Speaker 1: Thinking Sideways. I don't think you never know what stories
Speaker 1: of things we simply don't know the answer to. Welcome back, everybody,
Speaker 1: and thanks for coming back. I am Steve and this
Speaker 1: is Thinking Sideways the podcast, and always, as always have
Speaker 1: got my co host with me. I'm Devino. And by
Speaker 1: the way, your your language is kind of exclusionary because
Speaker 1: you're only welcoming back to people who have already listened
Speaker 1: to us, and welcome back to all of our previous listeners,
Speaker 1: and welcome to all of our new listeners. Yes, thank you, sir,
Speaker 1: appreciate you for clarifying that for me. Well, tonight we
Speaker 1: are going to talk about a story that is a
Speaker 1: bit of a mystery and it's not solved. It's just
Speaker 1: a little bit of a Mrs Smitch pretty a bit.
Speaker 1: It's not yet unsolved, it's not shortly to be solved. Okay,
Speaker 1: so it's it's it's still unsolved at this moment, but
Speaker 1: not until you get your hands on it. Absolutely, I
Speaker 1: got it. Okay, Sideways is going to crack this one
Speaker 1: like a walnut. Apparently we do that every week. Sorry everyone,
Speaker 1: all right, well let's let's get into this. So, uh,
Speaker 1: just a little background, how I got this. This particular
Speaker 1: story is I just finished reading recently the book The
Speaker 1: Code Book by Simon Sing. I read that book. I
Speaker 1: liked it. You didn't know are you gonna? Why would I?
Speaker 1: You guys are now obviously like really really good at
Speaker 1: this stuff, right, cryptographer, I need to get better at
Speaker 1: the other stuff that's happening, Like who needs like three
Speaker 1: code breakers? One? That's true. Obviously, we've we've given away
Speaker 1: that The Code Book is about code breaking. It's also
Speaker 1: about the history of and it is. It's really interesting,
Speaker 1: and it's by a guy named Simon Saying, And anybody
Speaker 1: who's interested in Cipher's go pick that book up. It's
Speaker 1: really awesome. That's yeah, it's a very it's a very
Speaker 1: good and easy read. But one of the stories that
Speaker 1: he tells in there is about the Beal Cipher and
Speaker 1: I read about it briefly before, but once I read
Speaker 1: his accounting of it, I really got interested in it,
Speaker 1: and I decided that we needed to take some time
Speaker 1: to really look into it. So let's just kind of
Speaker 1: start at the beginning, and let's start with how the
Speaker 1: story goes, because the story has been retold a number
Speaker 1: of times, but I'm gonna do. We're gonna do the
Speaker 1: best we can with the accounting of it. Are we
Speaker 1: gonna are we just gonna do like this is how
Speaker 1: everything's kind of all the way always told or or
Speaker 1: what well? I mean, if we if we see things
Speaker 1: that have different accountings, I think that we'll have to
Speaker 1: bring those up. Okay, maybe I thought that quick, quick abstract.
Speaker 1: I guess he would say, Okay, bury a treasure, mysterious cipher.
Speaker 1: Everybody's puzzled for two years. Okay, there you go. All right,
Speaker 1: let's get into theories. Okay. So the story begins in
Speaker 1: eighteen twenty January of eighteen twenty when a gentleman by
Speaker 1: the name of Thomas J. Beale arrives in Lynchburg, Virginia
Speaker 1: and checks into the Washington Hotel. He stays at the
Speaker 1: hotel that winter and then leaves in the spring, but
Speaker 1: while he's there, he becomes friends with the owner of
Speaker 1: the hotel, manned by the name of Robert Morris. Beale
Speaker 1: comes back two years later, so this is eighteen twenty two,
Speaker 1: and once again he spends the winter at the hotel,
Speaker 1: but before he leaves in the spring, this time he
Speaker 1: gives Morris a locked iron box, which he says contains
Speaker 1: papers of value in importance. Lawrence, of course, being a
Speaker 1: good guy, sticks the box in a corner on a
Speaker 1: shelf and hangs onto it and doesn't think anything of it. Bunk.
Speaker 1: But Morris of course immediately opened the box. Was in there. Well,
Speaker 1: according to this story that is out there, bal never
Speaker 1: came back, and Morris, being a good guy, was gonna wait.
Speaker 1: And according to their and this is where the accounting
Speaker 1: is get a little fuzzy. I've seen accountings that said
Speaker 1: Beale told Morris not to open it for ten years. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he sent him a letter. Actually, yeah, is that how
Speaker 1: it went because accountings both ways. Yeah, I sent a
Speaker 1: letter said if you don't hear from me from ten
Speaker 1: years past the date of this letter, then open the box.
Speaker 1: I love that his instructions to open the box first
Speaker 1: removed the lock. And it's like okay, yeah, And and
Speaker 1: so he eventually does open the box, but Morris waits
Speaker 1: twenty three years to do it. So it's eighty five
Speaker 1: before curiosity ever gets the better of him and he
Speaker 1: finally pops the thing open. When he opens it, he
Speaker 1: finds several things in there. He lines a note written
Speaker 1: by Beale in English to him. And then he also
Speaker 1: finds three sheets that are just full of numbers, and
Speaker 1: the note evidently reveals a little bit about Beale himself
Speaker 1: and what's going on. And here's what it is. According
Speaker 1: to Beale. In eighteen seventeen, he and twenty nine other
Speaker 1: men headed west to explore the country. And this is
Speaker 1: pretty much the wild West, and they went all over
Speaker 1: I think you said, Joe, you had seen they've been
Speaker 1: in Mexico. Yeah, they went to Santa Fe and then
Speaker 1: up north into Colorado. And that was Spanish America back
Speaker 1: in those days, that back when the Spaniards ruled it.
Speaker 1: And then after that just a little bit of history, Um,
Speaker 1: it was along and the like about one most a
Speaker 1: Mexican revolution, Mexicans over through the Spanish. So the Spanish
Speaker 1: previously controlled that territory and the Spain Spanish. Yeah, the
Speaker 1: Spain Spanish. Yeah. Yeah. When the Spanish were overthrown in,
Speaker 1: Spanish control authority over that that area went away, and
Speaker 1: the Mexican government was like fairly incompetent, had enhanced full
Speaker 1: at home, and so that whole part of the US
Speaker 1: was really kind of like ignored pretty much not under
Speaker 1: any sort of government at all. It was truly was
Speaker 1: the wild West, and it was it was every man
Speaker 1: for himself. Do whatever you want while you're here, pretty much. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: according to this this letter eighteen seventeen, which is just
Speaker 1: a little prior to that, Uh, these guys had gone
Speaker 1: out and we're looking to make their fortune. And according
Speaker 1: to the note, Beal says, the party encamped in a
Speaker 1: small ravine, we're preparing their evening meal when one of
Speaker 1: the men discovered in a cleft of the rocks something
Speaker 1: that had the appearance of gold. Upon showing to the others,
Speaker 1: it was pronounced to be gold, and much excitement. Was
Speaker 1: the natural consequence, like the understatement, I like the way
Speaker 1: they wrote back in those days. Yeah, no, it's it's
Speaker 1: it's a little flowery, but I like it. It was
Speaker 1: the natural consequence of things, naturally. The note goes on
Speaker 1: to explain that Beale and his men had mind that
Speaker 1: site for eighteen months, at which point they had obviously
Speaker 1: accumulated a large quantity of gold and silver, which they
Speaker 1: seemed to have found nearby, and they agreed that they
Speaker 1: needed to move all of this gold somewhere safe, and
Speaker 1: they decided to take it back home to Virginia, where
Speaker 1: they were going to hide it in a secret location. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and and and in this trip back to Virginia, Bale
Speaker 1: says that he traded some of the gold and silver
Speaker 1: for jewels, which I can understand because they would be lighter.
