Six Questions with John Michaels: In Search for the Milwaukee Casque of The Secret Armchair Treasure Hunt

This is the second of a series of Six Questions with dedicated searchers of The Secret (A Treasure Hunt) published in 1982.  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.

Let’s get to the Mikwaukee Casque by lead searcher, John Michaels, creator of Shhh The Secret Podcast and co-creator of Tribute: Hunt for the 13th Casque! Enjoy!

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

2009-2010-ish

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

I was born there and lived there at the time and I was involved in all kinds of community projects since I was a kid.  I had a vast knowledge of the city and its history and I love puzzles.  I figured that I would give it my best try.

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

My proposed solution for Milwaukee?  Which one?  LOL.  When you work on a specific city for a long time, and have checked as many spots as I have, theories change.  I have about 3 working theories, all of them have been checked several times.  I keep all of them open.  I’ve recently discovered good evidence of several verification methods in the puzzle.  One of them has to do with paths to the park, which explains longtime arguments about 2 different starting points in some cities.

I think the ominous presence of Milwaukee’s Gothic bastion, City Hall in Image 10, and the mention of one of Milwaukee’s prominent families, the Mitchell family in Verse 8, keyed me into Milwaukee as the city.  We all know now about the rebus puzzle on the image which verifies the city as well.

As this verse plays out, we find a bundle of riddles unfold which when solved and used with the visual clues, give one a way to find the entrance to the park.  The entrance to the park is also marked in every one of these cities with some kind of verse line and some kind of image match.  The same for the starting point and the path.  In Milwaukee we have “Ascend the 92 steps” as the marker for the park entrance.  This is visually confirmed by the “millstone” in the image, which you’ll find a replica of as you are standing on top of the stairs.  From there it gets intensively more complex. 

The verse leads you on a strange path around the park and back out to Lincoln Memorial Drive.  All of a sudden, once I was in the park, the verse made no sense at all.  I struggled digging 15 or 16 holes in various areas at the end of the ravine.  Finally I had to go back and rework some things.

It was about 4 or 5 years ago that I figured out one of the more interesting puzzles in the Milwaukee chapter of the hunt.  The verse is actually juggled up. As part of being able to figure out the correct path to the dig spot, there is 1 really tricky, or unconventional puzzle one has to figure out in every one of these.  In Milwaukee he’s written out a verse which has 2 lines that begin with the word “Pass.”  Pass is also a Juggling term just fyi.  These 2 lines which start with PASS, just happen to separate the verse into 3 sections, a beginning, middle, and end.  Well since the beginning has brought me to the park, the 2 that I chose to “juggle” or swap were the 2nd 2 sections, turning the end of the verse around, and changing the path to make a little more sense in the park.  Which it did.

From there I worked out the final image matches and riddles in the verse for the Lion sculptures on the bridges and the General Wolcott statue, and then it was narrowing the dig spot down to only a couple places.  Between the 5th lion and the prize winning pear tree with the metal badge on it, pictured in the cape of the image.  Please keep in mind there are a lot of references from 1981, research I had to do to verify the theories. Another was the actual foot of the lion on the path going down to the ravine (that was eliminated), and an area by the Wolcott statue which may or may not have been severely disturbed since 1980. 

I’ve run GPR over some of these areas, and for a time I was working WITH the parks department to help locate it.  That relationship has since deteriorated as most of the relationships between parks and citizens in the remaining 9 suspected US sites.  IMHO it is the job of the parks departments to help the citizens search for these in their own public parks without disturbing wildlife, or irrigation, or electrical systems.  If this supervision comes at an added cost in the way of a permitting fee, that’s fair, at least they wouldn’t be completely shutting citizens out of using their own parks, having a fun day with their families, or squashing some tourism from people coming from other places to look.     

Only San Francisco leads the way in allowing the people who share ownership in the parks and contribute to the salaries of the people who maintain them, to actually search in them with delegated help.  I would hope that other cities would not turn a blind eye to what San Francisco has done. 

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

I found a “Crystal White” laundry soap token one time, the hexagon shaped kind, that was pretty unique.  I think what I enjoyed the most about my searching in Milwaukee was learning how to use a GPR and also using a plumbing camera for the first time like 3 years ago.   Also some of the “Lake Park Friends” people were very kind and helpful, as well as Sue from the Parks Dept. I learned a lot from them also about the history of the park.

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

Fear.  As well as ignorance  and a lack of public support by and from local government.  It’s sad because for people with kids, or even groups of young friends, and older folks alike, this is such a fun and harmless activity.

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

#1 – Dr. Gerald Gay did not dig up a casque in San Francisco from The Secret treasure hunt. Both John Palencar and JoEllen Trilling verified to me personally that the thing unearthed by Gerald Gay was a fake.  Anyone who believes Dr. Gay about his find should have their head examined.

Now that that’s out of the way.

Remember that it’s a puzzle.  The answers to the riddles can be applied in many ways.  You hear the term, “simple is best” a lot from my friends Rob Wrobel and Brian Zinn.  This gets misinterpreted I think.  What we mean is if you see a peregrine falcon in the image, maybe that just means BIRD, or in the case of the Boston image it’s meaning is part of a word game. Beak signified by the 2 bubbles, one being near the beak of the bird, the other near a map of an intersection which BEACON st. runs into.  Simple answers seem to work best, especially when they are shrouded by complex possibilities. 

The clues are always verified by the verse and image.  This is what should eliminate wrong answers.  If you have solved the verse riddle correct, and you are in the right place, you will see something from the image.  That is how the puzzle has shown that it confirms itself.

In the puzzle the following clues are always given for each city.  See how many you can find.

Starting Point

Path

Park Entrance

Treasure Grounds

Dig Spot

And the Image always provides the city

Below is Image 10 with Verse 8

(Which most believe match and lead to Milwaukee)

More thoughts on this Image and Verse, and possible locations, in other MW Posts!

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

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