‘The Secret’ NYC treasure hunt was a bust — but gem seeker plans to dig again using book clues
NY Post
He thinks Staten Island is treasure island.
At 6 a.m. this past Saturday, David Hager, 58, and wife Michelle, 51, and two sons, Tyler and Ryan, 21 and 17, started digging in a small park in the forgotten borough.
Hager, who lives in Colorado, believes he has correctly deciphered clues pinpointing buried booty on Staten Island from Byron Preiss’s 1982 book “The Secret: A Treasure Hunt.”
“There were two things [in the book] that nobody could figure out,” Hager, a former geologist and science teacher who now owns a college-planning service, told The Post. “We have this so dialed in. It has to be here.”
In the early 1980s, Preiss supposedly buried casques and keys in plexiglass cases in 12 North American cities. He put elaborate clues in the book as to their whereabouts. Only three of the treasures — in Chicago, Cleveland and Boston — have ever been found. It’s widely assumed that there’s loot somewhere in the five boroughs, but it’s never been located. Preiss died in a car crash on Long Island in 2005.
Hager and family travelled from Denver to spend the holiday weekend digging. They brought battery-operated power drills, shovels and underground cameras with them.
