About Foir Miles From Buford's (The Beale Papers)

By Thomas J. Davis

This book details a solution to a code found in a pamphlet (The Beale Papers) printed in Virginia in 1885 which purported to describe the location of a lost treasure in Bedford County, Virginia. Unfortunately for treasure hunters, the author shows there never has been a treasure. The whole story of the treasure is an allegory. The real story, which emerged as the author broke the code, is detailed in this book along with the method used to break the code. Approx. 185 pages.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Thomas Davis
• Release date: Sep 21, 2023
• ISBN: 9798989197309

Book preview

ABOUT FOIR MILES

FROM BUFORD'S

(THE BEALE PAPERS)

THE CLEAR-TEXT

AND

A PERSONAL ANALYSIS OF THE CRYPTOGRAPHIC MESSAGE IT CONTAINS

Thomas J. Davis: Psychic, Author and Cryptographer.

Barbara J. Walker: Research Associate.

© 2023

COPYRIGHT

While every precaution has been taken in the preparation of this book, the publisher assumes no responsibility for errors or omissions, or for damages resulting from the use of the information contained herein.

ABOUT FOIR MILES FROM BUFORD'S (THE BEALE PAPERS)

First edition. September 21, 2023.

Copyright © 2023 Thomas J. Davis.

ISBN: 979-8989197309

Written by Thomas J. Davis.

www.aboutfoirmiles.com

Table Of Contents

TITLE

COPYRIGHT

PROLOGUE

THE NEW CLEAR TEXT

DECIPHERING THE BEALE PAPERS

MY HISTORY WITH THE THING AND HOW I GOT STARTED IN ALL OF THIS.

IT WAS NOT IN THE CARDS

IS IT FATE OR A MYSTERIOUS POWER FROM BEYOND?

THE VIRGINIA ROOM

NEXT STEP, BOULDER COLORADO AND THE ROLLING STONES

AFFIRMED-ROSY-ASEXUAL

THE OREGON COAST, CABIN, WINE, A JOINT AND A QUEER WORD

AND THEN I TOOK A LITTLE LOOK INTO THE FUTURE

WILLIAM F. FRIEDMAN

James Beverly Ward

Robert Morriss Esq.

WHY?

THE STORY

ADDITIONS PEDOPHILIA

CLEAR-TEXT EDIT

THE SEARCH FOR CLEAR TEXT

STEPS, AN EXPLANATION OF HOW TO DECODE THE CLEAR TEXT

CONSTRUCTION METHOD SUMMARY

GLOSSARY

EXTRACTION WORK STEPS SYNOPSIS

DETAILED EXPLANATIONS OF THE PRECEDING STEPS

TABLES AND PROGRAMS

Triplet Propagation Programs.

Cells 2110R1 and 1912R1

I'M AN R.A.T.

NUMBER 2 DATA TABLE (C2)

CLEAR TEXT ANALYSIS

CLUES

POLY-ALPHABET SQUARE

TRIPLETS

ORIGINAL COPY

PROLOGUE

The following book is actually two distinctly different publications written as one.  The roots of each of them are so inextricably entwined that I believe if I tried to remove either of them I would kill them both.  The subject is a very old publication titled The Beale Papers.  That pamphlet was published in 1885 in Lynchburg, Virginia.  On the surface it tells a fantastic story of thousands of pounds of lost gold and silver hidden away someplace in Virginia.

The reality is the pamphlet is an allegory.  In a way it is a form of secret writing.  I'll describe it as a Masonic Allegory because of its tendency to follow certain old Masonic rules and characteristics, and the use of words that are considered to have come from old Masonic vocabulary. 

In the middle of the allegory is a mathematical cipher.  The hidden message it contains is alleged to tell exactly where all of that gold and silver is buried.  It has stood the test of time for 135 years but now I've broken it. 

The clear text I produced does not speak of the location and burial of lost gold and silver.  It does talk of gay life in the mid-19th century in Virginia as well as a family squabble.  The story is about the secret burial of two beloved individuals. 

