''Secret Places, Hidden Sanctuaries: Uncovering Mysterious Sites, Symbols, and Societies'' is a 2009 book called a "robust and skeptical look at the kind of esoteric nonsense celebrated in ''

The Da Vinci Code ''The Da Vinci Code'' is a 2003 mystery thriller novel by Dan Brown. It is Brown's second novel to include the character Robert Langdon: the first was his 2000 novel ''Angels & Demons''. ''The Da Vinci Code'' follows symbologist Robert Langdon ...

''." The book itself covers various sites and societies favored by conspiracy theorists and unexplained mystery enthusiasts, including

Rosslyn Chapel Rosslyn Chapel, formerly known as the Collegiate Chapel of St Matthew, is a 15th-century chapel located in the village of Roslin, Midlothian, Scotland. Rosslyn Chapel was founded on a small hill above Roslin Glen as a Catholic collegiate church ...

Area 51 Area 51 is the common name of a highly classified United States Air Force (USAF) facility within the Nevada Test and Training Range. A remote detachment administered by Edwards Air Force Base, the facility is officially called Homey Airport ...

Skull and Bones Skull and Bones, also known as The Order, Order 322 or The Brotherhood of Death, is an undergraduate senior secret student society at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. The oldest senior class society at the university, Skull and Bone ...

Opus Dei Opus Dei, formally known as the Prelature of the Holy Cross and Opus Dei ( la, Praelatura Sanctae Crucis et Operis Dei), is an institution of the Catholic Church whose members seek personal Christian holiness and strive to imbue their work an ...

, the

Esalen Institute The Esalen Institute, commonly called Esalen, is a non-profit American retreat center and intentional community in Big Sur, California, which focuses on humanistic alternative education. The institute played a key role in the Human Potential ...

Mount Weather The Mount Weather Emergency Operations Center is a government command facility in the U.S. Commonwealth of Virginia, used as the center of operations for the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). Also known as the High Point Special Facili ...

Heinrich Himmler Heinrich Luitpold Himmler (; 7 October 1900 – 23 May 1945) was of the (Protection Squadron; SS), and a leading member of the Nazi Party of Germany. Himmler was one of the most powerful men in Nazi Germany and a main architect of th ...

Wewelsburg Wewelsburg () is a Renaissance castle located in the village of Wewelsburg, which is a district of the town of Büren, Westphalia, in the ''Landkreis'' of Paderborn in the northeast of North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. The castle has a triangular ...

Castle,

Montecristo Montecristo, also Monte Cristo (, ) and formerly Oglasa ( grc, Ὠγλάσσα, Ōglássa), is an island in the Tyrrhenian Sea and part of the Tuscan Archipelago. Administratively it belongs to the municipality of Portoferraio in the province o ...

island and

Disneyland Disneyland is a amusement park, theme park in Anaheim, California. Opened in 1955, it was the first theme park opened by The Walt Disney Company and the only one designed and constructed under the direct supervision of Walt Disney. Disney in ...

Club 33 Club 33 comprises a number of private dining clubs located within the various Disney Parks. First opening in 1967 inside Disneyland Park, the club was modeled after numerous executive VIP lounges created by pavilion sponsors in the 1964 New Yo ...

. In this work, the authors seek to put forward new evidence (and novel theories) about some 150 controversial places and legends, including the following hypotheses: *That the Mediterranean island of

, an Italian government exclusion zone forbidden to visitors without special permission, may conceal the greatest hidden treasure of all time—the immense booty of Turkish pirate and admiral

Turgut Reis Dragut ( tr, Turgut Reis) (1485 – 23 June 1565), known as "The Drawn Sword of Islam", was a Muslim Ottoman naval commander, governor, and noble, of Turkish or Greek descent. Under his command, the Ottoman Empire's maritime power was extended ...

. *That contrary to the commonly held view that Yale's

society was founded as a chapter or branch of a German university "

corps Corps (; plural ''corps'' ; from French , from the Latin "body") is a term used for several different kinds of organization. A military innovation by Napoleon I, the formation was first named as such in 1805. The size of a corps varies great ...

", it bears none of the hallmarks of a student corps, but rather resembles the esoteric and Masonic lodges of early 19th-century Germany.

References

External links

''Secret Sanctuaries'' book site
(dead)
the book available on loan on the Internet Archive
2009 non-fiction books Fringe theories Books about conspiracy theories {{occult-book-stub