The 30-year hunt for the Golden Owl, or La Chouette d’Or, is a story of thriller and obsession that captivated treasure hunters worldwide. The story started in 1993 when French creator Régis Hauser, underneath the pseudonym Max Valentin, buried a bronze sculpture of an owl someplace in France. The sculpture was a placeholder for a much more invaluable prize: a golden owl, created by the artist Michel Becker. It featured six kilos, ten ounces of gold, and 15 kilos, seven ounces of silver with diamond chips on its face. It’s estimated to be price $165,000. Alongside this, Hauser printed a ebook titled On the Path of the Golden Owl, which contained 11 cryptic riddles—and a hidden twelfth one. As a part of the hunt, Hauser and Becker required that whoever found the buried bronze duplicate should current it together with the options to the ebook’s riddles to assert the unique golden owl.
The treasure hunt grew right into a cultural phenomenon over the following three many years. The ebook constructed a cult-like following of greater than 200,000 gamers, referred to as “Owlers,” from France and overseas. These fanatics tried to resolve the riddles, organizing occasions in France to satisfy and share suggestions. Nonetheless, the clues—written by Hauser—had been famously intricate, involving layers of wordplay, historic references, and geographic hints. Regardless of the dedication of many hunters, who typically spent years on the hunt, the situation of the bronze owl remained elusive, main some to take a position that Hauser’s clues had been too complicated and even unsolvable.
In 2009, the hunt took an surprising flip with the passing of Régis Hauser. His loss of life solid doubt on the way forward for the hunt, as Hauser had been the one one with full data of the puzzle’s resolution. Nonetheless, he had taken measures to make sure the hunt might proceed, abandoning directions and clues for the prize to be claimed even in his absence. Michel Becker, the artist behind the golden owl, additionally grew to become extra concerned within the narrative as time went on, sometimes offering insights into his collaboration with Hauser. The duo’s partnership had created a bodily treasure and a decades-long enigma that blended artwork, historical past, and cryptic puzzles. A brand new version of On The Path Of The Golden Owl written by Michel Becker was printed in December 2019, referred to as The Secret Notebooks (4th version 2019).
Baptiste Giroudon/Paris Match through Getty Pictures
After 30 years of relentless looking, the Golden Owl was lastly discovered on October 3, 2024. “Don’t go digging!” warned a message on a channel on the chat app Discord with tens of hundreds of followers. “We affirm that the Golden Owl countermark was unearthed final evening,” the message learn, unleashing a wave of unhappy and crying emojis. “It’s subsequently ineffective to go digging.”
The precise particulars of the invention, together with the finder’s identification, proceed to be shrouded in secrecy. The puzzle’s resolution, lengthy thought-about one of many hardest in treasure-hunting historical past, was lastly cracked. The second represented the end result of Hauser’s imaginative and prescient and Becker’s inventive contribution, ending the thriller that had intrigued hundreds.
Because the information broke, Discord customers’ reactions began to roll in. “Time to get the tissues out,” one wrote. Mentioned one other, “It’s the tip of an period.”
The ultimate discovery of the Golden Owl marks the tip of an period, however its legacy lives on within the hearts of those that chased it. For 30 years, Hauser’s riddles and Becker’s artwork captured the imaginations of treasure hunters, historians, and puzzle fanatics alike. The hunt will ceaselessly be remembered as certainly one of historical past’s most legendary scavenger hunts. The partnership between Régis Hauser and Michel Becker is a testomony to the attract of unsolved mysteries and the human want for journey and pleasure.
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