Within the clear text the author describes how he was involved in an intergenerational gay relationship with an older man.  He cautiously describes that relationship in allegorical terms together with the events that occurred throughout his life involving that man and himself and his family.  He lived a double life, hiding who he was from the public by putting on an evincing show.  Like the publication itself the clear text is allegorical.  However, reading through it leaves no doubt about what it says.

The first part of this book deals with my history of this saga.  I describe how I got involved with it in the first place and I speak of events that occurred over a 40-year period of time which took me from that beginning to the final clear text given here.  I explain how my personal life was intertwined with this historic work.  I also speak of my psychic work during that time as well as current and past gay lifestyles. 

It was a result of that psychic work that I was able to find the steps necessary to solve that very old hidden message.  Thus, the roots of my psychic involvement reach deep into the base of the actual solution process itself.  The one cannot stand without the other.

In the second part of this book, I go deep into the technobabble that is the sum of the steps I took to complete the deciphering process.  Certain words and terms I obtained from the work I describe in the first half of the book were key to completing the second half.  I've tried to be as explanatory as possible when constructing the second half of this book.  Technical terms and procedures are not always easy to explain especially to those who are unfamiliar with the work being described. 

That applies to my psychic work as well.  To those who are unfamiliar with parapsychology in general, the work involved in that study can seem bizarre, fantastic and even an improbable fantasy.  I have attempted to describe how that is not the reality, at least from my perspective or how it applies to this specific work. 

This book is not fiction.  I've attempted to keep my comments as historically accurate as I am able.  I've provided all of the bibliography I have for any factual statements I have made.  I've tried to be totally candid in my approach to this subject.

Tom

THE NEW CLEAR TEXT

I'm at about up top, tail.  Go fey!  Go chap, as I'm time hid at pots of death.  Earth adopt what it was.  A dim jot hit top ft.  Too it hit top.  Dirt I had, is at bottom, has fell.  Won't save mate from a hit.  Tho war hath fated boys to a pot won to what's lowest I fess up to that sham with it and I'm told by him ft.  So the hit was aimed to go down at him.  Sad.  That became tacit fact.  Me too.  So I hid.  That I was where many wilt, but not me.  I made the attempt to back.  That our end was here you have to. I'm out a touch to start as the jot also is atop us.  Won't be but Two that fall too.  Wait won't keep both down. Now I wait past dark, hike, got my feet with Two out.  Yep, we can't hear but I'm witness to each that hit.  Twas now must kill the mad.  Answer wasn't what to make fend.  Now is shout for them but it went after what TJ coldly attests.  With luck I saw him.  I shot him two proud hits, best shot.  He had been somewhat the scut.  But soon I saw that behind me was how mad that war was that I escaped to act as a blue and then if now that I can't stay I had them if I need a choice. 

Hot!  I feel tit most about those haunted faces shaped by war.  My face had a fume.  That was my first big sweat and I got nowhere easily. At best that death is atop my paths.  Wasted two attempts.  Above I saw the way and all of what was the back.  I didn't want  any ambitions of mine to be what woke it up.  I'm far.  A fool to be up where Two can't see my path.  It was head in onto there and toward Two to swap.  I'd stopped, crept back to the lowest.  I'm close if behind it.  Now I can await to ask to switch over.  That was how I'd most wanted it.  Calm, but when I'm waiting soon shooting.  I got low. 

When taken they put those I hated to be my caller for any want.  This wasn't good.  Tho I'm a jewel I stoop.  New to them.  I stooped them.  I'd lick or take, both.  You pick what.  I do it and take all who'd give this ass some action if found at night.  I have kept at a farm that is the land that is about one step down to hell.  My sort got what was an evincing show.  I'm sort who'd lie and hide tacit courts.  We wish.  But now I'm not hid.  I'd wait, ask to act that's how chaps oft act.  Scrat, whistle as we did.  A lad of the daign we call most but watch if safe.  He gave.  I had a tight, neat, tall bod.  A bath ouch.  The same coax, dole,  I put Bert to it.  I'm some ass but act with you at fun times, I don't long to become a friend who isn't fit.  I'm a fit, tight body waiting for you.

