Speaker 1: Hello, it's Richard mc lean smith here with Unexplained on
Speaker 1: an end of season break. We'll be dipping back into
Speaker 1: the archive each week until season nine begins on Friday,
Speaker 1: October thirty first. This week's episode takes us to a
Speaker 1: windswept island off the coast of Nova Scotia and Canada, where,
Speaker 1: in the summer of seventeen ninety five, three young men
Speaker 1: made a strange discovery that would haunt generations to come.
Speaker 1: What began as idle curiosity about a depression in the
Speaker 1: earth would ignite an obsession that has endured over two
Speaker 1: centuries Since that fateful day. Oak Island has drawn treasure hunters, engineers,
Speaker 1: and dreamers from around the world, each convinced they can
Speaker 1: succeed where countless others have failed. But the island seems
Speaker 1: to guard its secrets jealously, and those who seek to
Speaker 1: uncover them soon find themselves confronting something far more complex
Speaker 1: and mysterious than they ever imagined. This is Unexplained, Season three,
Speaker 1: episode eleven, Into the Abyss. Maybe it had been the
Speaker 1: effects of an unusually dry summer causing unfamiliar variations in
Speaker 1: the color of the grass, or perhaps it was just
Speaker 1: the way. The light had fallen that morning, which caused
Speaker 1: Donald to take notice either way. If there was one
Speaker 1: thing the three farmers now standing over the peculiar impression
Speaker 1: in the ground could agree on, it was that none
Speaker 1: of them had seen it before. Donald had called on
Speaker 1: them as soon as he'd found it that morning, suggesting
Speaker 1: they come and check it out for themselves. Seemingly manufactured,
Speaker 1: it looked like a thirteen foot wide circle had been
Speaker 1: carved into the ground, positioned in a small clearing under
Speaker 1: the bow of a large solitary oak. It was certainly
Speaker 1: strange that they hadn't come across it before. Or three
Speaker 1: of them had lived and worked on the island for
Speaker 1: a number of years, and with it being just over
Speaker 1: one hundred and forty acres worth of land, there was
Speaker 1: barely an inch of it that they hadn't seen. Being
Speaker 1: first and second generation immigrants themselves, the men knew only
Speaker 1: too well how transitory the local population had been through
Speaker 1: the years, But since the island was thought to have
Speaker 1: been entirely uninhabited prior to its incorporation only a few
Speaker 1: decades ago, they were stumped as to what the strange
Speaker 1: marking could be. Maybe it was just a well, or
Speaker 1: some kind of fire pit, suggested one of the men,
Speaker 1: that had long since been filled in an ancient burial mound, perhaps,
Speaker 1: suggested another. The year was seventeen ninety five, and the
Speaker 1: place a two and a half kilometer long island known
Speaker 1: locally as Oak Island, situated just two hundred metres off
Speaker 1: the east coast of a stretch of land recent settlers
Speaker 1: called Nova Scotia. Perhaps it shouldn't have been such a
Speaker 1: surprise for Donald to have stumbled on something so strange
Speaker 1: that morning, for the island had always been somewhat of
Speaker 1: an enigma, a stranger in the midst The clue was
Speaker 1: in the name Oak Island, inspired by the interloping evergreen
Speaker 1: oaks that were dotted all across it, reaching upwards of
Speaker 1: ninety feet with bare trunks and flat splayed out canopies.
Speaker 1: They dwarfed the many surrounding pine trees that were far
Speaker 1: more common to the region. In fact, it is said
Speaker 1: that Oak Island was the only island out of three
Speaker 1: hundred sixty four in the surrounding Mahone Bay that was
Speaker 1: home to such a species. Perhaps they had pondered on
Speaker 1: this when they decided to make a quick excavation of
Speaker 1: the area that morning to see what they might find,
Speaker 1: or perhaps they did not. Nonetheless, there was little chance
Speaker 1: they could possibly have anticipated just quite what was going
Speaker 1: to happen next. You're listening to Unexplained and I'm Richard
Speaker 1: McLean Smith. Into the Abyss Part one. The men had
Speaker 1: only made it two feet down when one of them
Speaker 1: struck something hard. Assuming it to be a large rock,
Speaker 1: he tried digging a few feet to the side, only
Speaker 1: to hit something similar again. It wasn't until they'd cleared
Speaker 1: more of the earth away that they discovered the entire
Speaker 1: area of the circle had been covered over with flat stones.
