In the 1989 blockbuster film “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade,” the fictional swashbuckling archaeologist and his father seek out the legendary cup of the Holy Grail inside the Treasury Room in Petra, Jordan, that dreamlike ancient city carved into a sandstone canyon by the nomadic Nabataean people in the third century B.C.
But in 2024, real-life archaeologist and adventurer Josh Gates and his team from the Discovery Channel’s popular long-running series “Expedition Unknown” joined a group of Jordanian/American scientists and researchers to investigate the Treasury Room, and also received permission to dig underneath.
The team found 12 ancient human skeletons, with one clutching what appeared to be a clay cup of some kind similar to the Grail cup from legend. (It was later identified to be the top part of a broken jug.)
Dr. Fares Braizat, Fadi Balawi, Josh Gates and Pearce Paul Creasman pictured basking in the discovery of the secret tomb in Petra, Jordan.
For nearly two decades, Gates has been fascinating audiences with a variety of adventure-seeking, answer-seeking series, most notably the SyFy channel’s “Destination Truth,” which ran from 2007 through 2012 and “Expedition Unknown,” which premiered in 2015 and began airing its 15th season in July, 2025.
Gates will visit Pensacola for “Josh Gates Live: An Evening of Ghosts, Monsters and Tales of Adventure,” at 6 p.m. on Oct. 26 at the Saenger Theatre. Tickets begin at $57 and are available through www.ticketmaster.com.
“I watch the show every Wednesday,” said Anthony Odum, a Pensacola police officer. “The way he presents everything makes it exciting. He’s like a modern-day Indiana Jones-type guy. He even has the hat.”
Odom’s such a fan, he even has meet-and-greet tickets so as to talk to the Tufts University alumnus, who has degrees in both archaeology and drama.
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In 15 years of “Expedition Unknown,” Gates and his team have traveled the globe to investigate some of history’s biggest mysteries, from searching for the Lost Colony of Roanoake in North Carolina to hunting for the Yeti in the Himilayas to searching for hidden treasures of pirates, Nazis and lost cities.
“You’re entertained,” Odum said. “But you also learn something every episode.”
Gates has also been an active face in the paranormal world, and has hosted the live specials and served as a guest investigator for the series “Ghost Hunters” and “Ghost Hunters International.”
Now, full confession. My wife and I are big fans of Gates and his shows though, personally, I can do without the ghost stuff.
And we both wonder how we can get his job. Not because we would be better (We’d be horrible). But because this a guy who has chased down the vampire legends in Romania, searched through Egypt for the final resting places of queens Cleopatra and Nefertiti, traveled into the Peruvian forests to search for evidence of a mysterious ruling dynasty known as “The Snake Kings” and searched for the Ark of the Covenant in both Israel and Ethiopia and many, many more adventures.
If he’s interested in local legends, haunts and mysteries, we’d inform him about the Pensacola Sea Monster, which is said to have claimed lives, the Gulf Breeze UFO mysteries from the 1980s, the De Luna shipwrecks and the fort structures such as Pickens and Barrancas that protected Pensacola and Pensacola Bay.
“I’d tell him about the forts,” Odum said. “He always makes it interesting, and I’m always on the edge of my seat.”
This article originally appeared on Pensacola News Journal: Expedition Unknown’s Josh Gates will give Saenger presentation
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