If that father of ten got two by each, is them I trust.  But what's a RAT got in there?  If two is one three is too.  My son is fat and not the game I have lost now to time.  Eat but why such as that?  His fat almost won't accept facts.  It wants to now but because of to whom this regards and historic fact. 

He wouldd not of been home but used the back for it.  I do not think he took that shot.  I thought it might be from a wrong shot.  He wasn't old.  Sobbed.  Did not hurry that.  We laid that pot at Ward spot west of here where all I have left is some past that we had.  I wish the past was not so sad.  Why did a boy do that?  He told no one about it.  I hope some boy won't choose it, to shoot too.  If I was too sad my faith was too.  I swear truth can't bend.  If two held and won't part, won't to all who lie, phut!

NOTE: In the second section of this manuscript you will find all of the steps I followed to extract this clear text from the data within the pamphlet titled, The Beale Papers. I compiled that section and added it to this manuscript so that anyone wishing to duplicate my work would have all the information I have.  Within this clear text as it is presented here sentence returns and punctuation are arbitrary.

DECIPHERING THE BEALE PAPERS

OK, now what?  I have largely finished deciphering a mathematical cryptogram, or secret message that has remained hidden for 135 years.  It was presented in the body of a treasure story that spoke of buried gold, silver and jewels that if real would be valued in the multiple millions of dollars today. 

Because of those potential riches many people have invested a lot of time trying to break the cipher.  These individuals include simple treasure hunters, cryptographers, mathematicians, computer scientists and others, just to name a few. 

Many of these individuals are highly educated and respected people in the field of cryptography.  Of the ones I know about all are eminently qualified to do this type of work.  The work to solve this thing has continued quietly over all these years.  In one instance, an individual, Clayton Hart, literally invested his whole life trying to extract the solution.  He died impoverished.

How easy it would be for me to now take the stage, smile broadly, and proclaim my genius at having accomplished what they all tried to do but failed.  I could point to my understanding of such complicated things and just how smart I actually am.  I could bask in the sunlight of my accomplishment.

I could do that, but no I cannot.

I cannot do that because it didn't happen like that.  In reality, and to a large extent, I did not solve the ciphers.  I was told the answer and I simply wrote it down.  I was told the answer by the voice in my head.  I was told the answer by communications from the other side of this reality where we all live.  That other energy, that psychic presence, the voice of God if that is how you understand it, carefully guided me through the steps until I had the answer. 

In some instances, I heard words.  In other instances, I saw words.  The ways of getting information from there to here varied.  But in the end that information did not come from my personal creativity or brilliance.  I was told what to do and how to do it and as difficult as it often proved to be, I simply walked the path that was laid out before me.

So now what?  I know others might handle this situation differently, but I know what I'm going to do. 

I'm going to tell the truth.

I am going to attempt as best I can recall, to relate each of the steps as they happened and what effect they had on my life and these end results.  To these honest descriptions I must add that my work with this cipher has been an active part of my life for more than 40 years.  This did not happen overnight.  The voice in my head was speaking to me that whole time.

MY HISTORY WITH THE THING AND HOW I GOT STARTED

IN ALL OF THIS.

When in the 1970s my sisters Sharon, Helen and I determined to share a residence, one of the things that they brought to the collective was a subscription to a periodical entitled The Contest Newsletter.  That small publication sent out a list of the currently active promotional contests across the country. 

They offered prizes of anything from a box of soap to a Rolls Royce with a glove box stuffed with $100 bills.  We determined to invest 100 envelopes and stamps each month toward trying to win one of those contests.  With every new edition we would pour over the possibilities and make our choices, trying as best we could to determine which of the contests held the most likely chances of us winning. 

When a particular edition appeared one month, my sister Helen was elated.  Among the listings was an advertisement to join a group trying to discover the location of a lost, buried treasure.  To learn about it required a self-addressed stamped envelope mailed to an address on the east coast.  Helen was so excited about doing this that she announced she would pay for the envelope and stamp so it wouldn’t have to come out of our budget.  We sent away for the information.

