This is a bonus Six Questions for the In Search Series done with dedicated searchers on The Secret (A Treasure Hunt) published in 1982.  Each Six Questions of this series looks 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.

In the previous Six Questions on The Charleston Casque with James Vachowski, Image 2 was matched with Verse 5. While this reminds us to keep options open, it is most commonly thought that Verse 6 matches with Image 2. This is what pairing is used in the following Six Questions and proposed solution.

As you will take note, John Michaels, creator of Shhh The Secret Podcast and co-creator of Tribute: Hunt for the 13th Casque, makes an impressive case for the casque to be in White Point Garden, Charleston, South Carolina. Enjoy!

Image 2 believed to match with Verse 6 leading to Charleston, SC

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

Since I answered this already in the 6 Questions article about Milwaukee, I’ll skip this and add some commentary at the end.

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

When I decided that I really wanted to solve the puzzle (and not just find a casque) I made a concerted effort to study all of the cities and started compiling a base of knowledge and collected information. I used this to compare similarities across all of the proposed cities in hopes of finding some insight on the methodology.

This led me to researching all of the 12 cities individually and as part of a whole puzzle, Charleston included.

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

Keep in mind this is just what I believe to be correct based on using confirmations in the image and in verse lines. I try to keep my verse confirmations to either a riddle solution (when applicable) or an exact, word for word quote, or an OBVIOUS reference by confirmation of something else in the image, verse, or area we are standing in.

We start with the image, to verify the city.  There are 4 sets of numbers in the mane of the lion.   33 and 79 on one side, and 32 with the 2 being upside down and 80 on the other, these coordinates point to a whole lot of ocean and the city of Charleston, not to mention there is a map of Charleston on the top of the mask in the image.

We now know the image most probably represents Charleston, so how do we match the verse?  This is going to come from a literary connection to an excerpt from Abroad in America, the same book where we find a useful piece of info for New Orleans.

The excerpt is in reference to Edward Wilmont Blyden, the line in Verse 6 which reads “Edwin and Edwina were named after him” this event took place in Charleston South Carolina.  The exact excerpt reads like this.

“Many in Charleston sought from Blyden news of the South Carolinans who had emigrated a dozen years before.  He was enthusiastically welcomed; he even had twin babies named after him.  Edwin and Edwina Wilmont Blyden, during his stay.”

So now we have a line from the verse which references South Carolina specifically and an image with a map of Charleston, we can focus our search on Charleston to see if things fit.

While we are on this, let’s look at another literary connection, to a poem by Robert Louis Stevenson entitled “To the Hesitating Purchaser” which actually starts the book Treasure Island. The poem reads like this.

If sailor tales to sailor tunes,

And all the old romance, retold,

Can please, as me they pleased of old,

The wiser youngsters of to-day: 

-So be it, and fall on! If not,

If studious youth no longer crave,

His ancient appetites forgot,

Kingston, or Ballantyne the brave,

Or Cooper of the wood and wave:

So be it, also! And may I

And all my pirates share the grave,

Where these and their creations lie!”

There are some specific lines in here which are more than a coincidence, 

 If sailor tales to sailor tunes,

And all the old romance, retold,

Can please, as me they pleased of old,

The wiser youngsters of to-day:

These lines match extremely close to the opening lines of Verse 6, 

Of all the romance retold 

Men of tales and tunes 

Cruel and bold 

Seen here 

By eyes of old

and they give us some clues to research.  In the poem there is mention of “Cooper of the wood and wave” this refers to Joseph Cooper,a pirate who ironically met his demise by  a ship called the HMS Diamond which coincidentally, is the jewel for this image.  So the line about Cooper connects the verse THROUGH the poem to the diamond in the image, and it goes a step further and proposes a place to look for the Diamond, which are the last two lines of the poem

And all my pirates share the grave, Where these and their creations lie!

I consider some of these connections tenuous, and coincidental, which is why I examined other connections to the park such as a path method and some riddles alluding to different street names leading to and surrounding the park.

There is a monument at White Point Gardens commemorating the hanging of several pirates in that park, their bodies buried in the marsh at low tide after hanging, we’ll get to that in a bit.

If we look at our visual clues, there are also some things that lead us to WPG.  First off we have what looks like a giant pear hanging from a branch.  There is a famous bridge leading into Charleston called the Pearman Bridge which has now been replaced with another bridge but in 1980 it was the Pearman Bridge.  If you follow this bridge into Charleston it puts you on Cannon St. It’s hard not to notice the giant lion on the image, the King of the Jungle. 

