Finding the Fenn Treasure

Published Jan 21, 2021, 3:33 PM

In 2010 an eccentric art dealer hid a treasure chest with $2 million in valuables somewhere in the Rocky Mountains and published a poem with clues on where to find it. Hence began the most famous treasure hunt in modern times.

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Welcome to stuff you should know, a production of I Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant over there. Bryant, Really, would you say the first time? I pronounced it with a real hard te Bryant. Yeah, you only do that when you're mad at me, you know, like kissing through a clenched teeth, kind like I say, Josh Clark, Right, Marge Simpson even know the one where that guy came in and introduced Marge's substitute teacher. Oh yeah, yeah, um so wait what did you say? Boy? This is this is great podcasting. Right now, I'm clearing my throat and asking you what you said ten seconds ago. Uh? Well, I do have a couple of weird announcements, if let's do that before we actively get going. One is just a quick listener shout out. And you remember in the Hell Hell Hell episode when I couldn't think of the Pixar movie where if you were forgotten you go away, It's Coco. Yeah, I saw somebody right then, And is that a good movie? I've seen nothing but good things, but I've never watched it. Dude, Coco is easily the best looking animated film I've ever seen. It's amazing. It is striking. And that's from Joe Brown. He's a movie crusher. I felt so dumb because the main song from that movie is called remember Me. Think it's about being remembered. The title of the song is remember Me chuck. Uh. And also, uh, we wanted to announce that we are edging close to one hundred thousand books sold. Yeah that's pretty good, huh it is, and we would really like to hit that number. Oh okay, yeah, I mean like we uh, I mean you don't Yeah, yeah I do. I totally do know, I totally do. Um. It's just usually we coordinated with stuff like this so I can prepare some remarks. Uh, you know, come on, let's see what you gotta say. Selling book, good bye book, good you. Hundred thousand, big number, that's what I have to say off the cup. Yeah, we'd like to hit a hundred thousand because that would, um, that would please a lot of people. It's a good round number. And just because the holidays have come and gone, you still can go out and get that thing, the stuff you should know Book of Interesting Facts and Figures. What it's called bit's close stuff you should know Invisible colon uh, an incomplete compendium of mostly interesting things. We took some grief for not actually putting a colon on there. Oh really after our colon heavy speak over the past few years. Yeah, my response is that it's invisible and silent, invisible in silent, much like us. Yeah, yeah, not at all. But the thing is, I wonder if we shot ourselves in the foot by making the thing bright red so people are confused and think it's it's only a Christmas present m m, because you're right, it's not. Just because Christmas is over, it doesn't mean you can't get it. So it's available everywhere still, and you can get it from indie booksellers to Giant uh, global monopolies. Everywhere has it anywhere you can buy books. That's right. Uh. And then my final little quick shout out because this is an episode on the fin Treasure. Actually know a guy who looked for this thing, and it's my old pal from my film industry days, Kim bro and I remember when this well, we don't want to ruin anything, but I remember him posting on Facebook about it some that he had looked for it. He didn't quit his job like some people, but he was a UM, a casual to moderately intense UM explorer for the Finn Treasure. So that's really neat man. Big shout out to kimbro Yeah listen, Actually, oh even better, you won't have to email and be like you should really listen to the Finn Treasure episode. So you just kind of let the cat out of the bag. You and the title of the episode. We're talking about the Fen Treasure, and it's probably familiar to a lot of people. It made the news pretty widely over the decade that it was ongoing. But for those of you who aren't aware of it, it was a treasure hunt, like a real live treasure hunt. There was a chest of treasures literally treasures of gold and jewels and gems and are like archaeological artifacts hidden somewhere by a very eccentric art dealer named Forest Finn, hence the name Finn Treasure. And he published something in his book which is basically a puzzle map full of clues I think nine clues, and said you got everybody go find it and kick back and and watched by the highest count I've seen about three fifty thousand different people search for this treasure, some of whom, like you mentioned, quit their jobs moved out to the rockies so that they could um search more frequently. Most people, though, just kind of were casually involved or maybe followed it on the message boards that kind of thing. But but the people who actually did go out and look for it, we're kind of fulfilling this vision that Forest Fin had, which was, you know, we're also just kind of stuck on our couches in front of multiple screens all the time, and there's so much natural beauty out there that's just passing people's lives by. UM. And he said, well, you know, if you put a chest of treasure worth a couple of million dollars out there, tell people it's somewhere out there, it might actually get some people to go look for it. And and that was the definite result of that whole thing. Yeah, I mean, it's a very cool thing. I did not know about it until the end, and I'm still trying to sort of