Any treasure hunter in the world needs to keep people from knowing what they know as they pursue the treasure. "Even after it's been pretty well debunked, there's something in the human psyche the finding a hidden treasure, something no one else has been able to do that keeps people searching for it," Dunin explains. Instead of replacing each word in the secret message with a number, you replace each letter in the secret message with a number. 179-201. . These frequencies are not uniformly distributed some digits are more common than others. Knowing human nature, if there was a treasure, it was found almost 200 years ago and kept secret, otherwise, they would be killed by Beales group or someone else that knew where the treasure was. Telltale signs in retrospecthindsight is 20/20. [5] He also is recorded as becoming a Master Mason in 1863.[1]. It could be that the discovery was an indication that the Beale treasure had been found long ago. Even if this was all valid and part of an elaborate hoax by someone to lead people to a vault that was always empty, history is being robbed of a great part of this story. I dont know any of the Gentlemen mentioned previously. As noted by Coral Anne, the A Friend letter at the end of Huckleberry Finn (written at the same time as The Beale Cipher) contain information related to the Beale Cipher, We do not recall the grid (it might have gone to 48 coloumns but could have been traditional 36-2 Grid - we will post it if we find it in the mess that is CAD's computer) - but there is a subgrid within that DeeCipher that was 16x8 or similiar. And they, especially HAVE NO IDEA of what they are looking for! Read the Wikipedia article for more details. Ward was a Mason himself.[1]. Its been nearly two whole centuries of endless attempts by the most skilled cryptographers, and yet the mystery has never been solved. The pamphlet also mentions the American Civil War that started in 1861. It isa collection of three documents, each of whichcontained an encrypted message as a sequence of numbers. The Beale Papers text, on pages 20 to 21, gives an alleged translation of the second ciphertext, but it has nine differences from the actual one. The rules include some tips for how to do this. "Those unanswered details seem to always keep the door slightly ajar, no matter how hard some slam it. The man who claimed to have ultimately obtained the documents published them for the public to see, including one of the documents which had been broken usingthe Declaration of Independence as the key. 171-73). Let alone the fact that, if by luck, any had they managed to hang onto their foolish scalps for the journey, the picky Spanish occupiers at the time, were unlikely to roll out any welcome mats upon doubtful arrival of any gringo, invaders of their territory. 1817, not much chance at all Larry. Your email address will not be published. The images below, transcribed from the pamphlet, show the original line-breaks for easy comparison. The idea was to lure people in to finding and exposing this horror through the enticement of untold riches. Bizarrely, the person who 60 years later solved the cipher just happened to have exactly the same rare version. No longer hide information about the treasure and take action to legally claim and protect it. Sending a letter from St.Louis a few months later, Beale promised Morriss that a friend in St.Louis would mail the key to the cryptograms; however, it never arrived. According to the story, the innkeeper opened the box 23years later, and then decades after that gave the three encrypted ciphertexts to a friend before he died. The above is securely packed in iron pots, with iron covers. Beale told Morriss not to open the box unless he or one of his men failed to return from their journey within 10 years. Basically, they claimed to have found avault similar to what is described, but it was empty of any treasure. (With this in mind, I have an idea about cipher 1 & 3, although Im sure the NSA & CIA have already tried these two works since theyre so obvious. the key to beale cipher no. BealeSolved.Com The lack of clear images of the original ciphers, combined with the large quantity of numerals, has led to numerals being misprinted or omitted in many sources. [10] Other questions remain about the authenticity of the pamphlet's account. For reasons unexplained, Morriss didn't break the lock and open the box until 23 years later, in 1845. Nick: 2 and of no importance to the present discussion. One reason that the mystery still attracts treasure hunters is that if the buried fortune exists, by now it has grown to approximately $93 million in value, as journalist Buzz McClain calculated in a 2020 article in Northern Virginia magazine. Beale Papers - The Cipher Foundation Beale Papers Around 1885, a short pamphlet was published in Lynchburg, Tennessee: it contained a story about a young man called Thomas Beale who had allegedly deposited a sizeable treasure (worth approx $63m in 2011) in two deposits in 1819 and 1821. Im far more convinced that the Thomas Beale in question may well have been the one Ive just posted about here: http://ciphermysteries.com/2015/05/23/the-two-thomas-beales . Raised eyebrow. Interesting tidbits John. 194+2=388= X ORIGINAL FINISHED DECODING: Sheet 1: OF CIPHER 3 : Sheet 2: BY MR. DANIEL COLE: Sheet 3 . ORIGINAL FINISHED DECODING: Sheet 1: OF CIPHER 