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Several digs were completed at the top of Porter's Mountain, one in late 1980s with the land owner's permission as long as any treasure found was split 50/50. However, the treasure hunters only found [[American Civil War|Civil War]] artifacts. The value of these artifacts paid for time and equipment rental; these hunters broke even.<ref name=Singh />
Several digs were completed at the top of Porter's Mountain, one in late 1980s with the land owner's permission as long as any treasure found was split 50/50. However, the treasure hunters only found [[American Civil War|Civil War]] artifacts. The value of these artifacts paid for time and equipment rental; these hunters broke even.<ref name=Singh />

In Jan 2014 Rev. John L Piper found the key to the Beale Cipher. At this time he is working to complete the two [http://bealecipherdecoded.com/about/ decoded] pages to a final draft.


==Media attention==
==Media attention==
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In 2010, an award-winning animated short film was made concerning the ciphers called ''The Thomas Beale Cipher''.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.thomasbealecipher.com/index.htm|title=The Thomas Beale Cipher}}</ref>
In 2010, an award-winning animated short film was made concerning the ciphers called ''The Thomas Beale Cipher''.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.thomasbealecipher.com/index.htm|title=The Thomas Beale Cipher}}</ref>

==Latest developments and discoveries==
{{Unreferenced|section|date=April 2015}}
In November 2014, while investigating numerous cyphers and codes, amateur codebreaker and forensic archaeologist James William Simpson, of Eldorado Enterprises Inc., from Princeton, NJ, deciphered sequences in numbering systems hidden in the Beale that correlate to the measurements of distances and degrees of inclination from a starting point, to locate the two troves. Finding direct relation to a converging point in the west, the starting point they charted their journey from, Simpson tracked the location to a well known area of Arizona, in the Superstition Mountains.

There in the mountains of AZ were found a series of stones, the "Peralta Stones", that had been carved into a series of maps featuring a code scribed into the bottom of one of the stones, 2 = 3 - (mine symbol) - 18 = 7, a code that had eluded searchers for years. These numbers were found by Simpson to be the exact times that Beale's men went on a 2 year contract, in a 'perilous enterprise', leaving for the mine in the 3rd month of March, arriving at the mine to dig for 18 months, returning one trove to VA, then returning to mine for another 7 months to return a second trove to VA, to return to be massacred in the valley, now named for the bodies found there. On these stones were statements in poorly translated Spanish that also said ''Esto Bereda Es Muy Peligrosa'' (Perilous Enterprise), and ''Busca Por El Mapa'' (Look For The Map), and also ''Busca Por El Corazon'' (Look for the Heart). Simpson discovered these were not all the same type of stone, or the same trail, as there were variances added to the map stones that matched in AZ, yet the heart stone descriptions did not match. It matched elsewhere, at the end of a 4 mile trail.

As the rest of the information at hand was given due value, the other codes on the stones and the images scribed became more apparent, including a western brand that read 8 BAR n BAR P, or 8 - n - P, which was found to be a code to signify a particular western cattle rancher's brand. When formed into the metallic branding iron shape, this coded brand formed an image that appeared to look like the letters TJB, a family name brand from the area near the mines in AZ.

Seeing the direct coded markings etched into these stones, as derived from statements in the Beale Codes, and interpreting the stones as a map to the mine areas in AZ and the locations to 'Walk The Line' in VA as well, Simpson easily located the entire series of 8 mines in the Superstitions and the Vault that held the hidden troves they had robbed, while charting the direct course to the two locations in VA using codes in the Beale, listed as mileage and degrees of inclinations. Once the individual arrived at the location in VA, the trail stones were then followed from the church in Bedford, VA, to the area of the Heart. There the Latin Heart Stone is used to locate the two troves from the different terrain found described in Latin, and from the inscriptions (I) for the first grouping of stashes, and ((I)) for the second grouping of stashes. Note the unique marks on the stone has two different sets and individual counts for a number of personal stashes in each of the two areas in roman numerals denoting weights in pounds of gold and silver.