Speaker 1: After removing the slabs, a few more hours of digging
Speaker 1: revealed some kind of pit that seemed to narrow to
Speaker 1: about seven foot in diameter under the flagstones. With the
Speaker 1: soil having been obviously displaced and refilled before, it was
Speaker 1: easy to follow the contours of the original dig Pickaxe
Speaker 1: markings on the inside of the wall gave further indication
Speaker 1: of the previous excavator's work. By the afternoon, having reached
Speaker 1: just under ten feet in depth, one of the men
Speaker 1: struck something solid again. Clearing the mud away, they found
Speaker 1: a layer of rotting timbers that had been carefully positioned
Speaker 1: deep below the surface. Believing they might finally have an
Speaker 1: answer to the purpose of the pit, the men pulled
Speaker 1: up the wood, only to find an empty two foot
Speaker 1: pocket of air underneath. Undeterred, they continued to dig until
Speaker 1: the early evening, making it a further eight feet down,
Speaker 1: when once again their shovels struck timber. Utterly Perplexed, the
Speaker 1: men pulled up the next row of logs, only to
Speaker 1: find nothing but dirt underneath. With the light fading quickly
Speaker 1: and not having ladders long enough to dig any further,
Speaker 1: the men call it a day. Any suggestion of the
Speaker 1: pit being a burial chamber has been thoroughly dispelled, since,
Speaker 1: despite being twenty feet down already, they had found nothing
Speaker 1: to show for their efforts. But in the days that followed,
Speaker 1: slowly something began to dawn on them, a clear reason
Speaker 1: why someone might go to all the trouble of digging
Speaker 1: a secret pit on the edge of a tiny, nondescript
Speaker 1: island and fortifying it to keep it safe. Back in
Speaker 1: seventeen oh one, in the city of London, a man
Speaker 1: had been condemned to death and eventually hung at the
Speaker 1: infamous Execution Dock, located in Wapping on the banks of
Speaker 1: the River Thames. His name was William Kidd, and like
Speaker 1: many of the unfortunates for whom Execution Dock would be
Speaker 1: their final destination, he was a pirate. There was much
Speaker 1: a victim, as he was a participant of the rampant
Speaker 1: scheming and corruption perpetuated by British gentry in matters of
Speaker 1: trade and expansion. Kidd had none the less exhausted all
Speaker 1: favors by the time the noose was placed around his neck,
Speaker 1: and though his life would be short, his legend was
Speaker 1: only just beginning. It had long been suspected that Captain
Speaker 1: Kidd had buried a significant portion of his stolen wealth
Speaker 1: in an effort to curry favor lest he ever be captured. Indeed,
Speaker 1: a large stash of it had already been discovered shortly
Speaker 1: before his execution on Gardiner's Island, a small outcrop at
Speaker 1: the northern tip of New York State. But few believed
Speaker 1: there wasn't more. And if you were looking for somewhere
Speaker 1: to hide a treasure trove of gold and jewels far
Speaker 1: from the usual shipping lanes of the trade, as Donald
Speaker 1: Antony and John would shortly come to believe you couldn't
Speaker 1: have found a better spot than the anonymity and seclusion
Speaker 1: of Oak Island. Returning to the site a few days later,
Speaker 1: convinced of their destiny, the men managed a further fifteen
Speaker 1: feet but were left disappointed, finding only another shelf of timber.
Speaker 1: Frustrated and realizing they had neither the skill or the
Speaker 1: financial means to carry on, the men were forced to
Speaker 1: bring an end to their adventure, or so they had
Speaker 1: all told each other. In truth, John Smith had very
Speaker 1: different ideas. Over the next few years, Smith surreptitiously secured
Speaker 1: ownership of the pit, buying up the land and a
Speaker 1: number of the plots around it. Finally, by eighteen o three,
Speaker 1: along with three other investors, with whom he formed the
Speaker 1: Onslow Company, he was ready to tackle the mystery again.
Speaker 1: Before long, they had made it to another five feet down,
Speaker 1: where again they find yet another floor of timbers, But
Speaker 1: this time there is something else, a layer of charcoal
Speaker 1: scattered across the top of it. Since it was common
Speaker 1: to use charcoal fires to draw fresh air into mining shafts,
Speaker 1: it was now clearer than ever that a significant operation
Speaker 1: had once taken place here the company soon make it
Speaker 1: almost ninety feet in depth, uncovering a further four timber shelves,
Speaker 1: each at ten foot intervals, and incredibly layers of cocoanut fibers,
Speaker 1: suggesting that whatever was down there had likely traveled from
Speaker 1: some distance, the nearest cocoanut trees being thousands of miles away.
Speaker 1: Not only that, but as the men well know, cocoanut
Speaker 1: fibers were often used to pack precious cargo. Then, at
Speaker 1: ninety feet down they find something extraordinary. Having anticipated finding
Speaker 1: another layer of wood, the team instead find a thick
Speaker 1: slab of stone measuring two feet long and one foot wide.
Speaker 1: Peeling it carefully from the mud, they are astonished to
Speaker 1: find there is an inscription carved on to its under side,
Speaker 1: Only it's not in any language that they have ever
Speaker 1: seen before. Made from thirty nine geometric symbols spaced out
Speaker 1: over what seems like eight words, it appears to be
Speaker 1: some kind of code. A short time later, the workers
Speaker 1: notice water seeping up from under the hole, but decide
Speaker 1: to ignore it and continue to dig. That afternoon, at
Speaker 1: roughly ninety eight feet, once again, the shovels hit wood,
Speaker 1: and a ninth timber platform is unearthed after prising the
Speaker 1: logs apart, only to find more mud and clay below.
Speaker 1: The team finished for the day, convinced they are only
Speaker 1: feet away from the objects of their wildest desires. Spirits
Speaker 1: are understandably high when the crew return to work the
Speaker 1: following morning, only to find a solemn looking John Smith
Speaker 1: waiting for them by the pit, wringing his hat in
Speaker 1: his hands. The pit has completely filled with water. All
Speaker 1: hands work fearios to bail out the water, but the
Speaker 1: level refuses to budge. With no other option, the company
Speaker 1: pulls the rest of their money and hires a mechanical pump.
