''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 “the best-selling American novel of all time.” Brown's second novel to include the character Robert Langdon—the first was his 2000 novel '' Angels & Demons''� ...

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

Rosslyn Chapel Rosslyn Chapel, also known as the Collegiate Chapel of Saint Matthew, is a 15th-century Scottish Episcopal Church, Episcopal chapel located in the village of Roslin, Midlothian, Roslin in Midlothian, Scotland. The chapel was founded by William Si ...

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 in southern Nevada, north-northwest of Las Vegas. A remote detachment administered by Edwards Air Force B ...

Skull and Bones Skull and Bones (also known as The Order, Order 322 or The Brotherhood of Death) is an undergraduate senior Secret society#Colleges and universities, secret student society at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. The oldest senior-class ...

Opus Dei is an institution of the Catholic Church that was founded in Spain in 1928 by Josemaría Escrivá. Its stated mission is to help its lay and clerical members seek holiness in their everyday occupations and societies. Opus Dei is officially r ...

, the

Esalen Institute The Esalen Institute, commonly called Esalen, is a non-profit American Retreat (spiritual), retreat center and intentional community in Big Sur, California, which focuses on humanism, humanistic alternative education. The institute played a ke ...

, Mount Weather,

Heinrich Himmler Heinrich Luitpold Himmler (; 7 October 1900 – 23 May 1945) was a German Nazism, Nazi politician and military leader who was the 4th of the (Protection Squadron; SS), a leading member of the Nazi Party, and one of the most powerful p ...

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 triangu ...

Castle,

Montecristo Montecristo, also Monte Cristo (, ) and formerly Oglasa (), is an island in the Tyrrhenian Sea and part of the Tuscan Archipelago. Administratively it belongs to the comune, municipality of Portoferraio in the province of Livorno, Italy. The isl ...

island and

Disneyland Disneyland is a amusement park, theme park at the Disneyland Resort in Anaheim, California. 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, ...

Club 33 Club 33 is the name of a number of private dining clubs located within Disney Parks. The first opened inside Disneyland in 1967, and was modeled after sponsor lounges at the 1964 New York World's Fair. At the time it opened, Club 33 was the on ...

. 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. *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 formally introduced March 1, 1800, when Napoleon ordered Gener ...

", 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