The Oh, no, no. You have reached the Atlas Obscura Podcast line. I'm Doan Thuris. Leave me a message about a strange, unusual, or surprising place that happens to be near where you grew up or where you live now.

Hi, my name is Jim Matthews.

I owned a house, Brownstone in Brooklyn.

For many years, one day two guys came to my door

and asked that they could dig in our backyard.

Which is a very strange request. But dig they did, in fact that what they unearthed several

feet down at the rear end of our backyard was an old latrine from the days when plumbing wasn't available in the house.

It was an old 150 year old house and digging down to the latrine what they discovered

was that glass bottles down there. Over the years the glass

bottles became covered with a kind of a glaze, a kind of a shimmery

iridescent glaze. They gave us a couple bottles but took the ones they found.

And off they went into the day and I never saw them again.

I'm Sarah Weymen, and this is Atlas Obscura, a celebration of the world's strange,

atlas Obscura, a celebration of the world's strange, incredible, and wondrous places.

Today we're going to unearth a treasure in Jim Matthew's literal backyard under layers of

ash and trash and some century- poop and will meet the mysterious men who

dug it all up. Who were they and why did they do it? That is after this. So I should start by saying just to add another layer of mystique to this story.

There is a lot Jim Matthews does not remember about the day those two guys

showed up and turned his backyard into an archaeological dig. I'm sorry I'm 80 years old. I'm 80 years old.

It's a question is, will I live to the end of this conversation?

But here is what we do know.

Jim Matthews moved into a Brooklyn brownstone in 1977.

...