dance around a spoil alert. UM. But you know, anything could have happened. It could have exploded, yep, could have never been found and been a hoax, right, don't forget Martians could have been Martians, it could have been found. You'll have to listen to find out. But eventually when things came to a conclusion is when I learned about it, and I was kind of mad that I didn't know about it before. I definitely would not have gone and looked for it, but I would have done a lot of online sleuthing just to sort of poke around because it's kind of fun. Treasure hunts are neat Well, yeah, that was the cool thing about this too, is like you could do a lot of it through online sleuthing and you could just kick back and like join the forums and help out like that. But if you had your own salves is what they're called, where you figure out different solutions to the clues UM and you put them all together. That's a solve, and you know, different people had multiple solves UM. To prove whether it was correct or not, try to find the you had to actually get out there and look follow the solve that you would come up with UM, And so a lot of people did do that, and I think that's really cool because it drew a lot of people out to the Rockies, and the Rockies are indeed quite beautiful they are. Uh, should we talk about the man himself? I think we should. Man. Yeah. So Forest fen f E double n FO double R as Well was born in Texas and he was always into the great outdoors. Apparently when he was a kid, they used to vacation at Yellowstone National Park and it really made a pretty big impact on him. He went through high school and then joined the Air Force and became a pilot. Uh served in Vietnam, and after about twenty years of service in the military, got out, moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico, and got into the art dealer business, which is something he really didn't know anything about it first. No, but he, I guess, had started collecting art um even though he wasn't like a particularly enthused by art itself. But he liked the business of art and art collecting. I think he liked the art world and um, I get the impression also that it brushed up against celebrities and you could, you know, get rich people to part with their money pretty easily. So sure that has something to do with it. Yeah, I think he really liked that a lot. Um. One thing I do want to say, I saw about his time in Vietnam was that he said that he had flown three hundred and twenty eight combat missions in three hundred and forty eight days while he was there, which is just astounding. And then apparently that drove him to become a pacifist because he after he left the military, he became a certified self proclaimed pacifist from from Fur the rest of his life from what I understand, Yeah, which that quite a few Vietnam vets went down that path. I've heard a lot of those stories. So he uh moves to Santa Fe in ninety two, and like you said, by that time, he had already collected some art. What he would you is go out and buy art from um little known artists and then up sell it, which is I guess the whole nut racket. But that's the business of art collecting, as you buy low hopefully and sell high, right. And uh. He specialized in Native American art and also artifacts and opened the Aerosmith Finn Gallery with his partner Rex Aerosmith. Um. Eventually he just became the Finn Galleries with his wife Peggy, and he sold art for you know, about eight or nine years. UM. While he kept selling art, but in eight or nine years he started uh selling it to really famous people and was making a lot of money doing it. Yeah, and he would actually he had a pretty cool tactic actually, um where you know, if you were of some certain level of rich or famous, he would put you up at his gallery, which is, you know, a compound which had lots of guest houses that were filled with art and everything was for sale, and um he would just kind of like, uh bathe you in luxuriousness while also simultaneously trying to to sell you art. Um. So he he seemed to have been living a pretty kush lifestyle in Santa Fe for a while, and he was making like, I think grossing back in the eighties six million a year um in eighties money too, which is you know, that's a lot of cheese for somebody who just came into the art world because he said, I guess I'll go try this next. You know, the dirtiest money too. It's pretty dirty. Yeah, And a lot of people are like that guy is no hero. He's very widely celebrated, but a lot of um Native American communities, including I believe the Pueblo, UM, say, you know, this guy is a plunderer. And archaeologists too are not a big fan of him either, because he would excavate UM, you know, our archaeological sites, but without any documentation whatsoever. He just wanted to get to the artifacts and then he would take it and sell it. He would he would ruin an archaeological site UM to to get to the art and then make some money off of it. So he didn't have He wasn't beloved universally in that sense, for sure. It's worth pointing out. Yeah, I mean the FBI actually investigated him. They did an undercover operation where an informat, a wired informat just like you seen the movies, went over to his house. I assume sort of posing is some kind of a rich art collector, and he was like here, like, look at all this cool stuff, like here's some eagle feathers, which I'm not supposed to have, and here's some human hair from antiquity, and here's some chain mail and some prehistoric sandals and a basket and and don't tell anyone, but I'm not supposed to have any of this stuff. And after the