The Extremely Enchanting, Totally Perplexing, Possibly Never-Ending Quest for the Golden Owl

For 30 years, this labyrinthine treasure hunt has had thousands of players cracking codes and digging up the French countryside. After a sudden death and bitter disputes, will the prize ever be found?

Illustration by Molly Magnell | Story edited by Jesse Sposato

Months after he buried it in darkness, Régis Hauser still dreamt of “the beast.” Of the hole he dug at 3:30 a.m. on April 24, 1993, three feet deep somewhere in France. How he lugged the hunk of metal from his car trunk and placed it in the dirt. When he told his tale to the French newspaper Libération, he made the entombment sound faintly gothic: “I hadn’t even finished, and my hands were bloody. When it was done, I went far away, to get breakfast. I looked at myself in the mirror at the cafe. I was barely recognizable, disheveled, covered in earth.” No one had seen him in the act, or so Hauser hoped. Years later, he recounted seeing just one person during his whole expedition: a dog walker looking for his animal. How could he forget the hound’s name: Dracula.

The object Hauser buried that night was a bronze sculpture of an owl. He had promised that whoever found it could exchange it for an identical owl cast in gold, silver…