Thinking Sideways: The Beale Cypher

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Thinking Sideways. I don't think you never know what stories
of things we simply don't know the answer to. Welcome back, everybody,
and thanks for coming back. I am Steve and this

(00:25):
is Thinking Sideways the podcast, and always, as always have
got my co host with me. I'm Devino. And by
the way, your your language is kind of exclusionary because
you're only welcoming back to people who have already listened
to us, and welcome back to all of our previous listeners,
and welcome to all of our new listeners. Yes, thank you, sir,
appreciate you for clarifying that for me. Well, tonight we

(00:50):
are going to talk about a story that is a
bit of a mystery and it's not solved. It's just
a little bit of a Mrs Smitch pretty a bit.
It's not yet unsolved, it's not shortly to be solved. Okay,
so it's it's it's still unsolved at this moment, but
not until you get your hands on it. Absolutely, I
got it. Okay, Sideways is going to crack this one

(01:12):
like a walnut. Apparently we do that every week. Sorry everyone,
all right, well let's let's get into this. So, uh,
just a little background, how I got this. This particular
story is I just finished reading recently the book The
Code Book by Simon Sing. I read that book. I
liked it. You didn't know are you gonna? Why would I?

(01:35):
You guys are now obviously like really really good at
this stuff, right, cryptographer, I need to get better at
the other stuff that's happening, Like who needs like three
code breakers? One? That's true. Obviously, we've we've given away
that The Code Book is about code breaking. It's also

(01:59):
about the history of and it is. It's really interesting,
and it's by a guy named Simon Saying, And anybody
who's interested in Cipher's go pick that book up. It's
really awesome. That's yeah, it's a very it's a very
good and easy read. But one of the stories that
he tells in there is about the Beal Cipher and
I read about it briefly before, but once I read

(02:20):
his accounting of it, I really got interested in it,
and I decided that we needed to take some time
to really look into it. So let's just kind of
start at the beginning, and let's start with how the
story goes, because the story has been retold a number
of times, but I'm gonna do. We're gonna do the
best we can with the accounting of it. Are we
gonna are we just gonna do like this is how

(02:40):
everything's kind of all the way always told or or
what well? I mean, if we if we see things
that have different accountings, I think that we'll have to
bring those up. Okay, maybe I thought that quick, quick abstract.
I guess he would say, Okay, bury a treasure, mysterious cipher.
Everybody's puzzled for two years. Okay, there you go. All right,
let's get into theories. Okay. So the story begins in

(03:07):
eighteen twenty January of eighteen twenty when a gentleman by
the name of Thomas J. Beale arrives in Lynchburg, Virginia
and checks into the Washington Hotel. He stays at the
hotel that winter and then leaves in the spring, but
while he's there, he becomes friends with the owner of
the hotel, manned by the name of Robert Morris. Beale

(03:31):
comes back two years later, so this is eighteen twenty two,
and once again he spends the winter at the hotel,
but before he leaves in the spring, this time he
gives Morris a locked iron box, which he says contains
papers of value in importance. Lawrence, of course, being a

(03:52):
good guy, sticks the box in a corner on a
shelf and hangs onto it and doesn't think anything of it. Bunk.
But Morris of course immediately opened the box. Was in there. Well,
according to this story that is out there, bal never
came back, and Morris, being a good guy, was gonna wait.

(04:15):
And according to their and this is where the accounting
is get a little fuzzy. I've seen accountings that said
Beale told Morris not to open it for ten years. Yeah,
he sent him a letter. Actually, yeah, is that how
it went because accountings both ways. Yeah, I sent a
letter said if you don't hear from me from ten
years past the date of this letter, then open the box.

(04:35):
I love that his instructions to open the box first
removed the lock. And it's like okay, yeah, And and
so he eventually does open the box, but Morris waits
twenty three years to do it. So it's eighty five
before curiosity ever gets the better of him and he
finally pops the thing open. When he opens it, he

(04:57):
finds several things in there. He lines a note written
by Beale in English to him. And then he also
finds three sheets that are just full of numbers, and
the note evidently reveals a little bit about Beale himself
and what's going on. And here's what it is. According

(05:20):
to Beale. In eighteen seventeen, he and twenty nine other
men headed west to explore the country. And this is
pretty much the wild West, and they went all over
I think you said, Joe, you had seen they've been
in Mexico. Yeah, they went to Santa Fe and then
up north into Colorado. And that was Spanish America back

(05:40):
in those days, that back when the Spaniards ruled it.
And then after that just a little bit of history, Um,
it was along and the like about one most a
Mexican revolution, Mexicans over through the Spanish. So the Spanish
previously controlled that territory and the Spain Spanish. Yeah, the
Spain Spanish. Yeah. Yeah. When the Spanish were overthrown in,

(06:03):
Spanish control authority over that that area went away, and
the Mexican government was like fairly incompetent, had enhanced full
at home, and so that whole part of the US
was really kind of like ignored pretty much not under
any sort of government at all. It was truly was
the wild West, and it was it was every man

(06:23):
for himself. Do whatever you want while you're here, pretty much. Yeah. Well,
according to this this letter eighteen seventeen, which is just
a little prior to that, Uh, these guys had gone
out and we're looking to make their fortune. And according
to the note, Beal says, the party encamped in a

(06:44):
small ravine, we're preparing their evening meal when one of
the men discovered in a cleft of the rocks something
that had the appearance of gold. Upon showing to the others,
it was pronounced to be gold, and much excitement. Was
the natural consequence, like the understatement, I like the way
they wrote back in those days. Yeah, no, it's it's

(07:05):
it's a little flowery, but I like it. It was
the natural consequence of things, naturally. The note goes on
to explain that Beale and his men had mind that
site for eighteen months, at which point they had obviously
accumulated a large quantity of gold and silver, which they

(07:25):
seemed to have found nearby, and they agreed that they
needed to move all of this gold somewhere safe, and
they decided to take it back home to Virginia, where
they were going to hide it in a secret location. Yeah,
and and and in this trip back to Virginia, Bale

(07:45):
says that he traded some of the gold and silver
for jewels, which I can understand because they would be lighter.
O bal went by himself. According to his letter, he
doesn't mention anybody. According to his letter, its friends were like, Hey,
you're the most trustworthy of the dudes. We're gonna give
you what's what equivalent to like twenty million dollars today

