The golden owl finally found after an incredible 31-year treasure hunt
On the night of April 23 to 24, 1993, around 3:30 a.m., a man dug a hole in the darkness. At the first shovel, Max Valentin hears an owl hooting. Incredible coincidence. Because he is preparing to bury the bronze replica of a gold and silver owl, with onyx eyes set with 500 diamonds. The stony subsoil complicates the task. At a depth of 80 cm, he places the statuette of the raptor, the original of which, worth a million francs (150,000 euros), lies dormant in a safe. After three hours of hard work, he leaves the place in the cool of the early morning, his face sweating, calluses on his hands and his back aching.
On May 15 of the same year, a book entitled On the Trail of the Golden Owl appeared on the shelves of bookstores. It contains eleven riddles, a mixture of charades, alignments of numbers and letters: “Wherever you want, By the horse and the coachman. But where you must, By the compass and the foot”, “WHEN AL-MAR ALLIES WITH THE FIBULA OF PRENASTE, THE DARKNESS SHINES BDI, J. DF, F. CFD. B.J. HJ. EA, B. BC. E. DC, B…”. These texts designed by Max Valentin are accompanied by paintings by the painter Michel Becker, the artist who designed the owl and financed its creation in gold and silver. This giant treasure hunt, planned to last less than two years, appeals to tens of thousands of French people
To answer hunters’ questions, Max Valentin opens a Minitel server: 3615 MAXVAL. Over the weeks, on this forum, a community is formed. The hunters become “owlers” hidden behind a pseudonym and those who observe, while refraining from giving their solutions, are nicknamed “currants”.
Cédric, 24 years old, spends hours on the forum. It was his grandfather, Roger, who gave him the book. It’s 1996, and the bird still hasn’t been found. The young man, who has “kept his Peter Pan soul”, sees in the owl and his million francs another, simpler life. Delving into the dictionary and encyclopedias, he deciphers the enigmas and comes up with a lead in Lyon. One night, with Arnaud, his friend, he covers the 478 km that separate him from the capital of Gaul. But, in the early morning, the two friends fail. Cédric persisted for two more years before giving up.
In the meantime, the game has turned into a collective obsession. A sick man tried to set fire to a chapel and planted a bomb in another, thinking the owl was there. Another broke down the floor of a bank hall with a pickaxe, a third was found working on a railway track. In the summer of 1997, Max Valentin published a series of additional information in Le Figaro Magazine. It was while leafing through the weekly that William, 17, discovered this hunt that never stopped. He solves two or three puzzles, like others do crosswords to keep themselves busy during the holidays. Then let go. What’s the point? Even if he manages to identify an area, he does not have a car to get there.
September 2008. Cédric, now the head of a small landscaping company, is behind the wheel of his truck when his apprentice, sitting in the passenger seat, mentions a story about a treasure hunt. Immediately, the memory of the owl resurfaces. Back home, he goes up to the attic where he has stored the little book. Crawling under the frame, he searches several boxes before getting his hands on them. When reading the pages, the “magic” happens again.
Two days later, sitting cross-legged on his bed, book on his knees, he spent the night looking at the map of France pinned to the wall of his bedroom. He traces the first lines connecting Bourges, Roncesvaux, Carignan and Dabo. Then, he draws a diagonal between Cherbourg and Golfe-Juan. In two weeks, he identified a search area in the Vercors. It remains to find the “supersolution”, the result of a twelfth enigma hidden in the eleven previous ones, making it possible to determine, to the nearest centimeter, the point where to dig. At the end of December, he went to the Vercors. Arriving near a chapel, he digs three holes but does not go very far, the layer of powder is so thick. He promises to return in April, once the snow has melted.
On April 24, 2009, sixteen years to the day after burying the owl, Max Valentin died suddenly. The man having taken care to leave the solutions sealed, the community continues the quest, despite the sadness. William learned of the disappearance of Max Valentin in 2010 while searching on the Internet. Adventure called him, he took up the game again. After a year, he demarcated an area in Antony, in the Paris suburbs. On the land register that he obtained from the town hall, he found exactly the same series of numbers as that which appears in the table of the enigma known as “650”. It can’t be a coincidence. “Kaspius”, as he calls himself on the forums, travels back and forth from Germany where he lives. Nothing, still nothing.
In the spring, Cédric also returned empty-handed from the Vercors. Since then, he has suffered several failures. No matter, he is convinced: the golden owl is somewhere in the Alps. In the evening, once his two children had gone to bed, he got into the habit of unfolding the cards on the large table in his office in the basement. And to trace on the massifs, reproduced at 1/25,000, a multitude of lines with a fluorescent marker. Sometimes he wakes up with a start. The treasure obsesses him, “burns his brain, his fingers”.
