore, Emanuel had no idea how to start the conversation or what to ask. However, he decided to move forward with his plan and approached the address he found inside the rusted box.
Worst-case scenario, if he could not find the owners, he would have to involve the police. Despite all the risks that came along with this visit, he decided to knock on the door. Hopefully, someone would answer that could help solve the mystery of the rusty safe.
29. A Bizarre Introduction
On April 30, 2018, Emanuel knocked on the door of the address he found. Emanuel had no way idea what to expect, knocking on a stranger’s door and asking about a crime that might not have occurred. For him, it seemed like quite the risk! However, as they say: nothing ventured, nothing gained. An elderly woman answered the door, and Emanuel introduced himself before cutting right to the chase.
“I have a strange question for you,” he said. “Have you ever been robbed?” If the answer was a harsh “no,” everything could have ended right there. But as Emanuel watched the elderly woman’s reaction, he realized he made the right decision. The woman started to shake, which could only mean one of two things: she was either terribly upset or extremely excited. Emanuel had hardly prepared for the woman’s reaction.
30. A Crime Has Been Committed
The question that Emanuel asked left the elderly woman extremely surprised. Still shaking, the woman confirmed Emanuel’s suspicious: someone had robbed her! Then, the painful memories resurfaced as the elderly woman attempted to explain what had happened to her.
While Emanuel felt touched because of the woman’s reaction, he felt relieved to have found the true origins of the mystery box on his backyard. He had finally found the answers he was looking for. In the end, everything turned out for the best. However, there was still one last mystery that Emanuel wanted to solve. Could he possibly provide the missing link?
31. Bringing Back Painful Memories
The night after the 2011 Christmas, a burglar broke into her home. They had no idea what was going on inside their household. By the time she and her husband realized what had happened, the thief was too far away for them to even try and catch him.
The criminal left their home with $52,000 worth in jewelry and cash. Unfortunately, all the savings of the couple had vanished in a heartbeat. The couple never imagined that a stranger would be knocking at their door six years after the crime, asking them this bizarre question. But, how could this happen in such an exclusive neighborhood?
32. The Ninja Burglar
While Todt Hill is one of the most exclusive communities in Staten Island, not too long ago, its population was suffering at the hands of an unknown thief. At the time of the robbery in 2011, Staten Island was facing a wave of crime.
No one knew who the unseen menace was, but they called him Ninja Burglar because of how stealthy he had been. Even worst, the criminal was surprisingly successful! From 2005 to 2015 the Ninja Burglar robbed over 200 homes in New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut. Just in Staten Island, he stole from hundred-and-sixty homes! Could this also be one of his handiworks?
33. Ending His Reign
A man called Robert Costanzo was finally arrested in Staten Island back in 2016. Costanzo had a criminal past and was in court for something unrelated when he confessed, and they charge him for robbery. He admitted to the investigators that he was responsible for over 100 burglaries in which he stole $4 million worth in property! They sentenced him to 22 years in prison.
The residents of Todt Hill could breathe easily again! However, by the time the burglar was convicted, the woman that Emanuel met had already lost hope. The police told her that she would never see her belongings again. But they couldn’t have been more wrong!
34. A Treasure Recovered
Now that he had finally solved the backyard mystery, Emanuel told the woman that he might have her belongings. “Well, I think I have your stuff,” Emanuel said. He continued: “Why don’t you come over to my house, and I will show it to you?”
Then, Emanuel and the woman walked around the corner to his house to see if she could identify some of the objects they found inside the safe box. Emanuel was excited to show the woman what he had found. The rusted box had been sitting there for four years, waiting for someone to dig it up. Instead, the Emanuel family ignored it. Now, Matthew Emanuel was just one step away from unraveling the puzzle for good.
35. Lost and Found Objects
Emanuel brought her to the kitchen and showed her the safe. When the elderly woman saw the jewelry and the stacks of the dollar bills, she was overwhelmed with emotions! She immediately burst into tears and hugged Emanuel. The woman couldn’t stop shaking, she couldn’t believe what was happening. “She was stunned,” Emanuel recalled.
After six and a half years of living with the trauma of losing her most valuables and being told over and over that she would never see them again, a stranger knocked on her door to give her back the hope. Thankfully, now they were right here in front of her eyes! And what happened next was the best thing that had happened to her in years.
36. The Right Thing to Do
Emanuel did the right thing, he returned all of the safe’s contents to its real owner. Emanuel was satisfied with the result! What started as a mere eyesore in his backyard, had suddenly morphed into the most incredible moment of joy within just a couple of days!
In the end, with the help of stormy weather, some deer and the curiosity of Bamboo Bod, Emanuel managed to solve a crime that the police hadn’t solved in years! Furthermore, he did it in a little less than a week! To the safe’s owner, Emanuel is a true hero! And a real-life hero deserves a proper reward!
37. Surprisingly Coincidental
Emanuel felt happy to have found the owners of the safe. His journey proved to him that just about anything can happen! While he didn’t get to keep his real-life treasure, he ultimately brought happiness and hope when the owner thought she had lost everything that mattered the most to her.
“I knew whose it was,” he said. “When I did not know Saturday night, I had all intentions of keeping it. But once Sunday came, and I found out whose it was, I knew it was somebody else’s. I couldn’t walk past their house and live with myself knowing I had their stuff.”
38. Karma Came Along
After talking with the owners, Matthew Emanuel didn’t have to think twice about doing the right thing. The very next day, he returned every single piece of jewelry, gold, and salvageable bill he found in the safe to the elderly woman who lived just around the corner.
In the end, Emanuel refused to take any awards. He told the press that the only award he could hope for was “good karma.” In his mind, Emanuel knew he did the right thing. However, he hadn’t finished his work just yet! He wanted to do something to make sure he would never forget this life-changing moment.
39. Commemorating the Mystery
With all said and done, the Emanuel family had returned the safe to its rightful owner and finished renovating their backyard. Matthew Emanuel, in particular, wanted to make sure that he would never forget his extraordinary backyard adventure! So, Emanuel decided to commemorate the wonderful experience with a small memento. Right next to the bamboo that Bamboo Bob and his team planted, the family placed a ceramic elephant.
The family wanted to mark the exact spot where they found the rusted box, as a way to remember the mystery box that had been sitting there rusting, waiting for them to break it open. At least, now they knew that a mystery and actual treasure could always hide right there, in front of their eyes!