(08:09):
gold and just like send you on your merried way. Well, right,
that's what that letter says, right it does. And looking
that's the thing that's absurd about it, is like if
they're really worried about the safety or their gold, and
you send one guy off with basically twenty because I
I calculated the way of of this his first trip
and a two out of fifty pounds per horse, it's

(08:29):
about twenty horses, twenty horse pack train a single guy
and you guys are just taking Oh, I feel so
much better than Mr Beale has got all of our
gold and twenty horses. He's riding aloud to this territory
rather than us having to worry about Indian territory exactly
the territory. And they're going from where probably New Mexico is,
other Colorado FROMO and then up to Colorado and then um,

(08:57):
and then he was going all the way to Virginia.
And it was obviously because I mean, yeah, and if
nothing else, mean, accidents happen. So even if the Indians
don't get it with the Spanish don't get them, even
if robbers don't get them, uh you know, I mean
just and hit his head or whatever, you know. And
then but I actually I did hear another version of

(09:21):
this story in which it wasn't just him. It was
actually about almost half the group went back to Virginia
with him the first time. Uh. And so that makes
that makes a lot more sense, because that means if
you've got a bunch of guys and everybody has one
pack horse, that's he's pulling behind them all the way
they got the horses. I don't know they might have
traded with the Indians. It's hard to say. Yeah, I
feel like with that much gold you can buy kind

(09:41):
of anything. I don't know if the Indians were all
that interested in gold, though maybe the gems oh wait,
he would have traded that in route so that he
wouldn't have had these precious gems at the start. Though. Yeah,
that's good point. Just ye, they love them. That is

(10:01):
so viciously racist. I can't think of anybody who don't
love gold. Okay, well, and let's get back to this
what the letter said. The letter says that at the
end of the winter, when he had left Morris the
first time, so we had left the Washington Hotel in Virginia,
he had gone back and the men, of course, while

(10:24):
he was gone during this time, we're busy minding gold
and hiding it from him. This time around, we're busy
continuing to mind the gold. Now, mind you, is that
he got there in the winter, and he left in
the spring, which has got to be two to three months.
So this guy's had to have been gone six months
and all the buddies are just still barely working away.
I don't know, you have you know, like like digging

(10:45):
in winter in Colorado. I don't know. They might have
been hanging up, pulled up somewhere, spending all their time
like hunting for food and stuff like that, didn't time
to stay warm. Yeah, I don't know. Beale leaves Virginia
in the what I would guess would be the spring
of eighteen one and heads back to his guys. He's
been gone a while there, of course, still mining everything,

(11:07):
and they, in his absence have say, well, we've got
all this new gold that we've mined, and you've been
we should probably secure this as well. So they send
him back on another trip to put it in whatever
little heidie hole he's got it stashed away in, And

(11:28):
while he's at it, they tell him to find a
reliable person who they could confide in their secrets, so
that if something happened to them, their relatives could be
alerted of this cash of gold and silver and jewels
and come and take their share of the money. So

(11:51):
this is the reason that Beal supposedly left Morris with
this iron lock box with the note in it and
um and so that was a second trip back, and
again in another another telling him the story that I heard,
Bale and all of the guys came back down that
second trip. So that is just one more version of
which makes it even weirder that they would have left

(12:12):
the lock box with him. Well yeah, and it doesn't
seem really necessary at that point. Yeah, that seems before
the horse. Yeah, that doesn't make sense. Sending him back
all buy his little lonesome doesn't make any sense either.
So I calculated, by the way, there's some weirdness going on.
I calculated the weights, uh, the weight of his second journey,
and he would have only required about fourteen pack horses

(12:33):
for that one. Well, thank goodness for that. Yeah. Well, like,
like we said, Morris gets the box and he opens
it and he decides, I've got to figure out what
this cipher says, because he is morally obligated, according to

(12:53):
the story, to find these relatives and get the money
to them to get their share. So look like pulls
out his Apple computer and saying program plus plus. Oh wait,
there's a problem, Joe. They didn't have computers. Head. Oh,
he's using an abacus. They didn't have computers. Then, they

(13:15):
haven't always had computer How did they get on the internet.
How did they take selfies? They didn't? Oh my god. Okay,
well in eighteen sixty two, so this is seventeen years
after Morris has opened the box, because he opened it
in eighteen forty five, he's eighty four years old. And

(13:37):
again this is according to the accounting, he realizes that
he doesn't have much longer to live and he needs
to tell somebody, so he shares this story with an
unknown confidante, this person. We never know who this person is,
but we do know two things about that person. First,

(13:59):
they turn around and they publish the letters from Beal
along with the cipher in a pamphlet, and began to
circulate that pamphlet around. And the pamphlet also evidently deciphers
one of the codes, and that and his decipher text

(14:21):
appeared in that first pack. It appeared in the pamphlet.
According to this pamphlet, this guy or I guess it
could have been a woman. This person decoded, thank you
for pointing at me, while saying that, well, it would
have been worse if I pointed at Joe. Yes, it
could have been a woman. Yes, that point, I said, woman.

(14:42):
That's exciting. The pamphletter decodes the second page of the
cipher and supposedly figured out what it was. They say
that it was this This person determines that it's a
book cipher, and this second cipher has eight hundred numbers on.
We talked about book ciphers with Tom and Shrewd didn't

(15:05):
we know we were talking about like things like one
time past. There's other things like book ciphers, not the
same as this particular book cipher. But say if I
take a book like like to Have Have Not by
Ernest Hening way, starting from the first page, you know,
that's one way of doing and is you go from
the first the first counting the letters. Yeah, well for

(15:26):
the words, I should say, yeah, well, there's there's various ways.
You can just go letter by a letter, so translate
years by adding letters to letters you know, you know,
and not not skipping words or anything. And that's one
way to do it. That generates that generates a number,
or you can do like this one is where you
have a number which is the number of the word
in the entire sequel to the document, and you take
the first letter, which really seems to me like a

(15:49):
really cumbersome encryption sess technique. It is very combesome. But
evidently this guy says that he deciphered it using the
declaration of independent and the second one, not the first
or the third that he figures out the middle one
of the bunch, which is weird. That is a little weird,

(16:10):
and we're gonna We're gonna share with you what this
supposedly decoded texts says, and Joe, do you mind reading
that for us? Not at all. I have deposited in
the County of Bedford, about four miles from Buford's and
Beaufords by the Way, was a tavern in an excavation
or vault six ft below the surface of the ground.
The following articles belonging jointly to the parties whose names