My late sister Helen was a true romantic.  She saw in the description in that newsletter a group of handsome young men on horses galloping freely into the Colorado Rocky Mountains and discovering a wealth of gold and silver long before the official beginnings of the gold rush.  In her mind she rode with them as they attempted to hide it for the future only to lose it to fate and time. 

She intended to go with a shovel where it was hidden, and maybe take dad with her as they dug it up and hauled it back to the bank in his old Studebaker pickup truck.

When the envelope finally arrived and she carefully opened it, she soon tossed it aside and proclaimed, This is nothing but a bunch of old numbers!  I don't want any numbers. I want a treasure map.  That was my introduction to the Beale Ciphers.  While she had no interest in numbers, Sharon and I both instantly became curious.  We had scoffed at the idea of a lost treasure map, but an unsolved cryptic cipher was quite a different thing.

The small document that arrived gave a very brief outline of the story behind the Beale Ciphers but was careful not to reveal any substantial bibliography.  We wanted the whole story.  The offering in the envelope was if anyone wanted to share all of the known information on the subject, he or she would have to buy a membership into an organization titled The Beale Cipher Association.  I believe the fee was $50. 

The membership agreement mandated that any information any person had would become part of a collective of information which would only be available to all the other members.  Everyone would be sworn to secrecy except between other members.  You had to agree to share all that you knew in order to gain access to all that was known.  The treasure was to be divided equally when it was finally recovered.

Fifty dollars was an outlandish sum of money at the time and there was no way we could entertain becoming part of all of that.  I really didn't have many resources, but I did live in a city with a large university that had a very well-stocked library. 

In that library was a reference table and there was always a handful of students and instructors ready to give guidance to anyone who asked.  I walked in unabashed and presented the little paper we got to one of the attendants.  Knowing what I know now he was probably a graduate student. 

To my good fortune he instantly became intrigued.  The lack of any bibliography made that research a bit of a treasure hunt for him in its own respect.  He took on the challenge with great ambition moving first from one source to another, all of which was printed information in those days.  All we had to work with were books, because there were no computers available for patrons at that time.  In fact, I don't think there were any computers in that library at that time.  Even so he soon found the source of that small paper.

The paper had been signed by a Dr. Carl Hammer.  He found a reference to Dr. Hammer in an article Hammer had written titled Signature Simulation and Certain Cryptographic Codes (Comm. ACM, Vol. 14, No. I Jan. 1971, pp. 3-14). 

Dr. Hammer had formed the Beale Cipher Association and was offering the memberships in the hope he would gain more information and help to solve the old cipher that spoke of so much lost treasure.  He worked with the Sperry Univac computer system in the very early days of computer science.  It was one of the biggest computers in the country at the time.  I'm guessing that when the story of the Beale Ciphers was presented to him, he was convinced that a powerful computer could solve the puzzle.  We know now it could not.

But from that article I now had some bibliography to pursue.  A copy of the original pamphlet can be found at the back of this book.  From it one will see that in addition to the story, there is nothing but a bunch of old numbers in it.  They are broken up into three parts.  One of the parts had allegedly been solved and it tells of literally tons of gold, silver and jewels all hidden away someplace in Virginia, About foir miles from Buford's.  That's the part that's kept so many people looking for all of these years. 

But it was not that part that Dr. Hammer and the Beale Cipher Association were interested in.  One of the other two parts allegedly told exactly where the treasure was located and, understandably all of the participants wanted to break that part so they could go and dig it up.  So did my sister Helen.  Dr. Hammer's study was to look at those numbers and from them and their characteristics try to determine if they were indeed an unbroken cipher or if they were simply a hoax. 

The article the graduate student found for me in the library describes how Dr. Hammer assigned the project to a computer science class under his tutorial.  The Beale Ciphers seemed to have been written using the random alphabet technique.  Don't worry about what that means.  It’s cipher stuff.  It's all explained in the second part of this book if you want to know what little I know about it.

