The search for treasure truly inspires us all to get out and learn more about the incredible world around us. How awesome that Hank Fritsch is like a chaperone for these treasure hunting adventures! All kids need the chance to explore, search, and find Treasures, and Hank encourages that opportunity! And while The Lost Cross cache may not have been found YET by this enthusiastic group, I’m certain other memorable, longer lasting, treasures were found!
In the following ‘six questions’, Hank shares some of his story of how he got involved with the hidden caches of H Charles Beil (the Treasure Man). For those not familiar, H Charles Beil is hiding treasures across the states for anyone to go find, with The upcoming Gallows Harbor treasure hunt claiming to be one of America’s greatest treasure hunts of all time.
But, anytime friends and family get out to enjoy the country, with the excitement to find treasure- that is the greatest adventure. Hank proves this in his following story. The formatting is a bit different than other In Search Six Questions. But as many know, Six Questions is not so much about the ‘number’, as it is about my nickname, Sixer. While I play with words and usually have ‘6’ questions, it can be just one or 20 too. They are still ‘My’ or Six Questions.
So I was more than happy for Hank to choose a format that suited his excellent storytelling skills, and to answer the main Six question of ‘Can you share some of your adventure with us?’
And what adventures they are! Thank you Hank!
Six Questions with Hank, Enjoy!
Once upon a time I grew up in a sleepy little town called Madison in West-More-Land county, PA. Bordering my parents backyard is an old historic road called Braddock’s Trail, the remnants of which can be clearly seen to this day. It was named after General Braddock whose men created a 12 foot wide road from Fort Cumberland, Maryland 7 miles shy of Fort Duquesne (Point Sate Park in Pittsburgh) circa 1755. In fact, the section of Braddock’s Trail bordering my parent’s house is one of the most preserved sections in the whole county. As a young lad, my brother Bryan and I would explore the trail and the surrounding woods hoping to find a musket rifle, a bayonet or a sword from General Braddock or his young Virginian Aide-de-campe, George Washington. In fact, my Dad cut down a gigantic, dying oak tree right next to Braddock’s Trail in 2010. Upon counting the rings, he found it to be well over 250 years old, which meant it was probably a freshly dropped acorn germinating in the soil or perhaps a young sapling when the British troops passed by in 1755! The wood from the “George Washington Tree”, as we affectionately called it, heated several homes that winter including ours!
My Dad then began asking me if I ever thought about getting a metal detector. He would often talk with metal detectorists he met behind his house hunting for British relics on the trail which is still considered a public township road. Nearing retirement, he had a jar he began to fill with pocket change with the hopes of buying a good metal detector himself. Unfortunately, in 2015, the Lord took him home after suffering a major brain aneurysm – he never did get to swing a coil over his native Pennsylvanian soil. He never got to experience the thrill of hearing a metal detector sing and the excitement of unearthing an ancient relic…… but the story doesn’t end here….. from death, life often springs in mysterious ways!
My Mom told me that Dad had saved about $300.00 in his jar and asked what kind of decent metal detector she could buy for that amount of money. After researching, I told her to buy a Garrett Ace 350 and lo and behold at Christmas she gifted it to me in memory of my Dad. So began our metal detecting adventures! The first thing we found was an old rusty cutting tooth from a haybine – very fitting, since we make a lot of hay on our farm here in Brookville, PA. My youngest son, John Paul, who was 8 years old at the time, took to detecting like a black bear to a blueberry patch! He has become so proficient with it, time and space prevent me from telling you of all of the historical treasures and relics he has found! Our mudroom has become a treasure trove museum filled with rusty axe heads, Tootsie cars, harmonica reeds, pewter spoons, old Presidential tokens, miner’s tags, military buttons, Ford Model -T parts, crotal bells, buckles, ox shoes, copper coins, silver coins and sterling, titanium, tungsten and gold rings to name a few! He has even found some of his own old matchbox cars he himself lost in the yard not to mention all the wrenches, screwdrivers, hammers and sockets that we have lost working on farm equipment over the years.
Well, what do most people want? More! We found ourselves somewhat limited to ‘dirt fishing’ with our Ace 350 – all though the coil is waterproof, the head unit housing the display screen and electronics is not. I took it out to a local river and ended going out too deep and almost killed it, so we upgraded our arsenal and purchased a Garrett AT MAX enabling us to enter the underwater realm of treasure hunting! We have found lost iphones, wedding rings and even a 14k gold, High school class ring that we were able to recently return to the owner after she had lost it canoeing the Clarion River in Cook Forest 48 years ago! My daughters have even been successful dowsing metal underground using bent coat hangers – I think body chemistry, not witchcraft, has something to do with this.
