David Hager, 58, is on the hunt.
Next Friday, he, his wife and two sons, ages 16 and 21, will travel from their home near Denver, Colorado, to NYC to search for booty hidden decades ago.
“Some place in the city of New York, there is a treasure,” Hager told The Post. “There is a ceramic casque, about the size of a volleyball. It has a ceramic key inside it.”
In the early 1980s, Brooklyn-born writer/editor Byron Preiss buried ceramic casques and keys in 12 cities in the US and, possibly, Canada. He then published elaborates clues — pictures paired with esoteric verses — to their whereabouts in his 1982 book “The Secret: A Treasure Hunt.”
Each key can be exchanged with Preiss’s estate for a valuable gemstone.
Followers of “The Secret” widely believe that one of the clues featuring an image of a woman in a white gown floating above topaz gems directs readers to a treasure hidden in New York City.
Hager and others have noted that the woman’s face strongly resembles that of the Statue of Liberty.
But, Hager, a former science teacher who now owns a college-planning service, believes he has figured out the exact whereabouts and knows things other do not.
“Everybody thinks it is in Brooklyn because that is where the author grew up,” he said.
He noted that the third-from-last line in the clue is “In rhapsodic man’s soil.” That would seem to reference Gershwin, but Hager believes it to be a red herring.
“It’s in there to throw people off,” he said.
While he’s hesitant to reveal exactly where he thinks the treasure is, he will say that he believes it to be “south of Liberty Island” because one line in the clue reads, “Or gaze north / Toward the isle of B.’”
Liberty Island, Hager explained, used to be called Bedloe Island.
Only three of the twelve treasures Preiss supposedly hid have ever been found. The author died in a car accident on Long Island in 2005, taking the secret of his buried booty with him to the grave.
“His wife and two daughters remain involved in the treasure hunting. They’re the people you turn your key in to in exchange for the gem,” Hager said. But, “I don’t think they know where anything is.”
Hager is hardly the only one obsessed with unearthing the lost goods.
On online forums and social media, thousands speculate about the treasures’ whereabouts. In 2018, the Discovery Channel dedicated an episode of its TV show “Expedition Unknown” to the hunt.
That series inspired a Boston family to search for, and ultimately find, the casque in their city, and their journey was featured on the show in 2019.
“People are crazy about this because of the adventure and the idea of solving a 40-year-old mystery,” said Hager. “You start doing it and it’s easy to go down rabbit holes, trying to figure out the clues.”
The cable show also compelled him to start looking.
“I loved the idea of buried treasure being out there,” said Hager.
The Boston casque is the most recent one to be unearthed. Chicago teens found the first one in the city’s Grant Park in 1983. The second casque was uncovered in 2004 when a pair of savvy lawyers located it in a Cleveland garden.
For his Big Apple escapades, Hager isn’t packing lightly. He’s bringing tiny metal probe cameras that attach to coils that go deep into the ground and send images back to an iPhone, along with “really good” hand-shovels.
“I had shoulder surgery in February; so my sons will have to do some of the digging,” he said.
He’s obtained a metal-detecting permit from the city but has yet to hear back on the actual digging permits he applied for.
According to the NYC Parks website, the fine for unlawful excavation is “up to $1,500.”
Furthermore, a press officer from NYC Parks warned of issues involving “underlying infrastructure networks — such as gas lines, sewer lines, etc.”
But, most likely, Hager won’t be deterred.
“Between you and me, we will probably dig [whether or not we get them],” he told The Post. “If I get a fine I will live with it.”
His treasure-hunting obsession coincided with his father passing away from heart failure in 2020.
His dad, a former college professor of international studies, loved taking the family on annual trips to New York, from their home in Virginia Beach.
“This whole thing is a little bit dedicated to him,” he said.
It’s also for his sons.
“The challenge of proving myself right is important,” he said. “My 16-year-old said, ‘Dad, I totally believe you, 100%, but I want to see it come out of the ground.’ I plan on making that happen.”