As the trail of mounting evidence was followed through the entire series of clues of the numerous carved mapping stones, and while using the Beale Codes as a guide to describe the actual affairs going on in both of these 150+ year old mysteries, these markers became more obvious to Simpson, matching a trail of stones that were laid by thieves, who were making their getaway from the area, after murdering their own labor, leaving the stones in scattered areas along a trail, yet planting others in key locations, to seem like they were attacked by Apaches. The other problem was they were crafted from a fairly modern era of tool making, from after the Apache made peace and surrendered, and one stone, the Horse Stone, was crafted from a type of White Granite that was only known to be found in VA. After reviewing the names in the Beale and their history, and noticing that all of the directions and charts were scaled and coded in a very cunning way, to leave hints for the simple minded to understand, and to confuse the intelligent, Simpson was able to pick up on their intended trail of deception, as they were planting information along the way to hide their identities behind a historical, and a faulted timeline of events, as one finds in the Beale. These overly obvious statements at times were clearly integrated into the Beale Codes in certain places to make the common man who wrote them seem more affluent, and from an older era, using types of records and information that were easily referenced by clerks in their offices and other locations around the country at the time in books.

Drafted to seem as if it was from an earlier time, the Beale was pre-arranged by the ringleader of the Arizona Land Grab, James Reavis, who both used the native Apache Tribes as a scapegoat for the murder of their 30 men while in AZ, and attempted to lay claim to the title to the land charter that was once owned by New Spain. In a failed effort to continue the affairs of Manifest Destiny in the west, during the eras of John C. Calhoun and Andrew Jackson, the KGC's roots were being founded in a secret military order just outside of DC in the foothills of Bedford, VA, and were laid there in a Confederate Union, in ceremonies surrounding burning effigies, mocking the death of the Knights Templars of France. Using pseudo-religious occult ceremonies, and military orders and hierarchies, the Knights of the Golden Circle took archaeological stone carvings found in Bedford Basin, Nova Scotia, thought to be the works of early explorers found in the early to mid 1800's, and crafted a faux Charing Cross legend surrounding a few acclaimed new 'biblical discoveries', to convince their followers they were God's Chosen, following a trail of golden 'speaking stones' out west, in a religious order that was being guided to take over the entire southern US, and parts of Brazil, using Christianity as a guise.

While fueling vengeance for the Spanish American Wars, and filling thousands with a craze for gold, their intention was to remove the entire Native population from their lands, and relocate them to other areas, to secure certain areas for mining the richest claims in the country, like in Dahlonegha, GA, and the Spanish and Apache Mines in AZ. They sent numerous families out to the west using the printing press as a tool to inspire the 'Gold Rush' in California, while their intention was to relieve the gold and silver mines of AZ of their stores, while using this 'Treasury' to form a series of 8 Slave Trade Colonies, under the guise of numerous leaders and diplomats, businessmen, and even members of Congress and the White House Cabinet.

Having been employed as a Confederate Soldier and travelling to both Santa Fe, and to New Orleans, Reavis became familiar with the coding and mapping techniques of the Spanish and the markings in the cliffs, and the historical image of the previous Commanders of the times who were involved in laying the roots of the Secessionist movements were passed along amongst fellow Confederate Soldiers as tales to pass the time. Using these identities as covers for his post-Civil War affairs, Reavis was part of the operation to continue the secret order they were pledged to, under the strictest of terms, which were even listed word for word in military format in the Beale. Reavis swore an oath to the death with these men to keep their secrets. Although terms in the Beale can be used in a certain context of time periods of dialects and linguistic tastes in spelling in the Beale, leading one to believe they were much older affairs, the specific words 'stampeded' were used, while including a branding iron symbol in the stones. This is part of the hinting of the fact these are two different time periods discussed, and that the operation occurred at a certain time period closer to the later 1880's, when cattle were brought out to the areas to be raised in ranches, not when New Spain was in control over the territories in the 1820-30's.

Reavis was known by the Federal Authorities investigating him afterwards as a fraudulent Real Estate Agent working in St Louis, MO area, who concocted the entire "Don Peralta" story, and planted faked charters and land claims in city clerks' offices around the country, including crafting faked identities of Spanish Nobility, so that when others were cross-referencing his filed claims for authenticity purposes of issuing the new US Titles, he would seem to be in the legal standing to be the person to inherit the entire valley of Phoenix, and parts of the lands taken from the Apache in the Tonto National Forrest during the expulsions of the 1860s. Arranged all on behalf of his previous agreements with Confederates, he was subservient to a higher group that never revealed its identity, and commanded him through hidden coded messages in his division of the KGC after the Civil War. He was able to make one trip to AZ to secure the old Peralta Ruins, and from the work in the old Spanish Stone Cross maps found there from 1791, he was able to track the locations of their mines and vaults there. After he returned to St. Louis, he finished the rest of these tales, and prepared to hire each of the 30 men himself, with a few that were not keen to the execution of the offered contract in their perilous enterprise.

