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Episode 445 - The Golden Owl and Other Treasure Hunts (Back to the Conspiracy)
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Josh and M use the excuse that the Golden Owl has been found to take a trip back to the conspiracy and look at treasure hunts like the Fenn Treasure, Masquerade, Hareraiser, the Eternity Puzzles, and the Publius Enigma.
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Transcript
Introduction of Hosts
00:00:04
Speaker
the podcast's Guide to the Conspiracy featuring Josh Edison and Im Dinteth.
Academic Projects Discussion
00:00:17
Speaker
and welcome to the podcaster guide to the conspiracy in auckland new zealand i am josh edison and shuhai china who you going to call It's Associate Professor M.R.X.Dentist. I ain't afraid of no academic article. Good. That's why we're going to give you a call. Precisely. Oh, the writing I've been doing recently, Joshua. The writing I have been doing. Doing writing I have.
00:00:40
Speaker
Yes, so right. just and just Just in general, or for a specific academic purpose? Well, mostly for specific academic purposes. So I've been reworking the paper I gave at Kent, and I've just finished a co-authored piece with Milena Sapos for the Social Press Modji Review and Reply Collective, which when it gets published, we will talk about on the podcast, because I think it's an interesting little debate going on there.
00:01:08
Speaker
And I've also been working on two other papers, one with Marty Orr, one with Curtis Hagen. So there's been lots and lots of exciting writing going on there, but most of it I want to keep kind of under wraps because so as to go through the whole peer review process. But exciting writing at least has the benefit of rhyming.
00:01:32
Speaker
So therefore it must be good. Well, that is my rationale. Well, um i guess I guess that discharges our duty of of talking about what you've been up to in the past Fortnite
Golden Owl Treasure Update
00:01:45
Speaker
academically. So maybe we should shoot straight into the topic of this episode, which I guess this is a bit bit back to the conspiracy one. we Yeah, so I was thinking about the new topic just before. So we're doing a news update for a story we've never covered and then using that news update for a story we never covered to talk about stories we have covered, wish themselves have some updates.
00:02:08
Speaker
so obviously it's it's one of those it's just one of those as Cole paul Porter would say it's just one of those things right well in that case we'll play some sort of a sting now I think we will play the back to the conspiracy sting but it's a loosely back to the conspiracy news update news episode about old news made new news they Buckle up. We're going back to the conspiracy.
00:02:42
Speaker
So if you were listening last episode, we we said we we had a bit of news and then we thought, actually, why don't we save this bit of news for the next episode? Because there's ah we we can talk about a whole bunch of stuff based upon it. And now it is that next episode. And so now we are going to talk about it. Because a couple of weeks ago, a friend of the podcast Hayden sent me a link to a news article which showed that the Golden Owl has been found. Yes, this is not. This is not false news, this is not fake. The Golden Owl has been located. Now, if that is your KGB activation phrase, be aware the meeting is in the park at 11.03pm. Not 11.02, not 11.04, 11.03pm. The meeting will be
00:03:33
Speaker
in the park and the doves roost at midnight.
History of the Golden Owl Hunt
00:03:37
Speaker
Right, but if you're not a KGB agent, ah then you might have heard of the the the the famous buried golden owl hidden by it in a treasure hunt in France. Yeah, and this is one of these things, as we're going to talk about with respect to other stories, there was kind of a craze in the late 80s and early 90s for people to bury treasure and then leave clues to how it can be found. In this case, ah the clues were in a French book published in 1993 by a man called Max Valentin, or not, as we'll see. The book is called S'ilatras de la Chouête d'Or, on the trail of the golden owl, and it was a book that had an illustrated book that had, I think,
00:04:24
Speaker
11 clues, and then there was a 12th clue, which would become apparent after you got the 11 or something like that, ah to the location of a treasure. So what it actually what they they made this golden owl. It's an owl made out of gold and silver, diamond encrusted, worth apparently in 1993, it was estimated to be worth 150,000 euros.
00:04:48
Speaker
Wikipedia said it's worth around €231,000 now, but your inflation calculator
Gold Investment Discussion
00:04:53
Speaker
begs to differ? Well, yes. so well So, I mean, inflation is inflation. The price of gold is the price of gold. So, gold an hour that was worth €150,000 in 1993 is said to be worth around about €231,000 now.
00:05:09
Speaker
According to inflation, 150,000 euros in 1993 is the equivalent of in present day monies, which means that gold has not kept up with inflation. And I find this amusing because people like Alex Jones, who are saying you should always be putting your money in gold and not in banks, this is bad investment advice. Gold is not keeping up with inflation. Your gold is worth less now than it was 10 or 20 years ago. Let that be a lesson. don't The podcaster's guide to the conspiracy, our financial advice is, do not invest in gold. No, invest in gold. But if you do own gold,
00:05:59
Speaker
if you do own gold do send it to the podcasters guide the conspiracy because as gold is a bad investment we will take care of that gold for you as in we will take it off your hand because you will give us legal ownership of that gold and we will take your worthless gold and we will just keep it because we will jump on that grenade for you you does have You don't need that gold, we are willing to take that gold off of you. So please do send all of your gold and your parents' gold and your children's gold to the podcast's Guide to the Conspiracy. We will take that gold off your hand and that one hand, not both, just one hand, off your hand, that is a no gold back guarantee. Damn right. But if you don't have any gold,
00:06:44
Speaker
then maybe you should have been looking for... And if you don't have any gold, get some gold to send it to us. Yeah, which you could have done. by by hunting for this golden owl, ah but you're too late
Golden Owl Ownership Controversy
00:06:55
Speaker
now. and So the gold the the ah the the golden owl existed. It wasn't actually buried in a secret location. It was kept by the author who had this big photograph of, here's me with this owl, which you can win if you solve my riddles three or 11 or whatever it was. So there was a bronze replica of the owl had been buried somewhere in France. And by solving all of these riddles, you would find the exact location of it.
00:07:19
Speaker
um and so the the First of all, we should probably justify talking about this in a podcast that is normally about conspiracy theories by pointing out that there were several people in on this, so it does, I guess, count as a conspiracy. yeah Because there's the author and then there's the artist, and also the artist turns out to be the sculptor.