The example that is given in the Beale pamphlet uses the Declaration of Independence as the alpha-numeric alphabet and the answer spells out the message in a simple stream.  But Dr. Hammer didn't have the source documents for the other parts that were not yet solved, so he had no way to know if the unsolved numbers in the pamphlet encoded another message or were simply made-up strings of numbers created to sell pamphlets.

He assigned his students the task of first composing a secret message of their own.  Then using a source of their choosing, they would reduce their message to a series of numbers by using the alpha-numeric alphabet technique, much like the pamphlet had done.  From that study he found that all of the students would choose numbers going forward but then jump back to some previous number they had already seen.  He found some of those same characteristics in the unsolved ciphers.  From that he concluded they were real.  He was right and wrong at the same time.

That tendency is what his article describes, and I mention it here because it became a very valuable tool for me all these years later when I finally began to unravel the secret message. It taught me which numbers were most probably the right ones because of their relationship to one another. 

If I had to choose from several options, I could recognize Hammer’s work in one or more of my options and make my choices based on that.  For the most part it was generally right. James Ward, the author of the ciphers, behaved no differently when he was writing the thing than Dr. Hammer's students did more than a hundred years later.  Human nature, I guess.

I mentioned early on in this manuscript that the information came to me in a variety of ways and Hammer’s article is a prime example.  I could not read well at that point in my life.  I would never have thought to pick up a scientific journal and attempt to understand what it said.  But because in those days I was looking for an original copy of that pamphlet, I had done just that.  I didn't find the copy I was looking for in Hammer’s study, but I learned something that would later become an important tool to accomplishing this work. 

Do you believe that it was coincidental that the student who was helping me, found that particular article by Dr. Hammer and not some of his other published works?  I don't believe that it was coincidental at all.  As an aside, that article did discuss the Beale Ciphers.  I knew I was on the right path but to where I could not have dreamed.

IT WAS NOT IN THE CARDS

Now let's jump back a few years to a time before I found out about the Beale Ciphers.  In a way it's a point in my life where I believe all of this really began for me.  I was in my late teens and at a very small party consisting of a group of young college students.  I was invited to join a simple card game as they needed one more player. 

I did what I could to politely refuse their invitation, but it didn't work.  Soon I found myself sitting through a very embarrassing event in which I had no understanding and little ability to adequately participate.  I tried to cover my lack of understanding with bluff, bravado and outright lies.  That didn't work either.  Finally, after an agonizingly long period of time I was set free.  One of them figured out another game they could play without the need of my participation.  Games, competition and life, remember that.

Those university students were all budding educated members of society.  I was not in college and so I concluded I was failing.  I never won any academic accolades while involved with that small group of friends.  I often used the wrong words.  I was never certain what they meant.  I was made fun of, until something mechanical stopped working.  When that happened, I was the one who was asked for help. 

They were in college and smart.  I could not even make it through the front door of the university.  It's important to know I thought I was not smart enough to do anything like what they were doing.  Hell, I couldn't read well so how could I go to college?  I figured that's why I could not play that card game and in effect had no business being on the same page with any of them.  I was very insecure among them. 

Once freed I retreated to the far corner of the room where there was a reading table with a lamp.  I found the local newspaper there and I was glancing at the classified ads.  At the bottom of that page was a puzzle.  It was what is known as a cryptogram or substitution cipher.  I didn't know that at the time.  I had never tried to solve a puzzle like that before because they employed all the things I was the least successful with:  reading, writing, mixed up letters and odd words.

The cryptogram consisted of a short message that had been scrambled by substituting every letter with some other letter.  No letter could repeat, and no letter could represent itself.  The word lengths were left intact with spaces in between each one.  It looked impossible to me and as I was about to put it down the little voice in my head said, Solve it!

Solve it?  How?

I hadn't a clue.  It looked like a bunch of scrambled up letters to me.  I might have tried to read them as they were, not knowing if they were spelled correctly or not.  I asked one of the other students and he replied, Oh those damn things are hard. They are very difficult to solve. 

