It was the gaze of Sauniere`s original statue by the church entrance that led Ben Hammott to his first message in a bottle. That find was followed by the discovery of several carved coded stones which pointed to other bottles containing more cryptic notes and diagrams written in red or black ink that had been buried by the priest during his hikes in the mountains. There is a link to these discoveries in a previously known word-grid written by Sauniere called the "Sot + Pecheur" cryptogram. This word-grid was written on red graph-paper as described by Gerard de Sede in his 1967 book "The Gold of Rennes-le-Chateau". The text is framed with a "crown of letters" around the edge of the graph-paper. Some of the notes that Ben found have frames drawn around them as well.