(16:32):
are given in number three herewith. The first deposit consisted
of ten thousand and fourteen pounds of gold and thirty
eight hundred and twelve pounds of silver, deposited November eighteen nineteen.
The second was made December eighty one and consisted of
nineteen hundred and seven pounds of gold and twelve d
and eight of silver, also juels obtained in St. Louis

(16:56):
an exchange for silver to save transportation, and valued at
thirteen thousand others. The above is securely packed in iron
pots with iron covers. The vault is roughly lined with stone,
and the vessels rest on a solid stone and are
covered with others. Paper number one describes the exact locality
of the vault, so that no difficulty will be had
in finding it. You you have a Yeah, Okay, I

(17:20):
understand people wrote like more eloquently and more thoroughly in
those times. Sure, but if you're writing a cipher, especially
one that this contact, why do you say something like
in an excavation or vault like that specifically because stand
out yea, because you're thinking like, h you're thinking like, wow,

(17:44):
this is going to add another fifteen minutes to the encryption,
or even like why include this, right? I mean I simplifying, right,
you just say like, hey, for the people who have
the key for this, this is where it is. Right,
Why write three full different manuscripts in the super complicated
cipher I'm sorry, in three different super complicated ciphers cipher

(18:08):
with three keys, sure, and have it saved flowery like
really really crazy stuff. But you've got to remember today's
language is much more abbreviated and to the point, and
that to him may have been shortened in an excavation
or vault. I feel like I'm not defending it. I'm
just saying it could have been to him that was

(18:30):
the shortened version. Yeah, but it's like maybe maybe it was,
but I think that he could have pared this down
to about a quarter of his length. Totally. Yeah, you
could have just said, hey, about four months of beaufers.
There's just a ton of golden silvers of jewels, and
that's all people need to hear about it, maybe six
feet on there in a stone vault. And to defend
Beal a little bit though, he does need to describe

(18:52):
how much is there so that everybody has an accounting.
So if I show up and I'm taken some U
and I've already I come back for some more, and
person number two arrives is, hey, I'm here for my share.
Oh yeah, so this is what was here. I just
got here as well. You have to be able to
kind of hold everybody to some kind of honor system,

(19:14):
wouldn't you, I guess. But I and I think that
you know, you just like leave that in the vault,
right like that somebody somebody taking you can alter the
accounting to sure, and that's fine. But I just think that, like,
it's such a crazy, weird circumstance. As you know, I
understand your point, I completely do. Here is how much

(19:37):
money in today's value was in this vault, supposedly gold, silver,
and gems. According to the research that people have done
based on this, they say it's thirty million dollars worth.
Who Yeah, it depends on when this account when they
made this calculation because of gold and silver fluctuate the

(20:01):
hell up? And also what gems right, yeah, it depends
on what gems are because you don't know. It's just
you know, basics, a lot of money, a lot of money.
So here's the thing, though, is there's two other ciphers,
which one supposedly gives cipher Number three is supposed to

(20:23):
tell the names of the other men and or their families,
the next of kids, the next of kids. That seems
like one that you would maybe not code and not
necessarily necessarily because then it's you know, you can blackmail people.
But then number one is supposed to give the exact
location of the treasure. But there's no traditional use a map.

(20:48):
You would think that nobody's been able to figure out
what the cipher says, not even the n s A.
According to the n s A, all we know is
at it's that four miles around Buford's and people have
continued to go out there and dig based on where

(21:10):
they think the treasure is going to be and by
the way. People who own property in that four mile radius,
they hate this mystery thedomly find people trespassing and digging
up stuff on their property. But you know, that's all
I can take a two cool angles to this number one.
It's like, if you really hate somebody, you know, you

(21:32):
could set up a fake web page, you know, claiming
to have solved the mystery and give them give the
directions to your enemy, says, here's another thing. Supposing supposing
you own some land out there and you want to say,
put in a swimming pool. You see where I'm going there,
big side in looty tune style treasure here, just dig

(21:54):
with a big painted on the Yeah, I can say
some useful permutations to the whole thing. Oh gosh, Well,
nobody has figured out people have been trying to use
the Declaration of Independence to crack the other two ciphers,
which isn't working. Do we a little bit want to
talk about the problems with the deciphering of the second

(22:16):
one with the declaration of Independence? Well, yeah, let's do
that right now, and we'll start in on our theories.
And that's part of it. And in the first theory,
which there's a whole ream of things in this theory.
But the first theory is that this whole thing is
a hoax. But so what do you got? Well, so,
in some of the research that we were doing, um,
you know, it says, well, if you just use the

(22:39):
Declaration of Independence as a book cipher, right, then you
get this message exactly, but you actually don't. It turns
out that that's actually not the case. When you actually
use the Declaration of Independence to decipher this cipher, it
actually reads, I hate pided it in the count put

(23:00):
of bear hurt, a boot for miles from bolloons in bocation,
or asalt six fist below the surfux of the Crown.
It continues on right. But so it's so the guy
was using a wrong version of the declaration. I think

(23:21):
that kind of sounds, you know, like, And obviously I
haven't on the legwork on this. I can't tell you
personally from personal experience which one is correct. But I
can see how somebody would look at that text and say, oh,
that person is trying to say that. And and here's
what I think we need to explain for everybody. You're
using the official copy of the Declaration of Independence. Yeah,

(23:43):
this in the pamphlet. They discover that the version of
the declaration they were using, Yeah, it's an abbreviated version
that supposedly was being used in publications for newspapers and
stuff like that, but not like widely districted. It wasn't
a hugely distributed version of it. That's what they're there say.

(24:06):
He is saying, Oh, this is the one I used,
and he prints his copy I understand in this pamphlet. Yeah,
and I'm kind of curious about it. It's that's does
seemed like the abbreviated version would be more convenient for
in terms of type setting to print in your pamphlet. Oh, well, yeah,
I would. But that sort of puts a little cloud
suspicion over the whole It's a little weird. It sounds

(24:26):
like he was writing the pamphlet he and he just
got that and reverse engineered the cipher and the whole thing.
And that's what a lot of people say. And here's
here's some other facts. So let me just we're just
gonna run through some facts as to what what is
supporting that maybe this whole thing is a hoax. And
I'm just gonna start at the top, in no particular order. Historically,

(24:49):
there is no evidence that Thomas Beale ever existed, in
other words, census data, or that he hired twenty nine
men who then went off on this expedition to defend
there's no record of Thomas Bale though the census at
that time did not take the name of every person.