Speaker 1: The plan works perfectly as the water is soon drained
Speaker 1: from the pit, but then, with only eight more feet
Speaker 1: to go, disaster strikes when the pump breaks down. By
Speaker 1: the end of the day, the water line is back
Speaker 1: to where it started. Believing they knew roughly where the
Speaker 1: treasure might be, the team dig a second tunnel from
Speaker 1: which they planned to dig across to the first one
Speaker 1: once they had reached the required depth of one hundred
Speaker 1: and ten feet or so, but the crew only make
Speaker 1: it as far as twelve feet before their access pit
Speaker 1: is also completely flooded, Having run out of money, the
Speaker 1: Onslow Company is forced to give up, and so the
Speaker 1: pit's secrets will remain submerged by water for the next
Speaker 1: forty years. As for the stone, with its peculiar coded markings,
Speaker 1: it is left in the possession of John Smith, the
Speaker 1: landowner and one of the pit's original discoverers. However, believing
Speaker 1: it to be worthless, the code is never deciphered and
Speaker 1: the stone soon forgotten about. By eighteen forty five, with
Speaker 1: Donald mc kinnis having died and John Smith vowing never
Speaker 1: to waste another cent on the hopeless venture, it is
Speaker 1: left to the third of the original finders, Anthony Vaughan,
Speaker 1: to take up the reins. Now in his sixties, Vaughn,
Speaker 1: together with another seven investors, forms the Truro Syndicate, and
Speaker 1: by eighteen forty nine finally secures the rights to start
Speaker 1: his own attempt to locate the treasure. That summer, the
Speaker 1: largest team yet sets up camp and immediately gets to
Speaker 1: work draining the pit. After two weeks, they have drained
Speaker 1: it to within five feet of the bottom. Returning the
Speaker 1: following day, however, the crew is devastated to find that
Speaker 1: once again the waters have returned, but this time they
Speaker 1: have a new plan. After constructing a wooden platform over
Speaker 1: the pit, a large drill is dropped into it, with
Speaker 1: the hope of at least determining what materials are buried
Speaker 1: further down. They will not be disappointed. Passing the bottom
Speaker 1: of the hole marked by the shelf of timber ninety
Speaker 1: feet down, they drill on to roughly one hundred and
Speaker 1: fifteen feet. Deciding they have gone deep enough, the crew
Speaker 1: watch with bated breath as the device is withdrawn from
Speaker 1: the depths and pulled finally into the light of day.
Speaker 1: Just as the last section is removed, something sparkles in
Speaker 1: the light. The foreman hurriedly inspects the drill head and
Speaker 1: is astounded to find three small links of a gold chain,
Speaker 1: as well as fibers of oak, suggesting the high likelihood
Speaker 1: that the drill had broken through the walls of some
Speaker 1: kind of chest. Finally they had found it. Getting it
Speaker 1: out would be another matter, entirely owing to the incessant
Speaker 1: flooding of water. Just as the Onslow team had realized
Speaker 1: their best chance was to access it from a parallel shaft,
Speaker 1: Believing the treasure to be roughly one hundred and ten
Speaker 1: feet down. Incredibly, the team managed to dig a secondary
Speaker 1: channel to one hundred nine feet and are even able
Speaker 1: to start tunneling across before disaster strikes again, and just
Speaker 1: as if something had been suddenly uncorked, water rushes into
Speaker 1: the pit. But as the team regroups to assess their options,
Speaker 1: one of the men notices something interesting. The water is
Speaker 1: rising and falling with the tide. Tasting it, he is
Speaker 1: amazed to find it is salty, suggesting that rather than
Speaker 1: being the water table, it must be coming from the sea.
Speaker 1: One hundred meters to the east of the dig site
Speaker 1: lies Smith's Cove, named after one of the area's earliest
Speaker 1: known settlers, Edward Smith, sometime in the mid seventeen hundreds.
Speaker 1: Being the closest stretch of coastline to the pit, the
Speaker 1: crew naturally assume it to be the most likely source
Speaker 1: of the floodwater. With the beach being fairly small, the
Speaker 1: chief engineer suggests they construct a dam to better see
Speaker 1: what they are dealing with. Making quick work, it isn't
Speaker 1: long before they have blocked off the cove and drained
Speaker 1: it completely of water. What they discover next astounds them.
Speaker 1: Or of the inlet is found to be completely covered
Speaker 1: with coconut fiber and eel grass, under which they find
Speaker 1: beech stones carefully laid out. The cove, it transpires, has
Speaker 1: been synthetically constructed and underneath all the rocks. Finally they
Speaker 1: find the source of all their problems. It is some
Speaker 1: kind of booby trap made from a series of eight
Speaker 1: inch wide drains of flat stone fanning out like five
Speaker 1: fingers into the ocean. Together, the drains converge into one
Speaker 1: single drainage channel that disappears underneath the island, heading straight
Speaker 1: for the excavation site. The team immediately gets to work
Speaker 1: locating the main drainage tunnel in the hope of blocking
Speaker 1: it off completely. Yet another shaft is dug twelve feet
Speaker 1: to the east of the original, revealing an underground channel
Speaker 1: of water thirty five feet down. Next, timbers are driven
Speaker 1: into the ground to block it off, and when a
Speaker 1: fourth borehole twenty feet to the south of the original
Speaker 1: is dug to one hundred ten feet with no sign
Speaker 1: of water, it appears their plan is working finally, with
Speaker 1: no danger of water making it past the blocking timbers,
Speaker 1: the team are ready to dig through to the treasure.
Speaker 1: All is going well when within two feet of the
Speaker 1: original shaft. Workers tunneling through the clay on their knees
Speaker 1: in the dark, notice the walls have become wet, and
Speaker 1: soon their knees are damp, and before long their feet
Speaker 1: and calves are drenched. Two the tunnel is filling with water. Mercifully,
Speaker 1: the workers are able to scramble out and get back
Speaker 1: to the surface before it is too late, while the
Speaker 1: rest of the team watch with sinking hearts as one
Speaker 1: by one the three surrounding boreholes steadily fill up with water.