As they mined out west, they first crafted the map stones to show their trail, then returned to VA to select a place for their troves, carving the area's terrain into the stone in Latin, to make all of the stones appear as if they were old Spanish Miners who were doing the digging and were found dead with the stones nearby, slaughtered by the Apache. This was the heart stone to be placed inside of the map stones, and marked with the locations and terrain descriptions on one side of the stone, as they placed a single trove in VA. Gathering the White Granite from the ridge in VA to craft the Horse Stone for an additional map overview of the areas, they returned for their second leg of their three part journey. When they formed their second location in VA, and buried the trove there, the second letter was delivered to the office of Mr. Morris, who then had in his possession, the final coded map to the 2 areas, and the locality of the mines out west as described in the dates listed in the second letters. By reversing the movements on the US map to the focal point, one finds the "Locality of the Vault" they mined from to be located in AZ.

As they were searching for a way to show a whereabouts of the location to the person reading the Beale Codes, as Reavis feared the possibility of death or even arrest, they combined hints and direct cyphers into a storyline that could be published and sold to anyone in VA, while secretly alerting the families of these men and others in the area, so they could continue their agendas using the amounts left behind for their next of kin. After reading the tale and finding the bodies, they were to begin a new phase of driving the Indian out, being inspired to continue to fight the 'Savages' with a cleverly crafted tale of their deceased children left for them to ponder. The Witch Stone can easily be seen as a reference to the invention of numerous Superstitions to keep people clueless.

When looking from the point of view of the Beale Codes alone, you see they created a "Key" that was hidden as the word SINJ, formed by the capital letters of a sentence that described the key to finding a location, a "Direct Object" to look for when in the area, being the ridgeline and the keyhole shaped area found at the end of the 4 mile path, where you are to insert the Heart Stone into the Map, to guide you to the final location via the English translations of the shapes they describe. While seeing this in a clear path, Simpson was able to interpret some markings, as well as finding a series of boulders along the way that featured unique carvings, showing these direct objects spoken about in the Key, formed in the shape of the areas' surrounding treelines and rivers, complete with a few other terraformed works thrown into grooves in the ground. When they chose the areas, they crafted the trails as seen from the tops of ridges, and from previous maps made from the times, showing the exact likeness of the terraformed rivers, ridges and valleys as described in the Latin Heart Stone.

The physical clue to show you the direction to find the Heart, can be located through the charting of the course taken from the mines, using the stones and the decipherments that are printed in the letters, and if by chance the searcher was looking from the discovery of the box delivered to PA, by using the key by itself, combined with clues from tears in the original document, one could locate the series of markers and chart through the areas to the final locations, but would have trouble locating the two final troves. A person but was later verified scientifically to be chemical of origin, and not from the ink of the document. This was a hole chemically singed into a specific copy of the Declaration of Independence, hidden in a box with an actual skeleton key, with a single lens from a set of antique glasses in a leather pouch. Inside of the box, a false bottom was made to house the DOI, the key and eyepiece. This was a symbolic coded system to hint to the finder to "see through", to show the location revealed, as the DOI was laid over the map of the area near Bedford County, VA. The rest of the cypher leads you through the clues using mapping directions to find all points of reference to the 2 troves' final resting places.

