"The night was hot and sultry in eastern Turkey; the heat and darkness seemed like co-conspirators with the danger exploding just outside our door...

"Ronny! Are you awake? We've gotta get outta here! Some of those villagers are trying to kill us!"

My younger son, Ronny was 15 at the time and had been sleeping in room 303 of the Erzurum Hotel in Dogubeyazit. My other son, Danny, then 17, and I were across the hall in room 308. When we heard the pummeling of heavily shod feet rushing up the stairs, I shouted commands for the boys to grab what they could and get into the room Ronny was in, which had a window that opened above the back roof. The window in our room had a fire escape of sorts, and we'd be sitting ducks if we stayed in there.

We grabbed what we could and barricaded ourselves in room 303 by shoving the bed against the door and pushing the chest between the bed and the wall. Little was spoken as our minds raced, trying to comprehend what was happening to us. We could hear the attempted use of a passkey in the lock as the door appeared to strain against the weight of the angry mob just outside, threatening to disintegrate and loose upon us the furious knot of assailants. Our mouths and throats were excruciatingly dry from the lack of safe drinking water and also from the rush of adrenaline propelled into our systems. Desperately, our minds cast about for any means of escape, and I wondered how my well-laid plans had deteriorated to this..."

That scenario took place during my first trip to Turkey in 1977. And it was that trip which provided me with the discoveries that proved to me the boat-shaped object I was in search of was indeed the remains of Noah's Ark. It would be another ten years of painstaking and costly research before the Turkish government was convinced the boat was real, but today the evidence is in, and soon the entire world will be able to see the Ark remains for itself. The multi-million dollar highway is near completion; this will provide visitors easy access to the site and the modern, spacious visitor's center above the Ark.

During the summer of 1977, my two sons and I found ourselves at risk in a strange country amongst a people of strange speech. They attempted to rob and possibly kill us. (For the record, the same thing could and often does happen to tourists from other countries who visit our country and fall among the criminal element of our society.) This "nervousing experience", (a term coined by my youngest son, Ronny, that fit the situation quite accurately), was the beginning of many years of slow, meticulous, frustrating research that culminated in undeniable proof of the reality and location of the remains of Noah's Ark.

Our first trip to eastern Turkey produced a veritable landslide of discoveries and excitement and set the pace for a breathtakingly rapid sequence of discoveries that left us in a state of mind that had us mentally "pinching ourselves" from the difficulty of accepting the reality of it all!

Our discoveries on the 1977 trip included several massive, pierced anchor stones that bore an eight-cross iconographic representation of the eight survivors of the flood. These crosses were inscribed by the Byzantine and Crusader Christians, which proved that something or someone convinced them that these pierced stones were relics from the Ark of Noah. One of the stones bore the inscription of Nimrod, the builder of the tower of Babel and several great cities of early antiquity. These symbols of Nimrod were crosses with the outline of a boat (the Ark?) attached to the base of the cross. This symbolized his claim that he had preserved mankind in the face of their attempted destruction by the gods. The boat at the foot of the cross represented the means he claimed to have used to save mankind. The horizontal member of the cross represented heaven, and the vertical member of the cross represented the tower of Babel, which was the pathway to heaven he had promised his followers he would provide. After Nimrod's death, the boat symbol was placed at the top of the vertical member of the cross and is the symbol of life in the Egyptian hieroglyphics and the symbol of Nimrod's (Osirus) presence in heaven from whence he cares for his earthly followers.

We found two grave markers that bore the eight-cross symbols of Noah and his family above an ancient, petroglyphic portrayal of Noah's death on one marker and that of his wife on the other. These grave markers were in the front of a very ancient stone house. These markers and the house have been vandalized, and over one hundred million U.S. dollars worth of gold and gemstones were stolen from the graves. The Turkish authorities are seeking to recover these precious artifacts and to punish the thieves. At present, they are aware of the identity of the most probable person responsible for this outrage. He is a man who has been involved in the Ark search in the past, but he dropped from the public eye shortly after the theft from Noah's and his wife's graves.

We located and photographed several other inscriptions and physical remains of the flood and the Ark. We got a brief look at the boat remains before we were forced to flee for our lives. Upon our arrival back in the states, we had our super-eight movie film developed and were delighted to see that we had good photographic documentation of all the artifacts and inscriptions.

Shortly after our return, a friend called to inform me that an M.D. PhD (Dr. Bill Shea) from a university in Michigan had written several articles that stated his belief that the boat formation was related to the landing site of Noah's Ark. I contacted Dr. Bill Shea and shared our discoveries with him. He was delighted, reviewed the inscriptions, recognized the pierced stone anchors as probable relics from the Ark, and joined with me in applying to the Turkish government for permission to excavate the boat-shaped formation. The Turkish authorities declined to give us a permit at that time. We got the same reply after a second request. We were stymied.

My sons and I spent the summer of 1978 locating and documenting the site where Moses and the Habiru (Hebrew slaves, which included many of the descendants of Abraham by his three wives; Sarah, Hagar, and Keturah; these women are the fore-mothers of all the Arab and Jewish peoples) crossed the Red Sea.

Yet, all the while, we were unable to forget the fantastic discoveries associated with Noah's Ark. We, with some trusted friends, prayed that God would see fit to send an earthquake that would in some manner expose the boat formation for what it was without injury to any of the inhabitants of the area. Watching the evening news on the 28th of December, 1978, I was thrilled to see that an earthquake had hit the area where the Ark remains were located and that there had been no casualties! I made arrangements to return to the site, and arrived there in the early summer of 1979. The formation had been split down the middle along its entire length, and the earth had fallen away from its sides. This allowed me to take clean, fresh samples from five locations along the center and sides of the boat. It also made it possible to carefully measure the depth of the object along its length, and to document the dimensions of several of the main structural timbers that were exposed. I photographed the formation and its exposed structures and returned home with a veritable treasure-trove of archaeological data and specimens!