Last fall, after a pleasant conversation with a gray haired gentlemen nicknamed “Buck” at our local hardware store, I got a lead on a possible cache of circa 1600 French gold coins where an old fur trading post once stood. Before hitting the field, I began to research French gold coins and how they may have made it into Pennsylvania when I stumbled across an Ezine article entitled, “Lost Treasure of the Cross on the Rock” by none other than H. Charles Beil. I thought H. was a bit cocky in the writing of the article, BUT with so many wimpy, namby-pamby, go-with-the- flow, do-as-you’re-told, girly men out there today, I figured I would look into this self-proclaimed “Treasure Man”. Well, it turns out, H. and his treasures are the real deal! And he’s not cocky after all, just confident in sussing out treasure and discriminating between fact and fiction.
So we began researching the Lost Cross Rock treasure and in doing so learned so much about the early French occupation in Pennsylvania that many isolated ‘dots’ of history began to connect together in my mind! For instance, while the fierce Seneca, Iroquois and other First Nation tribes were defending their freedom, land and way of life, there were immigrant fur trappers and farming colonists trying to do the same while the British “Merry Monarch” King Charles II and the French ‘Sun King’ Louis XIV were trying to rule everybody’s life and claim ALL of America as their own! All this was happening a full century before we officially declared our independence from England – right here in our home state! I was beginning to see that one does not have to travel to the Middle East to be a modern day ‘Indiana Jones’…….. historical, adventure filled treasure hunting can begin in your own backyard! This is part of what makes H.’s treasures so unique – the history. Not only are his treasures real, as evidenced by the ones already found, but they are wrapped in a genre H. himself calls “Immersive Historical Fiction”. The history behind each cache can take the shape of a poem on a treasure map, a short PDF story or a full length novel, which many of us will soon be reading about in the Grimoire of Gallows Harbor.
With our minds full of Frontenac and French gold, we began to put LOLBOTG (lots of little boots on the ground) – living fairly close to the search area combined with the allure of an emerald studded, gold-gilded cross made it way too easy to neglect endless farm work to go traipsing off into the Endless Mountains together! Our family has joined up with another homeschooled family in our hunts. My best friend and local Mountain Man Legend, Jay Rafferty, and I both have six children. Jay’s parents, almost in their 70’s, accompany us on our outings as well – that’s three generations of Rafferty’s and three generations of Fritsch’s if you count the spirit of my father who inspired our treasure hunting! We refer to our group as the “Frifferty’s”. We share our research together and exchange emails, screen shots and ideas anytime day or night. When one of us hits a dead end, the other finds a clue and that in turn sparks a new possible ‘solve’ which develops into a recovery plan……. then it’s BOTG again! So far our various ‘recoveries’ have ended in many new discoveries – that is to say, we have discovered where H.’s treasures are not! Nevertheless, the laughter, the giggles, the smiles and comradery combine with the sweet smell of forest floor pine, ionized water and fresh mountain air creating exhilarating adventures sublime – even when we arrive home empty handed.
It was easy enough finding the location where H. believes the original, Jesuit carved Cross on the Rock once stood, but finding his Lost Cross on the Rock cache is another story! While still in hot pursuit of this treasure we decided that H.’s David Lewis inspired Outlaw Cache might be a wee bit easier to find. Beginning in the arm chair with FOTKB (fingers on the keyboard) as most treasure hunts do, we poured over H.’s ‘blood- stained’, poem inscribed treasure map, looking for clues. Then, in the middle of winter, it was off to worlds unknown and sights unseen along the swift Sinnemahone……. old mines, tram roads, foundations of ghost towns, tombstones of men, women and children long forgotten were slowly coming to back to life in our minds. The river rushing rogue, we couldn’t locate the “Ring Rock”, but we did find the furnace nestled snug and serene clothed with moss green in wonderful Wistar! Up and down with big boots, little boots all over the ground we hunted, we punted, we sought and we fought thick laurel, ice and snow until we thought our minds or our boots would blow! Many a trip was made off the top of Keating Mountain or up the tracks from where the Donnelly’s historic hotel burned to the ground in search of the Outlaw cache. Roads of steel rails, roads of gravel and dirt, near vertical roads of stacked rock with large trees growing atop, roads of diverging and roads a criss-crossing rose under each foot, yet we still couldn’t find Lewis’s loot! Nevertheless, we were of good cheer, for wherever Beil’s treasures lies hidden, great beauty is always near! Though the treasure remained concealed from our eyes, the wordless grandeur of God’s creation was most certainly not. The pleasure of seeking meant seeing what few eyes do see – the gorgeous, wild, most remote parts of God’s country.
