Well, if the treasure hunt was legit, shouldn’t the ancient artifacts that were repurposed as cache show up at Sotheby’s or Christie’s pretty soon now?
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There is no cake.
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I have a real Canadian girlfriend.
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Quick! Everyone tear apart silus! They’re full of gold and diamonds!
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And yet the Oak Island treasure and the lost confederate gold on bottom of Lake Michigan remains unfound.
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So…there are laws and precendents in scavanger hunts? If anything seemed like it should be laissez faire it’s a scavanger hunt. I mean, assuming you don’t violate existing laws like not killing someone to win the scavanger hunt. Othewise, saying “he followed me to see where i was looking!” sounds like a kid saying “no fair” when you peek when counting before hide and seek.
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Has anyone noticed anything on Google Earth that looks suspiciously like a large ‘X’?
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I spent a crazy amount of time trying to figure out that book as a kid.
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As others have said, this whole thing is nonsense. Did this guy say he buried treasure to get people out there enjoying nature? Sure, totally plausible. Is that something anyone would actually do? Of course not.
Even if you had the money to burn, why would you actually do the burying? Telling people you did has the same effect, and you can forever claim it’s still out there and people aren’t looking hard enough. Actually burying treasure out there would only work against your goal, as it puts a time limit on how long people are out there enjoying nature trying to find it.
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I’m putting the odds this was legit no higher than 20%. He has given zero evidence that there ever was a treasure. That there was any hidding spot the fit his clues. That anyone found it etc. Nothing matches how a real find would go down. For instance. The finder would have a much greater value to his treasure, if he filemd and documented everything, and then released the info and the video of the treasure, and did all the talk shows, and eventually sold it to a museum or casino etc for much more than the nominal value.
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Book sales!
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No, the friends you made along the way were inside you all the time.
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This exactly. And he’s been getting pressure to end it because people died. Saying “just kidding” would probably open him up to a lot of lawsuits.*
Also, the people who died trying to reach really remote places: If it was real, either it was hidden someplace a 79 year old can get to (and back from) on his own, or whoever hid it for him (or helped) is having a comfortable retirement.
*ETA lawsuits with more weight to them than the current crop of yahoos.
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Whatever the facts of it, I have to say that I love the idea. If I ever have a spare million I could see doing exactly the same thing. So much fun. But of course people gonna people and get all nasty with each other.
From previous reading I gather that a few of the deaths were people who ignored his instructions that it is not above the snowline etc.
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There’s always treasures to be found at book sales. I missed them last year, and it looks like I won’t get to any this year. I miss the search.
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in scavenger hunt law.
I believe you’ll find that’s covered in Finders v. Keepers (A.2d 586, 122-133)
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Was it though? The more I look into this guy, the more he just seems to be a self-involved, and rather dull, douche.
Here is Fenn’s “first attempt at fiction”, and I think it’s instructive as to his psyche. TLDR: he promises a girl he’ll give her something, then he tricks her so he can reneg on the promise. Then, he enjoys watching her distress because she really wanted the gift.
It really does seem like the kind of story someone would write who would falsely hide a “treasure”, then sit back and watch thousands of people scramble over this ersatz treasure while the media pays him excessive attention all the while.
Beautiful Dreamer by Forrest Fenn
There was this girl who lived just down the block and around the corner. Delores was her name and we were special friends. It didn’t take her family long to add up their assets, and that gave me an idea.
The Senior Prom was coming up and I said if she’d make all C grades or better I’d give her a new dress for the ball. Her whole face grinned because she was worried she’d have to wear her big sister’s hand me down pants suit again. I guess it’d been handed down a few times already.
But Delores was still young and didn’t have many living experiences so I devised a plan that I hoped would help her grow some trail mojo like me. I started giving her gifts that were nothing good, like a feather one time, and a picture of Johnny Dukakis, and other things like that. And some different colored Wriglets of course. This went on for several weeks.
Sure enough, she finally came to me and said to not give her anything else. I had fed her up with junk and I secretly smiled. Ha, now to spring the trap. “Look,” I said, if you don’t want gifts from me anymore lets shake hands and make the deal final so it would be unethical for me to give you things again.” She smiled and we shook.
Then I said “Delores, I am proud of you for thinking things through and knowing what you want. You are such a wonderful person. But now I can’t give you a new dress for the prom, and I can buy myself something nice with that money.” Suddenly her eyes looked like two Texas road maps in the rainy season.
I knew her mother was going to call me and it didn’t take her very long for that to happen. She said I was mean and uttered a word I’d heard once in the pool hall. I just told her to let Delores figure something out and hung up the phone right then because I didn’t want my cell battery to run down.
Well, that very afternoon here came Delores sloshing through the mud and ringing my bell. She said, “Mister Fenn I want to unshake our deal.” “What,” I muttered? She told me that if you can shake to seal a deal you should be able to unshake it away and she went on to explain. “If you count a pig’s tail as a leg how many legs would the pig have?” I told her “five, of course.” She shined and said “No, a pig has four legs. Just because you count the tail as a leg doesn’t mean it is one,” and she kind of snickered. I thought that was a good analogy so we high-fived three times with our left hand. That, she explained, is how you unshake a deal and I decided her mojo was ok after all.
The story had a wonderful ending and I’m a little proud of myself. The fifteen dollars, plus tax, that I paid for that beautiful dress was the best money I ever spent. – Forrest
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I know five who won’t be going back home. 
