Story By: Michael Leidig, Sub Editor: Joseph Golder, Agency: Central European News

A Turkish woman and five others have been arrested after digging a massive hole in the front room of her mother’s house after the older woman told her it contained buried treasure.

Police investigated after neighbours reported sounds of building work coming from the property in the heavily populated Istanbul district of Gaziosmanpaşa.

When they investigated, they found sacks of rubble in almost every room of the property, and in the living room a massive hole stretching down 21 m into the ground.

Asked what they had been doing, the woman said that her mother had had a recurrent dream about a man who was deep under the house calling out to her and saying: “Save me from here”.

Believing the dream to mean that if there were to look for him they would find buried treasure, she had told her daughter of the dream.

The daughter said it was a frequent dream, and so she decided when her mother later died that she would take the opportunity to dig into the living room in order to find the buried treasure.

She apparently enlisted the help of five others in the project, although it was not revealed whether these were friends or family members. They had reportedly spent 3 months digging down 21 metres in search of the treasure.

They were arrested because the property was only rented, and they were not authorised to dig the huge hole which puts the entire structure of the building at risk.

The house meanwhile has been sealed off while structural engineers investigate.

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