Yes, they are beech nuts and are edible but difficult to open, you need nimble fingers.

Most years, beech mast is almost all sterile with few nuts inside the husk though in a "mast year"....jackpot!

I have eaten beech mast on occasion especially having found a particular tree one year with a high percentage of fertile nuts. You soon learn by sight which visual characters of the nut show it to be fertile...