Speaker 1: O bal went by himself. According to his letter, he
Speaker 1: doesn't mention anybody. According to his letter, its friends were like, Hey,
Speaker 1: you're the most trustworthy of the dudes. We're gonna give
Speaker 1: you what's what equivalent to like twenty million dollars today
Speaker 1: gold and just like send you on your merried way. Well, right,
Speaker 1: that's what that letter says, right it does. And looking
Speaker 1: that's the thing that's absurd about it, is like if
Speaker 1: they're really worried about the safety or their gold, and
Speaker 1: you send one guy off with basically twenty because I
Speaker 1: I calculated the way of of this his first trip
Speaker 1: and a two out of fifty pounds per horse, it's
Speaker 1: about twenty horses, twenty horse pack train a single guy
Speaker 1: and you guys are just taking Oh, I feel so
Speaker 1: much better than Mr Beale has got all of our
Speaker 1: gold and twenty horses. He's riding aloud to this territory
Speaker 1: rather than us having to worry about Indian territory exactly
Speaker 1: the territory. And they're going from where probably New Mexico is,
Speaker 1: other Colorado FROMO and then up to Colorado and then um,
Speaker 1: and then he was going all the way to Virginia.
Speaker 1: And it was obviously because I mean, yeah, and if
Speaker 1: nothing else, mean, accidents happen. So even if the Indians
Speaker 1: don't get it with the Spanish don't get them, even
Speaker 1: if robbers don't get them, uh you know, I mean
Speaker 1: just and hit his head or whatever, you know. And
Speaker 1: then but I actually I did hear another version of
Speaker 1: this story in which it wasn't just him. It was
Speaker 1: actually about almost half the group went back to Virginia
Speaker 1: with him the first time. Uh. And so that makes
Speaker 1: that makes a lot more sense, because that means if
Speaker 1: you've got a bunch of guys and everybody has one
Speaker 1: pack horse, that's he's pulling behind them all the way
Speaker 1: they got the horses. I don't know they might have
Speaker 1: traded with the Indians. It's hard to say. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: feel like with that much gold you can buy kind
Speaker 1: of anything. I don't know if the Indians were all
Speaker 1: that interested in gold, though maybe the gems oh wait,
Speaker 1: he would have traded that in route so that he
Speaker 1: wouldn't have had these precious gems at the start. Though. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's good point. Just ye, they love them. That is
Speaker 1: so viciously racist. I can't think of anybody who don't
Speaker 1: love gold. Okay, well, and let's get back to this
Speaker 1: what the letter said. The letter says that at the
Speaker 1: end of the winter, when he had left Morris the
Speaker 1: first time, so we had left the Washington Hotel in Virginia,
Speaker 1: he had gone back and the men, of course, while
Speaker 1: he was gone during this time, we're busy minding gold
Speaker 1: and hiding it from him. This time around, we're busy
Speaker 1: continuing to mind the gold. Now, mind you, is that
Speaker 1: he got there in the winter, and he left in
Speaker 1: the spring, which has got to be two to three months.
Speaker 1: So this guy's had to have been gone six months
Speaker 1: and all the buddies are just still barely working away.
Speaker 1: I don't know, you have you know, like like digging
Speaker 1: in winter in Colorado. I don't know. They might have
Speaker 1: been hanging up, pulled up somewhere, spending all their time
Speaker 1: like hunting for food and stuff like that, didn't time
Speaker 1: to stay warm. Yeah, I don't know. Beale leaves Virginia
Speaker 1: in the what I would guess would be the spring
Speaker 1: of eighteen one and heads back to his guys. He's
Speaker 1: been gone a while there, of course, still mining everything,
Speaker 1: and they, in his absence have say, well, we've got
Speaker 1: all this new gold that we've mined, and you've been
Speaker 1: we should probably secure this as well. So they send
Speaker 1: him back on another trip to put it in whatever
Speaker 1: little heidie hole he's got it stashed away in, And
Speaker 1: while he's at it, they tell him to find a
Speaker 1: reliable person who they could confide in their secrets, so
Speaker 1: that if something happened to them, their relatives could be
Speaker 1: alerted of this cash of gold and silver and jewels
Speaker 1: and come and take their share of the money. So
Speaker 1: this is the reason that Beal supposedly left Morris with
Speaker 1: this iron lock box with the note in it and
Speaker 1: um and so that was a second trip back, and
Speaker 1: again in another another telling him the story that I heard,
Speaker 1: Bale and all of the guys came back down that
Speaker 1: second trip. So that is just one more version of
Speaker 1: which makes it even weirder that they would have left
Speaker 1: the lock box with him. Well yeah, and it doesn't
Speaker 1: seem really necessary at that point. Yeah, that seems before
Speaker 1: the horse. Yeah, that doesn't make sense. Sending him back
Speaker 1: all buy his little lonesome doesn't make any sense either.
Speaker 1: So I calculated, by the way, there's some weirdness going on.
Speaker 1: I calculated the weights, uh, the weight of his second journey,
Speaker 1: and he would have only required about fourteen pack horses
Speaker 1: for that one. Well, thank goodness for that. Yeah. Well, like,
Speaker 1: like we said, Morris gets the box and he opens
Speaker 1: it and he decides, I've got to figure out what
Speaker 1: this cipher says, because he is morally obligated, according to
Speaker 1: the story, to find these relatives and get the money
Speaker 1: to them to get their share. So look like pulls
Speaker 1: out his Apple computer and saying program plus plus. Oh wait,
Speaker 1: there's a problem, Joe. They didn't have computers. Head. Oh,
Speaker 1: he's using an abacus. They didn't have computers. Then, they
Speaker 1: haven't always had computer How did they get on the internet.
Speaker 1: How did they take selfies? They didn't? Oh my god. Okay,
Speaker 1: well in eighteen sixty two, so this is seventeen years
Speaker 1: after Morris has opened the box, because he opened it
Speaker 1: in eighteen forty five, he's eighty four years old. And
Speaker 1: again this is according to the accounting, he realizes that
Speaker 1: he doesn't have much longer to live and he needs
Speaker 1: to tell somebody, so he shares this story with an
Speaker 1: unknown confidante, this person. We never know who this person is,
Speaker 1: but we do know two things about that person. First,
Speaker 1: they turn around and they publish the letters from Beal
Speaker 1: along with the cipher in a pamphlet, and began to
Speaker 1: circulate that pamphlet around. And the pamphlet also evidently deciphers
Speaker 1: one of the codes, and that and his decipher text
Speaker 1: appeared in that first pack. It appeared in the pamphlet.
Speaker 1: According to this pamphlet, this guy or I guess it
Speaker 1: could have been a woman. This person decoded, thank you
Speaker 1: for pointing at me, while saying that, well, it would
Speaker 1: have been worse if I pointed at Joe. Yes, it
Speaker 1: could have been a woman. Yes, that point, I said, woman.
Speaker 1: That's exciting. The pamphletter decodes the second page of the
Speaker 1: cipher and supposedly figured out what it was. They say
Speaker 1: that it was this This person determines that it's a
Speaker 1: book cipher, and this second cipher has eight hundred numbers on.
Speaker 1: We talked about book ciphers with Tom and Shrewd didn't
Speaker 1: we know we were talking about like things like one
Speaker 1: time past. There's other things like book ciphers, not the
Speaker 1: same as this particular book cipher. But say if I
Speaker 1: take a book like like to Have Have Not by
Speaker 1: Ernest Hening way, starting from the first page, you know,
Speaker 1: that's one way of doing and is you go from
Speaker 1: the first the first counting the letters. Yeah, well for
Speaker 1: the words, I should say, yeah, well, there's there's various ways.
Speaker 1: You can just go letter by a letter, so translate
Speaker 1: years by adding letters to letters you know, you know,
Speaker 1: and not not skipping words or anything. And that's one
Speaker 1: way to do it. That generates that generates a number,
Speaker 1: or you can do like this one is where you
Speaker 1: have a number which is the number of the word
Speaker 1: in the entire sequel to the document, and you take
Speaker 1: the first letter, which really seems to me like a
Speaker 1: really cumbersome encryption sess technique. It is very combesome. But
Speaker 1: evidently this guy says that he deciphered it using the
Speaker 1: declaration of independent and the second one, not the first
Speaker 1: or the third that he figures out the middle one
Speaker 1: of the bunch, which is weird. That is a little weird,
Speaker 1: and we're gonna We're gonna share with you what this
Speaker 1: supposedly decoded texts says, and Joe, do you mind reading
Speaker 1: that for us? Not at all. I have deposited in
Speaker 1: the County of Bedford, about four miles from Buford's and
Speaker 1: Beaufords by the Way, was a tavern in an excavation
Speaker 1: or vault six ft below the surface of the ground.