00:07:40
Speaker
so Max Valentin, who is a pseudonym, we'll get into that in a minute, wrote the riddles. Michel Becker was the artist who provided the art that goes along with the riddles, because you find with these kind of treasure hunts the images are meant to give evidence for the riddles and riddles are meant to be aided by the evidence of the images. And Becker also turned out to be a sculptor of metals, so also made the gaudial to go along with the images and the text. So yes, Monsieur Valentin was actually a pseudonym of a communications expert by the name of Regis Hauser.
00:08:26
Speaker
Now, he died in 2009. Is he related to Cole Howser? Or Wings Howser. His name is Wings Howser. I mean, is this is this the Howser trilogy here? We can only hope, yeah. But unfortunately... There's a deep cut that only in very few listeners will ever get fans of 90s action films, yes. ah but no And the great film Paparazzi.
00:08:50
Speaker
But when Mr. Villantan or Mr. Hauser died in 2009, then Michel Becker, the illustrator and sculptor, he sort of took over the hunt. And there was apparently a bit of a legal battle over the whole thing, whether control of the of the role and control of the Golden Owl should have gone to him. I don't know if Mr. Hauser's relatives thought they should have got it or something like that. but um Yeah, I think it was a dispute over the literary estate because the book is attributed to Max Valentin. I think the family took it that Max Valentin was Regis Hauser. I think Michelle Becker took it, well, Max Valentin is a pseudonym. It refers to both the writer and the artist here. So, of course, I should take over the estate.
00:09:42
Speaker
Think which is actually interesting about this. So in the note that says in 2011, Becker had managed to claim ownership of the owl. According to the legal documents, he only actually got proper legal authority over the book in 2021 when the book was reissued. Yes.
Ongoing Golden Owl Mysteries
00:10:01
Speaker
So in in 2011, he basically just made the claim, said, ye no, I'm it falls to me. I have the owl. And this became particularly controversial because he he claimed he was going to sell it.
00:10:11
Speaker
at one point and even before ownership of it had been fully established the court said no even if you do own it you cannot sell it because technically it belongs to whoever wins the whoever solves the riddle there'd been an earlier thing as well i think in a few years earlier the publisher of the original book had gone under or something and they tried to claim that they owned that They wanted to sell the owl ah for their own good, but um all of these things managed to be sorted out without the owl getting transferred and ownership to anyone else.
00:10:43
Speaker
So in 2021, Mr. Becker finally was was officially made the the, what would you call it, administrator of the treasure hunt? No, the keeper of the owl. The keeper of the owl. so This is going to be one of those words we keep on saying it, owl is going to lose all meaning what's whatsoever. As well it should. Damn owls. What do they who did I think they are? But the the the solution, the location of the buried owl, ah before Mr. Valentin's death, he had he had um written the location of the owl and and placed it in a sealed envelope. And once Mr. Becker, actually the rulings went in his favour, he he then opened it, found out the location of the owl, went and dug it up to make sure it was still actually there. There was a little bit of Yeah, which is interesting because it wasn't. So when he went to dig up the owl, he discovered that the bronze owl that he had made wasn't there, and there was a rusty iron bird, and none of the sources mention which species this bird was, so we have to assume it wasn't an owl, otherwise it's a a rusty iron owl was in its place.
00:11:52
Speaker
And so Becker created a brand new bronze owl to put in the place of where the old bronze owl was meant to be. And there is an unanswered question here. What happened to the original owl? Was it a case that at some point Regis went to the location where the owl was meant to be located to check that it was there?
00:12:13
Speaker
dug in the location, discovered it wasn't there, and then has someone found the owl, and they haven't got in contact with me, or was the owl just dug up accidentally, not related to the treasure hunt? But whatever the case, at some point it is assumed that the owls had put an iron bird in the owl's place, and no one knows why. But nevertheless, there was um then a bronze owl in the proper place,
00:12:40
Speaker
and the um the search could resume. And as as you would probably expect, there was sort of ah a um an online community of of owl hunters. They had a nickname for themselves, which I don't think I wrote down. It was probably something cute and a bit silly. And people would pour over the clues. There was One of the articles I read about this linked to, you can find a PDF of the whole thing on this website. And I went to the website and it said, yeah, we don't actually host that PDF anymore. Sorry, they asked us to take it down. But I mean, if you go on Wikipedia, ah the the Wikipedia page for The the Hunt for the Golden Owl,
00:13:14
Speaker
lists, I think, all of the riddles and how they have or have not been solved officially. But it turns out... Can we get some examples? Yeah, yeah, go... So I've got an example here of a riddle which has been solved and a riddle that if it has been solved, the answer has not been made public. So here is our riddle solved, opening. My first, first half of the half of the first age,
00:13:40
Speaker
proceeds my second and third seeking their way. My fourth is inspired, my fifth is in range, but without protest follows my fourth and the Roman Alpha. My sixth is hidden at the limit of eternity. My seventh, standing, spits his demon. To find my all, just be wise, because the truth in truth will not be a Devon's affair. Josh, how what does that mean? Well, I mean, first of all, it would have been in French originally, so it's been translated for for a starter.
00:14:10
Speaker
um But basically, when you're talking about my my first, second and third, obviously this this this is spelling out a word, and you're having to figure out what each of these letters are based on the clues. And ah basically, ah so my my first first half of the half of the first age refers to the word baby, and so the and the first of that is B.
00:14:30
Speaker
um And it it sort of it goes on and on and on. It ends up ends up B-O-U-R-G-E-S, which is the French city of Bourges. So the very first riddle, when people solved that, gave them a starting point of at least the the city in France, that this was somewhere near.
00:14:48
Speaker
Although it turns out an owl is a small thing compared to a city. It is. I need to hide an owl in a city. I've hidden several owls in Auckland alone. But you'll you'll notice that there it talks about it gives all the letters, the first to the seventh letter,
00:15:03
Speaker
And then has the next little bit to find my all just to be wise, because the truth and truth will not be a Devon's affair. Apparently all of the riddles have a little extra bit that isn't specifically needed to solve that riddle, but apparently once you have all 11, the extra bits from each of those 11 riddles then let you solve the final one or something like that. Yeah, so essentially those extra bits make up the 12th riddle. Now here's an unsolved one. First step, wherever you want, by the Ross and the Coachman,
00:15:32
Speaker
But we have to by the compass and the foot. Now this one is interesting because according to Houser this was the second most important riddle of the game and yet the elders been found but no one seems to know what it means.
