Vidstone Video Gravestone
Created by the “Walt Disney of the Funeral Business,” the Vidstone is a gravestone that memorializes your loved one with an embedded video of the deceased.
The hunt for Fenn’s Treasure is over. Or is it? A CBS anchor says Fenn confessed his “dark and bizarre” plan to him back in 2012.
A photo proving Fenn’s treasure has been found
Many treasure hunters were undoubtedly disappointed earlier this month to learn that Forrest Fenn’s treasure had finally been found. Fenn, an eccentric art and artifacts dealer, filled a chest with more than $1 million in gold coins and other valuables and hid it somewhere in the Rocky Mountains. When he published his memoir The Thrill of the Chase in 2010, he included a map and clues for anyone adventurous enough to go searching.
An estimated 350,000 people have searched for the treasure, five people lost their lives in the process, and one is sitting in jail. But after a decade, the chest has finally been found.
“It was under a canopy of stars in the lush, forested vegetation of the Rocky Mountains,” Fenn wrote, “and had not moved from the spot where I hid it more than 10 years ago. I do not know the person who found it, but the poem in my book led him to the precise spot.”
Fenn announced in early June that the treasure had been found by someone who wanted to remain anonymous. There was controversy almost immediately as a Chicago attorney filed a lawsuit claiming the person who found the treasure had stolen its location from her.
But now there’s an added layer to the mystery.
CBS Anchor Tony Dokoupil, who interviewed Fenn in 2012, doesn’t believe the treasure was really found.
“Why I don’t think the treasure has really been found,” Dokoupil told Inside Edition, “is because Forrest told me his plan was to entomb himself along with the treasure.”
Fenn shared several photos of himself going through the items in the chest, saying, “The finder wants me to remain silent and I always said the finder gets to make those two calls. Who and where.”
Forrest Fenn looks over the contents of his recently found treasure. He wrote, “It is darker than it was ten years ago when I left it on the ground and walked away.”
Dokoupil is doubtful.
“There’s no proof that it’s been found,” he said. “He’s offered none. And he’s 89 now. It’s possible that what he’s actually doing is creating an opening for himself to complete the rather dark and bizarre plan he explained to me nearly a decade ago.”
Dokoupil spent some nearly a week with Fenn in 2012 while writing an article for Newsweek. Fenn had recently been diagnosed with kidney cancer, and confessed to Dokoupil that he wanted to be buried with the treasure.
“I think the treasure is in a location where an older man can still get to it and crawl or insert himself in and alongside the chest,” Dokoupil says. “I mean, that’s how it was explained to me.
“You have a guy who’s been collecting archaeology his whole life, is so in love with it he’s hatched a plan to make himself part of that record for all time and invite the public in to try to find it and his bones. I am confident it is not a hoax. Forrest wants to be remembered for thousands of years, and this is his way of doing so.”
