Six Questions with John Michaels and George Ward: The Secret Armchair Treasure Hunt and Shhh The Secret Podcast

At the beginning of August, the hosts of Shhh The Secret Podcast, John Michaels and George Ward, released a very exciting announcement.  It was about an upcoming treasure hunt for a 13th Casque in The Secret Armchair Treasure Hunt! The prize for finding this additional Casque will value at around $1,500 dollars.

The Secret by Bryon Preiss was published in 1982, and is one of the longest running treasure hunts in the states.  To have a brand new casque added to the hunt after almost 40 years is absolutely incredible!  Who would have imagined? Well, John Michaels did, and with the help of others, he is heading up an awesome ‘Tribute’ hunt for The Secret.  Both John and George are avid treasure hunters and researchers for The Secret Casques.  They’re leaders in The Secret Community.  Let’s get to their answers of the following Six Questions. Enjoy!

Six Questions with John (JM) and George (GW):

• 1Q)  Thanks, John & George, for participating in MW’s Six Questions.  The Secret is such a great armchair treasure hunt and one that I’ve been working on and off on since 2005.  But for those who aren’t familiar with The Secret treasure hunt by Byron Preiss, can you give a brief summary on it?  

GW – The Secret is a book published in 1982 which tells the story of fairies immigrating to the United States. The fairies became scared of man and his creations, and hid all of their valuable jewels away. They were an artistic bunch, they created 12 paintings and 12 poems so that a worthy human could pair a painting with a poem, and that pairing would form a treasure map of sorts. If you follow the map it will lead you to a spot where if you dig no more than 3 feet down you will find a ceramic box with a ceramic key inside. You can trade in that key for a jewel that was worth about one thousand dollars in 1982.

• 2Q) How did you hear about The Secret and when did you get involved in trying to find the 10 remaining Casques? 

JM – I was privy to see a screener of a movie called “The Institute” back in 2012 I think.  It inspired me to want to do a similar project in my hometown of Milwaukee.  When I started researching it, I stumbled onto The Secret, and immersed myself in it for 8 to 10 hour days.  I remember some nights staying up until 5am reading hundreds of posts on Q4T.  From that point on, until a few months ago, I was working on The Secret in some fashion every day for 6 years.  It’s ruined many, many relationships.

GW –  I have always been interested in ciphers and logic puzzles. I started working with a couple of friends who created a long running puzzle series on Reddit, which included elements of treasure hunts – with prizes, extremely difficult ciphers, and various other types of puzzles. All of those puzzles would come to form a story line. I was looking for a new puzzle idea when I stumbled on the secret. That was… ten or so years ago… Wow, time flies.

       -Do you think there are still some out there that can be found, even with the passing of almost 40 years? 

JM – Absolutely, Byron Preiss graduated magna cum laude from U of P and then went on to get a master’s degree from Stanford, he was reading constantly.  He was an EXTREMELY smart and driven individual.  He put these in safe places.  With 40 years passing there is going to be some human interaction with the sites.  When Cleveland was buried, the box it was put in had no plants or bushes or anything in it.  When Brian Zinn and Andy Abrams dug it up, the planter box had bushes planted in them.  I don’t think time itself has ruined any, but human interaction (landscaping) could be a factor.

GW – I’m of the opinion the vast majority of these can still be found intact. The depth they are buried is deeper than most construction goes, it’s lower than the frost line in most places… There is really no reason they can’t be found, unless something has been built on top of them… in which case we just need to tunnel. Anyone know how to make a tunnel? Can someone call El Chapo? We may need to get him on the podcast…

       -Do you think some are completely lost to time?

JM – Knowing what we know today about where the Chicago casque was buried in Grant Park, I think it would still be there today.  I think some of the CLUES in the paintings have most definitely been lost to time, but I think the casques, unless tampered with by human renovations, are exactly where he put them.

GW – One of our team members used a bulldozer to tear up a park, he broke a water main, created a small lake, and when he was done construction workers dumped nine hundred and sixty thousand tons of dirt on top of the area, and built a gorilla enclosure around it.
I think that one is lost to time…

• 3Q) What do you enjoy most about researching The Secret and looking for the Casques? –

JM – I’ve actually been on the sidelines for a while, only helping the team with info from time to time.  Making this tribute and the podcast takes up most of my free time, in addition to another career.  George is still quite an active hunter though.

GW – The Community is by far the most enjoyable part of this hunt. This hunt has a way of bringing people together which is unheard of in most hunts. The teamwork, and friendly openness is something to be proud of. I remember one guy who had never looked at the hunt, never read the book, and had only recently been introduced to the hunt by watching a Tv show. He joined the facebook page and his first post was a two page essay on how one treasure was buried in Costa Maya, Mexico. He wasn’t shot down, wasn’t insulted… He was welcomed by everyone, and politely encouraged to read the book.

        -What made you decide to begin Shhh The Secret Podcast and how are you enjoying that project? 

JM – I have a long background in public and commercial radio, in addition to producing a notable podcast for the Tenth Amendment Center for 3 years and doing commercial work most of my life.  After working on the secret for 5 years with a team of veteran hunters, all of us were digging many holes and coming up short, even with us using GPR, and some using a backhoe!  George and I concluded that we were going to need some more eyes and ears on this project.