Speaker 1: The following articles belonging jointly to the parties whose names
Speaker 1: are given in number three herewith. The first deposit consisted
Speaker 1: of ten thousand and fourteen pounds of gold and thirty
Speaker 1: eight hundred and twelve pounds of silver, deposited November eighteen nineteen.
Speaker 1: The second was made December eighty one and consisted of
Speaker 1: nineteen hundred and seven pounds of gold and twelve d
Speaker 1: and eight of silver, also juels obtained in St. Louis
Speaker 1: an exchange for silver to save transportation, and valued at
Speaker 1: thirteen thousand others. The above is securely packed in iron
Speaker 1: pots with iron covers. The vault is roughly lined with stone,
Speaker 1: and the vessels rest on a solid stone and are
Speaker 1: covered with others. Paper number one describes the exact locality
Speaker 1: of the vault, so that no difficulty will be had
Speaker 1: in finding it. You you have a Yeah, Okay, I
Speaker 1: understand people wrote like more eloquently and more thoroughly in
Speaker 1: those times. Sure, but if you're writing a cipher, especially
Speaker 1: one that this contact, why do you say something like
Speaker 1: in an excavation or vault like that specifically because stand
Speaker 1: out yea, because you're thinking like, h you're thinking like, wow,
Speaker 1: this is going to add another fifteen minutes to the encryption,
Speaker 1: or even like why include this, right? I mean I simplifying, right,
Speaker 1: you just say like, hey, for the people who have
Speaker 1: the key for this, this is where it is. Right,
Speaker 1: Why write three full different manuscripts in the super complicated
Speaker 1: cipher I'm sorry, in three different super complicated ciphers cipher
Speaker 1: with three keys, sure, and have it saved flowery like
Speaker 1: really really crazy stuff. But you've got to remember today's
Speaker 1: language is much more abbreviated and to the point, and
Speaker 1: that to him may have been shortened in an excavation
Speaker 1: or vault. I feel like I'm not defending it. I'm
Speaker 1: just saying it could have been to him that was
Speaker 1: the shortened version. Yeah, but it's like maybe maybe it was,
Speaker 1: but I think that he could have pared this down
Speaker 1: to about a quarter of his length. Totally. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: could have just said, hey, about four months of beaufers.
Speaker 1: There's just a ton of golden silvers of jewels, and
Speaker 1: that's all people need to hear about it, maybe six
Speaker 1: feet on there in a stone vault. And to defend
Speaker 1: Beal a little bit though, he does need to describe
Speaker 1: how much is there so that everybody has an accounting.
Speaker 1: So if I show up and I'm taken some U
Speaker 1: and I've already I come back for some more, and
Speaker 1: person number two arrives is, hey, I'm here for my share.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, so this is what was here. I just
Speaker 1: got here as well. You have to be able to
Speaker 1: kind of hold everybody to some kind of honor system,
Speaker 1: wouldn't you, I guess. But I and I think that
Speaker 1: you know, you just like leave that in the vault,
Speaker 1: right like that somebody somebody taking you can alter the
Speaker 1: accounting to sure, and that's fine. But I just think that, like,
Speaker 1: it's such a crazy, weird circumstance. As you know, I
Speaker 1: understand your point, I completely do. Here is how much
Speaker 1: money in today's value was in this vault, supposedly gold, silver,
Speaker 1: and gems. According to the research that people have done
Speaker 1: based on this, they say it's thirty million dollars worth.
Speaker 1: Who Yeah, it depends on when this account when they
Speaker 1: made this calculation because of gold and silver fluctuate the
Speaker 1: hell up? And also what gems right, yeah, it depends
Speaker 1: on what gems are because you don't know. It's just
Speaker 1: you know, basics, a lot of money, a lot of money.
Speaker 1: So here's the thing, though, is there's two other ciphers,
Speaker 1: which one supposedly gives cipher Number three is supposed to
Speaker 1: tell the names of the other men and or their families,
Speaker 1: the next of kids, the next of kids. That seems
Speaker 1: like one that you would maybe not code and not
Speaker 1: necessarily necessarily because then it's you know, you can blackmail people.
Speaker 1: But then number one is supposed to give the exact
Speaker 1: location of the treasure. But there's no traditional use a map.
Speaker 1: You would think that nobody's been able to figure out
Speaker 1: what the cipher says, not even the n s A.
Speaker 1: According to the n s A, all we know is
Speaker 1: at it's that four miles around Buford's and people have
Speaker 1: continued to go out there and dig based on where
Speaker 1: they think the treasure is going to be and by
Speaker 1: the way. People who own property in that four mile radius,
Speaker 1: they hate this mystery thedomly find people trespassing and digging
Speaker 1: up stuff on their property. But you know, that's all
Speaker 1: I can take a two cool angles to this number one.
Speaker 1: It's like, if you really hate somebody, you know, you
Speaker 1: could set up a fake web page, you know, claiming
Speaker 1: to have solved the mystery and give them give the
Speaker 1: directions to your enemy, says, here's another thing. Supposing supposing
Speaker 1: you own some land out there and you want to say,
Speaker 1: put in a swimming pool. You see where I'm going there,
Speaker 1: big side in looty tune style treasure here, just dig
Speaker 1: with a big painted on the Yeah, I can say
Speaker 1: some useful permutations to the whole thing. Oh gosh, Well,
Speaker 1: nobody has figured out people have been trying to use
Speaker 1: the Declaration of Independence to crack the other two ciphers,
Speaker 1: which isn't working. Do we a little bit want to
Speaker 1: talk about the problems with the deciphering of the second
Speaker 1: one with the declaration of Independence? Well, yeah, let's do
Speaker 1: that right now, and we'll start in on our theories.
Speaker 1: And that's part of it. And in the first theory,
Speaker 1: which there's a whole ream of things in this theory.
Speaker 1: But the first theory is that this whole thing is
Speaker 1: a hoax. But so what do you got? Well, so,
Speaker 1: in some of the research that we were doing, um,
Speaker 1: you know, it says, well, if you just use the
Speaker 1: Declaration of Independence as a book cipher, right, then you
Speaker 1: get this message exactly, but you actually don't. It turns
Speaker 1: out that that's actually not the case. When you actually
Speaker 1: use the Declaration of Independence to decipher this cipher, it
Speaker 1: actually reads, I hate pided it in the count put
Speaker 1: of bear hurt, a boot for miles from bolloons in bocation,
Speaker 1: or asalt six fist below the surfux of the Crown.
Speaker 1: It continues on right. But so it's so the guy
Speaker 1: was using a wrong version of the declaration. I think
Speaker 1: that kind of sounds, you know, like, And obviously I
Speaker 1: haven't on the legwork on this. I can't tell you
Speaker 1: personally from personal experience which one is correct. But I
Speaker 1: can see how somebody would look at that text and say, oh,
Speaker 1: that person is trying to say that. And and here's
Speaker 1: what I think we need to explain for everybody. You're
Speaker 1: using the official copy of the Declaration of Independence. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this in the pamphlet. They discover that the version of
Speaker 1: the declaration they were using, Yeah, it's an abbreviated version
Speaker 1: that supposedly was being used in publications for newspapers and
Speaker 1: stuff like that, but not like widely districted. It wasn't
Speaker 1: a hugely distributed version of it. That's what they're there say.
Speaker 1: He is saying, Oh, this is the one I used,
Speaker 1: and he prints his copy I understand in this pamphlet. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I'm kind of curious about it. It's that's does
Speaker 1: seemed like the abbreviated version would be more convenient for
Speaker 1: in terms of type setting to print in your pamphlet. Oh, well, yeah,
Speaker 1: I would. But that sort of puts a little cloud
Speaker 1: suspicion over the whole It's a little weird. It sounds
Speaker 1: like he was writing the pamphlet he and he just
Speaker 1: got that and reverse engineered the cipher and the whole thing.
Speaker 1: And that's what a lot of people say. And here's
Speaker 1: here's some other facts. So let me just we're just
Speaker 1: gonna run through some facts as to what what is
Speaker 1: supporting that maybe this whole thing is a hoax. And
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna start at the top, in no particular order. Historically,
Speaker 1: there is no evidence that Thomas Beale ever existed, in
Speaker 1: other words, census data, or that he hired twenty nine
Speaker 1: men who then went off on this expedition to defend
Speaker 1: there's no record of Thomas Bale though the census at
Speaker 1: that time did not take the name of every person.