Although they were able to make two trips to VA to bury the plundered ore that was mined quickly during their brief monopoly, and they were able to pass along hidden maps and clues, these troves were never recovered, until now, as the singed copy of the DOI was found in the late 1960's at a Pennsylvania Flea Market, sold as a novelty and kept for years until a faded watermarked signature was noticed and the tears were further examined. The Peralta Stones were not found until the 1950's, with numerous men losing their life searching blindly for these troves and mines in AZ, only to be scared off by the invention of the Confederates themselves, the Legend of the Apache Thunder God and the Black Hand, "protecting" the mines. The KGC were so worried about losing their territorial mines and funding resources in the area, that they crafted numerous legends around the mines, reporting through military reports, the deaths of many of their own men, who were actually killed in secret at the hands of the US Army. One legend was the feared "Black Hand of the Apache", which was created by the KGC from a symbol dating to the Latin phrase ''Mano Negro'', as a fear tactic, so that Spaniards and Mexicans would think it was the Jesuits guarding their mines, and so that white settlers would fear the superstition of an unknown enemy of "angry savages", which was never actually verified to exist. This was made to intimidate all who saw it and were close to their operations.

Through further research into the numerous affairs of the KGC and the Confederate Army in the Southwest, it became apparent that the agent in charge in St. Louis was none other than the above mentioned James Reavis. The final clue derived from the ciphers messenger, implicates the famous Jacob Walz (Waltz), as an accomplice of these men, as the acclaimed Agent that delivered the final segments of the Beale Letters, James B. Ward himself, the same extremely tanned gentleman featured in tales in the Beale.

It is well known that there was an extensive "Business Plot", and a Black Hand, another name for the extortion rackets they formed to take over these lands. This by no means was a single person's plot though, as Reavis was accompanied by a few other associates locally, who were known to hide a stash of magical ore and plated gold bars, without ever having filed a mine claim in the area. After seeing the levels of secrecy, the anonymity practiced, and the use of rotating shifts of men, Simpson was able to interpret these ciphers as a cover story, and completely document the movement of every stage of their illicit operation, including the murder of their men.


==See also==
==See also==

Revision as of 04:56, 5 April 2015

For the geographic code classification system, see beale code.
Cover of The Beale Papers

The Beale ciphers, also referred to as the Beale Papers, are a set of three ciphertexts, one of which allegedly states the location of a buried treasure of gold, silver and jewels estimated to be worth over USD$63 million as of September 2011. Comprising three ciphertexts, the first (as yet unsolved) text describes the location, the second (solved) ciphertext the content of the treasure, and the third (unsolved) lists the names of the treasure's owners and their next of kin.

The story of the three ciphertexts originates from an 1885 pamphlet detailing treasure being buried by a man named Thomas J. Beale in a secret location in Bedford County, Virginia, in the 1820s. Beale entrusted a box containing the encrypted messages to a local innkeeper named Robert Morriss and then disappeared, never to be seen again. 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 friend then spent the next twenty years of his life trying to decode the messages, and was able to solve only one of them which gave details of the treasure buried and the general location of the treasure. The unnamed friend then published all three ciphertexts in a pamphlet which was advertised for sale in the 1880s.

Since the publication of the pamphlet, a number of attempts have been made to decode the two remaining ciphertexts and to locate the treasure, but all efforts have resulted in failure.[1][2][3][4]

There are many compelling arguments that the entire story is a hoax, including a 1980 article "A Dissenting Opinion" by cryptographer Jim Gillogly, and in 1982 Joe Nickell published a scholarly analysis of the Papers and their related story, using historical records that cast doubt on the existence of Thomas J. Beale. Nickell also presents linguistic evidence demonstrating that the documents could not have been written at the time alleged (words such as "stampeding", for instance, are of later vintage). His analysis of the writing style showed that Beale was almost certainly James B. Ward, whose 1885 pamphlet brought the Beale Papers to light. Nickell argues that the tale is thus a work of fiction; specifically, a "secret vault" allegory of the Freemasons. James B. Ward was, in fact, a Mason himself.[1]

The story

It is important to note that all of the following information originates from one source — a single pamphlet published in 1885, entitled "The Beale Papers."

The treasure was said to have been obtained by an American man named Thomas J. Beale in the early 1800s, from a mine to the north of Santa Fe, at that time part of a Spanish province, in an area that today would most likely be part of Colorado. According to the pamphlet, Beale was the chosen leader of a group of 30 gentlemen adventurers from Virginia, who stumbled upon the rich mine of gold and silver while hunting buffalo. They spent 18 months mining thousands of pounds of precious metals, which they then charged Beale with transporting back home to Virginia and burying in a secure location. Beale made multiple trips to stock the hiding place, and then encrypted three messages with the location of the treasure, a description of it, and the names of the owners and their relatives.

