Page 19 : Beale Ciphers Analyses
What if...? A collection of Beale code ideas.
Visitors to this site send me intriguing ideas which are not sufficiently developed to warrant a full page, but may still be interesting to other readers. This page summarizes a few. I have also included my own failed or incomplete deciphering efforts. Do you have any good ideas to share? Email me
Popularized in the 1800's, Loisette's system consisted of memory techniques and methods for remembering names, numbers, using the senses, prose and poetry, and facts.
David Strayhorn writes: "My grandmother had an original copy of the system. It was published in 1780, then republished several times later. It's awfully odd that the system works perfectly with the Beale ciphers. I found that the Loisette's Mnemonic System numbers match up with words very readily. Although I have never visited the area, I was able to name landmarks that are there. For example: 'I went atop Mount Taylor to name my favor and became swept down into the dark mauve below.' Also, the first name on the third cipher is 'Matthew Keys', and twenty shot and half a dial down the mountain you can begin to see clues to where you're supposedly heading. I have been working with this for several years now and have found several landmarks in the text which are in fact present at and around Mount Taylor, and also several names that have been long associated with the legend."
Comment:
An internet search for 'Professor A. Loisette' produces meagre results: short biographical notes, one-sentence descriptions of the system, and book references. None offer a full explanation of the system. All the references to him are in the late 1800's, which is inconsistent with David's publication date of 1780, but he is certain of that date.
2. The Bible
If one were to write a book code during the 1800's, surely The Bible would be a tempting basis. It was universally available, and could be carried around without raising questions. Yet, I have found no internet references to Beale deciphering efforts using The Bible.
Curiously, there is a reference to The Bible in The Hart Papers, the only source of The Beale Papers text. It is a description of one of the meetings with a psychic. The psychic is describing his vision of Thomas J. Beale in his room at the inn:
"Now, he's wrapping up the jewels in something that looks like fine skins, and putting them back into his saddlebags. He's putting the saddlebags under the pillow, between featherbed and pillows, and has thrown the bolster off onto a chair. He's undressing, but he ain't taking off all of his clothes. Now he's reading the Bible, which was lying on the table."
Hart says: "Time is passing more quickly now. Tell me what the boss man, as you call him, does before he snuffs the candle?"
The psychic responds: "He's done replaced the Bible on the table. He's snuffing out the candle. The room is now dark."
I have downloaded the King James version of The Bible. It is comprised of 66 books containing 1189 chapters. I have written programs to match these against the codes. I can say with some confidence that the codes are not an exact match for text from The Bible, although I have found strings as long as 60 characters.
I have also processed both the books and the individual chapters with the program downloadable from this website, all to no avail.
Given the size of The Bible, and the almost limitless coding possibilities, these efforts, although considerable, barely scratch the surface.
3. Similarities of people and place names
In his letter to Morriss of January 4th, Beale writes "It was finally decided that it should be sent to Virginia under my charge, and securely buried in a cave near Buford's tavern, in the county of Bedford...". But then the cave was found unsuitable because it was used by farmers. He continues "We soon selected a better place, and to this the treasure was safely transferred". At first sight this appears to leave little room for interpretation, but note that the "better place" does not specify Virginia. Nor does the C2/DOI decryption "...IN THE COUNTY OF BEDFORD, ABOUT FOUR MILES FROM BUFORD'S...".
In fact, the first line above is the only one clearly stating Virginia, and that location was rejected. What if it was in another state?
There is a town of Buford in Georgia. There is a Bedford County in Tennessee and one in Pennsylvania. Bedford County, Pennsylvania is centrally located along the southern border, just west of Gettysburg.
During the Civil War, a key Union commander was General John Buford. His cavalry unit became known as "Buford's Boys". He played a key role in the defeat of Lee's army at Gettysburg, and after that battle, his troops chased the remnants of Lee's forces back south. General Buford had a brother named "Thomas Jefferson". More details are available here: John Buford
Is it possible that "...IN THE COUNTY OF BEDFORD, ABOUT FOUR MILES FROM BUFORD'S..." refers to Pennsylvania and some location related to Buford's Boys?
The Buford family has been traced back to 11th century France. There, the family name began as "de Beaufort". Various family members eventually adopted the last name "Beauford." Eventually, for some, the name became "Bufford" and "Buford." The first recorded arrival of a family member in America was Richard Beaufort, who came to Lancaster County, Virginia, in 1635.