Speaker 1: They took the name of the head of the household,
Speaker 1: So he could have been living at somebody's house and
Speaker 1: they took the head of the household's name and then
Speaker 1: not his, or he could have missed the census like
Speaker 1: that exactly. It's not like it was all encompassing by
Speaker 1: any means. Very very true. Let's see. So there is
Speaker 1: evidence that more is the hotel owner. He was a
Speaker 1: real person, he existed, but there's no evidence that he
Speaker 1: was ever in possession of the lock box or the ciphers,
Speaker 1: and there is record of him owning that hotel, but
Speaker 1: according to the records, he didn't get the hotel till
Speaker 1: about three years after when he was supposed to have
Speaker 1: first or in the hotel, until three years after he's
Speaker 1: supposedly first met Beale. Okay, so what kind of evidence
Speaker 1: were they hoping to find that he owned this lock box?
Speaker 1: Like the diriary substantiate who is who? But I mean, like,
Speaker 1: I yeah, I guess, like what what evidence are they
Speaker 1: are they hoping that? Like he was like, oh, dear
Speaker 1: Diary today, Mr Beale gave me a box and then
Speaker 1: I held it for twenty three years. I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: was that the kind of evidence they're looking for? Or
Speaker 1: they to substantiate that he was a real person and
Speaker 1: not just a fictional character, which Beale at this point
Speaker 1: kind of might be exactly might be. The The thing
Speaker 1: about Morris is if he was a really existent person,
Speaker 1: supposedly must have had descendants, and he must have told
Speaker 1: his children and grandchildren about this, that this mystery. You
Speaker 1: and he would think. You would think that there would
Speaker 1: still be people alive today that would know about this.
Speaker 1: Nobody's come forward. Yeah, but again according to the story,
Speaker 1: he never told anybody. But he also worked on it
Speaker 1: for that that whole time that he had But yeah,
Speaker 1: his wife didn't know, his kids didn't know that from
Speaker 1: the story. According to the story, he tried to figure
Speaker 1: it out for that seventeen years after he opened it,
Speaker 1: before he confided in his friend, who then cracked the
Speaker 1: second paper. Here's another problem. The pamphlet itself quotes the
Speaker 1: letters from Beal, which supposedly were written in the early
Speaker 1: eighteen twenties, and they use words that we're not normally
Speaker 1: in circulation. Fill about the eighteen forties, specifically, the words
Speaker 1: stampede and improvised. Those were not commonly used words nobody had.
Speaker 1: There's not a lot of record of those being in
Speaker 1: the vocabulary at that time. The letters, the pamphlets use
Speaker 1: those words. The pamphlet reprinted the letters from Bill that
Speaker 1: were in the lock box that we're in English well,
Speaker 1: and in his letter he uses words that weren't known
Speaker 1: until the eight four So that that points people to say, well,
Speaker 1: these were common words at the time, and the guy
Speaker 1: made it all up and he wrote these letters. I
Speaker 1: guess my argument back on that would be that, like,
Speaker 1: if Bill did exist, right, he clearly had a flourish
Speaker 1: for the English language. I did a lot of people
Speaker 1: back in those days. But he, for whatever reason, kind
Speaker 1: of strikes me as the kind of person who would
Speaker 1: have some kind of knowledge of those words. Yeah, or
Speaker 1: like to appear like he's much smarter than he actually is.
Speaker 1: So like seek out words that people didn't usually use
Speaker 1: and use them. You everybody knows that guy right who
Speaker 1: like uses words that nobody else uses. He could have
Speaker 1: been one of those guys, who knows, he could have
Speaker 1: easily been one of those guys you're right now, entirely possible.
Speaker 1: And it's not like they were words that didn't exist. Okay,
Speaker 1: Another another interesting aspect of this if the whole thing
Speaker 1: was a fiction and this entire pamphlet was just basically
Speaker 1: a hoax. The guy at one point, apparently I have
Speaker 1: heard that his full name was Thomas Jefferson Bale. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: Thomas Jefferson Bale. So Thomas Jefferson the author of the
Speaker 1: Declaration of Independence, which would explain why the Declaration of
Speaker 1: Independence was the key. Yeah. And also there was a
Speaker 1: guy um as a guy didn't Bill, I can't remember.
Speaker 1: His first name was also the Washington Hotel. Yeah, there's
Speaker 1: there's another key. Yeah, And the guy named Bale was
Speaker 1: a guy who I think, in the eighteen thirties was
Speaker 1: one of the first, if not the first, person, to
Speaker 1: transport gold from California from the California Gold Rush back
Speaker 1: to the East coast. Yeah, And of course that was like,
Speaker 1: you know much and so if you think about it,
Speaker 1: if you're if you're getting concoct to hoax, and you
Speaker 1: want to put some some things, some little teasers out
Speaker 1: there to sort of like, you know, like h crane
Speaker 1: of truth. Yeah, but also at the same time kind
Speaker 1: of kind of mock and tweak the people that you're fooling,
Speaker 1: you know, because you're putting these obvious a little it's
Speaker 1: kind of kind of let the Da Vinci Code, You're
Speaker 1: putting these obvious little clues right in their face. And
Speaker 1: Thomas Jefferson Declaration Bill, it's got famous transporting gold across
Speaker 1: the country. Um, it's it's kind of those are kind
Speaker 1: of interesting coincidences. On the other hand, I guess this
Speaker 1: is going like a little bit past the this is
Speaker 1: a hoax thing, right, But haven't people actually, like people
Speaker 1: who actually know about things like this, examined these and said, no,
Speaker 1: they look like they are actually real ciphers they have.
Speaker 1: So I guess my argument against it being a hoax
Speaker 1: is that, like, why invest that much time? I don't think,
Speaker 1: you know, I think that something that looks like it's
Speaker 1: a cipher, I mean you can compose, and something that
Speaker 1: looks like it's a cipher doesn't mean it's not gibberish.
Speaker 1: Can still be gibberish. I guess that's true. Here's the
Speaker 1: other weird thing about the ciphers number page it's number
Speaker 1: one and number three, spage one and page three. Cryptographers
Speaker 1: have looked at it, and I don't say that I
Speaker 1: understand how they came to this conclusion. But they say
Speaker 1: that the statistical characteristics of it make them believe that
Speaker 1: it is not from a language that is English. In
Speaker 1: other words, it could have been written in Spanish or
Speaker 1: that's fairly easy to do. I think, as it turns
Speaker 1: out right that you can analyze the frequency of letters
Speaker 1: in any given language because we have something frequent or
Speaker 1: the like the the composition of the length of a
Speaker 1: lot of our filler words, and analyze how often those
Speaker 1: are used in a cipher or something that could It's
Speaker 1: what's hard for me is that the stinking thing is
Speaker 1: all numbers. Yeah, but you say, like this is so
Speaker 1: like so three is a right, so like how many
Speaker 1: times is three used? Will that it is really quick
Speaker 1: to do on a computer? I think, say, hey, I
Speaker 1: have done frequency analysis myself and with computer about the
Speaker 1: thing about this this particular cipher, And this is why
Speaker 1: I don't understand that they could possibly think this is
Speaker 1: why that this was something besides English. I mean, obviously
Speaker 1: it could have been, but how can you conclude that
Speaker 1: there was any particular language because there's no spaces, so
Speaker 1: you have no you have no clue as to the
Speaker 1: length of the words that are being used, and there's
Speaker 1: no spaces between the numbers there. They can't do frequency
Speaker 1: analysis because one, uh, they're they're referencing words all throughout
Speaker 1: the document. So number one, one seven, number three, number
Speaker 1: fifty two, those could all be a So they're not reading,
Speaker 1: not repeating, they're not really repeating numbers over and over.
Speaker 1: So here's late. But then there that's my questions. A
Speaker 1: string of numbers. But how do you know it's it's
Speaker 1: one one five not uh, one one five? Right? How
Speaker 1: do you know it's like a hundred and fifteen? Not?
Speaker 1: There are commons believe that, yeah, separations between them. They've
Speaker 1: got some form of separator between them. Otherwise you're you're right,
Speaker 1: it would just be that it's just break up into words.
