Here's some good news: somewhere in the United States, near Bedford County, Virginia, a treasure is supposedly buried that could be yours. Roughly 1,326 kilograms of gold and 2,315 kilograms of silver, valued at tens of millions of dollars. To find it, you only need to decipher a couple of sheets written by Thomas J. Beale almost 200 years ago. Fancy a try?
It has all the ingredients for a great novel or even a successful film. But it's a true story. If you're good at solving riddles or cryptograms, you might want to try solving the mystery that a missing gold prospector left behind almost 200 years ago for his friend and partner. Although it might look like one, this isn't an urban legend, but one of the most interesting cryptographic riddles in modern history.
The Story Behind the Beale Cipher
The story behind the so-called "Beale Cipher" begins in January 1820, when a man who went by the name Thomas J. Beale arrived at a shabby hotel in Lynchburg, Virginia. Thomas stayed in one of the rooms for a couple of months, then left. Two years later, he returned carrying an iron box fitted with a lock, whose key he entrusted to the hotel management. A few days later, he departed again.
Several months passed, and the hotel owner, Robert Morriss, received a letter Beale wrote from St. Louis. In that message, Beale confided the importance of the box he had left at the hotel. Inside were various papers, some of which were encrypted. The key to understanding the encrypted text was in the possession of a friend of Beale, who was ordered to deliver it to Morriss ten years later.
Ten years passed, and Morriss heard nothing from Beale or his friend. He kept the box, and 25 years later, in 1845, he decided to force the lock. The box contained three sheets filled with numbers separated by commas and a note written in plain English. The note, written in Beale's own hand, explained that in 1817, accompanied by some men, he had set out on a journey through the United States in search of gold. Within a few months, good fortune led them to a giant vein. For 18 months, armed with picks and shovels, the group extracted all the precious metalthey could, plus two tons of silver.
Beale and his companions agreed to hide the treasure and return for it later, properly equipped. Beale was responsible for finding the right place, and he hid the fortune somewhere in Lynchburg, Virginia. That was the reason for his first visit to Morris's hotel. During his second visit, he brought more gold to the hiding spot and took the opportunity to hand the iron box to Morriss so that, in case something happened to him, his partners and heirs could receive their share.
According to the note Beale left, the three encrypted documents contain an explanation of how to reach the treasure's location, plus a detail of its contents and the list of men who were to receive their share of the loot.
Morriss must have felt devastated: he had everything needed to access an incredible fortune but no idea how to decipher it. When he turned 84, in 1862, Morriss decided to publish the secret, hoping someone could understand the three pages and fulfill Beale's request. In 1885, a friend of Morris published a pamphlet with all the details from the box. But he also did something more: he managed to decipher one of the three encrypted notes. Since the documents consisted of a sequence of numbers, he assumed each number represented a letter. Unfortunately, there was a wide variety of numbers—far more than the letters in the alphabet.
How the Cipher Works
This man assumed the numbers referred to the words or letters of a book. If he could find the right book, he could read the text. This encryption system is very old and secure: it involves taking the text of a book and numbering its words. That number designates the first letter of the word. For example, if Don Quixote begins with "En Un Lugar De La mancha...", we'd have the correspondences 1=E, 2=U, 3=L, 4=D, 5=L, 6=M... and so on.
The problem for Morris's friend was that he didn't know which book Beale had used as the basis. After trying hundreds of books without success, he tried the U.S. Declaration of Independence and managed to decipher the second note. In it, Beale reveals the approximate location of the treasure: Bedford County, about four miles from Buford's, hidden in an underground chamber about two meters below the surface. He also listed its contents: 1,326 kilograms of gold and 2,315 kilograms of silver. Today, all that metal is worth an exorbitant amount.
Of course, they tried using the Declaration of Independence to decipher the other two notes, but Beale had used different books for those. Many famous cryptologists attempted it as well—after all, a fortune like that was worth the effort. Herbert O. Yardley, the renowned American cryptologist of World War I, and William Friedman, his successor, both tried without success. If you're thinking they might have succeeded but didn't tell anyone, you're wrong: both died poor. If the treasure is real, it is still waiting to be discovered somewhere in Virginia.
You might want to give it a try after reading this, and we don't blame you: we felt the same way. All you need is to figure out the book Beale used for each of the remaining notes. That is, of course, if the whole thing isn't a hoax as big as an elephant: several theories exist on that front, which you can read on the English Wikipedia. Either way, the mystery of the Beale Cipher remains unsolved and, perhaps—just perhaps—somewhere in Bedford County, buried a few meters underground, lies a treasure capable of making you a multimillionaire. You can download the complete "The Beale Papers" in PDF by clicking here.
