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On August 7 1979, Kent Williams buried a piece of jewelry in Amphill, a small town in the south of England.
There was only one other person there to see it happen.
The jewelry was made from gold and valuable stones.
It was shaped like a rabbit, an animal with large ears and long back legs.
Williams put the rabbit in a special box so that no one could uncover it with devices that find metal.
He buried it deep in the earth.
Later that month, Williams released a picture book.
It was called Masquerade.
The book contained 16 beautiful paintings.
It told a story about a rabbit bringing a treasure from the moon to the sun.
At the end of the book, the rabbit loses the treasure.
The book asked readers to help the rabbit find this treasure.
Its pages contained the information needed to find the treasure.
People could study the pictures to find what Williams had buried at Ampt Hill.
The reaction to William's book was massive.
Masquerade sold over a million copies.
People all over Great Britain tried to find William's treasure.
When the hunt was over three years later, it had become a worldwide event.
Today's Spotlight is on the hunt for William's golden rabbit.
It is also about the other treasure hunts that Masquerade set in motion.
Before publishing Masquerade, Kit Williams was mostly known as an artist.
He made paintings and statues.
But in the 1970s, the publishing company Jonathan Cape called him.
The publisher asked him to make a new kind of picture book.
Williams decided he wanted to make a book that people would study.
He said...
I was to spend two years on the 16 paintings for Masquerade.
I wanted them to mean something.
I remembered how, as a child, I found treasure hunts.
But they were not exciting.
The treasure was not worth finding.
So I decided to make a real treasure of gold.
I buried it in the ground.
And I painted real pictures to lead people to it.
The treasure that Masquerade promised was enough for some people to buy the book.
But William's book was also interesting.
No one knew where to begin, so readers spent a long time looking through its paintings.
They spoke with each other and shared ideas.
The search gave readers a sense of excitement.
Ash Charlton was a student at the University of Glasgow.
In 2020, she wrote on the blog Simply Archivists.
The interesting thing about Masquerade is that it is a lovely object by itself.
It has amazing artwork and storytelling.
There is no longer treasure at the end of it, but there is still a desire to work through the pictures.
You want to see how to solve it.
It took treasure hunters three years to solve William's book.
Mike Barker and John Russo were English teachers.
These two were the first to put the pictures together.
But they were not the ones to find the treasure.
It was found by a man named Dougald Thomson.
But Thomson did not find the treasure fairly.
He was friends with a woman who had once dated Williams.
She remembered visiting a place with Williams.
It was the same place where he buried the rabbit.
Williams was not happy that Thompson found the rabbit.
But there was nothing he could do about it.
Some readers felt that they had been cheated.
They blamed Williams.
The artist made one more book.
He called it The Bee on the Comb.
But after this, he stopped writing.
He still painted, but he did not want many people to see his work.
The reaction to Masquerade was difficult for Williams, but he had created a new kind of book.
And in the years since, hundreds of authors have made books like Masquerade.
Experts call these books armchair treasure hunts.
They are called this because people can find their treasure without leaving their chairs.
One of the most difficult of these armchair treasure hunts was On the Trail of the Golden Owl.
Written by French author Régis Hauser.
The Golden Owl was a lot like Masquerade, but it was even more difficult.
Hauser took 450 hours to make his book.
To find the treasure a person would need to understand music, numbers and the way planets move through space.
Hauser also used special languages and pictures.
On the Trail of the Golden Owl was not as successful as Masquerade in one way.
It did not sell as many books.
But the Golden Owl was more successful at fooling its readers.
Hunters took over 30 years to find its treasure.
By the time people solved its mystery, Hauser had died.
Many people thought that the solution would die with him.
But in 2024, one treasure hunter dug up the golden bird.
Only one treasure hunt has gone on longer than On the Trail of the Golden Owl.
It is called The Secret.
This book was written by a man named Byron Price in 1982.
Instead of just one treasure, Price hid 12 boxes across North America and Canada.
Anyone who found one of these boxes could exchange it for a valuable stone.
Price's book was also very difficult.
Hunters found the first box quickly, but the remaining boxes were far more complex.
Price's writing also became more difficult to understand over time.
Often the book spoke about different trees or buildings.
Hunters were supposed to use these landmarks to find the treasure.
But many no longer exist.
Some buildings were torn down over the years.
The trees the book pointed to may have died.
Hunters found the second of The Secret's treasure boxes in 2004.
But in 2005, Price died.
He did not write down the place where any of his boxes could be found.
So no one now knows exactly where they are.
Hunters found a third box in 2019.
And people believe they know where other boxes are.
But some now have buildings on top of them.
Others may be in private property.
The ground may have shifted.
The boxes may have been destroyed.
It may be that the secret of The Secret has been lost forever.
Hundreds of armchair treasure hunts have been published since Masquerade.
These hunts may not have the same appeal as the first one.
Masquerade was a worldwide event.
It was the first of its kind, so it felt special.
Today, only a special group of treasure hunters work on these hunts.
But this does not make these hunts any less interesting.
Shane Richardson is a treasure hunt writer.
He spoke to the website Mysterious Writings.
The real prize comes from the excitement.
It comes from the questions.
It comes from the sense of community you build along the way.
There are small victories.
You solve something, make friendships, and share the experience.
These bring great value that cancels out the cost of entry.
In these hunts, the experience is just as important as the treasure itself.
Do you have a special hobby that you enjoy?
What is it?
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The writer and producer of this program was Dan Christman.
The voices you heard were from the United States and the United Kingdom.
All quotes were adapted for this programme and voiced by Spotlight.
This programme is called Finding Treasure from Your Chair.
We hope you can join us again for the next Spotlight programme.
Goodbye!