Speaker 1: After trying again to unsuccessfully find the central flood tunnel,
Speaker 1: the Truro Company's hunt for treasure is also forced to
Speaker 1: come to an end. In eighteen fifty seven, John Smith
Speaker 1: becomes the second of the three original Oak Island treasure
Speaker 1: hunters to die. Ownership of his land is passed from
Speaker 1: his sons, who, having watched the fabled treasure pit steadily
Speaker 1: ruin their father, are only too happy to sell it
Speaker 1: on to a Henry Stephen, who in turn sells it
Speaker 1: to local landowner Anthony Graves. The Trurou company return in
Speaker 1: eighteen fifty nine for one final stab, but their considerable
Speaker 1: efforts will once again prove futile. However, Rumours about the
Speaker 1: island's apparent treasure are beginning to grow, and within two
Speaker 1: years a new crop of hunters arrive on the island
Speaker 1: ready to claim its reward. The Oak Island Association, led
Speaker 1: by Jotham McCully, draft in over sixty men and thirty
Speaker 1: horses to assist them, as well as employing the latest
Speaker 1: mining technology, from an iron pump engine to industrial sized
Speaker 1: winches and pulley systems. However, their heavy handed approach digging
Speaker 1: three further holes and tunnels around the original pit results
Speaker 1: in yet more flooding and the eventual collapse of the
Speaker 1: original shaft, resulting in only the upper thirty feet of
Speaker 1: it now being accessible. In the process of re excavating
Speaker 1: the original pit, the pump boiler ruptures, spraying scolding water
Speaker 1: onto a nearby worker and burning him to death. But
Speaker 1: what's worse from the perspective of the Oak Island Association
Speaker 1: is that they are running out of money, and with
Speaker 1: news of the fatal accident now spreading, there is little
Speaker 1: hope of raising fresh capital. A short time later, however,
Speaker 1: with work halted, Jotham McCully hears a story about one
Speaker 1: of the first artifacts to be found in the original
Speaker 1: pit a mysterious stone inscribed with a strange cryptic message.
Speaker 1: What's more, as rumour would have it, the stone is
Speaker 1: still on the island, having apparently been integrated into John
Speaker 1: Smith's old fireplace. Wasting no time, McCully, whose company now
Speaker 1: owns the property, takes a chisel to the fireplace and
Speaker 1: sets about removing it piece by piece. He hasn't been
Speaker 1: working long when he spots one particular slab a little
Speaker 1: smoother than the others, pressed into the wall at the back.
Speaker 1: Freeing it up, he turns it around to find, much
Speaker 1: to his amazement, a strange cryptic message etched onto the
Speaker 1: other side of it. Realizing it might be their last chance,
Speaker 1: McCully has the stone loaded onto a horse and cart
Speaker 1: and dispatched immediately to Halifax, the nearest major city. For
Speaker 1: the next few weeks, the curious stone is placed in
Speaker 1: the window of a bookshop to drum up interest in
Speaker 1: the Oak Island treasure hunt in an effort to sell
Speaker 1: more shares to keep the company going. Many come to
Speaker 1: view the peculiar artifact and attempt to decipher the code,
Speaker 1: but no one can crack it. Regardless excitement generated by
Speaker 1: the stone's mysterious origins is enough to raise another two
Speaker 1: thousand dollars what equates to roughly fifty thousand today, enabling
Speaker 1: the Oak Island Association to continue their search for a
Speaker 1: few more years. However, like all all who had come
Speaker 1: before them, the company will fail, becoming the third formal syndicate,
Speaker 1: forced to admit defeat in the search for what many
Speaker 1: have come to believe is the lost treasure of pirate
Speaker 1: Captain William Kidd. A short time later, the stone is
Speaker 1: brought to the attention of James leache, a professor of
Speaker 1: languages at Halifax's Dalhousie University. A keen amateur cryptographer, Leechi
Speaker 1: sets about trying to decipher the message, assuming it to
Speaker 1: be a simple substitution code, whereby each symbol simply represents
Speaker 1: a letter of the English alphabet. It is not long
Speaker 1: before Leechie believes he has cracked the code. The message,
Speaker 1: he believes, reads forty feet below two million pounds are buried.
Speaker 1: It has been some twenty odd years since doctor Leechy's
Speaker 1: interpretation of the flagstone code, and the rumors of buried
Speaker 1: riches on Oak Island have reached mythical proportions Due to
Speaker 1: complications of ownership. It isn't until eighteen ninety three that
Speaker 1: a fourth team are able to secure the thirty thousand
Speaker 1: dollar lease agreement to begin the next assault on what
Speaker 1: many believe to be the hiding place of the long
Speaker 1: lost treasure of infamous pirate Captain William kidd On first
Speaker 1: arriving at the site, the new group of treasure hunters,
Speaker 1: led by a Frederick Blair, known as the Oak Island
Speaker 1: Treasure Company, find it much changed from Donald mc kinness's day.