00:15:48
Speaker
in Well, yes, presumably the people who did actually solve the riddle well did did find it and have solved everything. No, but they haven't haven't released it yet. So apparently, in order to in order to actually claim the prize, you had to not just produce the owl, but also produce your solutions to all of the riddles you know to guard against someone figuring out more or less the right area and then just going over it with a metal detector or something like that. And that's going to be important for another story. We're going to look at the story of masquerade.
00:16:17
Speaker
So supposedly, in order to have claimed the prize, someone or some group of people but quite possibly will have at least have to have shown to Monsieur Becker that they have solved every one of these riddles and he has accepted their solution.
Comparison with Other Treasure Hunts
00:16:32
Speaker
And so that's that's that's the gold now. It took, what was it, 1993? So that's 31 years it took them to find that.
00:16:40
Speaker
uh making it a quote from what from what i read it's the second longest running treasure hunt of this kind there was another one that took longer like i can't i can't remember which one that was uh but when i read that i thought oh no now this will be a good this will be a good thing to talk about this is like a news update because we've talked about this before haven't we And I look back at our old notes because I remembered we did an episode about this. so And we talked about a whole bunch of these these hidden treasury things. And it turns out we did. The bonus episode that accompanied Episode 272 was a whole look at a bunch of these treasure hunting type sort of conspiracies. ah Turned out the Golden Owl was not one of the ones we talked about originally. No, we'd never even thought to locate the Golden Owl back in 2022. No. um So that means though, that like that we can now move into the behind the conspiracy. and behind the conspiracy the Back thanks to the conspiracy. the yeah
00:17:38
Speaker
That's exactly what I said, you'll edit out the sausages and make people see how the sausage is made. Fortunately for me, Ian will edit out that embarrassingly long gap where I try to measure the word back. No I won't. I will not at all. In fact, actually, I will probably put the volume and the loudness up so high that it blasts everybody's ears. I might put echo in.
00:17:57
Speaker
Now, maybe even music to presage the era to come. I mean, I'm not going to do that because it would be a lot of work. But you can imagine a situation where you get this kind of foreboding tone as you get closer and closer to Josh not knowing the name of the segment we're doing in this podcast.
00:18:15
Speaker
But nevertheless, we are doing it. It's back to the conspiracy. Here it is. Let's talk about the things that we do. And of course, because we talked about it in a bonus here episode several years ago, um you, our regular listeners, will not have heard this in anyway. So it'll all be you anyway.
00:18:30
Speaker
So the first thing we talked about was the... field Do you know why we talked about this? Was it just... so I cannot remember... It was a new story that one of us had come across at some point? I think... Oh yes, because it yeah know so it must have been... It it was an Ars Technica story, actually, from memory, which I had read on Ars Technica.
00:18:52
Speaker
and then was going well this seems like the kind of thing we like to talk about in the bonus episodes because there was a period of time where we were doing art related stories and kind of art forgeries, art history, art related things and this was about an artist producing a treasure hunt and so it was a perfect fit for the bonus episodes at that time.
00:19:15
Speaker
So would this have been the Fenn treasure then? It would have been the Fenn treasure. So the Fenn treasure was a treasure planted not in the Fenns, which are a kind of marsh, but in the Rocky Mountains, which are not a marsh at all. And this was due to the work of Forrest Fenn, who was a Fenn.
00:19:38
Speaker
So actually, the whole the whole man's life is a lie. Neither a Forrest nor a Finn, named for God knows what reason. But Forrest Finn was a US Air Force may major who, as we note at the time, participated in the utterly unnecessary Vietnam War.
00:19:57
Speaker
Post coming back from service ended up running an art gallery He was diagnosed with what appeared to be terminal cancer in 1988 and he decided to start a kind of hidden treasure caper with the idea that he would create like the hunt for the Golden Owl and masquerade we'll talk about in just a minute a a book wherein he would leave clues for the location of a treasure, which, quite chillingly, according to his original plan, would also be where his grave would be located. So he's digging away, finding treasure. Oh, and here's a bit of corpse on on the side. What grim fun that would turn out to be.
00:20:41
Speaker
So he has cancer in 1988, he decides to plan his final resting place and make it into a fun treasure hunting caper at the same time. He then recovers from his seemingly terminal cancer, but he ends up writing the book The Thrill of the Chase, a memoir in which he still goes through on the caper itself,
00:21:04
Speaker
So he plants a cache, a treasure chest which contains gold nuggets, rare coins, jewellery in gemstones, somewhere north of Santa Fe in New Mexico, and and in the book he has a poem which contains nine clues about the exact whereabouts of this treasure. Josh, would you like to read this poem out? I would. The poem goes As I have gone alone in the air and with my treasures bold, I can keep my secret rare and hint of riches, new and old. Begin it where warm waters halt and take it in the canyon down, not too far, too far to walk, put in below the home of Brown.
00:21:43
Speaker
From there it's no place for the meek, the end is ever drawing nigh, there'll be no pedal up your creek, just heavy loads and water high. If you've been wise and found the blaze, look quickly down on your quest to cease, but tarry scant with marvel gaze, just take the chest and go in peace. So why is it that I must go and leave my trove for all to seek? The answers I already know, I've done it tired and now I'm weak.
00:22:05
Speaker
So hear me all and listen good, your effort will be worth the cold. If you are brave and in the wood, I give you title to the gold. So yes, this is a poem with nine clues about the exact whereabouts of a treasure worth, at the time, a cool two million US dollars. dollars and if you're asking yourself how does a retired Air Force major have access to a million US s well he owned a art gallery thus the art connection that we used to go for and our bonus
00:22:40
Speaker
episodes and that art gallery was bringing in around about six million a year. So two million isn't small change but it is also just a third of an annual income and if I had if i had six million a year And I then spent 2 million of that on an art caper. I still have 4 million a year to live off and that would probably be fine. Although, admittedly, with the rising cost of living, I'd only be able to buy one or two houses a year back home at that rate.
