Here’s a claimed solution to the Beale Papers (but press Cancel on the login popup, and if browsing there under Windows, I wouldn’t advise installing the ActiveX control that pops up) which I didn’t know about until very recently. I thought I’d mention it here because, as any fule kno, the Beale Papers are one of the few encrypted historical mysteries to parallel the Voynich Manuscript to any significant degree.
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. Of course, only someone who has broken the two remaining codes would know if all of this is true or not. 🙂
So, it’s basically a kind of Wild West bandit take on a pirate treasure map (which to me sounds like an Alias Smith and Jones script, oh well) but made obscure with some kind of dictionary code: all of which is reassuringly familiar if you’ve just read PopCo. Confusingly, some people argue that the Beale Papers are a fake (possibly by the promoter of the 1885 pamphlet, or even by Edgar Allen Poe, etc), claiming justification from statistical aspects of the cryptography and/or on claimed anachronisms in the language, etc: but a definitive answer either way has yet to be found.
For what it’s worth… my opinion is that, as with the VMs, cries of hoax are more Chicken Licken than anything approaching an ironic postmodernist reading. Really, it does look and feel basically how a home-cooked Victorian code-text ought to, with an emphasis towards lowish numbers (up to 350) plus a sprinkling of higher numbers (possibly for rare or awkward letters): Jim Gillogly’s observation (in October 1980 Cryptologia) of an alphabet-like pattern in part 1 (if you apply part 2’s codebook) seems to me more like a clue than a reason to reject the whole object as a hoax. 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?
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). Even though the dig that was carried out as a result of Cole’s decryption revealed an empty chamber (the website claims), the cryptographic details (ie, of how the codetext links with the plaintext) have yet to be released… which is a tad fishy.
A quick check of the first page of Cole’s version of part 3 reveals that he didn’t read it as a simple cipher or codebook, because repeated code-numbers only rarely get decoded as the same letter (for example, the five instances of ’96’ get decoded as “s / e / r / h / n”). Yet this seems somewhat odd: if there was some kind of strange offsetting going on, the distribution of code-numbers would not need to so closely resemble the kind of distribution you see in code book ciphers.
But once you confess to having taken a single step down the whole “it’s actually a strange cipher pretending to be a codebook code” route, nobody will believe a word you say, right?
Yes the codes are broken! I am giving them out free for all to see at http://www.bealetreasurecodes.com
As my Beale decodes are no good this may be of interest
71+2=142= L
194+2=388= X
38+2=76 = X
1701+2=3402=V
89+2=178 =V
76+2=152 =V
11+2= 22= V THIS = 90,
THIS COULD BE EDGAR ALLAN POES SWISS BANK ACCOUNT NUMBER Which i will claim,for,to go with the gold,silver jewels,and valuable iron cooking pots,
I don’t know any of the ‘Gentlemen’… mentioned previously. Although… I probably have conversed with them elsewhere about the Beale mystery. Not that I’m not friendly, because I am.
We just happen to be looking at this problem from different… perspectives, so to speak.
Many have ‘web-sites’… I do not.
Many are ‘committed to the idea that this mystery has something to do with the writings of Edgar Allen Poe.’ I am not.
Many ‘alledged’ re-searchers of this mystery, feel that it has something to do with ‘a massive Treasure’ of ‘Gold and Silver!’
“I DO NOT!!!”
In fact… I don’t 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!!” And that’s a fact!
And they, “especially”… HAVE NO IDEA of what they are looking for!
Nick:
Your Beale Papers and Poe fans may wish to review this monograph comparing errors in the Beale “2” cipher and Poe’s 1840 Broome County Cypher:
http://www.lasthauntingofedgarallanpoe.com/Doppelganger_Pattern.pdf
Here is another interesting coincidence,concerning the gillogy strings
122 byDoI= F 122=5 MY KEY
113 byDoI= G 113=5+5+5=15=O
6 byDoI= H 6=6+5+5=16=P
140 byDoi = I 140=5+6+6=17=Q
8 byDoI = I 8=8+5+5=18=R
120 byDoI = J 120=3+8+8=19=S
MY CODE KEY,ADD CODE DIGITS TO TWICE THE PREVIOUS ADDED CODE DIGITS.
