This is the end of a long quest of more than 30 years. The Golden Owl, one of the oldest treasure hunts in the world, ended overnight from Wednesday to Thursday. Michel Becker, co-organizer of “On the trail of the golden owl”, announced on the Discord forum that the owl had been dug up. “We are verifying the validity of the proposed solution,” he added.
In 1993, Régis Hauser, known under the pseudonym Max Valentin, buried a bronze owl somewhere in France. To find it, you had to solve eleven puzzles. For thirty-one years, enthusiasts went looking for him. The prize is a tidy reward: the original statuette in gold, silver and diamonds, estimated at 1 million francs at the time (150,000 euros).
“Don’t go digging!” »
It was through a first message, posted at 6:11 a.m., that players learned the news: “A potentially winning solution is being verified. The verification system is currently locked and no longer allows you to submit your solutions. Further information will be communicated to you as soon as possible,” wrote Michel Becker.
News officially confirmed at 8:26 a.m. in a second message: “Don’t go digging! We confirm that the Golden Owl countermark was unearthed last night, simultaneously with a solution being sent to the online verification system. It is therefore useless to travel to dig on the location that you assume to be that of the cache,” said the co-organizer.
A quest full of twists and turns
This treasure hunt, the longest known in France, was the subject of multiple twists and turns and sparked numerous controversies. Its creator, Régis Hauser, died in 2009, sixteen years to the day after the owl was buried somewhere in France.
After several legal proceedings with the latter’s heirs, the painter Michel Becker, who sculpted the cast and illustrated the riddles, recovered the solutions at the beginning of the 2020s, relaunching the quest of thousands of researchers by providing new clues.
The same year, he published the book “On the Trail of the Golden Owl” before launching, in 2021, an exchange space on Discord entitled “On the Trail of the Golden Owl”. A hunt that has become so legendary that Canal + dedicated a documentary to it in 2024, “In Pursuit of the Golden Owl”.
