Because when you don’t find what you’re looking for, you might keep looking … and keep looking … and keep looking … until you can no longer afford to stop. [1], Beale's second cryptogram (the deciphered one). (“The treasure has been moved!” he reportedly grumbled.) Somewhere in the green hills of Bedford County in southwestern Virginia, lies a buried treasure worth over an estimated 60 million dollars. The 1885 Pamphlet is the first written source for the Beale Treasure known. But Beale never sent a key. However, the population schedules from the 1810 U.S. Census are completely missing for seven states, one territory, the District of Columbia, and 18 of the counties of Virginia. In fact, when they first encountered these anachronisms, few dropped their shovels or chucked their maps; rather they picked up books and dove into special archives rooms to start a new hunt—a search to find counter-evidence in the historical record that would pile doubt on the doubters. The treasure is that of Thomas Beale, supposedly buried in Bedford County, Virginia sometime in the 1820s. After resting at Buford's, Beale and his men buried that gold, silver, and jewels deep in the Virginia woods, approximately four miles from the tavern. He was never heard from again, leaving in his wake a mystery that continues today. task force disguised as U.S. Forest Service workers,” treasure hunter Frederick W. Chesson wrote.) In 1885, that unknown man enlisted the help of James B. Today, many of its members are dead. The problem is, without added context, we can never be sure which answer is correct. “I visualize the encryptor selecting numbers more or less at random, but occasionally growing bored and picking entries from the numbered Declaration of Independence in front of him, in several cases choosing numbers with an alphabetical sequence,” Gillogly wrote. Beale researchers have always been a solitary, if not paranoid, bunch. Before 1850 the U.S. Census recorded the names of only the heads of households; others in the household were only counted. He's studied brittle, yellowing maps and has wandered the woods looking for the overgrown stagecoach roads that Beale would have traveled upon. Take Colonel J. J. Holland: Over his lifetime, Holland drove more than 150,000 miles—and spent untold dollars on gasoline, lodging, and digging equipment—pursuing Beale’s treasure, reports Norfolk’s The Virginian-Pilot. Pearls! It was on this occasion that he met Morriss for the first time. Stephen Matyas researched this discrepancy and compiled one of the world's most complete collections of Declaration of Independence copies. But when I spoke to Easterling over the phone last fall, he sounded resigned. So far, it’s been nothing but difficulty. Have you ever heard of an editor? Cryptanalysts. That detail isn’t as fanciful as it may sound. In 2014, the National Geographic TV show The Numbers Game referred to the Beale ciphers as one of the strongest passwords ever created. Gillogly offered two interpretations: that the message is buried under a second level of encryption; or that this measly string of text was the intelligent pattern Hammer's computer had detected. This becomes especially difficult when a code contains typos (the Beales certainly do) or requires a two- or three-step process (the Beales certainly might). If history books are to be believed, Beale’s men found gold more than 30 years before precious metals were discovered in that region. The Beale Ciphers have challenged treasure hunters for almost 200 years. THE LEGEND OF THE BEALE TREASURE. [25], Despite the Beale Papers' unproven veracity, treasure hunters have not been deterred from trying to find the vault. He died in 1849 well before The Beale Papers were first published in 1885. Beale would repeat that trip once more before returning west for good in 1821. Amateur and professional cryptanalysts have desperately searched for the lost key texts, consulting the Louisiana Purchase, Shakespeare’s plays, the Magna Carta, the Monroe Doctrine, the United States Constitution, "The Star-Spangled Banner," the Lord’s Prayer, the Songs of Solomon, the Book of Psalms, old local newspapers, and even the thrilling text of the Molasses Act of 1733. They reburied it in Virginia’s Blue Ridge Mountains. But for those who still cared about the treasure, the B.C.A. If they wanted to discover Thomas J. Beale’s buried treasure, they’d have to search like everybody else: By solving a puzzle. It’s all a cover-up! Ward, whose 1885 pamphlet brought the Beale Papers to light. According to the story, the innkeeper opened the box 23 years later, and then decades after that gave the three encrypted ciphertexts to a friend before he died. The press has breathlessly reported