00:23:13
Speaker
Yes, yes, but nevertheless, I'd take it. You you can give me six million dollars. I could live on four million a year with absolute A's. absolute days Now the treasure itself was contained in a bronze box. It was said to weigh about 10 kgs. ah Because it weighed so much, then it ended up kind of delivering items to the location over a period of time.
00:23:41
Speaker
And when the book came out, five people died. Josh, what happened there? Well, nothing sinister, unfortunately, more more just tragic. Like we say, it was in in a mountainous area north of Santa Fe. um And, you know, if you saw it in the um in the in the poem there, he talks about going through waters, going down a canyon, no place for the meek, going up high, pedaling. So it was obviously in fairly sort of treacherous terrain in some places.
00:24:11
Speaker
and And yes, so basically five people died, what just by all accounts were accidental deaths out in the wilderness looking for this stuff. But apparently that was enough for both the authorities and Mr. Finn's family members to say, can you look, can you can you actually stop the hunt, please? can you know People are dying. ah can we Can we call it all to a... put an end to it perhaps.
00:24:34
Speaker
Also, apparently didn happen. No, no. People were also arrested for damaging property and aid of the search. What was the one about? Put it but below put it put in below the home of Brown. I don't know if a brown family's house ended up getting broken into, but Mr. Finn's house apparently got broken into at one point by someone who thought maybe it was all a all a cunning trick and the treasure was actually in his place under under their very noses all along or something. Well yes, and actually that that's going to be interesting when we look into the people who claim to have found the true of the treasure, because the treasure was found back
00:25:09
Speaker
on June 6th in 2020 and Finn wrote on his personal blog, was under a canopy of stars in the lush forested vegetation of the rocky mountains and had not moved from the spot where i hid it more than ten years ago I do not know the person who found it, but the poem in my book led him to the precise spot. I congratulate the thousands of people who participated in the search and hope they will continue to be drawn by the promise of other discoveries. So the search is over, look for more information and photos in the coming days. And indeed, photos were taken of the cat.
00:25:47
Speaker
of the cachet to kind of prove the existence, because it had always been a worry that the treasure did not exist at all. Now, initially, the finder wanted to remain anonymous. And by the time we reported this back in the bonus episode for episode 2.7.2, the identity of the treasure finder was not known at that time. And because the finder wanted to remain anonymous, people went, oh, it's just another part of the hoax. There was no treasure.
00:26:22
Speaker
or Finn's just trying to get away from all of the claims of people trying to locate it by preemptively saying it has been located. So for example, Chris and Christopher Hurst claimed that they had found the treasure first, but they claimed that the treasure itself was a journey and not a physical item at all. So they didn't deny that there was a treasure,
00:26:48
Speaker
but they claimed that Finn had kept the treasure in a casket in a bank vault the entire time. And that's because they claimed, based upon the poem, that they had located the price location cut using maps the day before the treasure was announced. So they said, look, we relocated it on a map, and we told you about that.
00:27:10
Speaker
whilst you didn't accept that we had found it by locating it on a map and told us to keep looking. Yes, and then the next day he said, ah, it's been found. game over so yeah so uh tony um tony dokopil uh anchor for cvs this morning he at the time apparently said it was a hoax because he said that he had been told by mr fenn that he planned to be buried with the treasure which i don't know which was the original plan yeah was it just he was confused about the original plan or did he think that was what was actually going on Or quite possibly, Finn had told people at the time, look, if nobody finds the treasure, then my original plan, which is to be buried with it, is going to go ahead. Yeah, say yes, I don't know if that necessarily means anything. But eventually, now, when he said there in his statement, I do not know the person who found it, I assume what he meant is
00:28:00
Speaker
this person wasn't an acquaintance of mine or anything. They are a complete stranger. There's no connection that they could have exploited to have found it. They found it on their own, ah rather than the the the the identity of the person who found it as a mystery, even to me, because um There were eventually um images that he posted, Mr Fenn posted, and they you'd think that would settle it. He said, look, here here's here's here's the cache, here's the treasure, um it's been found, it's no longer and underground, or I assume it was buried.
00:28:33
Speaker
in Santa Fe, but that wasn't enough for some people. why so know Apparently the treasure was sitting out in the open. It says it was in such a distant location in the rocky mountains that the chance of someone stumbling across it would be rather low. Right, right but nevertheless, um having published these pictures, um still still some people thought maybe the whole thing was actually a scan.
00:29:01
Speaker
um So later, in 2020, a guy called Jack Stuuf, who was a medical student from Michigan... Is it Stu for staff? It's not a UEF, if it's due, but it's... Because the only reason I'm saying staff is that the game The Seventh Guest, the villain in that, is staff, and it's spelled the same way. Oh, maybe it is, maybe it is Jack Stu. I'm afraid I don't know.
00:29:23
Speaker
ah But he's a medical student from Michigan, and he revealed that he was the one who had found Finn's treasure chest. Orkest. Both, actually. Both the chest and the chest were but found by Jack Staff or Stu. But um but there was that there that was not the end of it. um Apparently, in July of 2021, a French treasure hunter those Wylie French again named Bruno Rafoz, he sued him, filed a 10 million lawsuit. So why are you saying those Wylie are the Wylie French again with respect to the first story as opposed to other French people in this particular story? He filed a lawsuit against Fens Estate. According to his complaint, Mr Rafoz had determined that the treasure was hidden in southwestern Colorado and had said as the two
00:30:11
Speaker
as Chris and Christopher Hurst, apparently, he'd got in touch and said, I know where it is. I'm going to go and find it. His plans were delayed um by COVID. This is where we're in 2020 now. So the COVID-19 pandemic was in full swing. And apparently after he'd said that, Finn announced that the treasure had been found in Wyoming. um And so Mr. Monsieur Rafolz has contended that Finn took advantage of the delay to move the chest from Colorado to Wyoming.