Then from the screen of my computer there arose a great chatter….. social media sizzling, the Treasure Man community ablaze…...the Outlaw cache was in custody! Kevin Cramer and his persistent team of intrepid treasure warrior goonies scored the find – a coin cache in a mason jar hid behind rocks at the base of a man- made tower, known to H. as Avril’s House. It was a mid 1800 aerial cable tram system support tower made of rocks used for transporting freshly dug coal off the top of Keating Mountain down to the railroad tracks and into the awaiting coal cars below – the ingenious precursor to our modern day ski lifts. When the video of Christina Lynn Moss recovering the cache debuted, I showed it to my children and John Paul cried out: “I know that spot! I was there! I slid down between the laurel and the tower and touched the rocks that hid the jar of coins!” Well, truth be told, most of our Frifferty crew had either been on top of, beside, below or above the hidden cache and we never knew it was there! Apparently the old saying is true: being close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades – not H.’s treasures! Happy for the Finders, yet sad it was found, we were confirmed yet again that these are real treasures and not merely fairy tales.
So we rolled up our sleeves, flipped open our laptops and doubled down to find the Lost Cross on the Rock cache. Gaining some ground, more clues were found, so once again LOLBOTG only to discover in great horror and wonder that the green on the ground could be weighed by the pound – each step found our legs with vegetation wound round and round! Sinking thoughts of sordid sneaky snakes slithering silently sight unseen in the sward of ferns sent shivers up our spines! Using metal detectors and long forked sticks to aid our steps, we traversed the tangly terrain single file with nary a fall. Listening for rattles and sniffing the air for freshly sliced cucumbers we journeyed through the Northern summer jungle. Though treasure-less, sweaty and stifling hot, smiles abounded amongst our stinky lot, for when the going gets tough, the tough get going and Frifferty’s never give up!
Snake boots and/or chaps are almost necessary equipment for the safe summer searching of H.’s treasures. If you are situationally aware of your surroundings and make sure no body parts will be placed where you can’t clearly see, you should be fine – Timber Rattlers do not want to have any part of your treasure hunting forays! Be forewarned – disobedient children who are not well trained to react immediately to a parent’s command could get themselves into trouble very quickly and most of the region is without cell service and the nearest hospital is a long, long way away. Most bites occur when a snake is either inadvertently stepped on or surprised and feels it cannot escape and therefore coils, taking a defensive stand, ready to strike like lightning. Often, but not always, they will rattle their tail in warning. Now if they strike, they are prepared to fight to the death! If bit, use a suction device commonly found in snake-bite kits if you have one, but, do not apply a tourniquet to the affected limb for the solution to venom pollution is dilution in the blood stream. If you apply a tourniquet, this will increase the chance of losing that part of your body. Carry a small container of Dr. Bronner’s Tea Tree soap with you to wash the wound site with – this is important as venom left on the surface of the skin can still be absorbed by the body. Now you know why in 1775, Colonel Christopher Gadsden of the Continental Navy under his Commander in Chief, George Washington, flew the yellow colored flag depicting a coiled up Timber Rattler ready to strike on a sward of green grass, with text reading, “Don’t Tread on Me” on his naval fleet of ships when in open sea. Who says history is boring!
Then rumors began swirling through cyberspace whispering that in the spirit of David Lewis, the mason jar full of coins was only the beginning of the Outlaw hunt! Since David Lewis had many hideouts and hidden caches of treasure, so too, H. has cached several more, dare I say, BIGGER, Outlaw treasures in the barrens of Pennsylvania…..possibly Vermont too! Putting the Lost Cross on the Rock treasure on hold once again, we delved into Outlaw Cache #2 with a renewed vigor. With fresh positions fixed and mapped, we set out to find Aladdin’s Cave, H.’s treasure and maybe some of David Lewis’ old counterfeit printing plates. Oh have we found caves – one cave in particular was rather memorable…….in the middle of nowhere we discovered a cave so large, that it could comfortably hold several Frifferty clans under its roof. It was full of old and fresh porcupine poop but there was an ominous odor emanating near the cave. Thinking John Paul had pooted, the other children began giggling and teasing him, but he claimed it wasn’t him – and he was right. Leaving the cave to search the other nearby rocks we discovered the source of the stench – regurgitated road kill! On top of a 12 foot high rocky crag near the cave was a Black Vulture leering down on us with regurgitated food halfway down the rock face and at the base where we were standing. Buzzards often employ their foul smelling vomit as a defense mechanism to keep predators away from their nesting area. Sure enough, after it flew away, we climbed the rock and discovered that a family of these filthy beasts had made a protected rookery to raise their young up there. So many creepy caves to explore and so little time!