raid UH in two thousand nine, apparently no charges were brought. It says in our article that UM people assume that the artifacts were hidden or sold, but he had stuff confiscated, so there was definitely only some of it there. And I'm just not sure why no charges were ever levied against him. He was a part of a bigger um investigation with a lot of people, but that might have something to do with it. I have no idea that well, he seems to have been slick and rascally like in the way that you know, those kind of people attract admirers far and wide and tend to like get off the hook in situations that other people necessarily wouldn't. So who knows. I have no idea exactly why he wasn't prosecuted if he was, you know, caught with that kind of stuff, but it would kind of um be in step with his larger personality, which is, you know, I saw him compared to the Native American coyote archetype, you know, the kind of the trickster, the the slick when you can never quite pin down. He definitely had a thread of that going through him, if not that being like you know, his main trait. Yeah, I mean, he was definitely extent rick He kind of flouted the rules of the art world. He thought they were kind of stagy and he was going to do his own thing. Um. Apparently in his galleries he had signs that said please touch the art, we are responsible. Um. He sold Master forgeries like as Master forgeries and basically said, hey, if you like the painting, by the painting the real fakes of those people who just by it because of the real signature of the real artist, which is interesting. Um. And he said he had a roster full of celebrities Jessica Lang, Michael Douglas, Steve Martin, Robert Redford, and as everyone knows, the largest art collector on the planet, Suzanne Summers. Yeah, who he was trying to help find a Georgia O'Keefe. Um. And I don't from a profile of him and People magazine that that hadn't been successful yet. But who knows what the nineties brought. You know. Well, she had that thime Master money, so yeah, she was rolling in the thime as her money. She wasn't hurt. Um. So so Forest Fin is kind of going along living his life just being Forrest Fin from what I can tell. And he was diagnosed with cancer. His father had had developed cancer and uh, when when Forrest was younger, and his father decided that rather than UM undergo uh potentially losing battle with with cancer, UM, he would take his own life. So he took a bunch of sleeping pills and he died. And Forrest Uh decided he wanted to do the same. But rather than like his father dying at home, he knew of a spot that he wanted to die in in the rockies, and so his idea was he was going to put together a chest of treasure uh, and when the time came, he was going to walk out to this spot, UH, take a bunch of sleeping pills himself, and lay there and die. And then at some point somewhere sometimes somebody was going to come along, probably and find this treasure chest being clutched by an old skeleton. That was his idea. But the whole idea kind of took a left turn, Chuck, because he actually got better. He didn't he didn't die from cancer. He actually beat it. And I think that came as a bit of a surprise to him. Yes, I imagine pretty pleasant surprise. Uh. So he wrote a self published memoir called The Thrill of the Chase Publishing, and he um In it contained a poem with six rhyming stanzas printed on the map of the Rockies. And I think we should take a break and read this poem right after this. All right, Fenn has written a poem, and I think we should just read it. You want to take turns? Oh? Sure? Are we going to do our voices like the Halloween episode? Or you can do whatever you want to know? I agree, we'll skip that one. I'm not going to read it as Sammy Davis Jr. You want to go first to me? Uh, dealer's choice. Okay, I'm gonna go you ready, all right? As I have gone alone in there and with my treasures bold, I can keep my secret ware and hint of riches new and old. My turn, Ye begin it where warm waters halt. That's the first clue of where to start, by the way, and take it in the canyon down not far but too far to walk. Put in below the home of Brown Capital b. Yeah, that's a big one. From there, it's no place for the me. The end is ever drawing nigh. There'll be no paddle up your creek, just heavy loads and water high. If you've been wise and found the blaze, look quickly down your quest to cease, but Terry scant with marvel gaze, just take the chest and go in peace? Okay. Uh so why is it that I must go and leave my trope for all to seek the answers? I already know I've done it, tired, and now I'm weak and finally, so hear me all and listen, good, your effort will be worth the cold if you are brave and in the wood, I give you title to the gold. This is really exciting, I gotta say, sure, especially the back and forth. You know, I'm really appreciative of us doing that was a really amazing literary device. So what this was was a very cryptic poem about this treasure that he's hidden, and uh, it was a real treasure, like you said it was. I mean some people say possibly up to three million dollars worth of golden loot. Um. I imagine just being a part of the fin treasure makes it even more valuable at auction. So who knows what it would fatch? You know? Yeah, I think, um, from what I've seen that there's a pretty wide belief that the treasure sold intact as the finn Treasure, would be worth way more than its estimated market value of the combined parts. Oh totally. There's some rich person that's just like, I want to have this in my house. I'll pay ten million bucks for it. Uh, we should say the