What do you think about this?
In 1820, a man named Thomas Beale walked into a tavern in Lynchburg, Virginia and asked the innkeeper to hold onto an iron strongbox for him. He said he would be back in ten years. If he did not return, the innkeeper was to open it.
Beale never came back.
When the box was finally opened decades later, inside were three coded letters and instructions. The first cipher described the location of a treasure hidden in Bedford County, Virginia. Roughly 3,000 pounds of gold, 5,000 pounds of silver, and a fortune in jewels Beale had traded for on his way back from the western territories. Modern estimates put the value north of $63 million.
The second cipher, the only one ever solved, used the Declaration of Independence as its key. It described the treasure itself in detail.
The first and third ciphers, the ones that name the burial spot and the rightful heirs, have never been cracked. Not by amateur codebreakers. Not by professional cryptographers. Not by the NSA.
Treasure hunters have torn through Bedford County for 200 years and come up empty. Some have died trying.
Some think Beale used a one-time pad lost to time. Some think the whole thing is an elaborate 19th-century hoax meant to sell pamphlets. Some think the answer is sitting right in front of us, written into a document the entire country already owns.
Could it be the answer was never meant to be found?
What do you think about this? The Dropa Stones, 716 grooved stone discs said to be found in Chinese caves in 1938 beside small bodied skeletons, telling of a crash 12,000 years ago. The 1978 book that spread the story was admitted to be a hoax. Pure fiction, or a truth wrapped in lies?
What do you think about this? The Paiute of Nevada told of red haired giants they trapped in a cave and burned, written down in 1883. In 1911 miners near Lovelock opened a cave and found red haired mummies and a layer of ash. Legend that matched a cave, or memory of real enemies?
What do you think about this? In 1987 a Wisconsin family bought a used bunk bed. Within weeks their kids were sick, a radio changed stations by itself, and a chair rocked with no one in it. They fled in the night in 1988 and burned the bed. Old house, or something that came with it?
What do you think about this? In 1904 an American dredged the Sacred Cenote at Chichén Itzá and pulled up gold disks, jade, wooden idols and the bones of more than 200 people, many of them children. The Maya called such wells doorways to the underworld. Prayers for rain, or an open door?
What do you think about this? Norse settlers lived in Greenland for nearly 500 years, with farms, a cathedral and a bishop. The last record is a wedding at Hvalsey church on Sept 16, 1408. Then nothing. The church still stands, roofless and empty. Starved out, or walked away?
What do you think about this? In 1615 a Spanish pearl ship is said to have sailed into an inland sea that then dried up. In 1870 a Los Angeles paper reported its hull found in the desert near the Salton Sea. Every searcher since has lost it to the sand. Mirage, or a galleon in the dunes?
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