00:30:39
Speaker
um And he he he points out that apparently Mr. Staff or whatever, has no one has ever actually said, here's the precise location where I found it. It's something that's going to say, I found it. And Finn said, yep, he sure did. um But nobody said it. But um the suit was dismissed on July 16th, 2021.
00:31:01
Speaker
and nothing more seems to have come of that. I assume that it talks about he's suing Fenn's estate and that nothing had been specified, that the final occasion hadn't been specified by Fenn's relatives. I assume Mr. Fenn had died by this point. I actually don't know. I have read a death note just there. So as far as we know, as far as we know, it's done. It was found. There was some disagreement over it. But a guy says he found it. Mr. Fenn said, yep, he sure did. And that, as far as we know, is that.
00:31:31
Speaker
Yes, and this is, I mean, what's interesting about this particular legal case is the claim of conspiracy here, that having alerted FEN that I've located the treasure, but I have not found it in a technical sense of having touched it, is the claim that FEN and presumably Associates, because it's a 10 kg cachet of treasure, then decided to move the treasure to a new location presumably to allow this jackstoof or staff to find it in his stead instead. So there is a claim here. It's the it's a claim of moving the treasure from one location to another, which is quite fascinating about this. Yes, but again, that that those claims appear to have come to nothing, at least in a legal sense, and there doesn't appear to be anything more to say. So shall we move on to the masquerade?
The Masquerade Book and Controversies
00:32:22
Speaker
end Indeed. this masquera this seems This seems to have been the one that started, maybe not started at all, but it was definitely the inspiration for The Hunt for the Golden Owl and possibly others. This is the same thing, essentially. This is back in 1979.
00:32:36
Speaker
um And this was in England now. So a man called kitwi Kit Williams published a picture book and it is on the trail of the gold now. It was a treasure hunt for, in this case, a jeweled rabbit, or rather a hare, I suppose. They're not the same, are they? A jeweled rabbit. They are not the same at all. They would confuse your hares with your rabbits. I mean, I don't think they can even interbreed. Possibly not, no. But I do not know my um What's the word for rabbits? There is a word for it. So actually, so it's the lesson genus is you pull I-E-P-U-R-E? No, okay, that's not a word I know of. Which is also the ro Romanian word for rabbit as well. Yeah, pudding? or Something like that? That'll do. It's not about them anyway. ah It's about a hunt for a golden
00:33:28
Speaker
statue of one. So yeah this book, this but said this seems to be what kept things off, what what what inspired the various other cases um of this. It was a picture book, it had 15 paintings about a character called Jack here, who was a here.
00:33:45
Speaker
carrying a treasure from the moon to the sun, and he loses the treasure en route, and so you the reader are then tasked with finding it. It was placed in a ceramic casket, ah both for protection and apparently to make it harder to find with a metal detector, that was buried, as it turns out, in Antill Park in Bedfordshire. And this was unlike these other ones, it was very specifically, um you didn't have to you didn't have to go there and dig it up. You could just announce, you could send the guy a letter and say, i have've I've worked it out, here's the location. And that that would be good enough, the first person who was able to actually- Because this is the case of a book that was published worldwide. And it would be a very limiting factor to sell a book in South America and going, if you have located the treasure, please do travel travel to the UK to dig it up.
00:34:35
Speaker
before claiming the cash prize. Yes, now things get um things get a bit interesting here. that the the The prize was found and the first person who claimed it was a guy called Dougal Thompson aka Ken Thomas. the The pseudonym is possibly the first red flag.
00:34:52
Speaker
Now, mr Mr. Williams was a little bit a little bit suspicious when he claimed the prize, said he knew exactly where it was, but he couldn't actually explain how he had got to that location based on the clues in the book. And it turned out that's because he hadn't. The they were the first people who actually solved it were a pair of physics to teachers called Mike Barker and John Rousseau,
00:35:15
Speaker
Now they actually went out, they were it they were English, and they went to the location where they'd worked out where it was and had a good dig, but apparently didn't notice the casket. I assume it was a bit too small or something, and they they just picked it up in its face. Yeah, I'm not quite sure how big the hair was. really But you can imagine a situation where you dig, say, down one meter and it turns out to be one meter one millimeter deep so you end up just gently scratching the top but not noticing it or you're digging so robustly that you kind of throw the casket over your shoulder without ever realising it's there but whatever happened they digged in the right location they would have found it had they seen the casket but they gave up going well we dug there and there is no casket there so I guess we didn't find it So instead, Mr. Thomas came along and grabbed it instead, but how did he know to go to that location? Had he solved the puzzle? Well, no, because it turns out that Thompson's business partner, Juan John Guard, was the boyfriend of Veronica Robertson, who was herself the former girlfriend of Kit Williams,
00:36:30
Speaker
who apparently had shared with her the location of the hare but crucially not the solution to the puzzle. So what seems to have happened here was that thom Thompson or Thomas, depending on which name you want to use, was aware of the location, was kind of sitting on the location in order to claim the hare at some particular point then became aware that Barker and Russo were in the process of accurately locating it, realized that they hadn't located it on their first attempt, and then went, oh, I better claim the prize now, because otherwise in a few days time, it's not going to be mine to claim. And I don't need to explain how I found it, I just need to say exactly where it's located.
00:37:23
Speaker
Yes, so ah so so what actually, what became of that then? what what I assume he was then disqualified and it was given to um to to the two teachers, Mike Barker and John Rousseau. But I'm not actually... No, because I believe the next story is actually predicated on selling the hair to fund the next prize. Oh, I see. So, right, okay, well then then I shouldn't be jumping ahead.
00:37:47
Speaker
We could instead talk about the actual the actual puzzle, which was all done. that This one was all based on the pictures from what I gather. So Wikipedia has a summary of how the how the puzzle went. um So in each painting in the book, a line must be drawn from the depicted creature's left eye through the longest digit on its left hand and out to one of the letters in the page border. Then from the left eye through the longest digit on the left foot,
00:38:17
Speaker
the right eye through the longest digit on the right hand and finally the right eye through the longest digit on the right foot. This is only done for eyes and digits that are visible in the painting. The letters indicated by these lines can be made to form words either by treating them as anagrams or by applying the sequence of animals and digits suggested by an Isaac Newton painting. Following this method,
00:38:37
Speaker
ah revealed 15 words or short phrases, and once you had worked out all of the words in all the letters, you get the phrase, Catherine's long finger overshadows earth, buried yellow amulet midday, points the hour in light of equinox, look you!