3 : Sheet 2: BY MR. DANIEL COLE: Sheet 3 . A survey of U.S. Census records in 1810 shows two persons named Thomas Beale, in Connecticut and New Hampshire. -ED4CADAndHerself. The group of thirty or forty that had spouses or siblings, wouldnt have kept quiet either. The pamphlet's numbering has eleven words between the labels for 670 and 680. Create an account to follow your favorite communities and start taking part in conversations. Was located by And more relevant, why not list the heirs only since that is of value if, as Beale claimed, he was leaving the information in case something happened to his party on their next expedition and did not return. The Author of the papers decoded the 2nd paper and presented it in the pamphlet to establish the basis that the remaining two cyphers would be decoded. It was made simple. This would be the moment of well-earned personal fame. This indicates a complex behaviour in the solved cipher as one might expect from an encoded message, while the unsolved ciphers have a simpler behaviour. to be precise, the beale papers comprise not one long ciphertext ( putting the vms' thorny currier a-b language continuum issue to one side) but three short codetexts, all allegedly dating from 1819-1821: part 2 was publicly announced in 1885 already solved (for its codebook, the encoder used a slightly mangled/miscopied version of the However, if one considers a base that is relatively prime to 10, then the last digits of the numbers in the unsolved ciphers turn uniform each digit is equally common. Cryptography/Beale cipher. Many versions of the Declaration of Independence have been printed, with various adjustments to paragraphing, word inclusion, word changing, spelling, capitalization, and punctuation. The second was made Dec. eighteen twenty-one, and consisted of nineteen hundred and seven pounds of gold, and twelve hundred and eighty-eight of silver; also jewels, obtained in St.Louis in exchange to save transportation, and valued at thirteen thousand dollars. We note again, that one should review Mark Twain's Map of Paris (which is the cave near Wytheville) and again, please do not attempt to enter the cave through "Twain's Well" (roughly on the Lat/Lon that you can deduce (kisses to Ivy) from the numerical 'Ciphers'. Video Clip As the value of these artifacts paid for time and equipment rental, the expedition broke even.[20]. It knows where all the secrets are buried. Im not leaning towards it being real or a hoax I am considering anything possible pre the publishing of the Beall Papers 1885ish. Your email address will not be published. Perhaps it included the key to his locked box too. It was well known he placed notices of his abilities in the Philadelphia paper Alexander's Weekly (Express) Messenger, inviting submissions of ciphers which he proceeded to solve. *Some PagesUnder Construction* [30] Also in 2015, the Josh Gates series Expedition Unknown visited Bedford to investigate the Beale Ciphers and search for the treasure. I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Press question mark to learn the rest of the keyboard shortcuts. It would be an excellent feel good following so much tragedy, and would show the power that comes from working together to solve a problem. She's the author of the book "Introduction to Codes and Ciphers, Plus 20 Famous Unsolved Codes, Ciphers, and Mysterious Writings," and is founder of the Mysterious Writings website. It was thrilling to read about the effort, and see pictures of the site described. Well never know. Please copy/paste the following text to properly cite this HowStuffWorks.com article: Patrick J. Kiger . Had they wished, they could have satisfied their blood lust pleasure far closer to home, in Missouri, with its access to vast plains on the western banks of the Big Muddy. Whats the chance the eleven kept quiet about the treasure? Here's the story as laid out in the 1855 pamphlet, which was written by an anonymous author and published by a local newspaperman named J.B. Ward. The treasure was packed in iron pots with lids and buried in a stone-lined vault. No. But the exact location was on one of the other pages, in a coded message that the anonymous author conveniently for the mystery wasn't able to solve. -CAD4TeamBeale, We note that Tunis is where St. Louis died, that the Beale Cipher was written by Mark Twain (reasons given in other threads: short note is that Samuel L. Clemens was the Spymaster in the West for the CSA, first biography notes his boast he was a Lt. in the CSA which he recanted later, but that was due to the fact the General Amnesty for the Civil War did not apply to spies, and that the Beale Cipher hid "The Richmond Stores" (other biographers note that he visited a known CSA spy in San Francisco if you need additional evidence, that many of his journals from the War are mentioned, and that he disappeared for Months and Months at a time - supposedly 'prospecting')- The Phoenix mentioned by Mr. Paul G. Stewart in his book referred to the Confederacy's future use of The Richmond Stores. The letters also contain several English words, such as "improvise", not otherwise recorded before the 1820s in English, The second message, describing the treasure, has been deciphered, but the others have not, suggesting a deliberate ploy to encourage interest in deciphering the other two texts, only to discover that they