Blind Faith (PODCAST EXCLUSIVE EPISODE)

0:00Our two stories today are both about people who believed in something so strongly that it informed every single choice they made. And unfortunately for them, those choices led them down very dangerous paths. But before we get into today's two stories, if you're a fan of the strange, dark, and mysterious delivered in story format, then you've come to the right place because that's all we do and we upload two, three, even four times every week. So, if that's of interest to you, the next time the follow button sneezes in public, instead of, you know, politely saying, you know, bless you, just scream, shut up!

0:36Okay, let's get into our first story called The Search for Akakor.

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1:41Visit usaa.com slash bundle auto property to see how much you could save. Multiple product savings do not apply in all states or to all situations. Savings subject to change. Restrictions apply. Membership eligibility and product restrictions apply and are subject to change. USAA means United Services Automobile Association and its affiliates, San Antonio, Texas. One afternoon in November of 1980, 28-year-old John Reed sat at a table on a hotel veranda in the tiny village of Barcelos, Brazil, which was a two-day boat ride up a river from the Amazon jungle's largest city of Manaus. And sitting across from John was the legendary chief of the Uga Mangalula tribe, Tatunka Nara.

2:25Now, John had been in Barcelos for about 10 days now, and in that time, he'd already spoken to Tatunka many times. But still, it was like every conversation they had gave John this incredible sense of awe. He really felt like his whole life had been leading up to this exact moment of being here in Barcelos, about to go on this grand adventure. So Barcelos and Tatunka were very far away from where John had grown up. I mean, this was a very foreign place. John grew up in San Francisco, California. But even growing up in those suburbs as a kid, he had always dreamed of coming here and literally meeting Tatunka.

3:04So it was like surreal he had really done this. And if things from here on out went the way John hoped they would, he might never have to even go back to America. Because John was on a bona fide quest. John was in Barcelos to be the person who finally found the long-lost city of Akakor. Now, there was almost no record of the city ever actually existing, except for in one book called The Chronicle of Akakor, which was by this author and journalist named Carl Brueger. Carl wrote that Akakor was the capital city of a 12 ,000-year-old civilization, similar to the Incas or ancient Egyptians, in that they'd lived thousands of years ago and had a big empire and an extremely advanced civilization for their time.

3:52But according to Carl, Akakor and its people were way better because they were descendants from actual gods. When the Europeans eventually came to the Amazonian jungle, the people of Akakor did not get wiped out because they went underground. And it was there, underground, that they rebuilt their capital and literally hid their civilization from the modern world. And in fact, the legend said that they actually still live there now, guarding a treasure that had been given to them by the gods. Now, most people called Carl's book complete fiction and said that its author just sort of made it up to make money.

4:32But John hadn't paid any attention to the naysayers, and any possible doubts that he had had, had completely disappeared the moment he'd finally met Tatumka. So Tatumka was not only a famous chief who knew the Amazon like the back of his hand, but more importantly, at least to John, he'd actually been interviewed in Carl's book, and he was said to be the one known person who'd actually been to Akakor who was still alive. And here Tatunka was, in the flesh, sitting across the table from John in all his Amazonian glory. He wore just a loincloth, and he had that same turtle tattoo that the book described, so John knew he was the guy, he was the chief he'd been looking for.

5:16And to John, if Tatunka was real, well then surely everything else in that book was real too. Right now though, neither John nor Tatunka were saying anything, Which was unusual, because normally their meetings were very animated, as Tatunka regaled John with all these amazing stories about Akakor and what it was like there in his very heavily accented English. But hearing these stories hadn't been enough for John, who really wanted to know where Akakor actually was, so that he could actually see it with his own eyes. Now, so far, Tatunka had not told John where it was. He'd said that the people of Akakor wanted to stay hidden.

5:55You know, their survival depended on it, and so he was not going to give up their location. But today, John could feel that something was different. Because just a few minutes ago, John had asked Tatunka again about literally going to Akakor. And now Tatunka had been very quiet for a very long time. Like he was thinking about whether or not to finally reveal its location. And so John patiently waited. And as he sat there in this really intense silence, it was like he could almost feel Tatunka's deep wisdom oozing off of him in waves. And then finally, in his soft, very fragmented English, Tatunka began to speak.

