After 32 years of mystery, the co-inventor of this famous enigma unveiled, on Friday, the place where the solution of this giant treasure hunt was found.
It was in the village of Dabo, in the east of France, that the “golden owl” was found.
A new season of this treasure hunt should soon be launched.
End of suspense for the “golden owl”. Since his discovery, after 32 years of a quest that fascinated thousands of participants, the secret was kept on the location on which the statuette had been found. But Friday, May 2 in the evening, the co-inventor of the enigma raised the mystery: the solution of this giant treasure hunt has been found since 1993 in the village of Dabo in Moselle. The name of this locality of 2,500 souls had already appeared insistently on the discussion forums in recent months.
A film to reveal the location
Since the announcement of his discovery, on the night of October 2 to 3, 2024, Michel Becker, responsible for this treasure hunt, housed its effects, communicating only in droppings to maintain the interest of “owners”. The secret was since kept on the site of the discovery: those who wanted to learn it had to book and pay their place for one of the 500 event sessions of a 1:10 documentary, “the discovery of the golden owl”, broadcast only on Friday and Saturday.
-In the film, the name of Dabo is unveiled, the organizers told AFP. They have already announced the launch of a new season of this treasure hunt. The “Golden Owl” had been buried in April 1993 in a place that had to be identified thanks to 11 puzzles presented in the book “On the trace of the great gold”. Undergoing the replica made it possible to win the owl, sculpture of ten kilos in precious metals. Its value had been initially estimated at a million francs (150,000 euros).
The creator of the enigma was an author of books on marketing, Régis Hauser, who had taken the pseudonym of Max Valentin and who died in 2009. Michel Becker designed the sculpture, produced by an goldsmith. After a long conflict between Becker and the heirs of Hauser, the game had been relaunched in 2021, with new indices on the Discord social network.