are hoaxes. Thats what any treasure hunter worth his salt would do! In 2014, the National Geographic TV show The Numbers Game referred to the Beale ciphers as one of the strongest passwords ever created. After all, according to the text, Beale and party came back and claimed the treasure. However, all of this is an entirely different claim to the Beale Solved code solution linked above, which was (re)constructed by Beale treasure hunter Daniel Cole (who died in 2001). Itll just provide context. They've studied the Beale Ciphers mystery in detail, even traveling to Bedford County to scrutinize the area around the former site of Buford's tavern, where Beale supposedly buried the riches. Could someone explain what this is, how you derived it, what it means, etc.? Beale left the hotel in the spring of 1821 with a group of friends, and returned the following January, this time only staying for a couple of months. The expensive high tech lift that goes nowhere. "The only source is the pamphlet," she notes, and the details in it are sketchy. area,construction details,talley ofthe pots plus contentsand thefinaldirections leading Or should I say 24-15-18-20-8-12-5-19-19, i.e. Beale, if he existed, may have been living in someone else's household. Historical and Analytical Studies in Relation to the Beale Cypers, dated 15 April 1972: . 12 Innis and Innis, p. 175. The cyphers are actually very simple, you have all let your minds run away with yourselves, making this out to be more complicated than it actually is. The Beale Ciphers: Page 1 of 2. Beale entrusted a box containing the encrypted messages to a local innkeeper named Robert Morriss and then disappeared, never to be seen again. This is true for all three ciphers.[28]. You might have guessed it: he did not return. The Beale hunters had supposedly set off from their winter quarters near Sante Fe in spring 1817, heading in a northerly direction through the Sangre de Cristos along the Rio Grande bearing to the west through mountain passes into South Colorado and beyond to mid state. First, a budding treasure hunter could search for the right key. 25 February 2021. [20], Edgar Allan Poe has been suggested as the pamphlet's real author because he had an interest in cryptography. Well done Thomas J. After all, who would bring back a fortune in gold, silver and jewels from New Mexico and bury it somewhere in the rolling hills and ridges of central Virginia? This thread has been locked by the moderators of r/codes. Yet contemporary records show he did not start in that position until at least 1823. The Complex Ciphers Have Been Decoded And Reveal Much More Than Many Thought Possible! I didnt mean that I thought it was the same Thomas Beall, I was thinking maybe the guy was using that as a clue to find a 2nd book to decipher other ciphers with just like the 2nd one is solved with the Declaration of Indepence, I think the 1st and 3rd have the exact same system but the hard part is finding what literature was being used to code them. No chance at all, because they didnt need them. Beale used a version of United States Declaration of Independence slightly different from the original, and made mistakes in numbering it. decoding secretly hidden directions located within Cipher One of the Locality Cipher. The other two documents remained undeciphered, one of which contained the location of the treasure, and the other containing the heirs to the treasure. It was not until 1845 that Morriss opened the box. To be precise, the Beale Papers comprise not one long ciphertext (putting the VMs thorny Currier A-B language continuum issue to one side) but three short codetexts, all allegedly dating from 1819-1821: part 2 was publicly announced in 1885 already solved (for its codebook, the encoder used a slightly mangled/miscopied version of the Declaration of Independence) but the directions to the buried treasure were in the undecoded part 1, while the shorter (and also undecoded) part 3 listed the people involved. According to the pamphlet, Beale was the leader of a group of 30gentlemen adventurers from Virginia who stumbled upon the rich mine of gold and silver while hunting buffalo. since carbon dated to 1421 (joking fellas). [20], In 2010, an award-winning animated short film was made concerning the ciphers called The Thomas Beale Cipher. Many have web-sites I do not. Words 78 and 79 ("self-evident"), shown hyphenated, are counted as 2 words. He claimed to have solved 100 of them in a six-month period, according to a 2000 Scientific American article. Just the math and cryptography knowledge alone would be a feat in itself. To be honest, Im suspicious about the claim that the gold hasnt been located. Instead of a map, he created a set of ciphers to lead would-be treasure hunters to the content's location. In the more than 130 years since they were discovered, no one has been able to crack them, although many have tried. 