6:35Almost nine years later, on an evening in the spring of 1989, John's sister, 35-year-old Sandy Reed, pulled into the driveway of her San Francisco area home and got out of her car to check the mailbox. Sandy had just gotten back from her sales job, and she was tired and bleary-eyed as she, you know, reached into the box and sort of mindlessly pulled out a stack of mail. But, as she began sorting through the mail, the return address on one of the envelopes made her stop. It was a letter that was postmarked from Germany, and Sandy didn't know anybody who lived in Germany, and so she really wasn't sure what to expect as she quickly ripped it open.

7:12But, as her eyes scanned the lines on the page, her hands began to shake uncontrollably. The letter was from a German detective who said that he was writing about her brother, John, and that they were sure something bad had happened to him. So John, Sandy's brother, had gone to Brazil almost a decade earlier to find the lost civilization of Akakor, and Sandy and her parents hadn't heard from him since he left. Now, during the first few weeks of John's trip, he'd written letters fairly regularly. But then his last message had come in in late 1980, and after that, nothing. Now, of course, Sandy had been worried about her brother.

7:53But she also hadn't been that surprised he had gone radio silent. Because Sandy and her parents were well aware that John was obsessed with Akakor, and not just that. He wanted to go on this adventure, find this lost city in the jungle, and then never come home. He wanted to stay in the jungle. And so they kind of figured that, you know, maybe he found Akakor, or maybe he just found another village somewhere. But either way, the way they looked at it is, John likely wanted to start a new life somewhere else, somewhere in the jungle, and that's probably what he had done. So for nearly a decade, that sort of became their line of thinking.

8:31But now, as Sandy is reading this letter, it was like suddenly her understanding of what was going on with her brother was totally and instantly fractured. Now she was both panicked and also totally confused about the idea that one, John was in trouble, and two, like why is the German police looking for her brother? Why is that happening? Why aren't American police looking for my brother? But as her eyes frantically scanned the page, she learned why. The detective said they were investigating the death or disappearance of John and at least three other people, including a German citizen, who apparently had been lured into the Amazon by a particular book about a place called Acacor.

9:14Now, this book, according to the detective, was complete junk. It was a fabrication. Acacor, not a real place. But the detective believed that someone was killing the people who came looking for it. Now, the detective said they had tried to investigate, but the Brazilian officials were being very uncooperative, and he wasn't actually allowed to go to Brazil to collect evidence to try to figure out what happened here. And so basically, he was stuck, but he wanted her to know they were looking into her brother. And so by the time Sandy finished reading this letter, she felt like, well, I have to do something.

9:48You know, if the German police, if they can't go to Brazil, maybe I can.

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13:02Access limits are based on your earnings and risk factors. Standard cash outs take one to two business days with no mandatory fees. Expedited transfers available for a fee. Tips are voluntary and don't affect the service. Available in select states, terms and restrictions apply. Visit Earning.com for full details. Sure enough, later that same year, in June, Sandy arrived in the city of Manaus in the Amazon and checked into her hotel. She knew from John's letters from 10 years ago before he disappeared that this was the general area he had been. And so her plan was sort of roughly speaking to search the city, turn it upside down and see what she could learn.

13:41Now, obviously this was a big undertaking. Manaus is a big place, but Sandy at this point was all in on this mission. Sandy didn't really know why, you know, for 10 years, basically, she had no idea what happened to John, But it was like now she felt like she was being called to do whatever she had to do to go find her brother. So she had quit her sales job, emptied her savings account, bought a flight here, and brought along a tape recorder. Like an audio tape recorder so that she would basically, you know, not miss anything. Talk to everybody and learn whatever she could and track it. And her plan basically was to just spend all her time interviewing locals, recording what they say, to try to figure out if anybody knew about John or AkaCore.

14:23But almost as soon as she actually began doing this on the ground in Manaus, she realized how hard it was going to be. I mean, it had been almost a decade since her brother had gone missing. So when she met with the Brazilian law enforcement, they had virtually no details about his disappearance and really couldn't tell her anything useful. And when Sandy spoke to local residents, all she heard were endless rumors with no actual evidence. And on top of that, all the rumors she heard sort of contradicted each other. Some said a white man matching John's description had just recently been seen on the outskirts of Manaus.