His wife is losing patience, can no longer stand cohabitation with the shadow of this bird of prey. Cédric, known under the pseudonym “Pélandré” on the forum, announces his withdrawal from the game. He will make his solutions public. But at the last moment, he backs down. “I can’t give the location to everyone, not after so much effort,” he explains to his wife who, finally, agrees to live alongside an inveterate “owl”.
Here he sets off again on the winding paths of the Alpine massifs, his blue rubber bag on his shoulders, containing all the treasure hunter’s paraphernalia: a metal detector, a small pickaxe, a cloth, a bag filled with flower seeds that ‘he will plant where he digs up the treasure, and snowshoes to walk in the snow. Nothing stops him. He has lost count of the times his detector has gone off exactly where he thought the owl was sleeping. He unearthed a bronze ax dating from Antiquity, Roman coins, a pewter spoon, a belt buckle… Everything except the bird of prey.
Across the border, in Germany, William keeps wondering where the damn bird is hiding. One day, in 2013, his wife, observing the map, pointed out to him that several features converged towards Dabo. What if the owl was there?
In the early years of hunting, this Moselle village was the subject of heated debate. Owls assure that the treasure is buried there. The so-called “600” enigma, once deciphered, evokes a “perched black ship” which would correspond to the rock of Dabo, on which a chapel was built in the 19th century. The community is torn between “daboists”, “antidaboists” and “non-daboists”, the latter thinking that the city is an element of the game, in the same way as other cities.
A year after setting out on the Dabo trail, William found work in Moselle and moved near the famous village. He does not hesitate to detail his trail on his blog. While most Daboists dig in the fir forests surrounding the pink sandstone rock, he is convinced that the owl was buried at its summit. So he digs, again and again.
In 2017, having failed to get his hands on the sculpture, he decided to write a book for “ draw a line ». He presents his solutions there, before putting forward several hypotheses to explain his successive failures. He notably mentions a possible exhumation of the owl by Max Valentin in 2001, while earthworks at the top of the rock were taking shape. His book was a small success, journalists wanted to help him dig. In short, he’s diving back.
January 2019. Cédric loses his grandfather Roger, the man who started it all, the same one who was born on April 24, like the owl. During the funeral, Cédric opens the first page of the book of riddles that he had received from her hands, twenty-three years earlier: “It is with great pride that I followed over these long years the research of my grandson…” These few words, which he pronounces with emotion, the old man had written them in 2012. It is the first time that Cédric, who hoped to discover the owl during his lifetime, became aware of them.
Two days after the celebration, he paid homage in his own way, by returning to dig. But at 47, weariness is gaining on him. His back hurts from hours spent hunched over maps. Sometimes he puts his thoughts down on paper. “The owl is as much a burden as an escape,” he writes. Of course, his philosopher friend Guy regularly accompanies him. And he interacts with other hunters during the annual “owl party”, organized by the A2CO, the association of golden owl researchers. But deep down, the solitude of the quest weighs on him.
Recently, William came across a photo of the Dabo rock taken before the work. He then understood that he had to look a few meters further. On July 6, at 1 a.m., he climbed the stairs to the summit. Under the starry sky, the shadow of the chapel appears. From the fourth step, at the foot of the square, he pulls a rope to precisely point out the area to dig. Then he pushes a thin bar into the grass to probe the subsoil. The metal rod stops suddenly: there is something. William hastens to dig, one last time he hopes. Digging his hand into the hole, he feels a hard shape. He bangs his fist: it sounds hollow. So he continues. Barely has he demarcated what could be as much a large stone as one of the corners of the chest containing the owl, when beams of light pierce the darkness. Two cars are approaching. In a moment, their occupants will tumble onto the square and come face to face with the hunter. Simple tourists coming to admire the panorama or lovers enjoying the warmth of the night? Never mind. “I can’t risk being seen digging.” They could ask me questions or steal the owl,” William said to himself. Before closing again, he takes a final look into the bowels of the rock. “I’m going to have to come back,” he breathes, while being surprised not to have felt the usual adrenaline while digging. Would he be tempted to give up as he prepares to return to Germany?
500 km away, Cédric is preparing his next expedition to Lake Bourget. Above all, don’t give up, hold on despite weariness. “If anyone else finds it, I will be depressed,” he confides. For his part, William also thinks about the day when the treasure will be discovered. A strange feeling then takes hold of him, a mixture of relief, sadness and fear. Because on that day, the story of the golden owl will truly be over. And, with it, a part of the dream will disappear.