The Theodosia cache of the H Charles Beil (the Treasure Man) Treasure hunts is believed to be in the area of Cary, North Carolina. The cache is said to contain about a thousand old coins and at least 250 carats of finely cut gemstones. Jason Griffin and his wife, who also searched for H Charles Beil Virginia Cache, had looked at Theodosia’s PDF story and map and followed the clues to a promising area. Their search story is after these quick Six Questions and Answers…..
Enjoy!
Six Questions with Jason:
- Q1) What Treasure were you searching for?
H. Charles Biel’s Theodosia Cache.
- Q2) What inspired you to search for that treasure?
The clues became interesting to me and like all treasure seekers, I thought I had something special figured out about it.
- Q3) What did you enjoy the most about your search?
Seeing new places and getting time away with my wife.
- Q4) What did you enjoy the least about your trip?
It was just a weekend getaway, so more time away would have been good. Wonderful trip though.
- Q5) What is the most unique thing you found while searching?
A fantastic hiding spot for a treasure, so good I thought it must be where H hid the Theodosia when it was first found.
- Q6) Do you plan on looking for others, have any advice for someone else looking for H Charles Biel’s treasures, or is there something more you would like to say?
We will keep the hunt going, probably will take a look in at Gallows Harbor.
For Theodosia I would like to share my solve and reasoning behind the solve. I hope it helps others that want to search and maybe helps push the find along. I also hope that if it helps it be found that the people or person that finds it could really use it, emotionally and monetarily either one or both.
My hunt for Theodosia began around the same time I started hunting for the Virginia Cache. I have been hunting treasure for years and years, a hobby that at first drove my wife crazy but now she really enjoys getting away and living life to pursue the dream of finding one and becoming official pirates. The thing about these treasure hunts are you can get real close with the clues provided but that doesn’t mean you have found it. You have to have the treasure in hand before you have found it and have joined the club as a successful treasure hunter, an official pirate. I believe that to be the case with the Theodosia treasure.
After downloading the PDF with the story and map clues, I read the story and realized fairly quickly that the treasure map had been altered from an original file. The map is very fuzzy and hard to read letting me know that it had been placed into an image manipulation program such as Photoshop or Gimp. Once it was altered it was exported out of the program and then added to the PDF file. The export process created a new jpeg file with the treasure map image you see on the PDF and jpeg files have a fair amount of compression to make the file size smaller but with a smaller file size comes a lot of data loss and that is why the image is so fuzzy. So the search began for the original map a process that took me back to the college days and into the online library resources. I couldn’t seem to find the original map until I realized there is a county and a town that doesn’t exist in NC. Dobbs County and Crosscreek do not exist so with a search for them in the Library database I find two pings that cross reference and lead to the OG map. It is a survey map of North Carolina made for King George the Third. By the way Crosscreek still exist really, its just called Fayetteville these days. Dobbs County has been split into multiple Counties now.
Now that I had the OG map, which is a lossless file type that can be zoomed in on easily to see the names of rivers and towns, I could cross reference it with the treasure map to find what was changed in the image manipulation process.
Funny enough I found the end of the search first. I saw a red dot next to Swift Creek inland NC on the treasure map. Next to the red dot I saw a faint gray star drawn around the Swift Creek area on the treasure map. Later when speaking with Jenny Kile from Mysterious Writings she informed me of the much easier to see star around Nags Head. I saw that this leads to a trail of circles that go down and then turn to go up the Neuse River toward inland NC. With these markings on the Treasure Map it was easy to see that Swift Creek was the treasure area. Looking into Swift Creek I found that Cary NC was the treasure area.
Earlier this week H verified Cary in a live broadcast interview about the upcoming Gallows Harbor Hunt. When looking into possible locations in Cary NC it seemed like a tough prospect because all of the area in Cary is owned, all properties are owned by private owners or businesses. After searching for any plausible area and reading in forums or interviews with H for more clues I could only find one area that made sense. The Swift Creek Nature Preserve. It is an area with open public access also the parking area is right off of the road, there is one clue that H just pulled off the road and hid the treasure around 100 feet from his pull off location. This clue fits the area, if the clue is a true clue from H that is, a hacker broke into his old forum which is why it is shut down so it is hard to tell if any clue outside of the PDF is a real clue. The road is Holly Springs Rd. People we asked while traveling the area didn’t even know the nature preserve was there, and it is literally in their own backyard, we asked in a development right behind the preserve because even Google has a hard time getting you there.
My wife and I searched the area pretty hard looking for the treasure. The area; much like the treasure ground for the Virginia Cache, is in a flood plain. As you move along the trail you do get out of the flood plain area though. The Swift Creek Nature Preserve is managed by the Triangle Land Conservancy. I contacted them to ask about metal detecting in the area. They informed me it is not allowed because too many people were harming the natural area. There are no signs restricting metal detecting the area though. It seems that it may be possible that when H hid the treasure it wasn’t restricted but now it is, and with that it may be very hard to find the treasure without more clues from H.
I hope this information helps all searchers and that the Fates see fit to grant the treasure to someone who really could use it. I wish all of you the best of luck in your hunts, dreams and life in general. Maybe we’ll see you on the trail one day.
Oh, also I would like to add that if anyone goes to search bring bug spray and anti itch for poison ivy. That place is full of ivy and mosquitoes:)