The name "Beaufort" is famous in cryptography. The following is from The Codebreakers by David Kahn:
"In England, in 1857 (NB. Just before the Civil War), a 4 X 5 in. card with an alphabet square printed in red and black went on sale for sixpence. It was a new system of secret writing adapted for telegrams and postcards... Admiral Sir Francis Beaufort... had originated the cipher..."
Comment:
The Beaufort Cipher is a variation of the Vigenere. If it plays a role in the Beale codes, it implies double encoding: once to convert the numbers to ciphertext, and Beaufort to convert that to cleartext.
An internet search for "Beaufort Cipher" will yield many results. My favorite is CipherClerk. This is a lovely, easy-to-use, and powerful java applet program. Allow a couple of minutes for it to load. You can then choose from a few classical coding systems including Beaufort and Vigenere, enter your own keyword such as "Beale", "Jefferson", "Bedford", etc., enter the ciphertext, and click finish. You would proceed as follows:
Step1 Convert the code numbers to letters. For example, the Beale Ciphers Analyses program downloadable from this site offers two choices to do this, and of course, you can devise your own. First, choose the Beale code, eg. C1 or C3. Then, choice 1 is "Add Digits", or, choice 2, is to decode with a book such as DOI.
Step 2 The resulting text becomes the input for the CipherClerk program. CipherClerk does not allow you use "paste". You have to enter from the keyboard. But entering just the first 10 or 20 characters will give you a good indication of whether the text is readable or not.
4. Intuition
Several correspondents to this website believe they can intuit phrases that may be contained in C1 or C3. For example, C1 might begin by "The vault is located..." and C3 might end with TJB's signature.
You can now test your own intuition with this Excel program. It allows you to enter your phrases and it will replicate the same code/letter combinations throughout C1 and C3, thus providing further potential clues.
You require Microsoft Excel on your computer. After the download, unzip and open the program. Note the four tabs at the bottom left. Read the simple "User Guide" and the rest is easy.
5. Cemetery crypts
Robert Johansson of Germany writes:
- 6 feet under is a grave
- The vault is in a line with stones, headstones maybe?
- How many graves with headstones are there 4 miles from Buford's?
Brad Andrews comments:
Cool Springs Cemetery....actually the grave theory isn't all that new, and yes, it certainly fits into the location description. Cool Springs Church & Cemetery are to the east of Bedford, about four miles, and they sit on the county line. The actual cemetery is across the road, however, there are a few unmarked graves behind the church. Go to the following link, because I've already been there!
http://www.topozone.com/map.asp?z=17&n=4140181.00009618&e=618086.000001181&datum=nad83
The idea of the grave is pretty solid. When I came across Cool Springs Church I thought it was odd that there were a few isolated graves behind the church......I've been there, checked some of it out, and if you were going to hide something without being seen this location is perfect! The site is roughly four miles from what would have been the new Buford's Tavern, as the crow flies.
Richard Greaves adds:
In Bedford County, 2 to 5 miles from Buford's there are many family cemeteries. Some have markers, most do not.
Bedford City/County Museum has extensive cemetery records of the county - old and new. I have spent many hours viewing these records, with nothing important jumping out. Pascal Buford's home place cemetery is included in the Museum's inventory.
In Bedford County, during the past 25 years, many people have been arrested and faced a judge for digging in cemeteries. This is a serious offense and I would advise everyone NOT to engage in this practice.
6. The missing 'ember's
I thank Robert Smith for this most interesting discovery.
The Beale Papers, while presenting the C2/DOI decryption, states the following (the underlines are mine):
...the translation will be found to be as follows:
I HAVE DEPOSITED, IN THE COUNTY OF BEDFORD, ABOUT FOUR MILES FROM BUFORD'S, IN AN EXCAVATION OR VAULT, SIX FEET BELOW THE SURFACE OF THE GROUND, THE FOLLOWING ARTICLES, BELONGING JOINTLY TO THE PARTIES WHOSE NAMES ARE GIVEN IN NUMBER "3," HEREWITH:.THE FIRST DEPOSIT CONSISTED OF ONE THOUSAND AND FOURTEEN POUNDS OF GOLD, AND THREE THOUSAND EIGHT HUNDRED AND TWELVE POUNDS OF SILVER, DEPOSITED NOVEMBER, 1819. THE SECOND WAS MADE DECEMBER, 1821,...And then, as if for emphasis, the same text is repeated in lower case. To my mind, the capitalization is intended to show this as an accurate letter-for-letter decoding of C2. But in fact, in C2/DOI, the months are abbreviated as NOV and DEC. These are the only abbreviations used, all other words being completely spelled out. This omission, repeated twice for two month names, appears to be intentional. So what is the significance of the extra "embers"?