Then the little voice spoke to me again.  I was shown that two words used the very same random letters in the last four positions.  Still unclear what any of that meant the little voice pointed out to me that sitting on that reading table was also a dictionary.  Look in there for the answer. 

It seemed to me like a stupid thing to do, as though that dictionary could have had a section that would say, common solutions to cryptogram puzzles.  Stupid voice in my head, I thought.  For what it's worth that voice is not stupid.  Personal experience has taught me it’s really as smart as fuck if I carefully listen to what I'm being told.

The voice in my head? You will read later how that term has got me in trouble in the past.  Those words did not come to me as an auditory sound as such.  The information came to me.  That's what that means.  It was not like I was wearing a head set and I could hear someone speaking to me through the ear buds.  If I had to try to give a description of what happens I would say it was more like water contacting a very dry sponge.

All at once from nothing I knew what I was being told. At that point in my life I accepted those little interjections as a matter of fact.  I didn't give them a second thought, like where they came from or if others heard them too.  They happened all the time for me.  They had always been there, and I didn't know what they were, nor did I ever question it.

As I began to thumb through the dictionary, I didn't know what I was looking for, but I noted there were many words that ended in es, ed, ing, and yes, tion.  The voice then asked me, Might the four repeated random letters I had observed be tion?" 

The thing about a substitution cipher is once a letter is propagated in one position it is propagated throughout the puzzle.  The letters tion are nice letters to discoverers because, T is a letter that is used a lot in the English language, and I and O are both vowels which also repeat frequently. The words the and that are used a lot in the English language and for that reason propagating the T basically unlocked the thing.

I brought with me to this life many assets, but one of them was not playing cards.  The day was significant inasmuch as I was able to solve that puzzle.  I did that even with my handicaps, dyslexia, and other learning difficulties, which made it difficult for me to even spell my own name.  I did it after failing to play a simple card game.  I know now that part of what went on that day was my beginning to learn how to listen to the voice more clearly.  I recall that incident all these years later because it was the very first time I ever tried and succeeded in solving a cryptogram.  I have now completed that simple puzzle almost daily, many times since then.

My message to anyone out there who is reading this; if you believe that you are not worthy, or that you are unacceptable or are not as good as some others, don't you believe that for a moment.  I'm a case in point.  These humble beginnings of mine are a testament to that fact.  You may never know what effect some simple accomplishment in your life has had on some other person or to society as a whole.  You are not here living as you are by accident.  You are as important as any other member of society.  Keep on keeping on and be ready for exciting surprises.  You can never know what's going to happen next.

I have no idea what the cryptogram I solved looked like.  But here is one I just created if you have never seen one before.  The solution to this one can be found in the later part of this book under the heading CRYPTO SOLUTION.  Clue: F=I

BPAXVABZFPA IVABZFPAR JKL APZ JEE FI, JAY, UVZ, PK IPK ULBJVRL MDLA F MKFZL F JW BPPKYFAJZFAC JAY RVUPKYFAJZFAC JEE PI ZDFR, ZDJZ JAY ZDL BPKKLEJZFOL.

IS IT FATE OR A MYSTERIOUS POWER FROM BEYOND?

I have now used such terms as brought with me, and the voice, and so I believe it fitting to establish some basic characteristics about me.  I was born and raised in a Roman Catholic home.  I am familiar with the concepts of God, Jesus, Heaven, Hell and the Devil.  I was an altar boy. 

I don't believe in any of that anymore.  I used to, but that all changed.  It doesn't make sense to me on a lot of different levels.  But in my short seventy plus years on this planet I have observed how many do believe in those things.

I was very surprised to learn from a program on TV how a group of top military commanders actively pushed to stop any research into UFOs because they believe that UFOs are sent to earth by the Devil.  Folks are serious about this stuff.  That Christian concept has been well imprinted on everything worldwide.  If you don't understand something or if it is difficult to deal with then the Devil must have done it.