00:38:52
Speaker
Sounds a little Welsh. ah Which then, if you take the first zero of all those, those words you get close by amptill. And so they have admit this is, this is, I mean, apart from the fact it's very elaborate, elaborate, elaborate, a very elaborate and also elaborate puzzle with respect to the visuals. The code you get at the end sounds like nonsense. So you can imagine a lot of people giving up at that point, we're going, well, this,
00:39:19
Speaker
this doesn't mean anything. You'd expect the sentence it produces to be something which is meaningful. This is nonsense. And then to then go on from the nonsense sentence. So I can't say any worse today. Sentence, nonsense sentence, nonsense sentence. You can then make the acrostic close by Amptill. So I imagine there were a lot of people who actually did solve the puzzle, but then went this means nothing, and then, oh, but that was right after all. yeah i mean it was it is fairly It is fairly clever, because the the close the the acrostic that leads close by Amtill gives you the general location, but then the actual sentence itself does tell you the details, like Catherine's long finger overshoes. I guess you're actually right about that. so The actual location was that in the Amtill Park, there's a monument to Catherine of Aragon,
00:40:13
Speaker
and the location of it was the spot that the tip of the monument's shadow ah touches at noon on the day of the March or September equinox. so it did it did sort of Very clever, Josh. You've worked that out quite nicely. I rescind all of my comments about nonsense sentences. All I had to do was read the text that... that Josh, don't reveal how the sausage is made. Fine, fine, fine. I was trying to make you look clever. ah did this And now that now you've made us both look like idiots good who are just reading Wikipedia entries. I mean, that's that's not all we do, but that's some of what we do.
00:40:51
Speaker
ah but Okay, so yes, I jumped ahead. I made a faulty assumption about exactly what happened because yes, Thompson and Gard had through fear, means, or foul, no, through foul means. I think we've clearly, we've established really clearly through foul means had acquired the golden year. What did they do with it next? They created a video game. So the reason, h I think the reason why we ended up talking about masquerade was because I watched a video on Hair Razor. So Thompson and guard after Thompson takes
00:41:26
Speaker
purchase, authority, ownership of the golden here. And because there's a bit of a scandal about, oh, did he really discover it in the right way? I mean, there were BBC reports on the discovery of the here and the scandal about, it looks like he didn't discover it in the right way. They kind of tried to mollify the crowds going, look,
00:41:46
Speaker
we're going to give the hair away, and we're going to do it in the same way. Except this time, rather than a picture book, we are going to produce a game for 8-bit systems, so your Commodore 64, your Spectrums, your Sinclair's, your Atari's. And if you solve the computer games plural, you'll be able to locate the hair, and you can claim that hair for yourself.
00:42:16
Speaker
So they released two games, Hair Razor Prelude and Hair Razor Final. Interestingly enough, Prelude sold relatively well on the promise of you solve the game, you will win a Golden Hair. But because it was only half of the puzzles, about a year later, Hell Razor Final. That would have been good.
00:42:42
Speaker
Yeah, that would tear your hair apart. Hair Razor Final gets released, notably, only on a subset of the systems that Preyload was sold on. So you may have bought Preyload, solved the puzzles in it, although you probably haven't, as we'll get into in just a minute, and then discover that to be able to get the second half of the puzzle, you may have to own a completely different computer system.
00:43:10
Speaker
So the game didn't sell well. Part 2 only appears on a subset of those systems. Interestingly enough, the makers of the game, Hairsoft, also claimed that an additional clue to the mystery had been revealed in Harrods by TV presenter Annika Rice. But it was never specified when that occurred,
00:43:34
Speaker
what she said, or even whether Annika Rice even knew she was giving a clue to the Hair Razor, oh that's a Hellraiser puzzle, was he gonna tear your soul apart? ah Yeah. Now I would recommend look up the Stuart Ashen video on Hair Razor for the Norwich Gaming Festival.
00:43:56
Speaker
because it's pretty hard to describe hair razor. You need to see it in action for yourself. But if you take it that the masquerade is a case of very, very elaborate artistic pieces where you have to draw careful lines between one part of the image to another to eventually solve an acrostic.
00:44:20
Speaker
Imagine trying to do that on 8-bit mostly text-based graphics back in the 1980s, and you get something which appears to be an incomprehensible mess.
00:44:35
Speaker
to the point where many people think this was a scam from the outset, that the game is so deliberately obtuse and so bad for a reason to and in order to cover up the fact that there is no prize. Yeah, yeah, so these guys, they've got they've got the the here that they know people think the way they got it is a little bit dodgy. So it certainly sounds like they've thought, well, okay,
00:45:05
Speaker
and Maybe we can't keep the here. Maybe that's maybe we're going to get in trouble if we do that. But maybe we can make money by selling a video game. ah it's it's It's almost like running a lottery or something by selling tickets to give it away or something like that. But maybe the whole thing is like. But what we do know is that um this this game here razor was never solved, if there ever was a solution in the first place.
00:45:33
Speaker
and the here itself eventually was sold after here soft went into liquidation. And the thing which is of particular interest to gamers is that the game has been kind of decompiled so you can now look at the source code and many of the screens contain random factors.
00:45:53
Speaker
So people were going, well, look, maybe the moving images and the lights are meant to be some kind of code. Turns out most of them are random, which does indicate that either the puzzle like masquerade or the golden owl and things like that has some distracting elements in it, or it was designed to look as if it was meaningful when it really, really wasn't.
00:46:18
Speaker
Yeah. Now, one that did end up delivering was Christopher Monckton's Eternity Puzzle.
Monckton's Puzzle and Financial Strain
00:46:27
Speaker
It's another one we talked about. Now, we haven't talked about Christopher Monckton in a long time, but Christopher Monckton or Lord Monckton is one of the, and I'm going to say this advisedly with scare quotes, preeminent figures in the climate change denial industry.