Robert believes it may be linked to Edgar Allan Poe's most famous poem, The Raven, the second stanza of which starts as follows:
Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December; And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.
Alternatively, could it be a reference to the Lynchburg fire of 1883?
Is it a clue or a coincidence?
7. Similarities of the three codes in layered format
I thank Robert Lewxian for this original analysis. Robert overlayed the three codes (he calls this 'Layered Format') and proceeded to show striking similarities between them. He believes this is concrete proof that C1 and C3 are fake. He may be right. The two images below are the first 250 (approx.) codes. Over Robert's original work, I have overlayed some of the Gillogly strings in blue.
Can these similarities be caused by mere coincidence? Some maybe, but not all.
I believe that this demonstrates how John Sherman, a printer by trade, may have taken the type set for C2, moved some type around, added more here and there, and thereby generated C1 and C3. He would have added the Gillogly strings after, as his admission that this was all fiction. I would be interested in the opinion of any reader hereof who has manual character-by-character typesetting experience.
8. The two distinct parts of C3
Simon Ayrinhac of France suggests that C3 is comprised of two distinct portions, as shown graphically by his statistical analysis below.
9. The location of the vault
Robert Lewxian, an excellent contributor to this site, offers this new insight.
The C2 decryption has details which seem to conflict. The vault at "six feet below the surface of the ground" versus "the vessels rest on solid stone and are covered with others". Topping stones are superfluous, as hundreds of pounds of dirt sit atop the buried items, so why were they added? The answer may tell us where to look for the vault. The Beale miners found gold in a cleft of rock and became expert at tunneling. The idea of a carved stone chamber would have been a natural one when seeking a hiding place. A dirt grave is at risk from well-diggers and homesteaders; a ground-level stone chamber is difficult to conceal. But a combination of the two solves the problem. Find a large vertical rock face; dig down six feet and excavate the vault into the rock face below ground level. Once filled back in, there would be no trace of the chamber.There can't be that many rock faces "about four miles from Buford's".
To be specific, I cite three phrases: "roughly lined with stone", "rest on solid stone", and "covered with others". All three point to a carved chamber with iron pots surrounded by stone above and on every side, filling every empty inch of the chamber.
This is virgin territory and you are the first on the scene. Good luck!
10. Beale-themed award-winning short film
The film linked below, produced by Andrew S. Allen, does not purport to provide new insights into the Beale mystery, but it is captivating and entertaining.
Using pioneering animation techniques to create a look never seen on film before, this 10-minute award-winning film tells the true legend of history's most challenging cipher. Professor White, cryptographer extraordinaire, is on the trail of the notoriously uncrackable Thomas Beale cipher—a century-old riddle hiding the location of a fortune in gold that has tormented its pursuers since inception. But White is not alone—shadowy forces are tight on his tail.
http://www.thomasbealecipher.com
11. The Origin of The Beale Papers
This short paper prepared by Rich Wassmer is interesting for its historical notes on ciphers, its comparison of the Beale story with the adventures of American pioneer Edward Fitzgerald Beale, and many uncanny numerical combinations.
12. Robert Ward's analyses
This latest study adds proof to the earlier analysis on the use of DOI words in The Beale Papers
This paper presents the discovery of surprising vocabulary correlations between The Beale Papers and The Declaration of Independence. Is it the basis for a solution? Read more >>
Another study by the same author examines one of the most authoritative sources of the early history of the Santa Fe Trail, Commerce of the Prairies, published in 1844, and the influence it may have had on the author of The Beale Papers. Read more >>
13. How the Beale ciphers originated
This third analysis by Rich Wassmer is significant progress towards complete illumination of the Beale mystery.
The paper sheds light on several aspects including:
- the source of The Beale Papers version of the DOI
In particular, there is a strong case made that The Beale Papers is a complex numbers game created by its author. The explanation of the DOI counting errors and word changes is persuasive.