Speaker 1: And as you as you decode the letters, figure out
Speaker 1: that it is it's T H E N. Well is
Speaker 1: that then? But then you figure out the next letter
Speaker 1: and you realize that N is the start of a
Speaker 1: new word. You put a separator in there. It's it's
Speaker 1: it's difficult to to kind of wrap your brain around,
Speaker 1: but it's but it's it's definitely a cipher, but not
Speaker 1: necessarily a cipher, because it could just be gibberish. It
Speaker 1: could And here's here's the last thing that I have
Speaker 1: that that kind of points to maybe this whole thing
Speaker 1: as a hoax is that it's very similar to a
Speaker 1: story by Edgar Allan Poe called The gold Bug, which
Speaker 1: is evidently about gold the cipher and people say that
Speaker 1: this story is probably based on the gold Bug. And
Speaker 1: there's also another story Worry about a man in Kentucky
Speaker 1: that supposedly found a silver mine that was the richest
Speaker 1: silver mine ever and then turned around and buried all
Speaker 1: of the silver and then disappeared. We just did. We
Speaker 1: were just talking about the toy tiles, right, And in
Speaker 1: that episode we talked a little bit about the I
Speaker 1: think it was David Mammitt who wrote four Am. And
Speaker 1: I feel like this is another kind of case of
Speaker 1: which came first, right, chicken or the egg? Yeah, Like,
Speaker 1: did Poe write his story because he saw this manuscript
Speaker 1: or did this manuscript come to like be or the
Speaker 1: I guess it was a pamphlet. Sorry, did the pamphlet
Speaker 1: come to be because of somebody ripped off? Evidently was
Speaker 1: known for kind of tweak in the public sometimes, yeah, stories,
Speaker 1: So it could very well have been Poe. Yeah it was.
Speaker 1: Obviously it didn't get published until after he died. But
Speaker 1: and then that's why it leaves people to say, well,
Speaker 1: it probably wasn't Bow, but it could have been. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but that again, right, that's how we don't know, because
Speaker 1: you know it was it was much later after he dies,
Speaker 1: So yeah, who knows. I guess let's move from it's
Speaker 1: a hoax to the next theory. It's not a hoax.
Speaker 1: It's been found. I found one website that purports that
Speaker 1: this group of guys has found the location of the treasure.
Speaker 1: I can't with this guy. Okay, they found it and
Speaker 1: they've dug it up, or they just know exactly where
Speaker 1: part of it. Here's how it goes. They say they
Speaker 1: decoded page one and page three, and I have a
Speaker 1: major problem with that because they showed the decoded text,
Speaker 1: but nowhere do they say how they decoded it. So
Speaker 1: they could have just made it up. Just it just
Speaker 1: it sets me off right there throws the radar. But
Speaker 1: according to these gentlemen, they found it in the hills
Speaker 1: there in Virginia, and they and it was a cave.
Speaker 1: It was an outcropping with a cave, and they dug
Speaker 1: in there. I don't know cleft exactly, but they went
Speaker 1: in there and they didn't find the treasure. But what
Speaker 1: they did find was remnants of supposedly the pots that
Speaker 1: Beale had left it in. So there were some legs,
Speaker 1: some iron pots, remember the it said it had the
Speaker 1: They were in iron pots. They say that these were
Speaker 1: the short stubby legs it would have been on the pots.
Speaker 1: And there's an iron spike and a piece of leather
Speaker 1: and a buckle which I'm presuming that would have been
Speaker 1: to tie it shut. There's so many things. I uh, Well,
Speaker 1: the buckle was iron and then it was a piece
Speaker 1: of leather there with it. Yes, but it's just like
Speaker 1: why the legs don't break off of iron pots? Like
Speaker 1: why would there be no legs. I'm I'm okay, I'm
Speaker 1: just gonna hypothesize here. I'm just gonna spit ball on
Speaker 1: this that somebody else had found the treasure before they
Speaker 1: got there and they broke the pots, and then they
Speaker 1: threw away the evidence where they carried away most of
Speaker 1: the evidence, and then the rest of it just sat
Speaker 1: there and rusted, like broke open the pot. I don't
Speaker 1: say that's right, but I'm just for a second going
Speaker 1: to stand in defense of these guys and say, well,
Speaker 1: this is why they've only found that they've never found
Speaker 1: in gold. They found jewels. So somebody broke a pot
Speaker 1: open right in the middle of a cave where there's
Speaker 1: like dust and all that stuff. One piece of gold
Speaker 1: is gonna like get loft left behind, a nugget is
Speaker 1: gonna fall. Stuff is gonna get left other than just
Speaker 1: like weird little legs. Yeah, so them, these guys essentially
Speaker 1: you cipher the text of number document number one. They
Speaker 1: put it on the webpage. And this this, this text
Speaker 1: that people are on their web page tells you where
Speaker 1: to go find this. Not exactly what does the text say? Well,
Speaker 1: what's what's listened on their website? Does give some information
Speaker 1: just here I'll just read, according to this website, a
Speaker 1: guy named Daniel Cole is the one who cracked this. Somehow,
Speaker 1: that name makes me irrationally angry for no frea. Okay,
Speaker 1: here's here's it says. Nineteen is the distance south left
Speaker 1: on to second point two's on first part of main
Speaker 1: rock south in east wall ground on south six ft
Speaker 1: deep open front side of point straight down the point
Speaker 1: in front upper part. Remove rocks, then with them remove
Speaker 1: dirt five ft down and round. Now open open point
Speaker 1: two's wall street in now open south side, now on
Speaker 1: down under point. Okay, I have such a problem with this.
Speaker 1: It makes no sense. Okay, but find whatever. Even if
Speaker 1: it did make sense, it's not written the same well exactly.
Speaker 1: I mean, it doesn't sound like the same. Wow. I
Speaker 1: mean no, I'm not not at all. And it's not
Speaker 1: not even close. Now I agree it actually, you know
Speaker 1: what it sounds like to me? It sounds like to me.
Speaker 1: I remember one time I bought a PC back when
Speaker 1: I did PCs, and I got a card for the PC.
Speaker 1: It was like a sound card or whatever, and it
Speaker 1: had this little manual that came with it, and it
Speaker 1: had installations from for installing, you know, and everything like that,
Speaker 1: and there was this one paragraph that it was just
Speaker 1: hilariously bad because it looked like some red looks like
Speaker 1: somebody had put it in, you know, in like written
Speaker 1: in Chinese and then transcribed it word for word from
Speaker 1: an English Chinese dictionary. And that's what that reminds me of. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's not good. It's not a good thing. Now
Speaker 1: it's it's bs. But the other thing I I'm what
Speaker 1: I'm wondering about is another theory that I just came
Speaker 1: up with. Yeah, exactly, And you just came up with
Speaker 1: a theory. So you never do that, Well I'm doing
Speaker 1: you're breaking tradition. Here go, what do you got? It's lepricns. Well,
Speaker 1: I think about it. Pot of gold, Pots of gold,
Speaker 1: number one, number two. They find a leather belt in
Speaker 1: the buckle, fried with of it. Okay, that's some big
Speaker 1: old clue, he said. If there's a green filled hat there,
Speaker 1: he's got it. Yeah. But here's the other thing that's
Speaker 1: like it would have disintegrated by now. No, it's it's
Speaker 1: a leprechn hat. They don't they don't go away. But
Speaker 1: here's but here is the deal. It's like the Lepricon
Speaker 1: theory is almost almost as credible because these guys were
Speaker 1: out in Colorado and they find this cleft intervene that's
Speaker 1: got gold in it. Uh So Number one, veins of
Speaker 1: gold are not immediately apparent. They don't look like anything.
Speaker 1: There's usually not another vein of a cool little accompanying
Speaker 1: vein of silver somewhere really close by. But yeah, they're
Speaker 1: they're completely different minerals. They don't normally go together. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well they go together nicely, but not necessarily in the
Speaker 1: ground u um. And so in other words, if it
Speaker 1: was a vein of gold, that kind of thing is
Speaker 1: it's mixed in with a lot of other minerals. You've
Speaker 1: got to pull out tons of ores, and you have
Speaker 1: to smelt it, and you have to have a big
Speaker 1: factory thing. It's something that thirty guys out in the
Speaker 1: wilderness are not going to be able to probably do,
Speaker 1: which makes it that particular thing that so what if
Speaker 1: they found some lepre con stash of gold, But what
Speaker 1: if they have fifty horses too? Yeah, they just happened
Speaker 1: to fifty horses along. Is that I mean, does that
Speaker 1: make it easier? Well, if they're unicorns wings, they can
Speaker 1: easily get back to Virginia. Got it, We're done with fantasyland.
