Calling all adventurers: There is real treasure out in the world waiting to be found.
Before banks and high-tech vaults, humanity squirreled away artwork, jewels, and precious metals in covert hidey-holes that only they knew the location of.
Like all humans, the fortune stashers eventually passed on, and the coordinates of their makeshift currency crypts were lost to time.
Many of these treasure tombs have yet to be plundered by modern day swag swashbucklers.
Here are three hidden treasures waiting to be found:
The Mysterious Thomas Beale Ciphers
In 1816, Scottish naturalist Thomas Beale and his company of explorers were mining in the Rocky Mountains when they discovered a stash of gold and silver worth $63 million today.
Instead of fwasting their newfound wealth, Beale and his men concealed the treasure somewhere in Bedford County, Virginia, to ensure that their families could benefit from the large sums of precious metals.
Beale then penned three ciphers, the first revealing the location of the secret treasure, the second outlining its contents, and the third including the names of Beale and the men’s next of kin, who would ultimately be awarded a portion of the loot.
He put these codes in a box and gave it to the innkeeper of the neighborhood, Robert Morriss. Beale promised Morriss he would be back in ten years.
However, if he didn’t for any reason, he would mail Morriss a key to decipher the ciphers.
Unfortunately, Beale never showed up again and never sent Morriss the key.
Only the second cipher—the one that details the treasure’s contents—has been cracked as of publishing.
The other two are available online if you feel like trying your hand at cryptography.
The Oak Island Money Pit
We have a far better idea of where to look for the Oak Island Money Pit than any of the other treasures on our list. The challenge is in getting to the prize.
Oak Island is a small, mainly deserted island off the eastern coast of Nova Scotia, Canada, where a local boy called Daniel McGinnis made the initial discovery of the Oak Island Money Pit in 1795.
McGinnis and his companions discovered an odd depression on the island’s surface. In 1795, as they dug since they had nothing else to do, the crew found artificial platforms every 10 feet below ground.
It'd called the Oak Island Money Pit and apparently yes theyre still digging it and shitting themselves pic.twitter.com/J5wBiSpgpE
— 📕 (@SwampCommunist) May 1, 2023
The Oak Island Money Pit quickly became famous, drawing treasure seekers from all over the world in a futile attempt to recover whatever may be hidden there.
In 1804, an exploratory team known as the Onslow Company descended 90 feet into the abyss.
They unearthed something very remarkable there: a stone tablet bearing a cipher. This is what the deciphered message says: “40 feet below, 2 million pounds are buried.”
In that case, why hasn’t the treasure been dug out yet? As for the pit’s clever booby traps, they trigger when the soil within the pit is moved, flooding the tunnel with seawater.
Six individuals have already been killed by these traps while searching for the wealth.
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The Victorio Peak Treasure
In 1937, Milton Ernest “Doc” Noss went deer hunting in the mountain range of Victorio Peak located in the southern part of New Mexico.
He discovered a stone there that appeared to be obstructing a hole that had been dug by a person.
The hole had been dug by a human. After removing the enormous stone, he discovered a mine shaft that went deep into the mountain.
As soon as he went down the shaft, the strangeness of the situation only increased.
After descending several hundred feet, he was led into a vast room that was packed to the rafters with priceless religious artifacts, rare coins, and thousands of bars of pure gold.
In a sequence of circumstances that was eerily reminiscent of an Indiana Jones movie, Doc also encountered 27 skeletons that had their wrists bound behind their backs and were chained to stakes.
Even In spite of this, Doc ended up bringing his wife back to the shaft, and as a result, there was nothing that could stop him from doing so.
Victorio Peak Treasure – http://t.co/9qNXv1YUHY #dsgt #paranormal pic.twitter.com/UdmUhFRjml
— Dark Shadow GT (@DarkShadowGT) March 24, 2014
During the course of nearly two years, the two brought gold up from the depths of the earth on their backs, gradually bringing all of the treasures to the surface.
However, Doc was cautious with his wife. While she was sleeping, he would rebury some of the wealth, and then he would escape into the desert so that it would never be found again.
Due to the fact that it was against the law to privately own gold during that time period, he was never able to truly benefit from his discovery.
It was a terrible accident that he departed away in 1949, and he took the knowledge of the new location of the treasure’s burial with him.
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The United States Army White Sands Missile Range was established in 1952, but the area surrounding Victorio Peak did not become accessible to the general public for the purpose of treasure hunting until 1989.
Some people believe that the United States government may have covertly dug it, despite the fact that this has never been either proven or contested.