Would You Pick Up A Shovel to Dig for Treasure? Part 1

The Story of a Real Life, Secret Treasure Hunt

Not all treasure maps are drawn on parchment or sealed in bottles.

Some are hidden in plain sight.

When I was a little girl, my teacher brought a book into my third grade classroom that changed my life forever. The book was called Masquerade, written and illustrated by Kit Williams. It was a picture book—like so many other books we had read together. Deceptively bright and simple.

She read the story to us, page after page. It was about a rabbit tasked with bringing a gift from the moon to the sun, since they were never both together and shining in the sky. But on the very last page, the readers learn the rabbit has lost the precious, jeweled gift. This was a surprising ending for me as a kid. To not only have the main character fail in his quest, but to also lose the gift completely! It was only once our teacher flipped the book over to its back cover did I begin to grasp the true intention of this peculiar tale.

There, photographed on the back, was the beautiful jewel the rabbit carried, only this time it was not illustrated. It was a real life, jeweled necklace. It had all been real. The treasure was lost for real.

And the reader was now tasked with finding it.

Kit Williams has always been an artist of ingenuity. Before he wrote and illustrated Masquerade, he made art that moved. Art that blended with everyday objects. Art that pulled the viewer into the piece itself. When he was first approached to create a picture book, he knew he wanted to do something different with the medium. What he ended up doing was starting an entirely new category of books, which is now known today as the armchair treasure hunt book.

I came across Masquerade in 1998, long after its treasure hunt had been solved. (The book was published in 1979 and the jeweled necklace was unearthed in 1982.) But I never forgot about that book, or about the way I felt after reading it. By the time I made it to graduate school for a master’s degree in Children’s Literature, I decided to follow that curiosity in earnest and write my master’s thesis on the canon of armchair treasure hunt books, with special focus on its founder and its founding work.

Armchair treasure hunt books are a small but noteworthy canon. The entire world, it seemed, was absolutely smitten with Masquerade in the early 1980s. So much so that a line of publishers, writers, and artists would go on to try and emulate Williams’s idea with varying degrees of success in their own armchair treasure hunt books. Even New Mexico’s own infamous Forest Fenn emulated Masquerade through his book The Thrill of the Chase, where he put in clues leading to a massive treasure he buried somewhere in the Rocky Mountains.

For a long time, I was satisfied being on the academic side of armchair treasure hunt books. Though I quietly noted that I loved reading not only the works themselves, but also the stories of the victorious treasure hunters. One of my comfort reads is the full solution book to Michael Stadther’s 2004 armchair treasure hunt book, A Treasure’s Trove. The back of the solution book is filled with personal anecdotes from each of the twelve winners about how they found their respective treasures. One story in particular, about a fellow who has to stand on a rock and reach his arm deep into the knothole of the lone tree in an overview area, squeezes my heart each time I read it.

What would it be like, I wonder, to be that person reaching down and finding gold? It seems magical. It seems like it can’t possibly be real. And yet, because there are creators and puzzle-makers who believe in this magic, it is real. All of it has been made real by a collective wonder and imagination.

This buoyant feeling of magic followed me along like a shadow, patient and waiting, as I continued investigating armchair treasure hunt books. After my work on the episode “Masquerade” for the podcast Criminal, I decided to try to expand my research for a non-fiction book on armchair treasure hunt books. I took all my current research up with me to a cabin in the remote New Mexico mountains for a solo writing retreat, intent to put my nose to the grindstone on creating a proposal.

Instead, over the course of that weekend, I became an official treasure hunter to one of the few unsolved remaining armchair treasure hunt books from the 1980s.

This is the story of The Secret.

What follows below are transcribed excerpts from my personal journal that I started during my retreat in June 2023, and continued as I embarked on my own treasure hunting adventure. I would like to invite you on this journey with me, and—if you fancy yourself a treasure hunter too—perhaps you will pick up some clues and solve a mystery all your own. For there will be mysteries here for your taking…

THE SECRET JOURNAL—Initial interest 6/9/23 & 6/10/23:

I am reading some of Chasing the Thrill, by Daniel Barbarisi—research for my nonfiction Armchair Treasure Hunt Book project. Barbarisi notes their dual role as both treasure seeker and documenter of Forrest Fenn’s book The Thrill of the Chase, and how each role helped inform and expand the other. I get the idea at this point that maybe I should try my hand at an unsolved Armchair Treasure Hunt, to gain additional valuable insight to my nonfiction project.