box itself was actually a treasure as well, right, Yeah, it was a twelfth century bronze treasure chest basically, I think a ten inch by ten inch treasure chest or chest. The fact that it contained treasure made it a treasure chest by definition, but I don't know if that's what it was originally built for. But yeah, it's a remarkable looking box just just on its own. It's the kind of heft and size and just shape that you would imagine opening and being like, wow, there's hundreds of rare gold coins among other things in here. Yeah, so, uh, rare gold coins, um two gold nuggets supposedly as big as a hen's egg. That that's pretty neat to look at, I imagine. And then artifacts like pre Columbian figurine, some jade carvings from China, antique jewelry, emeralds, rubies, like the kind of thing that you would open up in. I think he you know, he wanted a bit of a wow factor and not just like a stack of cash. Yeah, well apparently he was originally going to put thousand dollar bills in there, but but yeah, but he was like, I don't know when this thing is going to be found, and who knows what kind of you know, uh, what kind of shape those those that paper currency is going to be in. And also he's like, who knows if there'll be banks accepting that kind of currency any longer. So he decided to put in more, um, everlasting treasures like gold and things like that. So he takes this box chuck and this treasure chest. He goes to the spot somewhere in the Rockies where he he was he wont he was going to go lay down and die, but rather than lay down and die, he just leaves the chest there, comes back, publishes this book and then you know, let's everybody know about it. And it takes a few years to catch on because I believe he's self published the book. Um, so he didn't have a lot of marketing behind it. But word of mouth started to spread that there was a man from Santa Fe who claimed to have put a two million dollar treasure chest out in the woods somewhere and had published a poem that that contained all the clues you needed to it, and so people started really getting into this, right, Yeah, I mean he didn't um. He gave away a few extra little clues, but basically said, the clues are in this poem. Uh. There are nine of them. They are listed in consecutive order, and they are you know, there are a series of steps that you have to take, um starting with that second stanza. Um. He did also say it's somewhere in the rocky mountains between Santa Fe and Canada. Another big clue was that it's an elevation of about five thousand feet, so that that's a big one that rules a lot of stuff out. And then this last extra clue is also pretty big. He said, it's not in a mine or in a graveyard or near any man made structure. And he said that last part from what I saw, because people were starting to do really dumb things and and going for really far afield. And he kept reminding people because so this is something that kind of um emerged from from reading about this stuff. He became part of this community. People would call him up, they'd text him, they'd email him, like he became friends with a lot of the most hardcore searchers. Um. And you know, sometimes they would ask him for clues or hints and he would just ghost him. But others just were kind of like, you know, I'm sitting in this one spot and you know, thinking of you right now because you you sent me here through this. This treasure hunter just wanted to thank you. Like he became a friend to a lot of these people. Um. But the one thing he kept saying to this crowd was, I was eighty years old carrying a forty pound treasure chest when I went out to this place, Like like, this is not a place where you have to climb up any sort of precipice or go down a precipice. Um, it's not that hard to get to. Just remember, like, it's the kind of place that an eighty year old man carrying a treasure chest weighing forty pounds can get to by himself because there was no one there. There were no witnesses, um. And it was just his word that this was actually there that people had to take it for for you know, on face value. Yeah, one of his friends supposedly saw what he claimed was the treasure chest in his walking close at once. But that's kind of the only verification and that this wasn't some big hoax. I think people took him at his word. And you know, if you're gonna figure something like this out, you have to start. If you don't get that first clue right, then you might as well not even bother. So it really comes down to begin it to where waters I'm sorry, begin it where warm waters halt and take it in the canyon down. You gotta find that place. And people like, what does that mean? Are their rivers converging? Is it a hot springs going into a river? Um? The first thing I thought was like, maybe he's being cheeky. Maybe it's like, uh, some primitive National park bath house that doesn't have hot water, right, you know, like, don't don't look in nature it's a bathroom. That's Some people actually took um below the home of Brown to mean an outhouse. I'm not kidding. I saw that in a couple of places, but Brown is capitalized. Yeah, I know, I know, But that's the like that that like you're idea about, you know, it being like a place without hot water. This pretty pretty mainstream thinking actually, like the like there were people who really got into this and started seeing things that just were not there. Yeah, of course, so um there. The whole thing is there was a lot of question about how you should interpret this and like I didn't see that that, like the whole thing actually did start with beginning where warm waters