14:57But then another person claimed John had been shot years ago and his bones had been found deep in the jungle. And then yet another person said, nope, none of that's true. What really happened is John found a tribe in the Amazon, not the people of Akakor, but another tribe, and he had decided to just live with them. Now, even though all this information she was getting was sort of all over the place, there still was one common reaction that almost everybody Sandy spoke to had. Fear. Each time Sandy asked about Akakor, people would sort of clam up like they were scared of it. Now, they all clearly knew about it, and most of the time when she brought it up, she was warned to sort of leave it alone, like don't talk about that, and that in some ways looking for Akakor could get her in trouble or even killed.

15:44So as the days wore on, Sandy just felt herself feeling more and more confused and anxious. And each night, as she laid in her hotel bed, she wondered if she should just give up, that this was impossible. But then it was like every night after she'd drift off to sleep, she would have a dream about John. It was like he was haunting her. And he would say to her in these dreams that Akkor was not what he thought it would be. So just about every morning when she woke up, she'd have this sort of re-found sense of purpose, and she would continue to look for her brother. But it just kept going nowhere.

16:18However, during her last few days in Manaus, based basically on finances, like she was running out of money and would have to go home soon, during that time period, she heard another rumor. And that was that John had gone into the jungle to find Akakor, but he hadn't gone in there blind. a local chief named Tatunka had told John how to get there. Now, by this point, Sandy had spent three weeks in Manaus and its surrounding areas and really felt completely overwhelmed. I mean, she really hadn't made much progress anywhere. There was definitely a sense of fear around Akakor, and she was even starting to feel that, that like, looking into this could potentially get her into trouble.

17:01And in many ways, hearing about this new person, Tatunka, whether they were real or not, it actually made her scared. She would love to learn what he knew, to go find Tatunka and see if he knew where her brother was. But there was also a part of her that just feared even pursuing this lead. It was like all of a sudden, Brazil just felt too overwhelming for her. And so after learning about Tatunka, Sandy's reaction was actually to pack up and leave. But after leaving Brazil, Sandy did not just fly to California and give up on the search for her brother. She just decided to look for her brother sort of in a roundabout way.

17:40She had heard from a local in Brazil that there was a Swiss tourist who might have seen John in the jungle. And so after Sandy left Brazil, she went to Switzerland and spoke to this tourist. And then after speaking with that tourist, she flew to Germany and she met with that detective who had sent her the initial letter she got. But neither the tourist nor the German detective had any new information. So by the end of all that, Sandy still had no answers. And by this point, she also had no money. She had completely drained her savings account trying to find her brother, and it had not worked. Now, Sandy considered just going home.

18:16I mean, she was broke. She was scared. And really, she hadn't actually gotten anywhere in her search for her brother. But there was still one lead that she had not investigated, and that was Tatumka. Because basically, it just felt too scary. She'd abandoned it and left for Switzerland and Germany. But Sandy felt like now, if she never went back to Brazil to speak with him, she would never get any real answers. It felt like Tatumka was the key, and she had been cowardly. She needed to go back there. She needed closure. So she went back to America, but she only stayed long enough to earn some quick cash cleaning houses so that she could finance another trip to Brazil.

18:55On June 21, 1990, so about a year after she had made her first trip, Sandy did return to Brazil. She took a small plane to the village of Barcelos, which she had learned was where Tatunca lived. This time, though, she brought some backup with her, a documentary producer and also a reporter. She felt a lot safer coming here with a group, but also she did want to draw attention and resources to eventually help her with her brother's case. When they landed at the rundown airport, Sandy and her small team deboarded and walked straight into the tiny village. In the time that she had been back in America earning cash, Sandy had done some research on Barcelos.