Beale placed the ciphertexts and some other papers in an iron box, which he gave in 1822 to a reliable person, the Lynchburg innkeeper Robert Morriss. The treasure was supposed to be buried near Montvale in Bedford County, Virginia. Beale asked Morriss not to open the box unless Beale or one of his men failed to return from their journey within 10 years. 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, but it never arrived. 23 years later, in 1845, Morriss opened the box, finding two plaintext letters from Beale, and several pages of ciphertext separated into Papers "1", "2", and "3". Morriss had no luck in solving the ciphers, and decades later left the box and its contents to an unnamed friend.

Using an edition of the United States Declaration of Independence as the key for a modified book cipher, the story tells how the friend successfully deciphered the second ciphertext, which gave a description of the buried treasure. Unable to solve the other two ciphertexts, the friend ultimately made the letters and ciphertexts public, in a pamphlet entitled The Beale Papers, published by another friend, James B. Ward, in 1885.

Ward is thus not "the friend." Ward himself is almost untraceable in local records except that a man with that name owned the home in which a Sarah Morriss, identified as the consort of Robert Morriss, died in at 77 (Lynchburg Virginian newspaper, May 21, 1865). He also is recorded as becoming a Master Mason in 1863.[1]

  • Beale's first cryptogram
    Beale's first cryptogram
  • Beale's second cryptogram (the deciphered one)
    Beale's second cryptogram (the deciphered one)
  • Beale's third cryptogram.
    Beale's third cryptogram.

The deciphered message

The plaintext of Paper #2 reads:

I have deposited in the county of Bedford, about four miles from Buford's, in an excavation or vault, six feet below the surface of the ground, the following articles, belonging jointly to the parties whose names are given in number three, herewith:

The first deposit consisted of ten hundred and fourteen pounds of gold, and thirty-eight hundred and twelve pounds of silver, deposited Nov. eighteen nineteen. 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 for silver to save transportation, and valued at thirteen thousand dollars.

The above is securely packed in iron pots, with iron covers. The vault is roughly lined with stone, and the vessels rest on solid stone, and are covered with others. Paper number one describes the exact locality of the vault, so that no difficulty will be had in finding it.

The second cipher can be decrypted fairly easily using any copy of the United States Declaration of Independence, but some editing for spelling is necessary. To decrypt it, one finds the word corresponding to the number (e.g., the first number is 115, and the 115th word in the Declaration of Independence is "instituted"), and takes the first letter of that word (in the case of the example, "I").

Beale used a version of United States Declaration of Independence different from the original. To extract the hidden message, the following 5 modifications must be applied to the original DOI text:

  • after word 154 ("institute") and before word 157 ("laying") one word must be added (probably "a")
  • after word 240 ("invariably") and before word 246 ("design") one word must be removed
  • after word 467 ("houses") and before word 495 ("be") ten words must be removed
  • after word 630 ("eat") and before word 654 ("to") one word must be removed
  • after word 677 ("foreign") and before word 819 ("valuable") one word must be removed

Furthermore:

  • The first letter of the 811th word of the modified text ("fundamentally") is always used by Beale as a "y"
  • The first letter of the 1005th word of the modified text ("have") is always used by Beale as an "x"

Finally, in the decoded text there are 4 errors, probably due to wrong transcription of the original paper:

  • 84 (should be 85) 63 43 131 29 ... consistcd ("consisted")
  • 53 (should be 54) 20 125 371 38 ... rhousand ("thousand")
  • ... 84 (should be 85) 575 1005 150 200 ... thc ("the")
  • ... 96 (should be 95) 405 41 600 136 ... varlt ("vault")

Size of the treasure

The treasure described in the second cryptogram calculates to approximately 35,052 troy oz gold (worth about US $63m in September 2011), 61,200 troy oz silver (worth about US $1m in 2010) and jewels which were worth US $13,000 in 1818: this sum is worth around $180,000 in 2010 terms. The treasure would weigh about three tons.

Truth or hoax?