Speaker 1: Let's move on to the next theory. Alright, So you
Speaker 1: don't like you're not buying an, I actually really like that,
Speaker 1: as in, I think it's hilarious, but no, I'm not
Speaker 1: buying it. The final theory is that the trade you're
Speaker 1: still out there and that it's real. Here's a couple
Speaker 1: of things that point to it. So, as we said,
Speaker 1: they use that abbreviated version of the Declaration of Independence
Speaker 1: to get the supposed deciphering of page two, the drunken
Speaker 1: slurrings of a man. Yes, yes, Well, if you take
Speaker 1: the declaration and you try and decipher pay or decode
Speaker 1: paper one using the declaration, what you get is a
Speaker 1: sequence of letters at the start, which are A B
Speaker 1: F D E F G, H I I, J K, L, M,
Speaker 1: M N O, H P P. So this people say
Speaker 1: in frequency the chances of those letters coming up on
Speaker 1: their own is zero, but that frequency has the appearance
Speaker 1: of quite possibly being a set of words. But people
Speaker 1: are saying that it's possible that while paper to just
Speaker 1: use the regular book cipher paper one and three may
Speaker 1: have been encoded and then encoded again, so they were double.
Speaker 1: So it's it's a double or supers And I guess
Speaker 1: that would make sense, right, because those are the two
Speaker 1: pieces of information that are more sensitive, right, the second
Speaker 1: one is just kind of like this is kind of
Speaker 1: what we have, but the location super important. You know. Again,
Speaker 1: I have issue with like the name of people who
Speaker 1: should be getting this, Like I don't understand why they
Speaker 1: would need to be included in the first place, trippers,
Speaker 1: you know, double encoded. And also the number three is
Speaker 1: like has has just been pointed out This thought is
Speaker 1: not original to me. But thirty guys, okay, their names
Speaker 1: and names are the next kin where they live, and
Speaker 1: you're going to do all that and eight characters are
Speaker 1: less well, and that's that's them. Is that that document.
Speaker 1: People have said there is not enough characters in that
Speaker 1: document to list off all that information. So there's a
Speaker 1: serious issue there. But we're gonna we're gonna continue to
Speaker 1: run down the path of it is totally true and
Speaker 1: it is still out there. And I assume that people
Speaker 1: have used other other documents from the founding of our
Speaker 1: country around that time. Yes, people have tried to use
Speaker 1: the Constitution and all those great historical documents. I don't
Speaker 1: think they've used that one, but failed to crack this
Speaker 1: particular set of ciphers. There is if we're going down
Speaker 1: the it's real path, which we of course are, which we,
Speaker 1: of course are. So there's a chance that the person
Speaker 1: our pamphlet, who put out the pamphlet that told us
Speaker 1: everything that we know about this, may have taken and
Speaker 1: scrambled the code that was listed in paper one and
Speaker 1: paper three. Yeah, he mixed them up. And here's the
Speaker 1: reason is that supposedly there was somebody else out there
Speaker 1: who had the key. So if that person gets ahold
Speaker 1: of the pamphlet and then tries to decode it themselves,
Speaker 1: it's not gonna work. So then they're gonna have to
Speaker 1: turn around and they're gonna have to come to him,
Speaker 1: the person who possesses the actual cipher text, so that
Speaker 1: then they can go in on at fifty fifty and
Speaker 1: split it. So basically he's forcing somebody's hand to come
Speaker 1: to him and pay out. It makes sense when you
Speaker 1: kind of step back from it a little bit. It's
Speaker 1: a little weirdness and telling the story that he never
Speaker 1: actually cracked the cipher at all. He just pretended to
Speaker 1: crack number two and scrambled numbers one and three. No, Well,
Speaker 1: I mean, you can look at it both ways. Either
Speaker 1: he didn't actually do it, he pretended to crack it,
Speaker 1: or he did crack number two, but he couldn't crack
Speaker 1: number one. But in an effort to draw that person out,
Speaker 1: he screwed up the numbers intentionally in one and two
Speaker 1: so that they had to come to him and say, hey, wait,
Speaker 1: something's not right here because I've totally got the key,
Speaker 1: or you've got the key. Awesome, I totally got the
Speaker 1: real cipher. Let's split it. Interesting because it seems really unlikely.
Speaker 1: I mean, anybody that uh, these this group of what
Speaker 1: thirty men would have trusted with the key to the cipher, right,
Speaker 1: would ostensibly not then go and say, oh, yeah, by
Speaker 1: the way, I have the key to this thing, let's
Speaker 1: split right. That's that's ostensibly a fairly trustworthy person. But
Speaker 1: we're also looking at how much time has passed. We're
Speaker 1: looking at nearly forty years. Yeah. I guess that's fair dad. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: You've got to imagine most, if not all, have passed
Speaker 1: by that point. Yeah. It's interesting little conunder there. We have,
Speaker 1: we have we have one more. We have one more
Speaker 1: that says that it was real, But it's kind of
Speaker 1: a crackpot. Version does have to do with like um,
Speaker 1: like lizard people living in the center of the earth.
Speaker 1: Afraid people, what about a mass conspiracy from our government?
Speaker 1: People say, because the n s A and other organizations
Speaker 1: in the government who are code breakers have used the
Speaker 1: Biel cipher as a training tool and had their their
Speaker 1: candidates try to figure it out. So it's been theorized
Speaker 1: that the n s A or some other government organization,
Speaker 1: not pointing at the n s A, but some government
Speaker 1: organization who has a lot of code breaking people around,
Speaker 1: has figured out what this thing said, went and got
Speaker 1: it and dumped all that gold into the national coffers.
Speaker 1: Which makes sense because as we have a lot of money. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and there's been many times when this country has been
Speaker 1: desperately in need of money. Yeah for our governm A
Speaker 1: thirty million dollars, isn't It's like a nickel to you?
Speaker 1: And I think, yeah, well, but hey, you know what,
Speaker 1: a little bit here is a little bit there. And
Speaker 1: so this theory says that they've gone and already gotten it.
Speaker 1: And that's why these other guys who found just the
Speaker 1: pieces of iron, we found the pieces of iron because
Speaker 1: the fans have come in and let's taken it. The
Speaker 1: fans are way better at extraction than that. Let's be
Speaker 1: totally honest there. Okay, they're not leaving anything behind. They
Speaker 1: can easily extract you know, money directly out of our
Speaker 1: bank accounts, in our wallets. They don't need to bother
Speaker 1: with gold. But we were looking at from today. What
Speaker 1: if this was a hundred years ago they did it.
Speaker 1: I don't know if we had the decryption, I mean,
Speaker 1: Intel didn't really Okay, let's the fifties of the sixties.
Speaker 1: It's entirely credible. What I think would be more likely
Speaker 1: is that government employees who are very skilled at decryption
Speaker 1: could very well crack this. But why would you tell
Speaker 1: the fens about it? If you were, if you've got
Speaker 1: access to the computers and everything else, you got access
Speaker 1: to these resources, you can crack it, and even a
Speaker 1: few of your buddies from the office go down there
Speaker 1: and grab it. I mean, that would make a lot
Speaker 1: more sense. I guess My big problem with them actually
Speaker 1: being able to solve this thing, right is that isn't
Speaker 1: there like a cipher that's like right in front of where,
Speaker 1: Like yeah, and they've only deciphered one of the three
Speaker 1: panels there. Come on, man, if you can't figure that
Speaker 1: thing out, right, Like, how are you going to figure
Speaker 1: this thing out. I just yeah, you know this is
Speaker 1: and I don't know if this has occurred to anybody
Speaker 1: in our government or not, but think about something like,
Speaker 1: you know so because you know that that other governments
Speaker 1: are trying to read our trying to read our mail
Speaker 1: all the time, so think about it. Wouldn't be tempting
Speaker 1: to actually put out giblers that's not even cipher, but
Speaker 1: it looks totally like a cipher and let them waste
Speaker 1: valuable man hours and energy trying to decipher those. I
Speaker 1: think you've brought this up before. It seems likely. What
Speaker 1: if the what if the second one is the only
Speaker 1: one that is a legitimate one, but it needs to
Speaker 1: be deciphered with something other than that the Declaration of Independence? Right,
Speaker 1: some other manuscript. So are you saying, wait, let me
Speaker 1: just make sure I'm following. So are you saying that
Speaker 1: the declaration was correct in an interpretation, but there's another
Speaker 1: document and had that another meaning that So somebody had
Speaker 1: to match up two books basically too and find words
Speaker 1: that were on the same number, that had the same letters.