Speaker 1: The once lush green grove now an open wound, scarred
Speaker 1: and pock marked with numerous holes full of water. Like
Speaker 1: many before them, the company make a start digging fresh
Speaker 1: holes and making industrial strength efforts to drain the seawaters away,
Speaker 1: but just as before, the same problems persist. In March
Speaker 1: eighteen ninety seven, labourer Maynard Kaiser is helping to drag
Speaker 1: water up from one of the pits when the bucket
Speaker 1: snags on the rope. After ordering the men to stop,
Speaker 1: he is fixed to the pulley system before luring himself
Speaker 1: into the pit, the bottom of which lies somewhere in
Speaker 1: the dark ninety feet below him, carefully easing himself in
Speaker 1: line with the bucket. He has just untangled it when
Speaker 1: the rope gives a sudden jerk, slipping two feet before
Speaker 1: being caught again on the pulley. A greatly relieved Kaiser
Speaker 1: has just enough time to look up before the rope
Speaker 1: jerks loose again, sending the unfortunate Kaiser disappearing into the
Speaker 1: darkness below. He becomes the second man to die in
Speaker 1: pursuit of the supposed treasure of Oak Island. With the
Speaker 1: rest of the team too shocked and saddened to return
Speaker 1: to work, the operation is brought to an immediate halt.
Speaker 1: That night, deep in sleep, one of the workers turns
Speaker 1: restlessly in his bed. Somewhere inside his head, he is
Speaker 1: visited by the specter of Captain Kidd, who delivers a
Speaker 1: terrifying warning cease digging now, or else more will die.
Speaker 1: With news of the nightmare permeating the camp, the crew
Speaker 1: refuse to return to work. It will be a year
Speaker 1: before the Oak Island Treasure Company are able to start
Speaker 1: digging again. This time, the team begins with another exploration
Speaker 1: of the material below the bottom of the pit, the
Speaker 1: discovery of what seems to be loose pieces of metal
Speaker 1: buried at approximately one hundred and fifty feet, as well
Speaker 1: as a small piece of parchment bearing the Roman numeral
Speaker 1: for the number six, only serves to convince the company
Speaker 1: further that they are not on a hiding to nothing.
Speaker 1: Despite extensive efforts to plug the tunnels from Smith's Cove,
Speaker 1: the boreholes continue to flood. In response, an engineer suggests
Speaker 1: putting a red dye into one of the pits so
Speaker 1: they can find out precisely where the waters are coming from.
Speaker 1: With a small team assembled to the east above Smith's Cove,
Speaker 1: the dye is poured into the hole. After nearly an
Speaker 1: hour of waiting, however, they have seen nothing, But then
Speaker 1: one of the crew spots it a garish wash of
Speaker 1: red bleeding into the sea from the south shoreline. Realizing
Speaker 1: they had been plugging the wrong tunnels all along, the
Speaker 1: team undertake a sustained process of dynamiting along the southern
Speaker 1: edge of the dig site in the hope of uncovering
Speaker 1: the real flood tunnel. But just like the many previous efforts,
Speaker 1: having only brought further destruction to the increasingly scarred landscape,
Speaker 1: the company draws a blank. With enthusiasm for the work
Speaker 1: beginning to Wane Company, found of Frederick Blair, buys out
Speaker 1: the remaining shares and in nineteen o five takes full
Speaker 1: ownership of the license to dig on the island. For
Speaker 1: the next twenty five years, he leases it out to
Speaker 1: a variety of unsuccessful ventures, and by the early nineteen thirties,
Speaker 1: as described by Frederick Griffin in the Toronto Star Weekly,
Speaker 1: where once the ground above Smith's Cove was littered with
Speaker 1: the majestic oaks that gave the island its name, by
Speaker 1: now there were barely half a dozen left clinging on
Speaker 1: for dear life. The land has become a battlefield of
Speaker 1: torn earth and empty boreholes. In nineteen thirty five, steel
Speaker 1: magnet Gilbert Headen is the next to answer the siren
Speaker 1: corn of treasure, purchasing half the island and a digging
Speaker 1: lease from Blair. After three years and fifty thousand dollars
Speaker 1: just under a million today, Hedden's team make a number
Speaker 1: of interesting discoveries, finding a minus oil lamp, some dynamite
Speaker 1: buried at sixty five feet, as well as an as
Speaker 1: yet undiscovered chamber that appears to have been one of
Speaker 1: the original flood tunnels, the problem being it is almost
Speaker 1: impossible to tell if any of these artifacts had been
Speaker 1: left prior to seventeen ninety five. It has also become
Speaker 1: impossible to tell which hole exactly was the original pit
Speaker 1: that started the whole adventure off in the first placed
Speaker 1: gives up in nineteen thirty eight. When Frederick Blair dies
Speaker 1: in nineteen fifty one, the site lease reverts to mel Chapel,
Speaker 1: who had been a partner of Blair's twenty years previously.
Speaker 1: Chapel had also been one of the diggers who witnessed
Speaker 1: Maynard Kaiser fall to his death. Though it was said
Speaker 1: that Chapel had once himself seen gold flakes coming off
Speaker 1: a drill during one of the earlier excavations, he had
Speaker 1: no interest in seeking the treasure, remembering all too well
Speaker 1: the warning from his colleague that death stalked all who
Speaker 1: sought it. It was in nineteen fifty nine that Robert
Speaker 1: and Mildred Restore negotiated a deal with mel Chapel to
Speaker 1: try their luck at cracking the mystery. In the nineteen fifties,
Speaker 1: Robert and his wife Mildred worked a traveling show called
Speaker 1: thee of Death, which involved the married couple riding motorbikes
Speaker 1: around a metal sphere at sixty five miles per hour.
