The exact location, where the owl had been buried in April 1993, was less than seven meters from these terminals.
Valentin Zemb, 41, came from Alsace with his partner and their daughter. This passionate of the early hours, who discovered the famous owl “to the 1:00 pm newspaper of Jean-Pierre Pernaut” at the age of 10 had already come to search Dabo, in 2001 … in vain.
The “Golden Owl” finally found after 31 years: its creator is launching a new treasure hunt
“Deliverance”
Dabo “was very quickly a thesis, immediately in 1994, 1995, people were talking about Dabo,” he recalls. And many have turned away from it after new theories.
Now, he intends to seek, with the family, the new owl, in a new enigma not yet revealed, whose starting point will be in Dabo.
This outcome is a “deliverance” for the mayor of the commune, Eric Weber, who has noticed a strong interest in recent years: “We have owners who called us, who were writing to us, who asked us questions because some also thought that we were in confidence, but no (…) I knew nothing”.
From now on, Dabo will become “a place of pilgrimage” of the lovers of the quest, assures Serge Boyer, 58, who is also geocatant.
“It is still a game that has marked the spirits,” he said, while he has posted, on a stone, near the site of the discovery, a wooden owl.
Golden owl: the very big disappointment of researchers
“Local curiosity”
Others, less passionate at first, have taken the game in recent years, while the theories that the famous owl is hidden in Dabo were more and more widespread, especially on social networks.
“If it had been further, I think I would not have started hunting,” says Guillaume Diebolt, 24, who lives in a big twenty minutes from there.
However, he quickly caught up in the game locally and immediately came to the scene on Friday evening, after seeing the film in the cinema.
“But there was no one,” he regrets. He therefore returned this morning, where he dug a hole with other game lovers, applying the responses of the final enigma allowing to unlock the location of the object.
He was able, by returning again in the afternoon, “exchange with the owners” on “the different hypotheses and the positions of each”.
The creator of the enigma was a book author 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. It was on this same social network that Michel Becker’s presence in Dabo on Sunday was announced.