19:33So she knew by now that Carl Brueger's book, The Chronicle of Akakor, the book that John had been so interested in that led him on this quest, had really spawned an entire economy in Barcelos, since Taurus came to talk to Tatunka and to try to find it. He was in Barcelos. But as far as Sandy could tell, the tourist boom had not done much for the village of Barcelos. It was dirty and the houses were all very run-down shacks. She'd read that only about 3 ,000 people lived there, and between all of them, they only had one phone. And so as the group wandered around looking for a friendly face to give them directions, Sandy spotted a woman who was hanging her laundry up on a line outside her home.

20:15So Sandy approached her and asked if she knew where Tatunka lived. And the woman immediately nodded, which Sandy expected, because Sandy had not just read up on Barcelos, she now knew a lot about Tatunca as well, and she knew that basically everybody in this area knew his name. He was a renowned chief who'd once led an expedition for the famous explorer Jacques Cousteau, and he was a hero too. One time he had saved the lives of a dozen Brazilian soldiers after their plane had crashed in the Amazon, so the country's secret service was actually in Tatunka's debt. And also, of course, Tatunka was interviewed extensively in the Chronicle of Acacor, that book, and was the only known person who'd actually been to the city and knew its location.

20:59But more recently, Tatunka had settled into a quieter life and was running a hotel and giving boat tours to visitors along the Rio Negro. And so Sandy got directions to Tatunka's hotel from this woman, and as Sandy and her team began heading deeper into the village to go meet this guy, Sandy felt a mix of excitement and also fear. I mean, there was just something sort of heavy about finally meeting this guy. Eventually, the group came to what appeared to be a very isolated looking hotel surrounded by a wooden gate. And inside of the gated area up on the veranda of this hotel was this very lean shirtless man with a turtle tattooed on his chest.

21:40And Sandy knew immediately from the tattoo that that was Tatunka. As Sandy and her crew opened the gate and walked towards Tatunka, she pulled out a photo of her brother and held it up along with, you know, an explanation of why she was there. And Tatunka at first just kind of listened and watched as they approached him. But then as he began to hear what she was saying, he smiled and in broken English, he told Sandy he was surprised she hadn't come sooner. But Sandy didn't return his smile because because as she stared at Tatumka, all she could think of was how wrong everything was. Tatumka's face, the way he spoke, the way he carried himself, none of it made any sense at all.

22:22It would turn out those dreams Sandy was having, where her brother John would appear to her and tell her that Akakor was not like he thought it would be, it would turn out that was correct. Akakor didn't exist. However, it was not just a fake city, created by that author, Karl Brueger, to sell his book. No, it was something much, much weirder than that. That whole book was based almost exclusively on the stories of Tatunka, the legendary Amazonian chief who Sandy was now meeting, you know, in front of this weird hotel. But Tatunka, the man standing in front of Sandy, was not chief of anything.

23:03In fact, he wasn't even Amazonian. In reality, this man parading around as Tatunka was just some random German man named Gunther Haack who had fled Germany for the Amazon to avoid paying child support to his ex-wife in the 1960s. But when he arrived in the Amazon, he wanted to blend in, but he didn't speak the language and he had this heavy German accent. So what do you do? Well, Well, he created a whole made-up story about a long-lost civilization that he supposedly descended from, you know, Akakor. The Akakor story was designed by this guy just to keep him from having to pay child support. The problem was, the Akakor story, the legend he created, worked too well.

23:51Gunther managed to convince local and even national authorities that he was an actual indigenous person. And then, fatefully, he also convinced this writer, Karl Brueger, that he really was from this lost civilization and sort of inadvertently created an entire tourism industry based on AchaCore. And so when Karl's book came out, Gunther found himself in a bind. To keep his tourist revenue stream afloat, he had to keep pretending that AchaCore was real and he knew where it was, while also never letting anybody get there. and both Sandy and the German police believe that to protect this secret, Gunther killed any tourists who insisted on actually visiting Acacor, including Sandy's brother, John Reed.

24:43Gunther Haack has never been charged with murder and denies ever hurting anyone. John Reed's body was never found. The author, Karl Brueger, was shot to death in 1984 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and rumors still circulate about who killed him and why. And as of 2024, Gunther Haack was confirmed to be alive and still living in Barcelos, and still insisting that AcaCore is real. To this day, explorers still travel to Barcelos to try and find it.

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