There has been considerable debate over whether the remaining two ciphertexts are real or hoaxes. An early researcher, Carl Hammer of Sperry UNIVAC,[5] used supercomputers of the late 1960s to analyze the ciphers and found that while the ciphers were poorly encoded, the two undeciphered ones did not show the patterns one would expect of randomly chosen numbers and probably encoded an intelligible text.[6] Other questions remain about the authenticity of the pamphlet's account. In 1934, Dr. Clarence Williams, a researcher at the Library of Congress, said, "To me, the pamphlet story has all the earmarks of a fake . . . [There was] no evidence save the word of the unknown author of the pamphlet that he ever had the papers."

The pamphlet's background story has several implausibilities, and is based almost entirely on circumstantial evidence and hearsay.

  • Later cryptographers have claimed that the two remaining ciphertexts have statistical characteristics which suggest that they are not actually encryptions of an English plaintext.[7][8] Alphabetical sequences such as abfdefghiijklmmnohpp are both non-random, as indicated by Carl Hammer,[6] and not words in English.
  • Others have also questioned why Beale would have bothered writing three different ciphertexts (with at least two keys, if not ciphers) for what is essentially a single message in the first place,[9] particularly if he wanted to ensure that the next of kin received their share (as it is, with the treasure described, there is no incentive to decode the third cipher).[6]
  • Analysis of the language used by the author of the pamphlet (the uses of punctuation, relative clauses, infinitives, conjunctives, and so on) has detected significant correlations between it and Beale's letters, including the plaintext of the second cipher, suggesting that they may have been written by the same person.[1]
  • The letters also contain several English words, such as "stampede" and "improvise", not otherwise recorded before the 1840s, implying composition no earlier than twenty years after their purported date; Beale's "stampeding" apparently first appears in print in 1883.[1]
  • 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. In addition, the original sale price of the pamphlet, 50 cents, was a high price for the time (adjusted for inflation, it is equivalent to $16.96 today[10]), and the author says he expects "a wide circulation".
  • The third cipher appears to be too short to list thirty individuals' next of kin.[6]
  • If the Declaration of Independence is used as a key for the first cipher, it yields alphabetical sequences such as abfdefghiijklmmnohpp[11] and others. According to the American Cryptogram Association, the chances of such sequences appearing multiple times in the one ciphertext by chance are less than one in a hundred million million.[11]
  • Robert Morriss, as represented in the pamphlet, says he was running the Washington Hotel in 1820. Yet contemporary records show he did not start in that position until at least 1823.[12]

There have been many attempts to break the remaining cipher(s). Most attempts have tried other historical texts as keys (e.g., the Magna Carta, various books of the Bible, the U.S. Constitution, and the Virginia Royal Charter), assuming the ciphertexts were produced with some book cipher, but none have been recognized as successful to date. Breaking the cipher(s) may depend on random chance (as, for instance, stumbling upon a book key if the two remaining ciphertexts are actually book ciphers); so far, even the most skilled cryptanalysts who have attempted them have been defeated. Of course, Beale could have used a document that he had written himself for either or both of the remaining keys, thus rendering any further attempts to crack the codes useless.

Did Thomas J. Beale exist?

A survey of U.S. Census records in 1810 shows two persons named Thomas Beale, in Connecticut and New Hampshire. 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.[13] The 1820 U.S. Census has two persons named Thomas Beale, in Louisiana and Tennessee, and a Thomas K. Beale in Virginia, but the population schedules are completely missing for three states and one territory.

Before 1850 the U.S. Census recorded the names of only the heads of households; others in the household were only counted. Beale, if he existed, may have been living in someone else's household.[14]

In addition, a man named "Thomas Beall" appears in the customer lists of St. Louis Post Department in 1820. According to the pamphlet, Beale sent a letter from St. Louis in 1822.[11]

Additionally, a Cheyenne legend exists about gold and silver being taken from the West and buried in mountains in the East, dating from roughly 1820.[11]

Alleged Edgar Allan Poe authorship

Edgar Allan Poe has sometimes been suggested to be the real author of the pamphlet. He had an interest in cryptography and used it as a plot device in several of his works, most notably his short story "The Gold-Bug." He is also known to have lived nearby at the time of Beale's encounters with Morriss; in the 1820s he was a student at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville.[15]

However, Poe died in 1849, long before the pamphlets were published. The references in the narrative to the Civil War, which occurred in the 1860s, also cast doubt on the Poe claims. Writer William Poundstone's stylometric analysis in his book Biggest Secrets found that Poe's prose is significantly different from the pamphleteer's.[16]