countless claims of the codes being broken, sometimes with head-spinning results. Paper number one describes the exact locality of the vault, so that no difficulty will be had in finding it. (He wrote a 700-plus page two-part book; one section was entitled The Hoax Theory Deflated.) That said, most people's "solutions" made Thomas J. Beale sound like a hepcat who had been couchsurfing at a bad beat poetry club. And after 10 years, he failed to return. I recently visited the brewery … Beale promised to send the key for decoding the ciphers, then left once again for the untamed west. Guided by lanterns and moonbeams, the Hart brothers dug. The medium (who had refused to help all night, opting instead to lounge on a bed of dead leaves) was re-hypnotized and told to explain himself. He wrote a book about the treasure (which he hesitated to publish, fearing it could spread an obsession that could destroy families). His analysis of the writing style showed that Beale was almost certainly James B. Beale, if he existed, may have been living in someone else's household. “And not a dime of it should be begrudged; the work—even the lines that have led into blind alleys—has more than paid for itself in advancing and refining computer research.”. 2—the longest and most repetitious of the Beale ciphers—took eight CPUs roughly 30 hours of work. [8] Other questions remain about the authenticity of the pamphlet's account. Lucky for them, the medium claimed to see the pioneer's every move: Beale had arrived at Buford’s tavern on horseback with a rifle resting on his lap, a pair of pistols on each hip, and two jewel-filled bags slung from his saddle. Nuhn's program, however, solved it in three seconds [PDF]. Treasure hunters. Hours passed. Some of their most remarkable work is genealogical. Clayton’s brother George, a skeptic, stood nearby in silence. Risque, who suffered a nonfatal gunshot wound to the gut, would stay and raise a family that included a grandson named James B. I look down. Visit my website www.BealeTreasureStory.com. One year later, the same man called with an update: Jesus had changed his mind. “I think it is fair to say that this effort has engaged at least 10 percent of the best cryptanalytic minds in the country, and represents much more than the value of the treasure even if it should be just as described,” Hammer told The Washington Post in 1979. Carl Nelson Jr., an ex-C.I.A. Nothing was below it. Clayton Hart thrust his pick into the red, iron-rich dirt and heard a hollow thud. Named after Thomas J. Beale, who purportedly buried the trove, the Beale Treasure of gold and silver and jewels has languished in the ground for two centuries. “I don’t think anything in it corresponds to historical fact,” he says of the Beale story. In the year 1817, Thomas Jefferson Beale, who was a Virginian native, along with the comradeship of thirty other adventurous companions set out for hunting buffaloes and grizzlies in the western part of America. The Imperial Seal, also known as the Heirloom Seal of the Realm, is a … A woodshop teacher has found a solution but not the treasure. . “And when one of the most respected historical codebreakers in the world says, ‘Pffft, don’t even try,’ a lot of codebreakers will say, 'You know, I trust Jim on this one.'”. One man, Stan Czanowski, spent $70,000 over seven years on dynamite and bulldozers. Friedman’s wife Elizebeth, also an accomplished cryptanalyst, dubbed them as a lost cause with a “diabolical ingenuity specifically designed to lure the unwary reader …. Then they go broke and leave! That’s nothing, researchers say. Beale used a version of United States Declaration of Independence substantially different from the original. Beale researchers have dredged up old reports showing rumors of precious ore swirling decades earlier, with small traces of gold possibly being discovered before Beale’s trip. Some Beale hunters would rather declare the mystery solved than admit defeat. In 2014, this last method was used by a Ph.D. student named Malte Nuhn and two fellow researchers at Germany’s Aachen University. Five covered wagons followed him, some hauling iron pots of gold and silver. For more than a hundred years, people have been arrested for trespassing and unauthorized digging; some of them in groups as in the case of people from Pennsylvania in the 1990s. It’s an unassuming, carefully folded stack of perforated paper. Beale treasure hunters are overwhelmingly male, though locals still chatter about one Pennsylvania woman, Marilyn Parsons, who cashed a disability check in 1983 and rented a backhoe to test her theory that the treasure was buried in an unmarked plot of a church graveyard. 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