"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 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 volume follows a historical account of two brothers, George Hart (1874-1968) and Clayton Hart (1876-1949), who attempted to decipher the infamous cipher texts known as the Beale Papers. The ciphers, alleged to provide the secrets of a treasure buried somewhere in the county of Bedford, Virginia, were authored by a mysterious figure named Thomas Jefferson Beale who led a hunting party of thirty men to New Mexico. But when they happened upon a gold mine amassing a fortune, they traded some of the gold to obtain silver and jewels, transported their loot back to Virginia in two shipments, and buried it for safe keeping in November 1819 and December 1821. The three cipher texts are alleged to detail the contents of the treasure, the instructions to locate the treasure, and a list of heirs to which portions of the treasure should be distributed. Only one of the three cipher texts were ever solved by using the Declaration of Independence as a key, detailing the contents of the treasure. Despite the publicity the papers received since their publication, none have come forward with the solution. Included in this volume is the text from an 1885 pamphlet attributed to J.B. Ward, detailing The Beale papers, and the narrative of George L. Hart, providing additional history and research that he and his brother discovered in search of the treasure between 1898 and 1922. The typeset manuscript was printed and submitted to the Roanoke Library in 1964 and is now published for the first time.

From one of the managers of MysteriousWritings.com comes a compilation of successful treasure hunts, ongoing searches, and a special puzzle with a prize from the website.