Speaker 1: That's extreme. No, I'm not saying that at all. I'm
Speaker 1: saying that, like this guy came up with an okay
Speaker 1: interpretation of the Declaration of Independence. He got he got
Speaker 1: to something that like could be made into something that
Speaker 1: kind of made some coherent sense, but that perhaps he
Speaker 1: used the wrong document. It is entirely that's the only
Speaker 1: one that's actually decipherable. It might be that, like you say,
Speaker 1: if you like, grab the copy of of any Dickens novels,
Speaker 1: say Tale of Two Cities. It might be that that
Speaker 1: is the key, you know, and that it's just a
Speaker 1: coincidence that some letters randomly in the two of them
Speaker 1: happen to coincide. It turns out English it's pretty easy
Speaker 1: to make words. Yeah, we do it all the time,
Speaker 1: all the time. It might be an entirely different key.
Speaker 1: I don't know that anybody has thought about that. I'm
Speaker 1: not I'm definitely not the cipher ologist of this crew.
Speaker 1: So I'm not the no cipherologist. Yeah, so I'm sure
Speaker 1: which title we were going. Yeah, I'm not going to
Speaker 1: say that, like my theory is better than anyone else's,
Speaker 1: of course, But what if what if it was the
Speaker 1: idiot who figured it out this time? Yeah? I mean,
Speaker 1: and the other thing about it is is like people
Speaker 1: are looking for the key, you know, and it's like, okay,
Speaker 1: so you got this thing with all these numbers in it,
Speaker 1: and so it's got to be a document, and these
Speaker 1: numbers have to represent a word, which we will take
Speaker 1: the first letter of that document. It could be an
Speaker 1: entirely different kind of cipher. So, I mean, so that's
Speaker 1: the whole thing. That's that's one reason I'm not going
Speaker 1: to really waste any time trying to break this particular one.
Speaker 1: It's interesting to try to come up with ideas as
Speaker 1: to what kind of a cipher. If I can start
Speaker 1: to get a cipher like that, I would have something
Speaker 1: that something to be more diabolical, like say a three
Speaker 1: letter or three digit number would represent say seven one
Speaker 1: seven fifteen is not the seven word in there, but
Speaker 1: instead what it is it's like to say the seventh
Speaker 1: line down and then the first call them in, and
Speaker 1: then five letters beyond that in the alphabet. You know,
Speaker 1: I would do something like that. You do this with
Speaker 1: your diary, don't I totally do. This is how send emails. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is how he does it. But you see, but
Speaker 1: you see see kind of what I'm talking about. Numbers
Speaker 1: can represent something entirely different than what these people are saying.
Speaker 1: You can, yeah, you can. You can determine how they
Speaker 1: get used however you want. And I see where you're heading.
Speaker 1: I feel like this is just one for the ages.
Speaker 1: It kind of is, because that's really that's our theories,
Speaker 1: that's it. I think that Yeah, I think no, I
Speaker 1: think that it's uh, it's almost certainly a hoax. But
Speaker 1: you know, pamphlets back in those days actually made money
Speaker 1: and they were like just like selling a book, and
Speaker 1: you could write a pamphlet however checking yeah, exactly, and uh,
Speaker 1: and actually there's no fact checking going on to day.
Speaker 1: Think they heard that they didn't have the internet. It
Speaker 1: was pretty hard to check those facts, right, Yeah, you
Speaker 1: couldn't just like google. Yah. But again, the fact that
Speaker 1: the fact that this guy used a kind of non
Speaker 1: existent version of the Declaration of Independence as a key
Speaker 1: and somehow that manages to successfully translate all these numbers
Speaker 1: into a medical message, It's yeah, that's kind of damning
Speaker 1: in and of itself. So, Kevin, what do you think?
Speaker 1: What's your where you lean on this? I don't know
Speaker 1: where I you know, I really want to believe this
Speaker 1: is one of those stories that like in the heart
Speaker 1: of any like true American, right, you really want to
Speaker 1: believe that, like these people could have gone out and
Speaker 1: found all this gold and struck it rich and like
Speaker 1: hit it and it's still hidden somewhere. But when I
Speaker 1: really sit down to think about it, that I definitely wouldn't.
Speaker 1: I'm lazy and I wouldn't have done that. And people
Speaker 1: back then were less lazy than I am. And that's fine,
Speaker 1: But like that's a really far way, Like why not
Speaker 1: just hide at someplace in Colorado, Like there are a
Speaker 1: lot of really great hiding places in Colorado. Why take
Speaker 1: it all the way to Virginia to hide it? And
Speaker 1: then write this like crazy cipher? I feel like hoax.
Speaker 1: I hate I hate advocating for hoaxes. But yeah, because
Speaker 1: you want. It's a fun story, it's cool and everything,
Speaker 1: but and I not of it makes sense. I gotta
Speaker 1: tell you this is this may be your first we
Speaker 1: have a unanimous decision here because I personally, after all
Speaker 1: of my research, have been inclined that this is a hoax.
Speaker 1: And here's here's a bit of information that we haven't
Speaker 1: shared yet. Is this pamphlet that came out this person
Speaker 1: had a huge quantity of these pamphlets printed, but only
Speaker 1: a small number of them got out. And then supposedly
Speaker 1: there was a warehouse fires, the setup warehouse fires in
Speaker 1: a district, and the press house that they were all
Speaker 1: stored at also went up in flames, and so that's
Speaker 1: where and oh my gosh, there's no more copies of it,
Speaker 1: which seems like if this guy was really real, he
Speaker 1: had just paid up and had some more made. Yeah. Yeah, Well,
Speaker 1: another theory I heard about about that is that it
Speaker 1: got out. This was a local guy who wrote this
Speaker 1: and probably wrote it to make some money or whatever,
Speaker 1: and he and then when it went out people want
Speaker 1: nuts and and because I mean the No. Number two
Speaker 1: of it, yeah, the allure of it, but and but
Speaker 1: but but but basically this does define kind of an area,
Speaker 1: although it's a broad area, a circle with a four
Speaker 1: mile radius around Buford's tavern in Virginia. Not that yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean seriously, And so apparently one theory is that
Speaker 1: this guy knew a lot of people locally, and when
Speaker 1: treasure hunters went out and started like digging up everybody's
Speaker 1: property and graveyards and everything else, this guy realized, holy crap,
Speaker 1: you know what have I done? And so he made
Speaker 1: either yeah, he made it. He created a monster, and
Speaker 1: so he destroyed these things or you know, probably maybe
Speaker 1: they're in a fire or maybe just through him in
Speaker 1: the river or something like that. But you know, that's
Speaker 1: another theory about the whole thing, which I find believable.
Speaker 1: It's a shame to waste. No, that's and that's a
Speaker 1: good point. But I I unfortunately, I I have to
Speaker 1: say that I don't. I don't believe this one. There's
Speaker 1: just too many inconsistencies. For one, No, I mean, the
Speaker 1: the underlying story is not credible. About these guys going
Speaker 1: up finding old You don't just find gold line around.
Speaker 1: You have to like set up a big operation with
Speaker 1: the pine. Yeah. Like we said, there's a whole bunch
Speaker 1: of logistics here that just don't seem to pay it out. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then getting all stressed out about about oh my god,
Speaker 1: it's so insecure to have the goal just hidden around
Speaker 1: here burying the ground. Let's send somebody alone back east
Speaker 1: to burying the ground back east instead. That doesn't make
Speaker 1: any sense. It doesn't make sense all around. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: if if you have any information or theories that you
Speaker 1: want to to proffer about this, you're more than welcome
Speaker 1: to do that. And if you're Thomas Jefferson Bale and
Speaker 1: you're actually a lizard person who's you know that, please
Speaker 1: do contact you can cut you can get a hold
Speaker 1: of a couple of ways. You can go to our
Speaker 1: website Thinking Sideways podcast dot com. While you're on there,
Speaker 1: of course, you can always leave a comment, of course,
Speaker 1: so you can listen to the episode while you're on
Speaker 1: there as well. Most likely a lot of folks have
Speaker 1: been using the website to listen, but a lot of
Speaker 1: folks also go ahead and go to down download it
Speaker 1: from iTunes. If you're on iTunes, take the time leave
Speaker 1: us a comment and rating. We've been get a lot
Speaker 1: of traffic on iTunes lately. Fantastic to hear everything from everybody.