TRY IT ON THE REST OF THE CODE, THIS BIT ISNT IN MY BOOK, BEALE TREASURE CIPHER SUCCESS, fastprint PETERBOROUGH ENGLAND.LET ME KNOW ANY RESULTS. STAN CLAYTON.
dont buy any more books concerning the Beale treasure location codes its all a big con trick,perpetrated by authors
keeping the myths alive by rehashing old theories and digging up new ones some of you have read my book and realised i have found the truth,ive contacted most of the people interested in treasure solutions and sent them samples of the decodes to save them buying my book but they dont want to know and dismiss them as coincidence. but i still claim to be the only published logicle key to the treasure location code, and time will prove im correct stan clayton
I do not believe that there ever was any code except the description. It was made simple. The others were not real. If this were on the up and up THE LIST OF HEIRS would be the most important and very easy to de-code. But a true list of family members would lead to Beale who is a hoax. Hence two meaningless codes.
the ciphers are real..they lead to a point, well actually several…they tell where it was…they tell where it is…and what it is…they tell alot more too…although not 30 peoples next of kin haha….is it gold and silver ?…or only statues in the sand ?..who are the 3 ?..i could put their names in print but not my place to do so…could poe be involved ?..one could easily go down that path…the wrong one of course..along with several other wrong paths…by design…only dogged determination can get one to the end…along the way you will be reduced to the lowest of the low..pure humiliation, but then you will see, and realize it was worth the candle…one should keep a close eye on a mr roy dallas…his bealekey website seems very quiet as of late….there is a reason why i am sure…soon enough you will learn the truth i would think….not a hoax..just a game of working problems to a solution…the answers are right there…
anonymous associate: I wish Roy Dallas good luck as well, though I’d have to say that every claimed decrypt of any cipher mystery I’ve seen to date containing the word “gematria” rapidly proves to be worthless. Or should I say 24-15-18-20-8-12-5-19-19, i.e. 6-6-9-2-8-3-5-1-1?
I bekive it was found and moved to another location will let u know in July 2014
tracker0001: OK, though because people have told me all kinds of similar things in the past that have turned out not to be the case, we’ll have to wait and see, I guess…
Anonymous Associate: Right on!
For me…the Golden Gnomon…108.
Telltale signs in retrospect…hindsight is 20/20.
I’ve been playing around with cipher 3, and found that if you use the full text of the Consitution, you come up with “Four in the shall person” for the first five numbers. I plan on plodding through it more, checking to see if there is some cohesion here.
IM SURPRISED NO ONE HAS CHECKED MY KEYS TO THE LOCATION, TRY 71 ADDED =8 +7 =CARRY ON TO GET/ OUR PXT IRYST MAP TO BURIAL CACHED PLOT RC JAYS ZEBIDAYA.THE ADDED 7 IS FROM THE MISSING LETTER TO MORRIS FROM ST LOUIS THE S = +19 OR
MINUS 7 AND THE PXT IS 89 ADDED 17+7=II3 =I MAKING PIT.DO THE SAME TO IRST. THATS A CLUE TO DECODE MORE LATER MY BOOK IS NOW OUT OF PRINT BEST OF LUCK . STAN CLAYTON
I just heard of this and thought someone would use a book of the same time period so i googled popular literature 1800s and moby dick and history of sperm whale came up. The HIST OF sperm whale was written by Thomas Bealle. And the treasure hiders name is thomas bealle. And the whole thing is a goose chase like moby dick.
Chisum: that particular Thomas Beale (1807-1849) spent almost all his life in London, apart from the two-year trip on a whaling ship in 1830 he described in his book. The probability that he had anything to with the events / places / times described in the Beale Papers would therefore seem to be close to zero, sorry.
