Welcome to the Wiki for the SoJoana Mystery! Read on for information and details on this interesting puzzle.
This mystery began on April 20th, 2019 when Reddit user SenJunkieEinstein made a post about an old travel book they had bought at a junk shop. The book, a copy of 'Around the World in 2,000 Pictures' contained strange sketches and writing added in blue pen and pencil.
These annotations ranged from sketches of landmarks, what appear to be encrypted blocks of text, coordinates, snippets of writing in both English and Cherokee, codewords, and bizarre puzzles.
In September of 2020 Reddit user u/windiwendi made a post to reddit.com/r/FoundPaper regarding an odd pull tab flyer found in Maggie Valley NC. The flyer contained a link to http://crossfiregambit.com/ which predated the original reddit post and contained a list of the capitalized terms found in the book. The terms being arranged and color coded in a way to suggest that they correspond to a deck of playing cards.
A second website, http://medicinedown.com contains an image of the Murphy Pyramid in Murphy, NC. The image is exactly 1838 pixels by 1838 pixels. The Cherokee Trail of Tears started in Murphy, NC in 1838. The image has 11 keywords steganographically hidden in it. The keywords Joana, Ofelia, Beebee, and Talula are hidden to the left of the pyramid, and Rosa, White Alice, Jenny, Bambino, Eve, Iris, and Toccoa are hidden to the right of the pyramid.
Later, a YouTube channel named Ricky Macchristen was discovered that had been made the same day of the original Reddit post, and contained references to locations found in the book's annotations, as well as the CROSSFIREGAMBIT keywords. Several of the channels videos contain series of playing cards with coordinates written on them, thus linking these locations to the CROSSFIREGAMBIT terms via the card deck. The YouTube channel continues to post new videos intermittently. The most recent content is from April 2023.
After contacting the owner of the junk shop the book was supposedly bought from, it was discovered that the shop owner never actually had the book, and that they had been harassed by redditors due to their shops connection to the mystery. Thankfully, they were kind enough to share the bizarre letter they had received before the reddit post was made, that contained scans of the book and other confusing things, one of which was a scan of a sticky note mentioning a 'private radio network' and '11 Cherokee princesses'.
If you've finished reading this summary and still feel just as, if not more confused, don't worry. The biggest mystery here is exactly what this mystery even is. Were all in the same boat!
We have a discord for discussing this mystery: https://discord.gg/8bK5kqTQkE
Book scans are here.