"Solving the Beale Papers" proves one of the world's most famous unsolved cipher mysteries does not lead to a buried treasure but instead contains a series complex Masonic allegories, written in celebration of unique events which occurred within Freemasonry between 1880 and 1883.

The stunning mountains of Virginia offer spectacular views and endless outdoor activities, yet they also hold secrets. A nineteenth-century cache of gold is buried in the hills. Nine-foot giants once walked the ridges, pre-Columbian explorers built homes on isolated mountaintops and a ghost town lies deep in the Jefferson National Forest. The mountains conceal canines that walk upright, black panthers and a resurgent mountain lion population. The hide-and-seek champion of the world, Bigfoot, lurks in the dark hollows, phantom dogs pace the back roads and aggressive monkeys swing through the trees. UFOs crisscross the skies, and ghosts haunt the caverns below. Join Denver Michaels, local author and explorer of the unexplained, as he explores these mysteries and many more.

The Beale ciphers are a set of three ciphertexts, one of which allegedly states the location of a buried treasure of gold and silver estimated to be worth over 30 million US dollars in the present time. The other two ciphertexts allegedly describe the content of the treasure, and list the names of the treasure's owners' next of kin, respectively. The story of the three ciphertexts originates from an 1885 pamphlet detailing treasure being buried by a man named Thomas Jefferson Beale in a secret location in Virginia in 1820. Beale entrusted the box containing the encrypted messages with a local innkeeper named Robert Morriss and then disappeared, never to be seen again. The innkeeper gave the three encrypted ciphertexts to a friend before he died. The friend then spent the next twenty years of his life trying to decode the messages, and was able to solve only one of them which gave details of the treasure buried and the general location of the treasure. Since the publication of the pamphlet, a number of attempts have been made to decode the two remaining ciphertexts and to find the treasure, but all have resulted in failure.

This vintage book contains Alexander D’Agapeyeff’s famous 1939 work, Codes and Ciphers - A History of Cryptography. Cryptography is the employment of codes and ciphers to protect secrets, and it has a long and interesting history. This fantastic volume offers a detailed history of cryptography from ancient times to modernity, written by the Russian-born English cryptographer, Alexander D'Agapeyeff. The contents include: - The beginnings of Cryptography - From the Middle Ages Onwards - Signals, Signs, and Secret Languages - Commercial Codes - Military Codes and Ciphers - Types of Codes and Ciphers - Methods of Deciphering Many antiquarian texts such as this, especially those dating back to the 1900s and before, are increasingly hard to come by and expensive, and it is with this in mind that we are republishing this book now in an affordable, modern, high quality edition. It comes complete with a specially commissioned new biography of the author.

There are many books of many kinds and this volume properly classified would probably belong to the "sui generis," "sic trasit gloria mundi" variety. If the reader has grown a little rusty on classic Latin I do not mind saying to him further that the latter phrase has been sometimes translated, "My glorious old aunt has been sick ever since Monday," but I do not think that this revised version has been generally accepted as strictly orthodox. This book cannot be said to have been written without rhyme or reason for its pages hold more rhyme than poetry and three reasons at least, have conspired to give it literary existence. A hundred years and more from now it may be that some far descendant of the author, while fingering the musty shelves of some old library, may find some modest satisfaction in the thought that his ancient sire had "writ" a book.