Interestingly enough cannon st. dead ends at KING street, and if you turn right there it takes you directly to WPG.  By the culmination of clues presented in both the cannons and other hidden clues in the image and verse, WPG sure seems like a strong contender for the park it’s buried in.  Also the tips of the fairies wings are white, possibly a hint at “White Point.”

With the Stevenson Quote about pirates, and where they are buried, this becomes more of a clue when we get to White Point Garden and find the Stede Bonnet monument I just referred to which reads

“Near this spot in the autumn of 1718, Stede Bonnet, notourous “Gentlemen Pirate,” and 29 of his men captured by col. William Rhett, met their just deserts after a trial and charge, famous in american history, by chief justice Nicholas Trott.  Later 19 of Richard Worley’s crew captured by Gov. Robert Johnson were also found guilty and hanged.  All were buried off white point gardens in the marsh beyond low water mark.”

This would be a solid connection to the poem by Stevenson referring to the place where pirates share a grave.

We are now at White Point Garden where the rest of the clues come into play. Instead of giving an expose on what image matches and verse riddles have been theorized by myself and others leading to an exact dig spot, I’d challenge those who believe this is the correct park to find some of their own image matches and to do some historical research on this area themselves. After all, that is the most fun and enjoyable part of doing this. I will include these photos of this beautiful park which is worth a visit for anyone who plans to go to Charleston.

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

I’ve been to Charleston’s White Point Garden several times as well as their library and a few other spots around town.  Thinking back on those trips, and the other sites I’ve visited while searching, there’s a certain feeling one gets when heading out to do a dig or even a boots on the ground research mission.

It’s what I like to call the essence of the secret, or what Forrest Fenn calls the “thrill of the chase.”

Maybe you’ve been to WPG many times as a kid, or as an adult. You’ve walked past the monuments jogging or playing around on the cannons as a kid, and it was no more than a nice day in a beautiful park for you.

Now you have this tale of a buried treasure casque and a treasure map of sorts, with hidden clues to confirm it.  You put in the research and formulate your own solution. You convince yourself that it is buried exactly where you suspect. Based on the clues and your research you set out to WPG again, this time with different eyes and a different feeling in your gut.

It’s a giddy excitement like when you were 10 and went to a Six Flags theme park for the first time. This is the essence of what the ATH’s are all about.  One will not properly experience this without putting in that research and work. The true reward, whether you find something or not, is that excitement you feel when you truly believe there is something a foot or 2 below you that you are going to dig up today. Without putting in the work to convince yourself of your own solution, you will not be overcome with the rush of excitement. It will be a bit lackluster.

Don’t just read someone’s theory online and then go to that spot and try to find it. It will be much more rewarding to do your own work and settle on something you believe to be correct. Then go there yourself and enjoy that hunt, it will be a new feeling I promise you.

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

These boxes were buried in 1980.  We were on the cusp of the major technology which is widespread today. That decade (1980-1990) lies in a grey area between analog and digital. There are several arguments out there which maintain that too much time has passed, obscuring the intended clues. This argument has some weight because of the time period the clues were intended for and the lack of recorded data. One should also consider a more overarching methodology before settling on these determinations. After 10 years of study on The Secret, I think the MAJOR obstacle is that no one, including myself, has a proven method to correctly solve the puzzle.

I do think there is enough hard information and tangible theories put forth over the last 40 years to make it possible for someone to figure it out, but quite often recalcitrance and short attention span put a damper on any serious efforts. “Online teamwork” these days often equates to a social club, it’s not like it was 15 years ago, everything is more and faster.

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

Something to consider for people who are seriously trying to work on this puzzle. When you have a puzzle that has vague, unclear instructions about how to work it, it forces one to look deeper into what is going on. This was most likely intended.

Before ANYONE knew what cities the casques were buried in, people looked at all 12 images equally. They looked at all 12 verses equally and tried to pair up verse and image combinations to all kinds of cities. It wasn’t until a breakthrough by Fox online, figuring out that the images contained Longitude and Latitude lines, that any real progress was made on matching up the verses to the images via a city. Even though tons of “plausible” ideas came forth about different cities, It took someone to solve an intended part of the whole puzzle for real progress to be made.

When trying to solve a problem, you need to isolate the unknown. In this case the unknown is the structure of the puzzle. I would agree with people like Fox, Forest Blight, Matt Sparks, and others who have taken the puzzle as a whole and try to use the correlations of different clues to isolate the structure of the puzzle. This being done in hopes to understand HOW to solve it. That in itself may be a rabbit hole, but at least there is some science behind it. I’ve done a study of all 12. One will find when knowing all 12 cities in detail, these correlations which are hard to ignore, truly exist between all of the images and verses.

I only have 3 words for you,

Good Luck

-JM

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