I didn’t 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.
Chisum: that particular Thomas Beale’s 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. And the DoI does seem to have played a part in the construction of the (as-yet-undecrypted) B1 and B3 as well as of B2, even if we don’t yet know what that part was.
I’m far more convinced that the Thomas Beale in question may well have been the one I’ve just posted about here: http://ciphermysteries.com/2015/05/23/the-two-thomas-beales 🙂
I’m not leaning towards it being real or a hoax I am considering anything possible pre the publishing of the Beall Papers 1885ish.
BEALE’S TREASURE
If you know the stories, Beale’s group was said to be thirty or forty men. They toiled in the gold fields to mine a treasure for two years. Ten men plus Beale traveled back from their mine to Buford’s tavern but decided against burying their treasure in a closeby cavern and selected a new unidentified location to bury it. Morriss didn’t open the box with the cryptograms for twenty-three years when it should have been ten. So what do you suppose all these people did during that time? For sure, the eleven people that buried the treasure knew where it was and had twenty-three years to collect it without Morriss or anyone else knowing.
Morriss was supposed to have received an envelope from Beales’ unknown friend in ten years, which provided the “key” to the treasure. The “key” would have been identifying the three documents used to create the cryptograms so they could easily be solved, (ie. The Declaration of Independence). Perhaps it included the key to his locked box too. If he got that letter, he would have immediately known where the treasure was and collected it himself. After all, he thought Beales group were all dead?
What are the chances that all eleven people died during those years? No chance at all. How about the chances that someone got the greedy itch to be ultra rich? Every chance in the world! What’s the chance they would contact Morriss to get cryptogram directions to the treasure? No chance at all, because they didn’t need them. What’s the chance the eleven kept quiet about the treasure? No chance at all. Some would have at the very least, told the other twenty or thirty of Beale’s group. The group of thirty or forty that had spouses or siblings, wouldn’t have kept quiet either.
There are warnings throughout Beale’s letter to Morriss about spending valuable time searching for the treasure. If you have nothing better to do, go ahead. If your family will suffer in any way, don’t do it. That’s a subtle hint that the whole story is a ruse and a waste of time. Knowing human nature, if there was a treasure, it was found almost 200 years ago and kept secret, otherwise, they would be killed by Beale’s group or someone else that knew where the treasure was.
Based on geographical isolation and known historical/political fact pertaining to the old Spanish/Pueblo, Santa Fe trail region of Nuevo Mexico circa. 1817, not much chance at all Larry. 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. 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. What I’m most particularly skeptical of is, what did they hope to gain from the slaughter of bison, which were a protected local industry allready. Canadian sourced hides would have been cheap as (buffalo) chips in Boston at that time, from what I understand and also hides not being easy to prepare for selling back east, should have been a deterant to any such consideration in the first instance. We are talking about a rarely ever attempted western trek of the greatest potential peril here, well before Santa Fe trail discovery by white intending settlers, thirty years before the Suttors Mill gold strike in 1849, and only a dozen years after the U.S. Army, at Jefferson’s behest, sent Captains Lewis and Clarke off on their two year arduous journey of western discovery…They say that gold is where you find it, and so the Beale team were unlikely to have found any in the Rockies, because they didn’t likely go there; it follows that there is also not likely to be any treasure secreted somewhere near Burford’s tavern in Virginia. The only thing I know to be fact concerning the tricky cipher is, that at least part of it is based on Jefferson’s United States Declaration of Independence, which was of itself inked for the Continental Congress of 4th July, 1776, on only the very finest pre birth, bovine velum parchment. “since carbon dated to 1421 (joking fellas)”….