Speaker 1: I want to do a shout out to Arcade gannon
Speaker 1: fellow follow follower, what up yo? No idea what that means?
Speaker 1: But okay or her? I don't know? Okay, Well, at
Speaker 1: least they'll know. You can always find our episodes on Stitcher,
Speaker 1: So if you don't want to take the time, you're
Speaker 1: not able to download it, and you don't want to
Speaker 1: go directly to the site, you can just get it
Speaker 1: there on any mobile device, very easy to stream right
Speaker 1: then and there. And at last, but not least, you
Speaker 1: could go ahead and send us an old fashioned email
Speaker 1: if you want to send us an even world fashioned
Speaker 1: like just snail mails, general delivery. The email address is
Speaker 1: Thinking Sideways podcast at email dot com. And speaking of
Speaker 1: listener mail, we've been a little tardy on getting some
Speaker 1: of these listener mails that we've picked out that we've liked.
Speaker 1: We like a lot of them, though, Yeah, it's been
Speaker 1: a little crazy, a little crazy. We've got a bunch
Speaker 1: of them, and there's been a number that we wanted
Speaker 1: to read and things have just kind of conspired against us.
Speaker 1: So I'm making an effort today. We're just gonna go
Speaker 1: ahead and are we going to read all of them? Well,
Speaker 1: we've got three of them that we're going to read. Yeah,
Speaker 1: only three of them. So let's go in and let
Speaker 1: me let me grab the first one. The first email
Speaker 1: is from Matt, and Matt said, uh, I got a
Speaker 1: response from art read At a while back, and it's
Speaker 1: spent the last few weeks listening to your podcast. I'm
Speaker 1: a really big fan and you guys have added an
Speaker 1: inquisitive nature to my walk to work listen read it friend,
Speaker 1: Thank you, yeah, and that I don't want you to
Speaker 1: be so distracted that you get run over by a bus,
Speaker 1: so please be careful. We'll be really careful to not
Speaker 1: do any those like creepy like people walking to like
Speaker 1: work stories. Yeah good, and we will slip in about
Speaker 1: every five minutes or so quick, like Matt, look behind you.
Speaker 1: I enjoy the Devil's addecate elements of your podcast and
Speaker 1: how you can switch standpoints a few times during a podcast.
Speaker 1: And Matt then goes on to to share a story
Speaker 1: that that he was thought that we should look into,
Speaker 1: and we're going to exchange some emails because he's got
Speaker 1: some information on it. But evidently he was writing, uh
Speaker 1: this email kind of late at night and so he
Speaker 1: couldn't write anymore, which is totally understandable. I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: it depends on what is scheduling that off into a
Speaker 1: bunch of z. That's what happens to me. No, that's
Speaker 1: that's that's not actually what happened. But thank you. So
Speaker 1: this next one is from a guy named Thomas. He says, hey,
Speaker 1: my name is Thomas, and about two weeks ago I
Speaker 1: got into your show and Binge on all the episodes.
Speaker 1: I love your show a lot. Your show is exactly
Speaker 1: what I was looking for in terms of a podcast
Speaker 1: that covers weird, unsolved mysteries, and I like how you
Speaker 1: take a more logical approach to the mysteries instead of
Speaker 1: always drawing aliens or conspiracy theories. That we don't believe
Speaker 1: in that stuff. We just tend to not advocate for
Speaker 1: it so much. I'm definitely looking forward to hearing more
Speaker 1: episodes in the future. By the way, Joe kind of
Speaker 1: sounds like John Goodman, and I'm sure I'm not the
Speaker 1: first person to point that out. Actually I think he is. Thomas.
Speaker 1: You are said that, but as soon as you said it,
Speaker 1: I was like, he totally does. Totally. I had never
Speaker 1: made that connect. And then you listen to it, You're like,
Speaker 1: oh my gosh, well now I'm going to have a
Speaker 1: famous person in my ears every time I edit a show. Great,
Speaker 1: it's going to be. By the way, Thomas, I don't
Speaker 1: I'm not as big as he is Goodman. He's a
Speaker 1: great guy. He's just you know, but yeah, I'm not
Speaker 1: don't want to be as biggest. Yeah you do a
Speaker 1: little bit sound like him. Okay, we'll go we'll like
Speaker 1: watch the Big I'm gonna be all yeah, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: be all self conscious about it. Yeah. By the way,
Speaker 1: I love The Big Lebowski. Yeah. So then Thomas like
Speaker 1: suggests a couple of shows that that seems to be
Speaker 1: like the trend, right everybody has like awesome feedback and
Speaker 1: also do these shows. Yes, and we're working through him
Speaker 1: as we as we mix him into the list. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: thanks Thomas, Thank you Thomas. Okay, okay, now our next
Speaker 1: emails from Jeremy. Hi, Jeremy, so here it goes. Hello,
Speaker 1: greetings from Wyoming. I drive for eups and listen to
Speaker 1: podcasts all day. I bet you would in a job
Speaker 1: like that. Oh yeah, I can imagine totally listen to
Speaker 1: just the radio, and especially if it's a he's kind
Speaker 1: of in a rural areas. Wyoming is a r you
Speaker 1: want to get radio stations constantly. Yeah, okay, well anyway,
Speaker 1: sorry for the interruption, Jeremy. Okay, greetings from Wyoming. I
Speaker 1: drive for EPs and let's listen to podcast all day.
Speaker 1: Years was coincidentally suggested to me the night before I
Speaker 1: started covering for a rural driver for two weeks. I
Speaker 1: really love the subjects you've covered so far in my
Speaker 1: attempt to catch up from the beginning. He's enjoyed his attempt. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's listening to what's come out and he's working through
Speaker 1: the great Okay, So I would love it if you
Speaker 1: would delve in the topics like the and the Okay,
Speaker 1: we actually have been considering some of those topics, and yeah,
Speaker 1: we probably will delve into at least a few of them.
Speaker 1: Well you know what's great. Yeah, one of those, yeah,
Speaker 1: is the Biel Cipher, which which which we just talked
Speaker 1: about exactly, and and another one the is one we're
Speaker 1: gonna be talking about sometime in the next few weeks. Anyway,
Speaker 1: I started continue reading your email, Jeremy. Either way, please
Speaker 1: keep up the great work because I drive a lot
Speaker 1: all caps, So okay, we're gonna do extra long episodes
Speaker 1: just for Yeah, that's awesome. Yeah, okay, bye, Jeremy, thank you.
Speaker 1: Well that I really I like listener email and I
Speaker 1: feel bad some times for holding them all in a
Speaker 1: bunch and spreading me up. I love doing listening. I
Speaker 1: love reading listener, I mean and like reading comments and
Speaker 1: things like that because people seem to be really great
Speaker 1: about giving us like awesome feedback, not just positive feedback,
Speaker 1: but like things that they would love to dress, you know,
Speaker 1: things that I think we should change, which I think
Speaker 1: is is really great. Yeah. No, we got we got
Speaker 1: useful constructive criticism. Yeah. And as I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: if you've been listening to us throughout the whole time
Speaker 1: or you're trying to like go through our backlog, we're
Speaker 1: fairly new at this, right. Yeah. We definitely appreciate the
Speaker 1: constructive criticism. Yeah, we try to improve. We take criticism. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we do. Uh yeah, thanks again everybody. We do appreciate it.
Speaker 1: And I guess, well, this is the point where I
Speaker 1: hate to tell it, but we're gonna say bye bye Ye.
Speaker 1: Time to walk up into the sunset. Yeah, let's walk
Speaker 1: off in this spurs that jingle jangle? Can you do
Speaker 1: you know any good tunes to whistle? Joe? I got
Speaker 1: stairs that jingle jangle, jingle jangle jangle,