hault. A lot of people suspected that the real first clue was in the first stanza, but apparently that's not the case. It is um, as I have gone alone in there and with my treasures bold I can keep my secret ware and hint of Rita's new and old. People were looking at things like, um, so in that first line, as I have gone alone in there, they're like, well, if you look at um the word gone and the word alone, the number one is spelled out, and those two words, maybe these are some sort of coordinates that start with one one Like this is the level of thought that bating too much into it, way too much. And yeah, I think he even kind of tried to help guide people away from that, like you don't need to be a cryptologist to get this right. This is you know, uh, it's it's not that kind of a puzzle like it's it's it's different than that. Um yeah, I mean he said there were no codes, no anagrams. It was just like warm waters, dummy, right, But that didn't stop anybody from from saying like, no, no, you're a liar. And that's clearly one one or the first two numbers in whatever coordinates you're giving us. Interesting. So, uh, he did accomplish his goal as far as getting people out there. Um, like you said, like he got emails where people talked about these amazing places they never would have seen otherwise. And I imagine that brought him a lot of joy because that was the whole point for him, was to was to get people out there. And uh, I think he had the idea initially during the financial crisis when everyone was feeling down about stuff, and he said, this is really gonna uh if people find out about it, this is gonna spice up a lot of people's lives and get them out into nature. Yeah. Because again, like you could sit there and be like, Okay, this is you know, this is where I think the starting point is, and I'm gonna go on to Google Earth and start here and try to find the next clue and put together a solve. But again, if you had thought that your your solve was onto something you had to go out to the rockies and go see for yourself. Um. So it really did get all those people out to nature. And you know there there were so many like, um, thanks and messages and you know, um just kind of uh, what's the word I'm looking for where you honor somebody with thanks or something like that. Yeah, there were accolades for a forest friend for doing this because you know, he helped change a lot of people's lives. But um, there were definitely cases where things went far enough off the rails that some of these treasury hunters did not come back from, you know, going to verify their solves in the in the woods in real life. Yeah, I mean sadly, it looks like there were five people that died. Certainly others that were rescued that could have died. Um. One man named Jeff Murphy I think died from a fall. A man named Eric Ashby was found in the Arkansas River. There was a man named Randy Bill you who he was one of these full timers. He moved from Florida to Colorado and he died and was found near the Rio Grand River. There was a preacher named Paris Waller Um um, sorry Wallace a priest who was Um, he died. And then just before this thing came to its conclusion in March, there were two men found. Uh. One of them was alive and one of them, named Michael Sexon, was actually dead. They went out as a pair, which is what he always recommended, like go out with a buddy, don't be dangerous. Um. But one of these guys died near a Dinosaur National Monument in Utah. Yeah, and Um, the other guy, like you said, was rescued. That was the second time that pair had had to be rescued in the area in a month. Man. Yeah, so you can imagine that law enforcement in some of these places around Colorado in New Mexico where people were getting lost or dying. Um called on Fenn to say, like just stop this, just call us off, like tell everybody where it is, like this has gotten dangerous. People are are losing their lives now because of this, Like people have died, and Forest Fen had um a fairly libertarian response to that. He said, there's there's not Um. He said, life is too short to wear both a belt and suspenders. If someone drowns in the swimming pool, we shouldn't drain the pool. We should teach people to swim, which has a certain homespun, wild West folksy sensibility to it, for sure. Um, it makes sense like he wasn't he. It's not like he was the original Tom Fool who was sending people to their death in the quicksand that he knew was going to, you know, catch them on their way to find this treasure. Like he was. He was trying to get people out of doors, and he was trying to guide them as best he could in a safe manner without giving anything away. Um. And you can make a case one way or the other that he was responsible or not responsible for those people's deaths. I think it just comes down to your philosophy on personal responsibility or you know, um, indirect responsibility. Yeah. And he also after that quote said why do I have to pay school taxes when I don't have kids? Right, I don't care about your kids. And now I'm going to get emails from libertarians. Yeah, I don't think libertarians listening to this anymore. We discussed them. Oh, who knows, Now, I'm sure there's some out there. I'm just kidding. Of course, we have libertarian listeners. So there was some other you know, aside from the deaths, there's some other darker sort of aspects to this story. Um. When you have hundreds of thousands of people looking for something in national parks and in wildlife, you're gonna get some people that are not accustomed to being in these places and treating them with their respect they deserve, and