Speaker 1: The pair traveled the world before settling in Canada. It
Speaker 1: was at some point in the nineteen fifties that the
Speaker 1: Dare Devil's got wind of the intriguing treasure hunt occurring
Speaker 1: on Oak Island. Soon after agreeing a lease with Chapel,
Speaker 1: Robert and his son Bobby moved to the island to
Speaker 1: begin work and are joined by the rest of the
Speaker 1: family soon after the following year, they succeed in pumping
Speaker 1: out almost all the water from the main shaft. For
Speaker 1: the next five years, however, the family struggled to keep
Speaker 1: the water held back long enough to make a thorough
Speaker 1: exploration of the site. Once again, the treasure remains tantalizingly
Speaker 1: out of reach. In August nineteen six, Robert and Mildred
Speaker 1: are preparing to head to nearby Chester to run a
Speaker 1: number of errands when Robert heads to the site to
Speaker 1: make a final check on a new gasoline pump. The
Speaker 1: pump had been installed next to one of the new
Speaker 1: shafts that they had been digging at Smith's Cove. Telling
Speaker 1: him not to take too long, Mildred watched her husband
Speaker 1: as he stepped into the muggy afternoon air and made
Speaker 1: his way down at the cove. A few miles away
Speaker 1: on the mainland, Jim Kaiser, one of the Restall's key laborers,
Speaker 1: was carrying out some chores at home. Though he wasn't
Speaker 1: scheduled to work that day, he had the most peculiar
Speaker 1: desire to stop what he was doing immediately and head
Speaker 1: to Woke Island, back above Smith's Cove. As Robert nears
Speaker 1: the shoreline, he is overcome by a strange smell of
Speaker 1: rotten eggs. It seems to be emanating from one of
Speaker 1: the newly dug pits. Robert's son Bobby, is helping to
Speaker 1: burn waste materials when he looks up to see his
Speaker 1: father peering down at something from the edge of the pit,
Speaker 1: before going stiff and falling straight in. Bobby tears down
Speaker 1: to the cove, only to find his father's lifeless body
Speaker 1: floating in the water at the bottom of the pit.
Speaker 1: Moments later, everything goes black as he too loses consciousness
Speaker 1: and falls straight into the hole. Another worker, Carl Graser,
Speaker 1: who had witnessed the whole thing, races to the edge
Speaker 1: of the pit. Seeing the two bodies in the water.
Speaker 1: He has only just reached the top of a ladder
Speaker 1: descending into it when he becomes the third man to
Speaker 1: lose consciousness, falling from the ladder with a splash into
Speaker 1: the hole. He is in turn followed by worker Cyril Hilts,
Speaker 1: who has made it half way down the ladder before
Speaker 1: he too succumbs to the strange fumes in the pandemonium.
Speaker 1: A further two workers, Andrew Dumont and Leonard Kaiser, attempting
Speaker 1: to rescue the others, make it as far as the
Speaker 1: water before their bodies give up too. Incredibly, New York
Speaker 1: fire fighter Captain Edward White, who just happens to be
Speaker 1: visiting the dig site at the time, is miraculously able
Speaker 1: to pull Kaiser and Dumont free, but for the others
Speaker 1: it is too late. Back at Jim Kaiser's home, there
Speaker 1: is a frantic knock at the door. He opens it
Speaker 1: to find his uncle in a desperate state with some
Speaker 1: terrible news. Jim immediately races to Oak Island to find
Speaker 1: a team of fire fighters assembled at the top of
Speaker 1: Smith's Cove, trying to figure out the safest way to
Speaker 1: retrieve the bodies. Without thinking, Jim borrows a vintage Second
Speaker 1: World war gas mask from one of them and jumps
Speaker 1: straight into the hole. One by one, he pulls out
Speaker 1: the dead bodies of his friends. The tragic death of
Speaker 1: the men, especially both Robert and Bobby Restall, marks the
Speaker 1: end of the rest All involvement with Oak Island, with
Speaker 1: Mildred having no interest in pursuing what is starting to
Speaker 1: look increasingly like a cursed errand ownership of the lease
Speaker 1: is transferred to Robert Dunfield in the summer of nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty five. The bullish Dunfield wastes little time in bulldozing
Speaker 1: twelve feet away from the surface of the original pit,
Speaker 1: and uses the resultant clay to clog any tunnels coming
Speaker 1: up from Smith's Cove. Next, he constructs a causeway joining
Speaker 1: the island to the mainland for the first time. Back
Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty three, businessman Fred Nolan discovered that, unbeknownst
Speaker 1: to Restall and Robert Dumfield at the time, a few
Speaker 1: minor lots of Oak Island were still available to purchase.