We tossed around the idea of an interactive web site, but couldn’t get it to work how we wanted without an immense amount of time.  I fell back to my radio and podcasting roots and we put together Shhh The Secret Podcast.  I have to give credit to one of our team members, Wilhouse, for coming up with the name.  Really it took the help of all the team members coming on as guests to tell their stories about cities they’ve worked on to make it what it is today.  In essence it’s a verbal account of what we know.  So far the response has been fantastic, and George and I love doing it, and sharing the stories and experiences of other people, some hunters and some people who worked on the book and knew Byron.

GW – I’ve done a lot of hunts and worked on a lot of puzzles. Successful hunts have a community working on them. There is only so much one person can do alone. When you have tens or hundreds of people, all contributing their own ideas and viewpoints, working together towards a single goal, that collection of knowledge can reach that goal in no time. When I started, the community seemed shut down. People wouldn’t work together to advance each other’s ideas, they seemed to hold fast to their own, and tear down the theories of others. I wanted to figure out a way to bring people together, and show them what a community could accomplish. John held that same idea so we formed a team of like minded people, all with a single goal of creating an open and sharing community for everyone interested.

• 4Q) It’s been announced you are heading up a team to offer a treasure hunt for a 13th Casque!  Very exciting!  How did this all come about?  What inspired you to create another hunt? 

JM – When I started this hunt, the generation of hunters who came before me were kind enough to take me under their wing and tutor me on the puzzle.  I “trained” under people like Brian Zinn and Andy Abrams, Matt Sparks, and some of the other guys who have been on this for a long time.  They passed the knowledge down to me, and through the podcast and social media sites, George and I are trying to do the same.  Likewise, with the “Tribute” hunt.

All of the fun that JJP and Byron and the crew gave to us, we just want to keep it going.   I thought getting John Palencar’s son Kit to do the painting would be keeping in line with that tradition.  JoEllen Trilling was kind enough to donate a casque to tie everything together.  This is just our own way of giving back, and continuing the legacy of what we have all experienced from being involved.

• 5Q) It seems this hunt for the 13th Casque is extra special, and all of The Secret treasure hunters are looking forward to it.  Can you provide more details about it?  Like what is it’s prize, when will it be released, or what makes it so exceptional?  Will there ever be a 14th Casque?

JM – First off let me tell you that we have added an additional 10 one ounce bars of .999 fine silver to the prize in addition to a 3 karat Pink Tourmaline gem valued at $1500.  Perhaps the person who finds it may want to make a silver setting for the gem, we’ve now given them the silver to do that with, if they desire!

I’ve given a few details out about the hunt on the Special Edition of the podcast that we released in Mid-August.  Here is what I can tell you for now.  This is a “Tribute” to The Secret, so we intend to keep the puzzle as close to the other 12 as possible.

The casque is an ORIGINAL casque and key, not a reproduction.  It was made with all of the others in 1981.  This casque will be fully painted and it looks amazing.  The painting for the puzzle will be done by Kit Palencar, the son of John Jude Palencar and an exceptional artist.  (Check out his site here: KitPalencar.com)

The clues will be presented in the same manner as The Secret, however, there are a few differences.  First off, the image and verse will be given out as a pair.  In the original hunt, there were 12 images and verses and they were not matched yet, so one needed a way to match them together.  A confirmation clue which brings the image and verse together, is the city.  Once you assign a city to the image, you can then figure out which verse to match up.

In this case there is no need to match them up, so the city will not be given out with Long/Lat numbers or in a rebus code, like many of the others are, however, like The Secret, the casque will be buried somewhere in North America, and to receive the prize you must dig it up and turn in the key.  A written in answer with the correct solution will not get you a casque or the silver or the gem, but all the other rules apply, it won’t be in a cemetery, public or private flower bed, or dangerous area.

Kit Palencar and I are using all the resources available to us, to make this as close as possible to the way the original worked.  We intend to release the new painting and verse by Valentine’s Day, 2019 at the very latest.  Everyone is putting their best foot forward on this project, so we don’t want to rush, but if it’s finished by the end of the year, we may do an earlier release.

• 6Q) I’m sure you know Treasure Hunting can take lots of time.  Do you work on other treasure hunts or just The Secret? And when not working on treasure hunts, what else do you like to do?  That is, if there is time. Lol. 

JM– I have worked on the Thrill Of The Chase a bit and have studied the legend of the Keel Mountain Gold, but nothing like the effort I’ve put into The Secret.  My 30-year long career is tour managing and mixing sound for touring bands and artists, currently I work with an up and coming artist named Valerie June, as well as many legacy acts (Firefall, Atlanta Rhythm Section, and The Smithereens, and Bow Wow Wow).

GW– I work on the reddit number puzzles a bit. When I’m not doing that, I do a lot of community outreach and volunteer work, mostly with Fire Departments and Rescue services. Judging from how I spend my days off, it seems like the activity I enjoy most is digging empty holes in various parks all across America.

Thanks so much John and George for such informative, inspiring, and fun answers.  To say I’m excited for this upcoming venture is an understatement. And I know it’s not just me, but all Secret hunters will be anxiously awaiting for the search of 13^th casque to be released.  You have done an excellent job at keeping The Secret as one of the most celebrated hunts, while creating a community, who is happily working together to unearthing more casques.  It’s all very commendable and admirable.  High fives. 

Bring on the 13^th casque, and keep hope alive for the other 10 to be brought to the surface too! (well except the one which is guarded by gorillas..lol.. great story!)

Thanks again!

Be sure to check out John and George’s sites: Shhh The Secret Podcast and Pages on Facebook to stay up to date.

You can also subscribe to the MW Newsletter and the MW Armchair Treasure Hunt Group.

Fun is everywhere!   Join the adventures!