(25:10):
They took the name of the head of the household,
So he could have been living at somebody's house and
they took the head of the household's name and then
not his, or he could have missed the census like
that exactly. It's not like it was all encompassing by
any means. Very very true. Let's see. So there is

(25:32):
evidence that more is the hotel owner. He was a
real person, he existed, but there's no evidence that he
was ever in possession of the lock box or the ciphers,
and there is record of him owning that hotel, but

(25:52):
according to the records, he didn't get the hotel till
about three years after when he was supposed to have
first or in the hotel, until three years after he's
supposedly first met Beale. Okay, so what kind of evidence
were they hoping to find that he owned this lock box?
Like the diriary substantiate who is who? But I mean, like,

(26:13):
I yeah, I guess, like what what evidence are they
are they hoping that? Like he was like, oh, dear
Diary today, Mr Beale gave me a box and then
I held it for twenty three years. I mean, you know,
was that the kind of evidence they're looking for? Or
they to substantiate that he was a real person and

(26:33):
not just a fictional character, which Beale at this point
kind of might be exactly might be. The The thing
about Morris is if he was a really existent person,
supposedly must have had descendants, and he must have told
his children and grandchildren about this, that this mystery. You
and he would think. You would think that there would

(26:54):
still be people alive today that would know about this.
Nobody's come forward. Yeah, but again according to the story,
he never told anybody. But he also worked on it
for that that whole time that he had But yeah,
his wife didn't know, his kids didn't know that from
the story. According to the story, he tried to figure

(27:17):
it out for that seventeen years after he opened it,
before he confided in his friend, who then cracked the
second paper. Here's another problem. The pamphlet itself quotes the
letters from Beal, which supposedly were written in the early
eighteen twenties, and they use words that we're not normally

(27:42):
in circulation. Fill about the eighteen forties, specifically, the words
stampede and improvised. Those were not commonly used words nobody had.
There's not a lot of record of those being in
the vocabulary at that time. The letters, the pamphlets use
those words. The pamphlet reprinted the letters from Bill that

(28:04):
were in the lock box that we're in English well,
and in his letter he uses words that weren't known
until the eight four So that that points people to say, well,
these were common words at the time, and the guy
made it all up and he wrote these letters. I
guess my argument back on that would be that, like,
if Bill did exist, right, he clearly had a flourish

(28:25):
for the English language. I did a lot of people
back in those days. But he, for whatever reason, kind
of strikes me as the kind of person who would
have some kind of knowledge of those words. Yeah, or
like to appear like he's much smarter than he actually is.
So like seek out words that people didn't usually use
and use them. You everybody knows that guy right who

(28:48):
like uses words that nobody else uses. He could have
been one of those guys, who knows, he could have
easily been one of those guys you're right now, entirely possible.
And it's not like they were words that didn't exist. Okay,
Another another interesting aspect of this if the whole thing
was a fiction and this entire pamphlet was just basically
a hoax. The guy at one point, apparently I have

(29:10):
heard that his full name was Thomas Jefferson Bale. Yeah, yeah,
Thomas Jefferson Bale. So Thomas Jefferson the author of the
Declaration of Independence, which would explain why the Declaration of
Independence was the key. Yeah. And also there was a
guy um as a guy didn't Bill, I can't remember.
His first name was also the Washington Hotel. Yeah, there's

(29:31):
there's another key. Yeah, And the guy named Bale was
a guy who I think, in the eighteen thirties was
one of the first, if not the first, person, to
transport gold from California from the California Gold Rush back
to the East coast. Yeah, And of course that was like,
you know much and so if you think about it,
if you're if you're getting concoct to hoax, and you

(29:53):
want to put some some things, some little teasers out
there to sort of like, you know, like h crane
of truth. Yeah, but also at the same time kind
of kind of mock and tweak the people that you're fooling,
you know, because you're putting these obvious a little it's
kind of kind of let the Da Vinci Code, You're
putting these obvious little clues right in their face. And
Thomas Jefferson Declaration Bill, it's got famous transporting gold across

(30:14):
the country. Um, it's it's kind of those are kind
of interesting coincidences. On the other hand, I guess this
is going like a little bit past the this is
a hoax thing, right, But haven't people actually, like people
who actually know about things like this, examined these and said, no,
they look like they are actually real ciphers they have.
So I guess my argument against it being a hoax

(30:37):
is that, like, why invest that much time? I don't think,
you know, I think that something that looks like it's
a cipher, I mean you can compose, and something that
looks like it's a cipher doesn't mean it's not gibberish.
Can still be gibberish. I guess that's true. Here's the
other weird thing about the ciphers number page it's number
one and number three, spage one and page three. Cryptographers

(31:00):
have looked at it, and I don't say that I
understand how they came to this conclusion. But they say
that the statistical characteristics of it make them believe that
it is not from a language that is English. In
other words, it could have been written in Spanish or

(31:21):
that's fairly easy to do. I think, as it turns
out right that you can analyze the frequency of letters
in any given language because we have something frequent or
the like the the composition of the length of a
lot of our filler words, and analyze how often those
are used in a cipher or something that could It's
what's hard for me is that the stinking thing is

(31:43):
all numbers. Yeah, but you say, like this is so
like so three is a right, so like how many
times is three used? Will that it is really quick
to do on a computer? I think, say, hey, I
have done frequency analysis myself and with computer about the
thing about this this particular cipher, And this is why
I don't understand that they could possibly think this is

(32:05):
why that this was something besides English. I mean, obviously
it could have been, but how can you conclude that
there was any particular language because there's no spaces, so
you have no you have no clue as to the
length of the words that are being used, and there's
no spaces between the numbers there. They can't do frequency
analysis because one, uh, they're they're referencing words all throughout
the document. So number one, one seven, number three, number

(32:29):
fifty two, those could all be a So they're not reading,
not repeating, they're not really repeating numbers over and over.
So here's late. But then there that's my questions. A
string of numbers. But how do you know it's it's
one one five not uh, one one five? Right? How
do you know it's like a hundred and fifteen? Not?