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. After Beale made multiple trips to stock the hiding place, he then encrypted three messages: the location, a description of the treasure, and the names of its owners and their relatives. As the basis for one of his ciphers, "Beale used a rare or unique version," Schmeh explains. As an aside, a few years ago I heard (off-Net) whispers of one particular cryptographic solution that had yet to be made public: but Louis Kruh in Cryptologia reported several such plausible-looking solutions as far back as 1982, so what can you say? The story of the three ciphertexts originates from an 1885 pamphlet called The Beale Papers, detailing treasure being buried by a man named Thomas J. Beale in a secret location in Bedford County, Virginia, in about 1820. Ten men plus Beale traveled back from their mine to Bufords tavern but decided against burying their treasure in a closeby cavern and selected a new unidentified location to bury it. The second cracked cipher outlines the contents of the buried treasure as follows: The Beale Papers definitely make me more curious about the mysterious elevator hiding in plain sight at the edge of Thomas Jeffersons Academical Village at UVA. Well done Thomas J. Not to mention the unlikely case scenario of thirty Virginian settlers packing off out west, two thousand land miles at least through mostly unexplored, inhospitable terrain, inhabited only by wild comanche injuns and their even more hostile Comanchero trading pals. The first letter of the 1005th word of the modified text ("have") is always used by Beale as an "x". While no documented case of anyone breaking the ciphers had been known, there were plenty of police cases of people trespassing and digging on properties nearBedford County Virigina, where the treasure was supposedly buried. In letter that he left behind, Beale explained that he and companions had ventured west to New Mexico in the late 1810s on a hunting expedition and while there, somehow had discovered a gold mine. The entire thing was to play people against greed and is likely intended to be a sort of F-You to the greedy people who were ultimately just desperate simple people needing money to get by and not be in debt. That would have enabled them a much easier means to access the eastern hide markets via the river barge transport available in the pre steam days etc &c.Hope I have not put the cypher masters off their pleasure, which of course is sponsored by fifty million slaughtered plains buffalo. to the Beale Vaultwere entirely decoded from this cipher and no other.Beale's use of landmarks, the location of the Inside he found two plaintext letters from Beale, and several pages of ciphertext separated into Papers "1", "2", and "3". THE BEALE VAULT 2, and (3) how lucky you are at guessing words or phrases that Beale used in writing the set of directions found in paper No. [29] One explanation for the difference between base 10 and the other ones is that the numbers were produced by a human in base 10, which would mean that the ciphers are fraudulent. Many alledged re-searchers of this mystery, feel that it has something to do with a massive Treasure of Gold and Silver! Still, the site is missing a lot of critical information, and there arethings (and lack of things) in the documentation and the pictures which generate more questions than answers. Chisum: that particular Thomas Beales book on whales was written in 1835, a fair few years later than the events described in the ciphertext itself, so it seems a little bit unlikely to have been used to encipher any of the notes. The other slight changes probably have no consequences. dont buy any more books concerning the Beale treasure location codes its all a big con trick,perpetrated by authors Recently found Journal that belonged to my great Hey, this was found on the dark web by a friends of mine TheCodebreakers, a web game about ciphers and codes. On the outside chance that the two ciphers really havent been cracked, lets devote some serious mind power during this horrific global pandemic / stay home order and find the hidden treasure. Morriss had no luck in solving the ciphers, and decades later left the box and its contents to an unnamed friend. This indicates that the ciphers are fraudulent. In fact I dont know of one of these other re-searchers who can give you the names of the 3 men that created this mystery, and back-up that statement in print! While the site posts the claim of how the documents were deciphered, it provides no details. 1 is decoded with a key constructed from a correctly numbered doi (a.k.a. pendence (on which the solved cipher was based), and Beale, appropri-ately, after a man of that name who carried to the East both the news of, and the first gold from, the . In 1820, a Virginian named Robert Morriss, who operated a hotel in Lynchburg, Virginia, became acquainted with a long-term guest named Thomas J. Beale, whom he described to the anonymous author as about 6 feet (1.8 meters) in height, with "jet black eyes and hair of the same color, worn longer than what was the style at that time." Robert Morriss, as represented in the pamphlet, says he was running the Washington Hotel in 1820. A translation of the Cipher from the actual Declaration of Independence shows in fact very poor spelling: "I haie deposoted in the copntt ol bedoort aboup four miles from bulords in an epcaiation or iault six fest below the surlact of thh gtound ths fotlowing articiss beaonging joiotlt to the partfes whosl namfs ate giiet in number thrff httewith.."[citation needed]. The friend, then using an edition of the United States Declaration of Independence as the key for a modified book cipher, successfully deciphered the second ciphertext which gave a description of the buried treasure.
Allison Shelton Age, Programs Like Delancey Street,