Interesting tidbits John. I refer to the story that someone found an empty underground chamber in the area. It could be that the discovery was an indication that the Beale treasure had been found long ago. We’ll never know. I spent twenty years trying to identify where the Lost Dutchman’s mine was, as I live close by in Mesa, Arizona. I believe I found where it could possibly be, but it means trespassing on federal land and a National Monument! It would be in an incredibly difficult place to get to also. I tried to get there anyway, but couldn’t for various reasons. Of course, It doesn’t help that I’m seventy years old and a recent double amputee. So, I’ll never know and I’ll take the information to my grave. That’s what any treasure hunter worth his salt would do!
Larry: Your own interest in the lost Dutchman mine, is somewhat reminiscent of our best known Australian equivalent, Lasseters reef circa. 1900-1930, of which a great deal has been written over the years. You can get a pretty good background on the Wiki entry and a lot of research material, including Ion Idriess’ authoritive ‘Lasseters last ride’, is still available and very worthwhile for people like us who are getting to be a tad too old for the hunt. As they like to tell us “Let your fingers do the walking” ie. page turning.
Read it when I was a boy … reefs of shining gold rising from the desert. Nuggets as big as your head, too heavy to carry.
I have a map.
Larry: A couple more thoughts related to American buffalo demograohics prior to almost total decimation of the plains variety by the 1880s. During the period of their ascendency, the huge herds ranged across the great plains where prairie grasses were in abundance. The western extent of their east west, seasonal migration pattern would have reached half way across Colorado to about where interstate 25 runs in a north/south direction for its entirety. The Southern Rockies acted as the western barrier to the range, and whilst some smaller herds may have wintered in protected alpine valleys, they were known not to be in such numbers sufficient to sustain the tribal indian food needs. 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. They claimed to have been tracking a massive herd north in May about 250 – 300 miles from their starting point to a location near to where ‘South Park’ of sitcom fame, is situated today, which is where they allegedly came upon their gold reef…I can’t imagine that buffalo (bison) of the numbers suggested would have been encountered anywhere within two to three hundred miles of the hunters’ location during any part of their trek. During spring through fall, the big herds would have been confined to the plains well to the east, gorging on the abundant, essential prairy grasses necessary to sustain their masses. I find it quite inexplicable that the Beale shooting party should travel so far west in the first instance, unless gold exploration was always part of their quest. Had they wished, they could have satisfied their blood lust pleasure far closer to home, in Missouri, with it’s access to vast plains on the western banks of the ‘Big Muddy’. 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.
12 may be the key.
I’m not so certain that the beale papers actually direct anyone to a massive treasure of riches, as much as I think it’s going to lead to something gruesome. Something that has been hidden in the darkness of our countries past. The idea was to lure people in to finding and exposing this horror through the enticement of untold riches.
I believe that this grim story and whatever secrets are being kept and hidden away behind this puzzle were carried out by a single individual, it likely involved the deaths of many people, possibly cannibalism and satanic practices. 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.
I am something of a “Medium” and am in tune with God and Creation, and the Various other spirits in this world. I have decoded a number of messages and texts contained within the Beale Papers and the names associated with them.
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 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. Incidentally There are many messages encoded into these texts, some maybe informative as to the situation to expect regarding the narrative of this story but they will not provide the answer to where this “treasure” is located or “who” was involved. It’ll just provide context.
An aspect of this mystery that I’m sure people are far to cynical to want to consider is, I believe all of this was created, perpetuated, and set out into the world by a single person. A person who had advanced knowledge of knowing that this wouldn’t be solved for quite a long time and that it was meant for and intended for specific person to decode it. Given the circumstances and the amount of information I have gleaned from a superficial examination of information contained within the beale papers, I really do think that I was the one expected to figure it out.
There is a reference at the end of the Beale Papers which points the would be treasure hunter to the next text to use to decode one of the cyphers. Paraphrased the text said to take his advice after he had lost everything to trying to solve these papers that you need to take care of all of your obligations and at the end of the day when your work is done, there is no harm pursuing these texts for a little while from time to time but not to let it consume you.