(32:49):
There are commons believe that, yeah, separations between them. They've
got some form of separator between them. Otherwise you're you're right,
it would just be that it's just break up into words.
And as you as you decode the letters, figure out
that it is it's T H E N. Well is

(33:12):
that then? But then you figure out the next letter
and you realize that N is the start of a
new word. You put a separator in there. It's it's
it's difficult to to kind of wrap your brain around,
but it's but it's it's definitely a cipher, but not
necessarily a cipher, because it could just be gibberish. It
could And here's here's the last thing that I have

(33:33):
that that kind of points to maybe this whole thing
as a hoax is that it's very similar to a
story by Edgar Allan Poe called The gold Bug, which
is evidently about gold the cipher and people say that

(33:54):
this story is probably based on the gold Bug. And
there's also another story Worry about a man in Kentucky
that supposedly found a silver mine that was the richest
silver mine ever and then turned around and buried all
of the silver and then disappeared. We just did. We

(34:17):
were just talking about the toy tiles, right, And in
that episode we talked a little bit about the I
think it was David Mammitt who wrote four Am. And
I feel like this is another kind of case of
which came first, right, chicken or the egg? Yeah, Like,
did Poe write his story because he saw this manuscript
or did this manuscript come to like be or the

(34:40):
I guess it was a pamphlet. Sorry, did the pamphlet
come to be because of somebody ripped off? Evidently was
known for kind of tweak in the public sometimes, yeah, stories,
So it could very well have been Poe. Yeah it was.
Obviously it didn't get published until after he died. But

(35:01):
and then that's why it leaves people to say, well,
it probably wasn't Bow, but it could have been. Yeah,
but that again, right, that's how we don't know, because
you know it was it was much later after he dies,
So yeah, who knows. I guess let's move from it's
a hoax to the next theory. It's not a hoax.
It's been found. I found one website that purports that

(35:26):
this group of guys has found the location of the treasure.
I can't with this guy. Okay, they found it and
they've dug it up, or they just know exactly where
part of it. Here's how it goes. They say they
decoded page one and page three, and I have a

(35:47):
major problem with that because they showed the decoded text,
but nowhere do they say how they decoded it. So
they could have just made it up. Just it just
it sets me off right there throws the radar. But
according to these gentlemen, they found it in the hills

(36:09):
there in Virginia, and they and it was a cave.
It was an outcropping with a cave, and they dug
in there. I don't know cleft exactly, but they went
in there and they didn't find the treasure. But what
they did find was remnants of supposedly the pots that

(36:30):
Beale had left it in. So there were some legs,
some iron pots, remember the it said it had the
They were in iron pots. They say that these were
the short stubby legs it would have been on the pots.
And there's an iron spike and a piece of leather
and a buckle which I'm presuming that would have been

(36:51):
to tie it shut. There's so many things. I uh, Well,
the buckle was iron and then it was a piece
of leather there with it. Yes, but it's just like
why the legs don't break off of iron pots? Like
why would there be no legs. I'm I'm okay, I'm
just gonna hypothesize here. I'm just gonna spit ball on
this that somebody else had found the treasure before they

(37:13):
got there and they broke the pots, and then they
threw away the evidence where they carried away most of
the evidence, and then the rest of it just sat
there and rusted, like broke open the pot. I don't
say that's right, but I'm just for a second going
to stand in defense of these guys and say, well,
this is why they've only found that they've never found

(37:36):
in gold. They found jewels. So somebody broke a pot
open right in the middle of a cave where there's
like dust and all that stuff. One piece of gold
is gonna like get loft left behind, a nugget is
gonna fall. Stuff is gonna get left other than just
like weird little legs. Yeah, so them, these guys essentially

(38:00):
you cipher the text of number document number one. They
put it on the webpage. And this this, this text
that people are on their web page tells you where
to go find this. Not exactly what does the text say? Well,
what's what's listened on their website? Does give some information
just here I'll just read, according to this website, a

(38:24):
guy named Daniel Cole is the one who cracked this. Somehow,
that name makes me irrationally angry for no frea. Okay,
here's here's it says. Nineteen is the distance south left
on to second point two's on first part of main
rock south in east wall ground on south six ft

(38:45):
deep open front side of point straight down the point
in front upper part. Remove rocks, then with them remove
dirt five ft down and round. Now open open point
two's wall street in now open south side, now on

(39:05):
down under point. Okay, I have such a problem with this.
It makes no sense. Okay, but find whatever. Even if
it did make sense, it's not written the same well exactly.
I mean, it doesn't sound like the same. Wow. I
mean no, I'm not not at all. And it's not
not even close. Now I agree it actually, you know
what it sounds like to me? It sounds like to me.

(39:26):
I remember one time I bought a PC back when
I did PCs, and I got a card for the PC.
It was like a sound card or whatever, and it
had this little manual that came with it, and it
had installations from for installing, you know, and everything like that,
and there was this one paragraph that it was just
hilariously bad because it looked like some red looks like
somebody had put it in, you know, in like written

(39:46):
in Chinese and then transcribed it word for word from
an English Chinese dictionary. And that's what that reminds me of. Yeah, yeah,
it's it's not good. It's not a good thing. Now
it's it's bs. But the other thing I I'm what
I'm wondering about is another theory that I just came
up with. Yeah, exactly, And you just came up with

(40:07):
a theory. So you never do that, Well I'm doing
you're breaking tradition. Here go, what do you got? It's lepricns. Well,
I think about it. Pot of gold, Pots of gold,
number one, number two. They find a leather belt in
the buckle, fried with of it. Okay, that's some big
old clue, he said. If there's a green filled hat there,

(40:29):
he's got it. Yeah. But here's the other thing that's
like it would have disintegrated by now. No, it's it's
a leprechn hat. They don't they don't go away. But
here's but here is the deal. It's like the Lepricon
theory is almost almost as credible because these guys were
out in Colorado and they find this cleft intervene that's

(40:49):
got gold in it. Uh So Number one, veins of
gold are not immediately apparent. They don't look like anything.
There's usually not another vein of a cool little accompanying
vein of silver somewhere really close by. But yeah, they're
they're completely different minerals. They don't normally go together. Yeah,
well they go together nicely, but not necessarily in the
ground u um. And so in other words, if it

(41:14):
was a vein of gold, that kind of thing is
it's mixed in with a lot of other minerals. You've
got to pull out tons of ores, and you have
to smelt it, and you have to have a big
factory thing. It's something that thirty guys out in the
wilderness are not going to be able to probably do,
which makes it that particular thing that so what if
they found some lepre con stash of gold, But what
if they have fifty horses too? Yeah, they just happened