uh damaging protected spaces and uh species. There was one person charged with the misdemeanor for digging under a memorial cross owned by the New Mexico State Game Commission. Um. They had to actually backfill the space to stabilize the monument. Um. There was other people. There were other people arrested over the years for digging in national parks, digging in cemeteries, people being indicted on federal charges. Um. You know this is what you're gonna get when you sort of have a wild West treasure hunt in in very kind of sacred areas. Yeah. Especially, Yeah, you're gonna attract some nuts and kooks for sure, who who don't listen and who just stopped thinking you're using their brains. Um. One I was, I believe, got a restraining order UM taken out against him by Fenn and his family because he had decided that the real treasure was fens granddaughter and that that was the key to everything, and had started stalking Fens home. Um, which is kind of scary. Yeah, did you see anything else about that guy? About the stalker? Yeah, I had. His name was Francisco Paco Chavez. Paco was his nickname, and uh, he was just clearly had had issues. I don't want to like diagnose him or anything, but um, it wasn't just about this treasure hunt. He at one point has sent pictures of hearts, the treasure chest and a shoe with a message that said one shoe can change your life Cinderella me. Um. He said he wanted to marry his granddaughter. He eventually was put on three years probation in and then in twenty nineteen showed up at his house again on on the like, Uh, you know, he had a gate at home and I was trying to get buzzed in. They saw who it was and he just sort of disappeared before the cops could show up. But um, that that pretty scary. Yeah, I can't imagine. Um, I mean, that's super duper scary to have somebody zeroed in on you like that, under any circumstance, you know. Yeah, Um, I think there was another guy who tried to gain entry into the house with an axe and had to be held at gunpoint by Fen's daughter. Um. But he was the kind of guy who inspired love and support by his family. And I saw a uh quote from his grandson, whose name is shiloh Old, which is pretty wide wild West name, uh, and he said, you know, this has been you know, really hard on the family, but you know, we we fully support our grandfather. Um. It's I thought that was kind of neat, and it says a lot about his family that they were willing to endure all this without you know, being like, just tell him where the where the treasure is? Like, this has gotten out of hand, so should we take another break and then talk about this mysterious conclusion you've been talking about totally? So people are still looking for this thing, it's um, I believe twenty right June of Yeah, you're speaking in a you know, past tense. Well, no, actually, I think there are people still looking at this for this as we'll see, but they're not necessarily looking for the treasure anymore. Because in June of there was an announcement made by forest Fen that said, it's been found. It's over. Somebody found fair and square and and um. Thus began this frustrating, maddening slow trickle of vague confirmations that this had been found and it had been found legitimately. That actually encouraged conspiracy theories about whether the treasure had even existed at all, or had ever been out there in the wilderness at all. Um. That still kind of persisted among some people of this day. But from what I saw, most of the people who were involved in the treasure hunt are satisfied that it was found and that it was found fair and square. Are you saying there are people in this country that, in the face of hard facts and truth, Uh, still believe in the conspiracy. Chuck, believe it or not. That may be true. I think the jury is still out, so UM. I think it's kind of interesting what he said when when they did find it, he said, Uh, it has been found under a canopy of stars and the lush forced vegetation the Rocky mountains, and had not moved from the spot where I hit it more than ten years ago. I do not know the person who found it. That would change. But the poem in my book led him to the precise spot, and uh, like you said, because of the conspiracy um individuals, he said, Uh. He posted a picture of it and he's like, here it is. Here are some of the objects. They have weathered. It's darker than it was ten years ago when I left it in the ground and walked away. Here's like a bracelet that's been tarnished. And yet some people still were like, Nope, I don't believe the facts in front of my face. This is a hoax. Yeah, I mean the fact. The fact is that the guy who um found it didn't want to be named. So now you had an anonymous person named the Finder who said that you know, he had found it. He wouldn't reveal how he found it because he was saying that he had been to this place obviously to get the treasure, and it was so beautiful and pristine that he said it was not an appropriate place to become a tourist destination. He and want people going out there and looking for maybe treasure that was dropped along the way um, or just you know, trying to see for themselves this place. It was a sacred place in his opinion, and he wanted to defend it so um to this day. Uh, the second part has still held true. People don't know where he found this thing, which is why I said, some people are still looking for this. They're not looking for the treasure anymore. They're looking for the spot, like the spot has become you know, the treasure. UM. And there was something that that we left out before that I think is worth mentioning um because