In an early chapter of Chasing the Thrill, Barbarisi summarizes some of the early Armchair Treasure Hunt Books, including the first armchair treasure hunt book from 1979, Masquerade—the subject of my 2014 master’s thesis. In this section, Barbarisi also introduces some of the ongoing Armchair Treasure Hunts that remain all or partially unsolved. Byron Preiss’ The Secret, illustrated by John Jude Palencar, catches my attention for several reasons. I see that Preiss’ book came out in 1982, and that Preiss was heavily inspired by Williams’ Masquerade. I see that only three of the twelve hunts are solved, leaving nine buried treasures* (*more on this later) and uncracked riddles. Most importantly, I read that Preiss buried ceramic casques of no great monetary value, which feels necessary for the ethics of this research component.

The way the treasure hunt in The Secret works is this: Within a much longer text of fairy stories are twelve poems penned by Preiss and twelve paintings done by Palencar. The poems/verses and the paintings are not presented in pairs, but the first step to solving any one of the twelve puzzles is to first match up a verse with a painting. The paintings all have location markers cleverly hidden within them, most with latitude and longitude coordinates to specific cities. The verses, though more vague and open-ended, guide the reader from a start point to an end point within a small area within a city, leading directly to the exact location of the buried casque. Most, if not all treasure locations are within a city public park.

It is still the evening of Friday, June 9^th, and I realize that one of the unsolved riddles/ buried casques is likely in the NYC area. I know I will be in the NYC area to visit some friends and attend a concert in late July 2023, and thus it would be a good idea to focus on that puzzle and accompanying image.

PREISS’S THE SECRET, VERSE #10:

In the shadow

Of the grey giant

Find the arm that

Extends over the slender path

In summer

You’ll often hear a whirring sound

Cars abound

Although the sign

Nearby

Speaks of Indies native

The natives still speak

Of him of Hard word in 3 Vols.

Take twice as many east steps as the hour

Or more

From the middle of one branch

Of the v

Look down

And see simple roots

In rhapsodic mans soil

Or gaze north

Toward the isle of B.

PALENCAR’S THE SECRET, PAINTING #12:

THE SECRET JOURNAL—Additional research 6/14/23:

I do not return to thinking about the NYC puzzle in earnest until Wednesday, June 14^th, once I have returned home from the retreat and have internet again. That day, I check out some of the message boards online regarding the twelve puzzles within The Secret. The verse and painting matches have been as a whole agreed upon by the larger community, and though there is some discussion about specific pairings, elements in Verse #10 and Painting #12 seem to clearly point to NYC. The number coordinates for NYC, 41 and 74, are hidden in the painting, the outline of the woman’s dress resembles the island of Manhattan, and the face of the woman strongly resembles the face of the statue of liberty. There are elements in Verse #10 that seem to point to NYC as well, notably the famous Indies native Alexander Hamilton, as well as a nod to New York native George Gershwin, creator of one of Preiss’s all-time favorite musical works, “Rhapsody in Blue.”

As I read over the message boards, I realize that I’m not interested in anyone’s specific proposed solutions for the NYC puzzle. I am far more interested in the three already solved puzzles: The Chicago puzzle, solved in 1983, the Cleveland puzzle, solved in 2004, and the Boston puzzle, solved in 2019. I read the solves over and over until I feel like they connect fully to the verse. I like how in the Chicago verse, Preiss helps his reader understand that every single-letter acronym stands for a last name of a famous person. M is Mozart. B is Bach. R is Roosevelt. L is Lincoln. I also appreciate how the last lines referencing the sounds of rumble, brush and music, and hush direct to the areas immediately adjacent to the treasure burial site. The rail road (rumble) is directly west. The Art Institute of Chicago (brush) is directly north. The Chicago Symphony (music) is northwest. The North Rose Garden (hush) is directly east.

While I work on figuring out the fine details of the solves from Chicago, Cleveland, and Boston, I start to really appreciate Byron and his poems. They are not nearly as cryptic and vague as I had previously thought, but are in fact quite elegant once the correct solution is known. I also realize that there is somewhat of a pattern in Preiss’ poems. He gives the reader a general location, a key marker within that area, directions from that marker to the burial site, and confirming markers at the final burial site. With this revelation, and a sneakily strong theory that I just can’t shake about one particular section of Painting #12 (pictured below), I decided to dive back into the NYC verse the next day.

…to be continued in Part 2… 

It’s not a puzzle, it’s a path. You just have to follow the signs.