Speaker 1: After swiftly buying them up, he undertakes a few minor
Speaker 1: excavations but finds little of interest. However, with the construction
Speaker 1: of Dumfield's causeway. Nolan is excited at the prospect of
Speaker 1: getting better equipment to continue his search, but Dumfield refuses
Speaker 1: to let him use it. What he hadn't realized, however,
Speaker 1: was that Crandall's Point, the land abutting the causeway, was
Speaker 1: also still available to purchase. When Nolan finds out, he
Speaker 1: buys it, immediately denying all access from the causeway. The
Speaker 1: petty stalemate results in Dumfield quitting the project for good
Speaker 1: and returning to his native California. Some might say he
Speaker 1: got off lightly. Only a few weeks prior to Dumfield's
Speaker 1: voluntary eviction, Jim Kaiser, who had stayed on to assist Dumfield,
Speaker 1: is spending the night at the dig site in the
Speaker 1: old Restall family home when he waits to find the
Speaker 1: whole cabin shaking violently while having the sensation of a
Speaker 1: heavy weight on his chest. Looking up, moments later, he
Speaker 1: was confronted by a pair of red eyes staring at
Speaker 1: him from out of the darkness. Running from the bed
Speaker 1: in terror, he heads straight outside into the cold night air,
Speaker 1: but finds no sign of anybody. The next morning, having
Speaker 1: finally got back to sleep, Kaiser finds his body covered
Speaker 1: in bruises, including five on his arm, long and thin,
Speaker 1: as if a hand had gripped him there. It wasn't
Speaker 1: long after that reports of a genuine curse first came
Speaker 1: to light. That Worn, specifically that seven treasure hunters would
Speaker 1: have to die before the island gave up its treasure,
Speaker 1: with the construction worker scolded in eighteen sixty one and
Speaker 1: Maynard Kaiser's fall of eighteen ninety seven added to the
Speaker 1: horrific quadruple tragedy of the rest All operation. So far,
Speaker 1: there had been six by nineteen sixty nine. In the
Speaker 1: one hundred and seventy four years since Donald mc kinnis,
Speaker 1: John Smith and Anthony Bourne first uncovered evidence of a
Speaker 1: potential treasure pit, not one person had succeeded in digging
Speaker 1: down any further than the ninety foot bottom carved out
Speaker 1: by the Onslow Company in eighteen o three. But all
Speaker 1: that was about to change. It was in April of
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty nine that businessman Daniel Blankenship and David Tobias
Speaker 1: formed the Triton Alliance, buying up the majority of the
Speaker 1: island and moving in at the first opportunity in what
Speaker 1: was by far the most sophisticated operation to date. The
Speaker 1: alliance begins by digging sixty different boreholes close to the
Speaker 1: original pit to draw up a detailed plan of the
Speaker 1: geology underneath. They soon discover the bedrock to be located
Speaker 1: at roughly one hundred and sixty feet below, but incredibly
Speaker 1: there also seems to be some kind of wooden layer
Speaker 1: forty feet below this. The follow year, labourers uncover evidence
Speaker 1: of what could well have been the original dam constructed
Speaker 1: at smith Cove to create the original flood tunnels, a
Speaker 1: set of logs laid out in a U shape with
Speaker 1: Roman numerals carved into them. They also discover a litany
Speaker 1: of artifacts, including wrought iron scissors, an iron ruler, and
Speaker 1: a wooden sled that pre date the time before Donald
Speaker 1: mcinness first spotted something in seventeen ninety five. But the
Speaker 1: best is yet to come. Since there was no way
Speaker 1: of preventing the sea water flooding the now myriad tunnels
Speaker 1: and boreholes, and with the risk of structural collapse too
Speaker 1: high to send people down them, the team construct a
Speaker 1: vast twenty seven inch diameter steel pipe, which they hope
Speaker 1: will allow for direct access to underneath the dig site
Speaker 1: in spring in nineteen seventy one. The team choose a
Speaker 1: borehole numbered ten X for the purpose and proceeded to
Speaker 1: carve it out to a depth of two hundred and
Speaker 1: thirty five feet before threading the pipe down it all
Speaker 1: the way to the bottom. What made TENX so special
Speaker 1: was that they had good reason to believe it led
Speaker 1: directly to an artificial cavity that had at some point
Speaker 1: been dug out of the bedrock. Before sending anyone down, however,
Speaker 1: Blankenship and Tobias decided to use a camera to first
Speaker 1: investigate what was down there. With the team set up
Speaker 1: on the edge of Borehole ten X, they gathered excitedly
Speaker 1: around a bulky TV monitor. As the camera was slowly
Speaker 1: lowered down, They watched with profound anticipation as it dropped
Speaker 1: deeper through the casink, through the pitch black of the water,
Speaker 1: and finally out into the open of the chamber below.
Speaker 1: Squinting at the monitor, they see soft, angular shapes beginning
Speaker 1: to emerge from out of the darkness, things which seemed
Speaker 1: foreign to the surrounding geology, all covered over in a
Speaker 1: thick layer of silt, and one shape more recognizable than
Speaker 1: the others, protruding from out of the mud the arm
Speaker 1: of a skeleton. Believing they had finally unearthed the location
Speaker 1: of the fabled treasure, the Triton team employ a diver
Speaker 1: to take a closer look. In October nineteen seventy one,
Speaker 1: Alan Sagar, a retired lieutenant commander and former de mining expert,
Speaker 1: answers the corps. With the casing too narrow to wear
Speaker 1: an oxygen tank, Saga is forced to hugger a small
Speaker 1: bottle of compressed air to his chest as he is
Speaker 1: lowered manually on steel cable into the pipe, and with
Speaker 1: no radio communication, Saga and the crew have only the
Speaker 1: cable with which to give each other signals. At ninety
Speaker 1: feet down, feeling the chill of the water at his feet,
Speaker 1: Sega tugs on the cable for the Winch team to
Speaker 1: stop adjusting his mouthpiece. He gives another two tugs and
Speaker 1: is soon descending again, dropping steadily until he is completely
Speaker 1: submerged under the water in total darkness. He soon descends
Speaker 1: past one hundred and fifty foot level, then two hundred feet,
Speaker 1: until finally he emerges at the bottom end and into
Speaker 1: the cavity. Saga takes a moment to compose himself before
Speaker 1: turning on the camera the images of which are being
Speaker 1: fed back live to the surface, and points it into
Speaker 1: the space. Turning on his torch, he directs it into
Speaker 1: the gloom. Suddenly he can see everything. Unexpectedly, the cavern
Speaker 1: that stretched off some distance behind was much bigger than
Speaker 1: had been first assumed. On the floor of it, just
Speaker 1: as the previous footage had revealed, there appeared to be
Speaker 1: a number of oblong containers and a pole, perhaps the
Speaker 1: handle of a tool, poking up from out of the
Speaker 1: soft mud, And sure enough, there to the side of it,
Speaker 1: the arm of a skeleton reaches up out of the silt.