Forest Fen was in correspondence with a lot of these people who are searching for this hard core UM. They would tell him like where they'd been or whatever, and he wouldn't give him anything in response. He'd just take the information, you know. But then later in interviews he said that multiple people had been within a couple hundred feet of the treasure and just hadn't been able to find it. Um. And apparently, uh one of the reasons why is this anonymous finder said that somebody had gone out that way and put a misleading blaze. Ablaze is one of the clues, but it's also something that marks trail, and it was the penultimate clue. I believe if you found the blaze, you were very close to the treasure and somebody had put some other misleading blaze out there to be a jerk, I guess, or throw other people off the trail. Um, but there are a lot of people who had come really really close and just walked right past it. Basically, Yeah, and apparently the original blaze had been damaged over the decade, so I don't think it was even visible to begin with. Then you had the misleading blaze and this mystery person would eventually be out of though because of a lawsuit. Uh. There was a woman, a real estate attorney from Chicago named Barbara Anderson who said that treasure is mine. Um, I solved it, and somebody hacked into my email and my cell phone and stole I solve and it's this person, whoever it is. And so because of this lawsuit, uh, Jack stuff, a thirty two year old medical student had to be revealed and and go to court, and um, we have we are one degree removed from Jack Stupe. I was wondering if friend Dazzo knew him or not. They they're there, they worked there around the same time, I would guess, right, Yeah, so he was a writer for The Onion and we knew folks from The Onion, and uh, I didn't text our buddy Joe Randazzo. But I did text Joe garden Um, former Onion writer, and he knew him, and he said after uh, and asked him if I could quote him on all this, and he said, after he found it. He said, we had a nice little Onion alumni chat about him. And he said he's a decent enough guy. And he said, but as my uh, he said, as my friend John Harris for The Onion put it, I didn't not expect him to find buried treasure. So uh. He said that he was the kind of guy. And you know, I read a little bit more about him. He was, um apparently into this kind of thing. When he was a kid. He was obsessed with the show Push Nevada, which was a TV show reviewers could solve a real million dollar mystery. Um. Joe said he admired his pluck. Uh. He had gained some notoriety before I'm sorry, after The Onion when he wrote for something called The Wonket and uh he was the person who in two thousand and eight made a drogatory term about Sarah Palin's uh special needs son and kind of got a lot of grief for that. Um got out of journalism, went to medical school, and then started searching for this treasure. Yeah, I guess he liked um only meeting with patients everything else. He hated about medical school from what I read. UM, But yeah, he just kind of dedicated his life to this. From what I saw, he didn't really share how into it he was with friends and family, UM, because he didn't know if he was ever going to find it, and it was just a weird thing to to be into this deep as far as he was concerned. So he seemed to have some perspective. But UM, I saw some some of the other treasure hunters were like this guy, Jack Stuf. He he was kind of a lone wolf, but at some points he went on and like and joined some groups that were trying to solve UM the treasure hunt as a group UM. And there were questions at first about whether he had basically taken a solve from one of the groups that he participated in and solved it himself and wasn't sharing the treasure. But um that group was involved in basically looking at like alone has the number one, and they were just totally off. What Stuf apparently did was apply his UM degree in English and literature and did a close reading and studied forest Fan and watched all the interviews with him, read every interview he could find to see if he slipped up or um, just to kind of understand who he was more, and then applied that to it and treated it less like a cryptogram and more like a poem that was that was symbolic, and that apparently is how he cracked the code. Yeah, I mean um. He said that he he did notice a couple of slip ups and interviews that Forrestment had made and that he said, I just guess no one else noticed these. Um. And he said his like, he obviously used the poem to to follow the steps, but in his mind it seemed like um. And there's that great Outside magazine article that if you want to read more about it, it's pretty in depth about him. But um, he said, what he really wanted to figure out was the where he thought he might want to die. Uh. And he thought that was sort of the biggest clue of all and that it would probably be some really beautiful place and not you know, like a rocky, dusty hillside or something like that. Uh. And it turns out that he was right. And um, you know, he said that that one A's had worn away over the years. But he went to the spot where he said, I think this is the spot where he wants to die. He went there about twenty five times over a couple of years, and I just, you know, finally found it. Pretty neat story. Yeah that that, Um, that Outside magazine article on him is pretty interesting. I found one I think is even better. Um. It was in New York Magazine by Benjamin Wallace called the Great twenty one century treasure Hunt. I believe, um that was that it was really provide a lot of extra details