He had promised in 1984 that upon his death the locations were to be revealed in papers kept in the safe deposit box. Less than a year after the last cask was found, Preiss was killed in a car accident. But he was not remembered for “The Secret”. Preiss would go on to varying heights of success as an editor and publisher with such fringe genres as educational comic books, celebrity children’s books, audiobook biographies, and even a foray into the first home computer text-based adventure games. When the book first came out, it was met with middling reviews and sales. In a press article from the time, Preiss said he would not reveal the other locations, considering the game still ‘on’. It took Preiss awhile to find the key to the lockbox, since he had not used it in 22 years, but he eventually awarded a gemstone to the armchair treasure hunter. The second was found in 2004, by a New Jersey attorney who grew up with the books and subscribed to an online forum called “TreasureNet.” He found that cask in a secluded part of the Greek Cultural Gardens in Cleveland. They were rewarded with a gemstone by Preiss. The first happened in 1983, by a trio of high school students who followed the clues to a quiet corner of Grant Park in Chicago. Out of all the buried boxes continent-wide, only two were ever located. If you don’t want to figure them out all on your own, I’m including a spoiler-heavy “Secret” entry on my blog here. However, deciphering and following these clues is an ambiguous mess. It has been determined with fair certainty that Painting 10 and Verse 8 match up for Milwaukee. Each emerald, opal, ruby or amethyst was valued around $1,000 at the time. He would then reward the finder with a precious birthstone as seen in each painting. If the reader examined the appendix pages and figured out which of the 12 riddles paired up with a corresponding fantasy-styled painting (which also contains visual clues), and then went hunting and dug up the cask, he or she was to send the ceramic key to Preiss.
But if you solve the puzzle and dig up the cask, you will be a worldwide web legend-and probably fined by the Milwaukee County Parks Department.īack in 1981, an enterprising young book publisher from New York named Byron Preiss decided to promote his company’s latest book, a fantasy satire titled “The Secret,” by flying to 12 cities across America and Canada then burying an ornate, one-of-a-kind cask that contained a ceramic key in each one. It’s a mystery more than three decades old that had been forgotten until the internet forums picked up on it, long after the valuable reward prizes (to those who found the casks in each city where they were buried) had been auctioned off to cover a company’s bankruptcy proceedings. There is a treasure of sorts, a ceramic cask buried somewhere in Milwaukee.
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