Speaker 1: Back on the surface. Crowded around the monitor, a nervous
Speaker 1: excitement to spreading throughout the team as they struggle to
Speaker 1: contain themselves. But then Sega takes a step forward into
Speaker 1: the cavern, instantly sending a bar cloud of silt billowing
Speaker 1: up into the space, blocking out the light. Realizing he
Speaker 1: can no longer proceed, Sega has little choice but to
Speaker 1: get back into the pipe and head back to the surface.
Speaker 1: Once in place, he tugs twice again on the cable
Speaker 1: and is greatly relieved when moments later, he feels it
Speaker 1: taking his weight and lifting him upwards a just over
Speaker 1: half way. With Saga still submerged some distance underwater, he
Speaker 1: has the strange sensation that he is being pulled back
Speaker 1: into the pipe. He realizes with horror that it is
Speaker 1: the suit caught on one of the welds in the pipeline.
Speaker 1: Unaware of what has happened, the workers above continue to
Speaker 1: winch him up, but with Saga's body unwilling to budge,
Speaker 1: the suit is beginning to pull apart, and now the
Speaker 1: breathing apparatus is coming undone as well. Sega pulls furiously
Speaker 1: on the cable while simultaneously struggling to free himself, when
Speaker 1: finally something dislodges and he is suddenly free, once again
Speaker 1: being pulled steadily up to the surface. After Saga's close call,
Speaker 1: nine other divers are tasked with helping to retrieve the
Speaker 1: apparent items from the cavity at the bottom of Hold
Speaker 1: ten X, but none are successful. In nineteen seventy six,
Speaker 1: Daniel Blankenship tries to enter the cavern himself. However, having
Speaker 1: only made it halfway down the pipe, Blankenship hears the
Speaker 1: ominous sound of creaking steel, which is followed by a
Speaker 1: cascade of debris falling on his head from above. Sensing
Speaker 1: imminent danger, Blankenship demands an immediate evacuation. Miraculously, he is
Speaker 1: pulled free just as the casing collapses completely below him.
Speaker 1: When the twenty seven inch wide steel piping is dug
Speaker 1: out later, they discover a section of it has been
Speaker 1: entirely closed in to some The cavity at two hundred
Speaker 1: and thirty five feet deep and the items allegedly spotted
Speaker 1: in it is the strongest evidence that a genuine horde
Speaker 1: of treasure has been stashed away on the island. Others
Speaker 1: have questioned whether it may have in fact, only been
Speaker 1: created by dynamiting that had been carried out by the
Speaker 1: Triton Alliance some time prior to its discovery. Either way,
Speaker 1: like all others before them, Blankenship and Tobias will leave
Speaker 1: the island empty handed, and though many others even to
Speaker 1: this day have since attempted to unlock the island's secrets,
Speaker 1: it resolutely refuses to give them up, or so it
Speaker 1: was thought. In a startling revelation that has only recently
Speaker 1: come to light, it was claimed by Fred Nolan that
Speaker 1: in nineteen eighty, whilst digging in a region just above
Speaker 1: the south shore known as the Swamp, he discovered three
Speaker 1: old and empty oak chests. Then something else came to light.
Speaker 1: Thanks to the extensive research carried out on the subject
Speaker 1: of the Oak Island Treasure by the Fantastic Blockhouse Investigation Team,
Speaker 1: it seems those empty chests just might have been rediscovered before,
Speaker 1: In fact, all the way back in seventeen ninety five.
Speaker 1: According to Carma, who had taken part in some of
Speaker 1: the earlier excavations, in nineteen twenty five, his grandmother Lucy Vaughan,
Speaker 1: a descendant of Antony Vaughan, one of the first discoverers
Speaker 1: of the pit, had taken him into the basement of
Speaker 1: her home and shown him an old looking chest made
Speaker 1: of oak. Opening it up, it was revealed to contain
Speaker 1: twenty five white canvas bags, each stuffed with gold coins
Speaker 1: that she said had come from Oak Island. And then,
Speaker 1: in a two thousand and seven newspaper interview, a descendant
Speaker 1: of Donald McInnis made a similarly startling revelation. In the
Speaker 1: weeks after Donald uncovered the first signs of the pit
Speaker 1: in seventeen ninety five, he John Smith and Anthony Vaughan
Speaker 1: had in fact also uncovered three separate chests stuffed full
Speaker 1: of lute. It had long been believed in the McInnis
Speaker 1: now known as McGinnis family, that on finding the treasure,
Speaker 1: the men had sworn to secrecy, agreeing never to reveal
Speaker 1: the truth of it to anyone. After all, there's no
Speaker 1: telling what lengths people will go to when told there
Speaker 1: is treasure to be found. Thank you as ever for listening.
Speaker 1: Unexplained as an Avy Club production, the podcast created by
Speaker 1: Richard mclin Smith. All other elements of the podcast, including
Speaker 1: the music, are also produced by me Richard mclin Smith. Unexplained.
Speaker 1: The book and audiobook is now available to buy worldwide.
Speaker 1: You can purchase from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Waterstones and
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Speaker 1: you get your podcasts, and feel free to get in
Speaker 1: touch with any thoughts or ideas regarding the stories you've
Speaker 1: heard on the show. Perhaps you have an explanation or
Speaker 1: a story of your own you'd like to share. You
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