(41:37):
to fifty horses along. Is that I mean, does that
make it easier? Well, if they're unicorns wings, they can
easily get back to Virginia. Got it, We're done with fantasyland.
Let's move on to the next theory. Alright, So you
don't like you're not buying an, I actually really like that,
as in, I think it's hilarious, but no, I'm not
buying it. The final theory is that the trade you're

(42:00):
still out there and that it's real. Here's a couple
of things that point to it. So, as we said,
they use that abbreviated version of the Declaration of Independence
to get the supposed deciphering of page two, the drunken
slurrings of a man. Yes, yes, Well, if you take

(42:21):
the declaration and you try and decipher pay or decode
paper one using the declaration, what you get is a
sequence of letters at the start, which are A B
F D E F G, H I I, J K, L, M,
M N O, H P P. So this people say

(42:46):
in frequency the chances of those letters coming up on
their own is zero, but that frequency has the appearance
of quite possibly being a set of words. But people
are saying that it's possible that while paper to just
use the regular book cipher paper one and three may

(43:09):
have been encoded and then encoded again, so they were double.
So it's it's a double or supers And I guess
that would make sense, right, because those are the two
pieces of information that are more sensitive, right, the second
one is just kind of like this is kind of
what we have, but the location super important. You know. Again,

(43:34):
I have issue with like the name of people who
should be getting this, Like I don't understand why they
would need to be included in the first place, trippers,
you know, double encoded. And also the number three is
like has has just been pointed out This thought is
not original to me. But thirty guys, okay, their names
and names are the next kin where they live, and

(43:55):
you're going to do all that and eight characters are
less well, and that's that's them. Is that that document.
People have said there is not enough characters in that
document to list off all that information. So there's a
serious issue there. But we're gonna we're gonna continue to
run down the path of it is totally true and
it is still out there. And I assume that people

(44:18):
have used other other documents from the founding of our
country around that time. Yes, people have tried to use
the Constitution and all those great historical documents. I don't
think they've used that one, but failed to crack this

(44:38):
particular set of ciphers. There is if we're going down
the it's real path, which we of course are, which we,
of course are. So there's a chance that the person
our pamphlet, who put out the pamphlet that told us
everything that we know about this, may have taken and
scrambled the code that was listed in paper one and

(45:00):
paper three. Yeah, he mixed them up. And here's the
reason is that supposedly there was somebody else out there
who had the key. So if that person gets ahold
of the pamphlet and then tries to decode it themselves,
it's not gonna work. So then they're gonna have to

(45:21):
turn around and they're gonna have to come to him,
the person who possesses the actual cipher text, so that
then they can go in on at fifty fifty and
split it. So basically he's forcing somebody's hand to come
to him and pay out. It makes sense when you
kind of step back from it a little bit. It's

(45:44):
a little weirdness and telling the story that he never
actually cracked the cipher at all. He just pretended to
crack number two and scrambled numbers one and three. No, Well,
I mean, you can look at it both ways. Either
he didn't actually do it, he pretended to crack it,
or he did crack number two, but he couldn't crack
number one. But in an effort to draw that person out,

(46:05):
he screwed up the numbers intentionally in one and two
so that they had to come to him and say, hey, wait,
something's not right here because I've totally got the key,
or you've got the key. Awesome, I totally got the
real cipher. Let's split it. Interesting because it seems really unlikely.
I mean, anybody that uh, these this group of what

(46:26):
thirty men would have trusted with the key to the cipher, right,
would ostensibly not then go and say, oh, yeah, by
the way, I have the key to this thing, let's
split right. That's that's ostensibly a fairly trustworthy person. But
we're also looking at how much time has passed. We're
looking at nearly forty years. Yeah. I guess that's fair dad. Yeah. Yeah,

(46:51):
You've got to imagine most, if not all, have passed
by that point. Yeah. It's interesting little conunder there. We have,
we have we have one more. We have one more
that says that it was real, But it's kind of
a crackpot. Version does have to do with like um,

(47:13):
like lizard people living in the center of the earth.
Afraid people, what about a mass conspiracy from our government?
People say, because the n s A and other organizations
in the government who are code breakers have used the
Biel cipher as a training tool and had their their

(47:36):
candidates try to figure it out. So it's been theorized
that the n s A or some other government organization,
not pointing at the n s A, but some government
organization who has a lot of code breaking people around,
has figured out what this thing said, went and got
it and dumped all that gold into the national coffers.

(47:59):
Which makes sense because as we have a lot of money. Yeah,
and there's been many times when this country has been
desperately in need of money. Yeah for our governm A
thirty million dollars, isn't It's like a nickel to you?
And I think, yeah, well, but hey, you know what,
a little bit here is a little bit there. And
so this theory says that they've gone and already gotten it.
And that's why these other guys who found just the

(48:22):
pieces of iron, we found the pieces of iron because
the fans have come in and let's taken it. The
fans are way better at extraction than that. Let's be
totally honest there. Okay, they're not leaving anything behind. They
can easily extract you know, money directly out of our
bank accounts, in our wallets. They don't need to bother
with gold. But we were looking at from today. What

(48:43):
if this was a hundred years ago they did it.
I don't know if we had the decryption, I mean,
Intel didn't really Okay, let's the fifties of the sixties.
It's entirely credible. What I think would be more likely
is that government employees who are very skilled at decryption
could very well crack this. But why would you tell

(49:05):
the fens about it? If you were, if you've got
access to the computers and everything else, you got access
to these resources, you can crack it, and even a
few of your buddies from the office go down there
and grab it. I mean, that would make a lot
more sense. I guess My big problem with them actually
being able to solve this thing, right is that isn't
there like a cipher that's like right in front of where,

(49:26):
Like yeah, and they've only deciphered one of the three
panels there. Come on, man, if you can't figure that
thing out, right, Like, how are you going to figure
this thing out. I just yeah, you know this is
and I don't know if this has occurred to anybody
in our government or not, but think about something like,
you know so because you know that that other governments

(49:46):
are trying to read our trying to read our mail
all the time, so think about it. Wouldn't be tempting
to actually put out giblers that's not even cipher, but
it looks totally like a cipher and let them waste
valuable man hours and energy trying to decipher those. I
think you've brought this up before. It seems likely. What
if the what if the second one is the only
one that is a legitimate one, but it needs to