00:46:44
Speaker
So he goes around the world talking about how climate change isn't real, presenting himself as a member of the House of Lords in the United Kingdom, despite the fact that even though he is a Lord, he is not a member of the House of Lords, he's not a member of Britain's upper chamber. Yes, but nevertheless, another thing he did when he wasn't denying climate change um was make this puzzle.
00:47:11
Speaker
um It was like, we should save the front. Ian got me it as a Christmas present. Or you got me the second one. I got you the sequel. Yeah. Yeah. Because there are two. There's there's not just one eternity, Josh. There's a sequel to the everlastingness of all creation. Eternity too. Yes. I could not solve it, but to be fair, I didn't actually try particularly hard because among other things, ah this puzzle, if you saw it, the first business of it would win a prize, but that had already been done quite some time ago. ah With this particular puzzle, it was just a, um not exactly a jigsaw, but you had a whole bunch of little triangles, not equilateral triles thirty sixty ninety triangles, 90 triangles that all had to, yeah they all had to fit together. They had different colors, the colors had to match up. There's apparently only one possible combination of all 209
00:48:02
Speaker
shapes that could go together in in such a way that all the colours would match up and things like that. um So it's from the sounds of things it was something where you'd have to have sort of a take a mathematical approach to it because simply putting them in at random you'd be doing it for a million years before you'd done before you tried all the different combinations. According according to Moncton and his compatriot, one estimate made at the time stated the puzzle had 10,500 possible temps a day solution, and it will take longer than the lifetime of the universe to calculate all of them, even if you had a million... Okay, well there you go. It was even it was even more than that. Yes, essentially impossible to to solve at random. So you had to take some sort of ah some sort of a systematic approach. He said um the prize was a million pounds,
00:48:54
Speaker
and which was would go to anyone who was able to solve it within four years. So there was a time limit. The puzzle, 50,000 copies of the puzzle were sold worldwide at £35 each. um So I assuming they all sold, he made his money back, I guess.
00:49:12
Speaker
Yeah, except if you're selling him at £35 each, production costs, shipping costs... I suppose. Maybe he didn't. I don't know. He's a lord. He's got more money than he knows what to do. You're probably making closer to £5 per copy than £35 per copy. At any rate, it was solved. It was solved in under a year. And apparently, I just said he had more money than he knows what to do with it. Apparently he had to sell his house.
00:49:37
Speaker
to pay out on the amount, although he then later claimed that that was a PR... Did he claim that selling the house was a PR stunt or that paying out in the first place was a PR stunt? I think the selling of the house he claimed retrospectively was a PR stunt. You never reached the end to do that, I don't know. And so then he designed the new puzzle, Eternity 2. The one that I gave you. Until you gave me. Which, actually, I'm sorry, this, sorry, yes, Eternity 2 never was sold, so maybe I should have tried her. No, no, but the the cash prize has also expired. I think in this case five years, and yes, it was never solved.
00:50:17
Speaker
But Josh has a copy, and just for the intellectual stimulation, we all think that Josh should be solving that puzzle, right? He should be devoting his life to solving that puzzle right now. I'm not sure if we still have it, to be honest. I think it might have been a casualty of the house getting flooded. A likely story. You tried to solve it and was so annoyed by your inability to solve a simple puzzle like Eternity 2, that you force fed it to a passing child.
00:50:45
Speaker
I did, yeah. Solo these poly drafters, child! Solo them all! Solo them now! I couldn't handle the shame. Um, do we want to do one more? Could you force-feed a board game to a child? Oh yeah, there's no shame in that.
00:50:58
Speaker
Do we want to do the last one? We've got it on the list. Yeah, why not? I suppose we might as well. It involves Pink Floyd. Well, except it doesn't. Except it doesn't. It's sort of a tangentially involves Pink Floyd. So remember, the masquerade was, what, 1979. The Golden Elle was 1993. So around this time, the craze, I guess, was still in
Unsolved Riddle of Pink Floyd
00:51:20
Speaker
effect. In 1994, Pink Floyd released an album called The Division Bell.
00:51:25
Speaker
um And supposedly there was a written this riddle, this so-called the soco socalled Publius Enigma? Publius? I don't know, is that Latin? Yeah, Publius. Publius Enigma. Publius Enigma was this riddle that was very released in in connection with the release of the album and apparently people who anyone who solved the riddle would get a reward. now Pink Floyd the band was not actually involved with this. So how did it do you know how it came out in the first place?
00:51:56
Speaker
Well, a message was posted to Usenet, which was the message boards of the day, back in the early to mid 90s. And the message went, my friends, you have heard the message Pink Floyd has delivered, but have you listened? Perhaps I can be your guide, but I will not solve the enigma for you. All of you must open your minds and communicate with each other, as this is the only way the answers can be revealed.
00:52:25
Speaker
I may help you, but only if obstacles arise. Listen. Read. Think. Communicate. If I don't promise you the answers, would you go? Publius. And so this was posted on Usenet when Pink Floyd was asked what the hell is going on here. Their response was, we have no idea whatsoever, but we think am i EMI, our and label, is doing some kind of advertising thing. So they they went, look, whatever this is, someone in management is running this. So yes, it is assumed that EMI, their label, were behind some kind of viral marketing for the division now. Before viral marketing even really existed? Well, I mean, it is.
00:53:16
Speaker
I mean, oddly enough, 1994 is early Internet era. It's early Internet, but the concept of going viral, I don't know if that existed yet. But nevertheless, that's basically... Well, I mean, as we know, viruses weren't invented until the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic, when the evil medical establishment invented viruses to enable lockdowns to destroy humanity. But um so so that first message was fairly cryptic. There there was a further message later that said As some of you have suspected, The Division Bell is not like its predecessors, although... No, I want to step in there. They are right. The Division Bell had little LED that blinked. So it wasn't like its predecessors. Previous Pink Floyd albums did not have LEDs. The blinking LED, no. So that's a true fact.
00:54:04
Speaker
ah Anyway, although all great music is subject to multiple interpretations, in this case there is a central purpose and a design solution for the ingenious person or group of persons who recognises this and where the information points to, a unique prize has been secreted. How and where, the division bell, listen again, look again.