Another memorable cave was found by Jay Rafferty’s Dad, Dave, whom we call “Captain Cave Man” for his uncanny ability to locate them. Captain Cave Man was hunting solo and miles from nowhere investigating a hot lead. After hiking through an almost impassable mountain laurel thicket, he came upon a very large rock. Trying to squeeze between the rock and the laurel, he put his right hand down upon a ledge and brought his side up close to his hand to squeeze through when suddenly he noticed a black phase Timber Rattler on the same ledge less than a foot from his hand and side……. Unga Bunga! Quickly retreating a safe distance he took his forked snake stick and pushed the Rattler on the ledge back into the crevasse whence it had slithered……… then he heard 3 or 4 more snakes start to rattle off inside the crevasse, so he turned around and decided to work his way counter clockwise along the big rock. Soon, the smell of long dead rotting flesh filled his nostrils and he came to a large area in the laurel where the earth and leaves were trampled flat…..then he saw the cave……..he hunkered down and moved in closer, eyes peeled for danger. He could see the cave went in for a ways and then turned downward to an unknown depth. Inching forward, flashlight in hand, he was about to descend when he heard a deep, guttural growling and hissing emanating deep within the bowels of the cave…………. Unga Bunga again! Captain Cave Man sighed in defeat and beat a hasty retreat back to the safety of his truck seat! If a treasure is in that cave, we will come back after whatever habituating critter is gone! It seems that H. and his crew are always two steps ahead of us – in a recent youtube video on H.’s channel, they discovered a cave full of gold somewhere here in the East! We did not find any gold in the caves we have found, but in another particular cave, we did find a very unique item – the remains of an old woolen blanket. Could that very blanket have kept the Robber David Lewis warm on a long ago, cold and stormy night??
Needless to say, the only thing I don’t like about searching for H.’s treasures is having to come home to our farm with so much work left undone! If anyone has any clues for being able to find more time to get things done and go treasure hunting, please pass them my way! I am getting too old to both work hard and play hard in the same day! As I grow older, I realize I am no longer that young wide-eyed little boy exploring Braddock’s Trail behind my Mom and Dad’s house, BUT treasure hunting still courses strong through my veins…..my spirit of adventure never has dwindled and my passion for history has only further kindled. My heart seeks that which is lost and forgotten so it can be remembered and treasured; for in our past we find our tomorrow. Those currently seeking to erase the history of this nation will only steer us into destruction. We must remember and cherish the good and learn not to repeat the bad and the ugly.
If you’ve read this far, God bless you dear reader for your patience, because now, I’m going to let you in on a little secret – it’s not always about the end goal, the treasure cache….. its about what happens along the trail – the people you meet, the sights you see, the things both spoken and heard, the things you smell, the anticipation and the participation in something way bigger than yourself. Now H.’s hidden treasures are certainly real, but the really real riches lie in plain sight along the path you now currently tread – family, friendships, loving and giving of yourself to others, experiencing God’s creation first hand, exercising your God- given body and soul – these are the oft overlooked gemstones that anyone can find along the way and you don’t even need a treasure map to recover them!
General Braddock never made it to Fort Duquesne…………. he was wounded in battle 7 miles shy of his goal and buried on the very road that bears his name. You may never finish what you start out to do here on this earth, but like Braddock, try you must! Live your life as it unfolds before you…….. challenge yourself mentally, physically and spiritually. Seek out all of the treasures this life affords you, but know this: there is but ONE Treasure that thieves, rust and moths can never destroy ONE Treasure that was hidden for thousands of years, but now has been revealed. ONE Treasure greater than all the gold bars snuck out of Victorio Peak by the military, greater than both the newfound East and the old West Lost Dutchman Gold Mines and greater than all of H.’s treasures combined.
Proverbs 25:2 says: “It is the glory of God to conceal a thing: but the honour of kings is to search out a matter.” Now, according to this verse, H. Charles Beil isn’t the only one hiding treasures….did you know that God Himself is in the Treasure Hiding business? Better yet, He’s into the Treasure Revelation business! Someone Who God had been hiding for ages, but hinting at for centuries, has now been revealed – His Son, Jesus Christ, Who is the exact representation of His Father. He died outside the city of Jerusalem on a hill called Golgotha, the place of the skull, on a symbol of suffering and shame – a wooden cross. Crucified, Roman style, so that you and I can live an immortal life with Him. God was in His Son on the cross reconciling the world unto Himself…….God does not hold your sins against you dear reader, BUT you must believe this! You must simply place your faith in Jesus Christ – by believing that He died for your sins, was buried for 3 days and 3 nights and was resurrected and has ascended to His Father’s right side as your Advocate! Here is a treasure that will last for eternity! Jesus said: “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.”
God wants you to seek the Greatest Treasure you can ever find – Himself. He wants you to look for Him….it is the glory of God to hide a Treasure………it is the glory of kings to search out a matter! All the clues you will ever need are written via ‘Immersive Non-Fiction’ in the best selling book of all time – the Bible! You don’t even need to join a Kick-starter campaign to get one and I bet you an old French gold coin or two, that you just might already have one on your shelf somewhere. So be brave! Tread upon serpents and embark on the Greatest Treasure hunt of all time – the search for salvation in Jesus Christ. So what are you waiting for?! See you on the trail!
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