(50:09):
be deciphered with something other than that the Declaration of Independence? Right,
some other manuscript. So are you saying, wait, let me
just make sure I'm following. So are you saying that
the declaration was correct in an interpretation, but there's another
document and had that another meaning that So somebody had

(50:29):
to match up two books basically too and find words
that were on the same number, that had the same letters.
That's extreme. No, I'm not saying that at all. I'm
saying that, like this guy came up with an okay
interpretation of the Declaration of Independence. He got he got
to something that like could be made into something that

(50:50):
kind of made some coherent sense, but that perhaps he
used the wrong document. It is entirely that's the only
one that's actually decipherable. It might be that, like you say,
if you like, grab the copy of of any Dickens novels,
say Tale of Two Cities. It might be that that
is the key, you know, and that it's just a

(51:10):
coincidence that some letters randomly in the two of them
happen to coincide. It turns out English it's pretty easy
to make words. Yeah, we do it all the time,
all the time. It might be an entirely different key.
I don't know that anybody has thought about that. I'm
not I'm definitely not the cipher ologist of this crew.

(51:30):
So I'm not the no cipherologist. Yeah, so I'm sure
which title we were going. Yeah, I'm not going to
say that, like my theory is better than anyone else's,
of course, But what if what if it was the
idiot who figured it out this time? Yeah? I mean,
and the other thing about it is is like people

(51:51):
are looking for the key, you know, and it's like, okay,
so you got this thing with all these numbers in it,
and so it's got to be a document, and these
numbers have to represent a word, which we will take
the first letter of that document. It could be an
entirely different kind of cipher. So, I mean, so that's
the whole thing. That's that's one reason I'm not going

(52:11):
to really waste any time trying to break this particular one.
It's interesting to try to come up with ideas as
to what kind of a cipher. If I can start
to get a cipher like that, I would have something
that something to be more diabolical, like say a three
letter or three digit number would represent say seven one
seven fifteen is not the seven word in there, but

(52:33):
instead what it is it's like to say the seventh
line down and then the first call them in, and
then five letters beyond that in the alphabet. You know,
I would do something like that. You do this with
your diary, don't I totally do. This is how send emails. Yeah,
this is how he does it. But you see, but
you see see kind of what I'm talking about. Numbers

(52:55):
can represent something entirely different than what these people are saying.
You can, yeah, you can. You can determine how they
get used however you want. And I see where you're heading.
I feel like this is just one for the ages.
It kind of is, because that's really that's our theories,
that's it. I think that Yeah, I think no, I
think that it's uh, it's almost certainly a hoax. But

(53:15):
you know, pamphlets back in those days actually made money
and they were like just like selling a book, and
you could write a pamphlet however checking yeah, exactly, and uh,
and actually there's no fact checking going on to day.
Think they heard that they didn't have the internet. It
was pretty hard to check those facts, right, Yeah, you
couldn't just like google. Yah. But again, the fact that

(53:37):
the fact that this guy used a kind of non
existent version of the Declaration of Independence as a key
and somehow that manages to successfully translate all these numbers
into a medical message, It's yeah, that's kind of damning
in and of itself. So, Kevin, what do you think?
What's your where you lean on this? I don't know
where I you know, I really want to believe this

(53:59):
is one of those stories that like in the heart
of any like true American, right, you really want to
believe that, like these people could have gone out and
found all this gold and struck it rich and like
hit it and it's still hidden somewhere. But when I
really sit down to think about it, that I definitely wouldn't.
I'm lazy and I wouldn't have done that. And people

(54:22):
back then were less lazy than I am. And that's fine,
But like that's a really far way, Like why not
just hide at someplace in Colorado, Like there are a
lot of really great hiding places in Colorado. Why take
it all the way to Virginia to hide it? And
then write this like crazy cipher? I feel like hoax.

(54:43):
I hate I hate advocating for hoaxes. But yeah, because
you want. It's a fun story, it's cool and everything,
but and I not of it makes sense. I gotta
tell you this is this may be your first we
have a unanimous decision here because I personally, after all

(55:03):
of my research, have been inclined that this is a hoax.
And here's here's a bit of information that we haven't
shared yet. Is this pamphlet that came out this person
had a huge quantity of these pamphlets printed, but only
a small number of them got out. And then supposedly

(55:24):
there was a warehouse fires, the setup warehouse fires in
a district, and the press house that they were all
stored at also went up in flames, and so that's
where and oh my gosh, there's no more copies of it,
which seems like if this guy was really real, he
had just paid up and had some more made. Yeah. Yeah, Well,

(55:46):
another theory I heard about about that is that it
got out. This was a local guy who wrote this
and probably wrote it to make some money or whatever,
and he and then when it went out people want
nuts and and because I mean the No. Number two
of it, yeah, the allure of it, but and but
but but but basically this does define kind of an area,

(56:08):
although it's a broad area, a circle with a four
mile radius around Buford's tavern in Virginia. Not that yeah,
I mean seriously, And so apparently one theory is that
this guy knew a lot of people locally, and when
treasure hunters went out and started like digging up everybody's
property and graveyards and everything else, this guy realized, holy crap,

(56:29):
you know what have I done? And so he made
either yeah, he made it. He created a monster, and
so he destroyed these things or you know, probably maybe
they're in a fire or maybe just through him in
the river or something like that. But you know, that's
another theory about the whole thing, which I find believable.
It's a shame to waste. No, that's and that's a
good point. But I I unfortunately, I I have to

(56:51):
say that I don't. I don't believe this one. There's
just too many inconsistencies. For one, No, I mean, the
the underlying story is not credible. About these guys going
up finding old You don't just find gold line around.
You have to like set up a big operation with
the pine. Yeah. Like we said, there's a whole bunch
of logistics here that just don't seem to pay it out. Yeah,
and then getting all stressed out about about oh my god,

(57:11):
it's so insecure to have the goal just hidden around
here burying the ground. Let's send somebody alone back east
to burying the ground back east instead. That doesn't make
any sense. It doesn't make sense all around. Yeah. Well,
if if you have any information or theories that you
want to to proffer about this, you're more than welcome

(57:32):
to do that. And if you're Thomas Jefferson Bale and
you're actually a lizard person who's you know that, please
do contact you can cut you can get a hold
of a couple of ways. You can go to our
website Thinking Sideways podcast dot com. While you're on there,
of course, you can always leave a comment, of course,
so you can listen to the episode while you're on
there as well. Most likely a lot of folks have

(57:55):
been using the website to listen, but a lot of
folks also go ahead and go to down download it
from iTunes. If you're on iTunes, take the time leave
us a comment and rating. We've been get a lot
of traffic on iTunes lately. Fantastic to hear everything from everybody.
I want to do a shout out to Arcade gannon
fellow follow follower, what up yo? No idea what that means?