00:54:22
Speaker
as your thoughts will steer you, lead the blind while I steer out the steel in your eyes." Lyric's artwork and music will take you there. then Apparently on the 18th of July in 1994, there were patterns in the lights on the front of the stage at the Pink Floyd concert in East Rutherford, which briefly spelled out the words Enigma Publius, suggesting that yes, this was actually something to do.
00:54:44
Speaker
with the Pink pink Floyd in their new album, even if the band themselves wasn't directly involved in it. Possibly by this point in time, they may have been playing along. Well, yes, you never know. but i mean they're They're making it sound like there are actually clues hidden in the album itself, or on the disc, or and the lyrics aren't working music.
00:55:03
Speaker
But to we don't know because it's never been solved. No. So we don't know what the price was. We don't know what the clues are meant to point towards. We don't even know whether there were clues in the album itself. It may well have just been an attempt to drum up interest in the Division Bell. Because I think from memory, when the Division Bell came out, it was neither well reviewed Nor did people think, oh great, a new album by Pink Floyd. I think they more went, oh great, a new album by Pink Floyd. Are they still around? Yes. Yeah, so
Conclusion and Bonus Content Teaser
00:55:38
Speaker
there you go. That's a whole bunch of of interesting treasure-hunty puzzles, um which have a conspiratorial angle angle to them.
00:55:47
Speaker
and it's a nice break from... This has not been a good day for words, has it? A conspiratorial ankle. I've had sissons rather than sentences. What's going wrong with this podcast? Who can say? Why do we no longer have command of our linga franca? And why isn't this podcast in French? I don't really speak very much of it and you don't at all as far as I'm aware.ale vous anglaise? Oui. Je parle. You want to wee on...
00:56:16
Speaker
Chappelle Ron. Is that what you're trying to say? I choose not to answer that question. But no, it says I think it's probably just because we spent the last three episodes ah delving into academic talk on conspiracy theories and actually having been presented with some ah actual conspiracies that are not in any way sinister unless you talk unless you think of the the possible scamminess of some of the people's actions. Maybe our brains are just rejecting it. Maybe that's the problem. ah Interesting. Interesting. Well, before we devolve any further, I think we should bring this episode to a close. No, no, no, we are we are devolving much further in the bonus episode. Oh, oh yeah, we'll be doing that. But in the main episode, let's let's let's halt our devolution. And yes,
00:57:01
Speaker
ah ah talk no more about secret treasure hunts and the enigmas behind them. And instead say, hey, why don't you go listen to our bonus episode if you're one of our patrons, where we'll probably Do another bit of a classic. Go have a look at what old Alex Jones and David Eicher are up to. Because it's been a while since we checked in. Yes, it has been a while. It's been more and more depressing every time we do. But who knows? There'll be something. That's all I can think of. But the thing is, this might be one of the last times we can go to Alex Jones. Because of course, his business is up for sale next month.
00:57:44
Speaker
So if the business gets sold to Alex Jones supporters, we can continue to think of Infowars and Prison Planet as being a continuation of his legacy. But if it's sold to people who don't like Alex Jones,
00:57:59
Speaker
That website may just disappear or get repurposed and it will be interesting to see whether Alex Jones can reincarnate elsewhere. Yeah, that's been the assumption that I've heard that especially because he's got what some stuff's in his father's name and some stuff's in his brother-in-law's name or something like that now. So the the assumption is that whatever happens he'll be able to set up a new platform and if that gets canned he can set up another one and another one and so on. But yes, as for Info Wars itself, we'll just have to wait and see. This could well be our last chance. So if you want to hear us take what is potentially our last look at Info Wars, become a patron and then you will listen to it as a bonus episode. You'll be unable to help yourself.
00:58:40
Speaker
It'll just happen and you won't even know what's going on. Because that's how our bonuses work. As we know, Josh likes to force the bonus episodes down the throats of patrons, even though they are the loveliest, the greatest and the best people. I don't even have to anymore. That is a vendetta against them. The bonus episodes now just have such a compelling property that people are forced to ingest them.
00:59:04
Speaker
against their will, essentially. But by how? how can you help how are they if they're If they're compelling, how are they forced? If they're compelling, people would be compelled under their own nature to listen. But you're saying they're being forced to listen, which means they're not really compelling other than by threat of violence. And Josh, if notfully compelling who was threatening them with violence?
00:59:26
Speaker
the the the nature of podcasting itself, the essence, the spirit, the spirit of podcasting compels there. Some kind of platonic form of the podcaster arrives in people's homes and then forces them to put on headphones or listen to it out loud, but forces them to press the play button on our patron bonus episode. That is exactly what happens and it could happen to you. All you need to do is go to patreon.com and look for the podcasters guide to the conspiracy and sign yourself up.
00:59:56
Speaker
if you want if you want to experience the platonic ah he of a podcaster in your home why not become a patron of the podcast long corial manifestations miracle to can be your as long to give us one dollar or more a month. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think we've so I think we've solved that pretty well. We can just sit back and wait for the wait for the patron sign. yeah All the gold people are going to send us to roll in. This is possibly been our most lucrative episode ever. Yeah. That useless gold that nobody wants that we are taking off people's hands.
01:00:30
Speaker
So we'll we'll um we'll sit back and count the money and leave you about your business while we record a bonus episode. So it just remains for me, I guess, to say goodbye, which is not an anagram or or an acronym or a secret clue to anything as far as you know.
01:00:46
Speaker
Except if you take the O and put it in front of the G, and you take the Y and put it after the A, and then you transpose by turning the word upside down and then inverting it by 90 degrees, mirroring the image, and then imposing it over the face of Donald Trump, and then you turn Donald Trump's face inside out, then you get a clue to what's happening in two weeks time. I can either confirm or deny it. Goodbye.
01:01:19
Speaker
You've been listening to a podcast's Guide to the Conspiracy, hosted by Josh Ederson and Imdenteth. If you'd like to help support us, please find details at our pledge drive at either Patreon or Podbean. If you'd like to get in contact with us, email us at podcastconspiracy at gmail.com.
01:01:51
Speaker
Marty, we gotta go back to the conspiracy.