The Beale ciphers are a set of three ciphertexts, one of which allegedly states the location of a buried treasure of gold, silver and jewels estimated to be worth over USD$63 million as of September 2011. The second ciphertext is said to describe the content of the treasure, and the third to list the names of the treasure's owners' next of kin.
The story of the three ciphertexts originates from an 1885 pamphlet detailing treasure being buried by a man named Thomas J. Beale in a secret location in Bedford County, Virginia, in 1820. Beale entrusted the box containing the encrypted messages with a local innkeeper named Robert Morriss and then disappeared, never to be seen again. The innkeeper gave the three encrypted ciphertexts to a friend before he died. The friend then spent the next twenty years of his life trying to decode the messages, and was able to solve only one of them which gave details of the treasure buried and the general location of the treasure. He published all three ciphertexts in a pamphlet, although most of the originals were destroyed in a warehouse fire.
However, in 1982 Joe Nickell published a scholarly analysis of the papers, using historical records that cast doubt on the existence of "Beale", and linguistic evidence demonstrating that the documents could not have been written at the time alleged (words like "stampeding", for instance, are of later vintage). His analysis of the writing style showed that "Beale" was almost certainly James B. Ward, whose 1885 pamphlet brought the Beale papers to light. Nickell argues that the tale is thus a work of fiction; specifically, a "secret vault" allegory of the Freemasons. James B. Ward was, in fact, a Mason himself.
Since the publication of the pamphlet, a number of attempts have been made to decode the two remaining ciphertexts and to locate the treasure, but all efforts have resulted in failure
The treasure was said to have been obtained by an American man named Thomas Beale in 1816, to the north of Santa Fe, New Mexico, most likely in what would now be Colorado. Beale supposedly led about 29 adventurers on the discovery, but no solid proof of Beale's existence, or that of any of his companions, has yet been found in any public or private record.
Beale allegedly placed the cipher texts in an iron box, and left it with a reliable person in 1822, a Lynchburg innkeeper, Robert Morriss. The treasure was supposed to be buried near Montvale in Bedford County, Virginia. Beale asked Morriss not to open the box, unless he or one of his men failed to return from their journey within 10 years. Beale promised a friend in St. Louis would mail Morriss the key to the cryptograms, but it never arrived. In 1845 Morriss opened the box and unsuccessfully attempted to solve the ciphers. Decades later he left the box and contents to a friend.
Using an edition of the United States Declaration of Independence as the key for a modified book cipher, the friend successfully deciphered the second cipher text, which gave descriptions of the buried treasure. The friend ultimately made the letters and cipher texts public, apparently by James B Ward, in an 1885 pamphlet titled The Beale Papers. Ward is thus not 'the friend'. Ward himself is almost untraceable in local records except that a man with that name owned the home in which a Sarah Morriss, identified as the consort of Robert Morriss, died in at 77 (Lynchburg Virginian newspaper, May 21, 1865). He also is recorded as becoming a Master Mason in 1863. There was no explanation of the accident which led to the solution of the second ciphertext, which perhaps suggests that there was additional information now lost.
Possible Solution to Beale Ciphertext
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