This is the sixth of a series of Six Questions with dedicated searchers of The Secret (A Treasure Hunt) published in 1982 by Byron Preiss.  Each Six Questions of the series will take a look into a location for a buried Casque of The Secret Armchair Treasure Hunt. There were 12 buried casques of which only two have ever been found.

The following takes a look at the believed location for a Casque in San Francisco. As you will read, MaltedFalcon has been following The Secret Treasure Hunt since its release! Now that is dedicated! And I’m sure he has lots to share. Enjoy!

It is believed Image 1 matches to Verse 7 for San Francisco

•  1Q) When did you first hear about The Secret?

November 1981, I was working in a bookstore in McLean Virginia, when the Bantam trade Paperback order arrived, we always tried to be the one that got to open the new orders of books. It was like opening a Christmas present. There would always be something good in the Bantam box.  In this case I got to open the box and a bunch of copies of The Secret was right on top, I had been a fan of Masquerade, so when I saw this new treasure hunt I grabbed the top copy for myself.

•  2Q) What inspired you to look for the San Francisco Casque?

Wherever I have traveled I have always kept the clues and images from the book in mind.  I have been to Chicago, Boston, New York, St Augustine, and Roanoke, zipped through Charleston, but didn’t have time to look, but since I now live near San Francisco, that’s mostly where I look. But when I started looking we had no idea of the Cities and which verse went where.  My book has notes in the margins listing possible cities with each verse. Some of them are quite off the mark.

• 3Q) What makes you believe the Casque is in San Francisco? Would you mind sharing some of the highlights of your solution?

When someone first looks at the book, everyone is very local-centric.  No matter where you live you are going to see some clues that match exactly to where you live.  I was in Virginia outside Washington D.C., so naturally I saw tons of clues that led me straight to Washington D.C.  Basically, the Chicago Verse and the Cleveland image totally led to there.  As you can imagine it was very frustrating. At some point though, I gave up. 

It was in the early 90s that I finally heard that Chicago Casque had been found. By then I was living in Los Angeles. At that point revisiting the book I discovered that a map of Golden Gate Park had been hidden in one of the images. Which I think was the first time an image was associated with San Francisco. It was a bit after that the latitude/Longitude clues were discovered which nailed it down. Figuring out which verse was still a problem. Most people at the time thought verse 7 went with New Orleans, and I was being ridiculous to consider using it for SF.

• 4Q) What is the most unique thing you found while searching or what did you enjoy most about your search?

Body parts, and drug paraphernalia…, c’mon it is San Francisco…  You would think it would get boring. It never does. There are so many great people involved in this hunt now. Even when the hunt was not as well known, there was this core of people, bouncing ideas, arguing and making discoveries. It was great!  Honestly now it is even better. I know there are some jerks out there. (Read that last line with a French accent.) But there are people involved in this from Canada and the US and all across the world. How cool is that! It is really great that people are passionate about their theories and I love to hear from them. 

I love that we are still making discoveries. John Michaels and I have had an argument about Cleveland for a couple years, what was the proper way in to the park via the clues. Last week he made a discovery in SF that turned my argument on its head, and just like that 37 years after getting the book I learned something new about the hunt.  That’s the kind of thing that keeps me hooked.

• 5Q) What would you say is the major obstacle preventing a successful unearthing of the Casque?

There are really two very large obstacles, the first is obviously how much the locations have changed in the last 37 years. Although we can with a lot of careful research mostly mitigate this.  The second is a bit more problematic.  In reality we are searching for a 5×7 inch cube buried at least 15 inches down in the ground. Even if your solution resolves down to a 5-foot square, you will need to move 75 cubic feet of soil (@40lbs a cubic foot) that is 3000 pounds of soil…  People try to use soil probes to get around this but that increases your odds of missing a casque even if it is there.  What we hear from the Groundskeepers is most people start digging and quickly give up. 

It is possible the clues don’t exactly resolve to a specific 1’x1′ spot  or if they did at one time, things have just changed so much we cant get that specific and sadly we don’t have Byron around to guide us that last few feet.  Still technology is advancing at a furious pace and becoming cheaper and cheaper, maybe at some point in the future our phones might have Ground Penetrating Radar built in to them, who knows?  Regardless I don’t believe these casques are lost forever and personally with the exception of Roanoke, I think it is likely that all the other casques still exist.

• 6Q) Do you have any advice for someone else looking for this treasure or is there something more you would like to add?

Don’t give up, even if your dig comes up empty, that just means you have discovered one more place where the casque isn’t.  I am pretty sure there is an underlying common method between all the casques, learning about one can help you with another, so don’t ignore the other images and verses to concentrate on one.

Keep in mind, in reality, Byron was either a horrible treasure hunt designer or an evil genius. Try not to over assign motives to him, his goal was to sell some books, not provide a guided tour through eclectic historical trivia in a dozen cities. He was extremely concerned the puzzle would all be solved in less than six months so right there, he didn’t feel they were too deep.

The problem is actually they are too generic and we can read so much into them.  Keep it simple. Remember to consider the changes to the area over time.  Don’t assume because a landmark is there now and is a perfect match that It was there then.

But most importantly, why are you paying any attention to what I say, I haven’t found a casque! Your guess is as good as mine!

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More thoughts on the San Francisco Casque Location and other casques of The Secret:

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Best of luck with all that you seek! Always Treasure the Adventure!

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