(58:19):
But okay or her? I don't know? Okay, Well, at
least they'll know. You can always find our episodes on Stitcher,
So if you don't want to take the time, you're
not able to download it, and you don't want to
go directly to the site, you can just get it
there on any mobile device, very easy to stream right
then and there. And at last, but not least, you

(58:41):
could go ahead and send us an old fashioned email
if you want to send us an even world fashioned
like just snail mails, general delivery. The email address is
Thinking Sideways podcast at email dot com. And speaking of

(59:02):
listener mail, we've been a little tardy on getting some
of these listener mails that we've picked out that we've liked.
We like a lot of them, though, Yeah, it's been
a little crazy, a little crazy. We've got a bunch
of them, and there's been a number that we wanted
to read and things have just kind of conspired against us.
So I'm making an effort today. We're just gonna go
ahead and are we going to read all of them? Well,

(59:23):
we've got three of them that we're going to read. Yeah,
only three of them. So let's go in and let
me let me grab the first one. The first email
is from Matt, and Matt said, uh, I got a
response from art read At a while back, and it's
spent the last few weeks listening to your podcast. I'm
a really big fan and you guys have added an

(59:44):
inquisitive nature to my walk to work listen read it friend,
Thank you, yeah, and that I don't want you to
be so distracted that you get run over by a bus,
so please be careful. We'll be really careful to not
do any those like creepy like people walking to like
work stories. Yeah good, and we will slip in about

(01:00:05):
every five minutes or so quick, like Matt, look behind you.
I enjoy the Devil's addecate elements of your podcast and
how you can switch standpoints a few times during a podcast.
And Matt then goes on to to share a story
that that he was thought that we should look into,

(01:00:26):
and we're going to exchange some emails because he's got
some information on it. But evidently he was writing, uh
this email kind of late at night and so he
couldn't write anymore, which is totally understandable. I mean, you know,
it depends on what is scheduling that off into a
bunch of z. That's what happens to me. No, that's

(01:00:49):
that's that's not actually what happened. But thank you. So
this next one is from a guy named Thomas. He says, hey,
my name is Thomas, and about two weeks ago I
got into your show and Binge on all the episodes.
I love your show a lot. Your show is exactly
what I was looking for in terms of a podcast
that covers weird, unsolved mysteries, and I like how you

(01:01:11):
take a more logical approach to the mysteries instead of
always drawing aliens or conspiracy theories. That we don't believe
in that stuff. We just tend to not advocate for
it so much. I'm definitely looking forward to hearing more
episodes in the future. By the way, Joe kind of
sounds like John Goodman, and I'm sure I'm not the
first person to point that out. Actually I think he is. Thomas.

(01:01:32):
You are said that, but as soon as you said it,
I was like, he totally does. Totally. I had never
made that connect. And then you listen to it, You're like,
oh my gosh, well now I'm going to have a
famous person in my ears every time I edit a show. Great,
it's going to be. By the way, Thomas, I don't

(01:01:52):
I'm not as big as he is Goodman. He's a
great guy. He's just you know, but yeah, I'm not
don't want to be as biggest. Yeah you do a
little bit sound like him. Okay, we'll go we'll like
watch the Big I'm gonna be all yeah, I'm gonna
be all self conscious about it. Yeah. By the way,
I love The Big Lebowski. Yeah. So then Thomas like
suggests a couple of shows that that seems to be
like the trend, right everybody has like awesome feedback and

(01:02:15):
also do these shows. Yes, and we're working through him
as we as we mix him into the list. Yeah. Yeah,
thanks Thomas, Thank you Thomas. Okay, okay, now our next
emails from Jeremy. Hi, Jeremy, so here it goes. Hello,
greetings from Wyoming. I drive for eups and listen to
podcasts all day. I bet you would in a job

(01:02:37):
like that. Oh yeah, I can imagine totally listen to
just the radio, and especially if it's a he's kind
of in a rural areas. Wyoming is a r you
want to get radio stations constantly. Yeah, okay, well anyway,
sorry for the interruption, Jeremy. Okay, greetings from Wyoming. I
drive for EPs and let's listen to podcast all day.
Years was coincidentally suggested to me the night before I

(01:03:00):
started covering for a rural driver for two weeks. I
really love the subjects you've covered so far in my
attempt to catch up from the beginning. He's enjoyed his attempt. Yeah,
he's listening to what's come out and he's working through
the great Okay, So I would love it if you
would delve in the topics like the and the Okay,
we actually have been considering some of those topics, and yeah,

(01:03:24):
we probably will delve into at least a few of them.
Well you know what's great. Yeah, one of those, yeah,
is the Biel Cipher, which which which we just talked
about exactly, and and another one the is one we're
gonna be talking about sometime in the next few weeks. Anyway,
I started continue reading your email, Jeremy. Either way, please
keep up the great work because I drive a lot

(01:03:46):
all caps, So okay, we're gonna do extra long episodes
just for Yeah, that's awesome. Yeah, okay, bye, Jeremy, thank you.
Well that I really I like listener email and I
feel bad some times for holding them all in a
bunch and spreading me up. I love doing listening. I
love reading listener, I mean and like reading comments and

(01:04:09):
things like that because people seem to be really great
about giving us like awesome feedback, not just positive feedback,
but like things that they would love to dress, you know,
things that I think we should change, which I think
is is really great. Yeah. No, we got we got
useful constructive criticism. Yeah. And as I mean, you know,
if you've been listening to us throughout the whole time

(01:04:30):
or you're trying to like go through our backlog, we're
fairly new at this, right. Yeah. We definitely appreciate the
constructive criticism. Yeah, we try to improve. We take criticism. Yeah,
we do. Uh yeah, thanks again everybody. We do appreciate it.
And I guess, well, this is the point where I
hate to tell it, but we're gonna say bye bye Ye.

(01:04:53):
Time to walk up into the sunset. Yeah, let's walk
off in this spurs that jingle jangle? Can you do
you know any good tunes to whistle? Joe? I got
stairs that jingle jangle, jingle jangle jangle,