in different ways of looking at it that I hadn't seen elsewhere. So and it also profiled a different hunter who didn't find it, by the last name of Posey Um, but is a pretty interesting cat himself too. Yeah, so Stuf ended up. Um. He said he became friends, like legit friends with Fenn before he died in September September seven. Um, he was ninety years old. And uh, he said, you know, I'm hanging onto this for now. I may split it up and may display some of it. I may sell some of it. He's really not sure what he's gonna do. I think I'm with you. Like, if he really wants to bring in the windfall, he should sell it all as one big package to some super rich person who wants to display this thing. But right now he's kind of hanging onto it. And um, it was really seemed like genuinely broken up when when Fenn died. Oh yeah, that guy was very much beloved in the community for sure. Like there there was one of those guys who went missing, one of the searchers who went missing, I believe um. Oh, I don't remember which one it was, but he was missing for seven months and after the initial official search and rescue UM was called off forest Fenn paid for a chartered helicopter to continue the search, and a lot of the treasure hunters searched for him too. So it was a very tight knit community and this guy was like this kind of homespun odd figure to them that they could text and say hi to. He was super approachable, um, and yet he he wouldn't give you anything. He wouldn't give you any hint as to where the treasure was. So it must have been really interesting for him too to um to kind of put himself in that kind of jeopardy or put the treasure in that kind of jeopardy by interacting with people who we're spending tons of their waking hours looking for this treasure UM and not giving them anything, not a single clue. It must have been pretty fun for him to to that that's how he spent his last days, you know. Oh, totally. Uh. And if you're thinking in terms of movies, like I always think, there is a documentary which I wasn't able to watch, called The Lure from that UM obviously before it was found. They made this documentary about people who were searching uh. And you cannot stream it online, but I think you can actually buy it from the website, and they are making supposedly a movie about it. UM director Jake Zamanski has been hired to make a movie based on journalist Hudson Morgan's misadventures looking for this thing himself. Uh. And it's about a group of millennials who set out to find it and getting wacky misadventures. And it's described as uh an action comedy Goonies meets the Hangover. Oh. I never thought I would hear those words put the other on the sid So who knows, maybe we'll see that one day. Uh. Wow, Okay, well, um, let's see you got anything else. Nothing else, let's the find treasury. But if you want to know more about it, go check out that outside article in the New York Magazine article and then just prepare to dive in and you can still join it and figure out where the spot is. Just be safe, you know, be smart. And since I said be safe and be smart, that means it's time for listener mail. I'm gonna call this layoff Cisco guy eyes. So uh, in our Buffets episode, I think you specifically sort of bagged on Cisco the restaurant delivery service. I was bagging on restaurants that use Cisco's pre made ingredients and try to pass it off as if it's just sure you know their own stuff. Alright, So take that, Brandon. But Brandon says this, Greetings guys have listened to many years and rarely needed it right in. But on the Buffet episode, that was a massive misconception of the role of Cisco at restaurants. I have worked for Cisco for thirteen years, delivery for ten, and now a shuttle driver hauling food from Salt Lake City to Grand Junction, Colorado every day. I love my job. Cisco was portrayed on the show as a prepackaged, frozen microwave food company. Uh. While we do have select items that are ready to eat and frozen, the vast majority of our food supply our fresh foods, fresh foods and vegetables. We supply restaurants, hospitals, schools, etcetera. With everything needed for kitchens to become successful. Our trucks are dual zone refrigerators for frozen and fresh items. I hope you can do an episode on food delivering how semitrucks are used to keep the cold chain supply and action. I hope this didn't go on for too long. Didn't, And I hope your perception of Cisco will change for the better. Sure, yeah, I mean I love Cisco. Now let's all go to Cisco lots of love. That's from Brandon writer in Colorado, and he saidps, can you plug my very small gaming channel on YouTube? Sure? It is Brandon due to gaming and that is d O O D all one word Brandon dude gaming on YouTube. Yes, I haven't seen his gaming channels, so let's just go ahead and hope that it's all above boards. That's a good point. You should probably do that. Yeah, we should, we'll get we'll get busy on that. You go and click on it in the first video, is right. Yeah, that would be the least of my worries. Actually, actually that'd be fine. Uh. Well, thanks a lot, Brandon. Sorry for really kind of I guess indirectly talking smack about Cisco. That was my intent. So thank you for calling me out. Uh And if you want to be like Brandon and call me out or call Chuck out too, you can do that to you once in a while. If you like, you can send us an email. The Stuff podcast at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a production of I heart Radio. For more podcasts for my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

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