The man slipped into the park, glancing to see if anyone noticed him. He was known to wear black velvet suits in June, but this time he likely wore a disguise — perhaps the safety vest, hard hat and steel-toed boots of a construction worker. 

He carried a shovel and a small box. When he was satisfied he wouldn't be disturbed, the man dug a hole no more than a metre deep, placed the treasure inside and covered it with dirt. He left the city without leaving a clue. 

Byron Preiss repeated this quest 11 more times, burying small plexiglass boxes all over North America. Each contained a key that could be exchanged for a jewel worth $1,000 US. No one — not even his wife — knew where he'd hidden them all. 

In 1982, Preiss published The Secret: A Treasure Hunt, a book that paired 12 cryptic paintings with 12 Nostradamus-like verses to give clues to the locations of the keys. He hoped the open challenge would give him a hit book. 

It didn't. 

The Secret caused a little stir upon publication and, one year later, teenage friends solved a riddle and found a treasure buried in Chicago. But the rest remained hidden and people gave up. 

The internet resurfaced the old treasure hunt around the year 2000, sparking a new wave of interest — and the discovery of a second treasure, this one in Cleveland in 2004. 

But then tragedy struck. In 2005, Preiss died in a car crash in his native New York. He took the locations of his buried treasures to the grave. Only one has been found since — in Boston, in 2019. Local treasure hunters had identified a likely spot, but it was construction workers who dug it up. 

That leaves nine secret treasures at large in North America. Now one Halifax man thinks he's solved two more puzzles — and he says they're both in Canada.

Vikings and legendary buried treasure

James Morrow has become something of an amateur treasure hunter on Canada's East Coast. In 2018, he saw a TV documentary about the hidden treasures and got hooked. He soon was immersed in an expansive online world of people determined to crack the codes of The Secret and track down all the treasures.

"It's been so long-standing that no one's been able to figure them out. Everyone keeps thinking they should be able to, but they can't," Morrow said. 

The treasure clues are like complex crossword puzzles, in that they make little sense to the untrained mind. But once you learn the language of The Secret, it can all become clear.

Most of the treasure hunting community lives in the U.S. and they'd given little thought to the idea that Preiss would have buried anything in Canada. But the theme that ties all the locations together is that they're to do with Europeans settling in North America. 

And Morrow thought: if you were to create a treasure hunt about Europeans in North America, wouldn't you put one in the province with the oldest European settlement on the continent (L'Anse aux Meadows, N.L.) and the home of the world's most famous treasure hunt (Oak Island, N.S.)?

"He made mention [during a promotional interview] of things like crossing over the border into Canada, being harassed about bringing a shovel and other implements with him," Morrow said.