Digging for treasure in Bedford County

Doubts have not deterred many treasure hunters, however. The 'information' that there is buried treasure in Bedford County has stimulated many an expedition with shovels, and other implements of discovery, looking for likely spots. 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.[11]

Several digs were completed at the top of Porter's Mountain, one in late 1980s with the land owner's permission as long as any treasure found was split 50/50. However, the treasure hunters only found Civil War artifacts. The value of these artifacts paid for time and equipment rental; these hunters broke even.[11]

Media attention

The story has been the subject of multiple television documentaries, such as the UK's Mysteries series; and the 2011 Declaration of Independence episode of the History Channel TV show Brad Meltzer's Decoded. There are also several books, and considerable Internet activity. In 2014 National geographic TV show "The Numbers Game" quoted Beale ciphers as one of the strongest passwords ever created. In 2015 the UKTV series Myth Hunters (in the United States, airing on the American Heroes Channel) devoted one of its season 3 episodes to the topic.[17] Also in 2015, the Josh Gates series Expedition Unknown visited Bedford to investigate the Beale Ciphers and search for the treasure.

In 2010, an award-winning animated short film was made concerning the ciphers called The Thomas Beale Cipher.[18]

See also

References

  1. ^ a b c d e Nickell, Joe (July 1982). "Discovered: The Secret of Beale's Treasure". The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography. 90 (3): 310–324. JSTOR 4248566.
  2. ^ "The Beale Treasure Ciphers". The Guardian. 1999. Retrieved 2007-04-14.
  3. ^ Elonka Dunin (2003-12-08). "Famous Unsolved Codes and Ciphers". Archived from the original on 23 April 2007. Retrieved 2007-04-14. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
  4. ^ Burchard, Hank (May 5, 1972). "Leading cryptanalysts seek to break secret code reported to tell of buried treasure in Virginia" (PDF). Washington Post.
  5. ^ Burchard, Hank (September 7, 1979). "Motley group gathers to solve ciphers to treasure". Washington Post.
  6. ^ a b c d Poundstone, William (1993). Biggest Secrets. New York, NY: William Morrow and Company. p. 127. ISBN 0-688-11529-2. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
  7. ^ The Beale Cipher: A Dissenting Opinion, James Gillogly, Cryptologia, April 1980
  8. ^ The Beale Ciphers, George Love
  9. ^ A Basic Probe of the Beale Cipher as Bamboozlement, Louis Kruh, Cryptologia, October 1982 (PDF file, 70 kB)
  10. ^ 1634–1699: McCusker, J. J. (1997). How Much Is That in Real Money? A Historical Price Index for Use as a Deflator of Money Values in the Economy of the United States: Addenda et Corrigenda (PDF). American Antiquarian Society. 1700–1799: McCusker, J. J. (1992). How Much Is That in Real Money? A Historical Price Index for Use as a Deflator of Money Values in the Economy of the United States (PDF). American Antiquarian Society. 1800–present: Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis. "Consumer Price Index (estimate) 1800–". Retrieved February 29, 2024.
  11. ^ a b c d e f Singh, S (2000). The Code Book. page 97: Fourth Estate. ISBN 1-85702-889-9.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location (link)
  12. ^ Poundstone, 127–28.
  13. ^ See: Missing Federal Census Schedules.
  14. ^ National Archives and Records Administration,Clues in Census Records, 1790-1840.
  15. ^ Poundstone, 126.
  16. ^ Poundstone, 133.
  17. ^ "Myth Hunters, Season 3" (pdf). 2015. Retrieved February 24, 2015.
  18. ^ "The Thomas Beale Cipher".

Further reading

  • Viemeister, Peter. The Beale Treasure: New History of a Mystery, 1997. Published by Hamilton's, Bedford, Virginia
  • Gillogly, James J.. "The Beale Cipher: A Dissenting Opinion April 1980 Cryptologia, Volume 4, Number 2
  • Easterling, E.J. In Search Of A Golden Vault: The Beale Treasure Mystery ( CD/AUDIO BOOK 70 min. ) copyright 1995/ Revised In 2011 . Avenel Publishing 1170 Easter Lane Blue Ridge, VA 24064.
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