1
00:00:00,120 --> 00:00:02,120
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening to the best of Coast to Coast

2
00:00:02,120 --> 00:00:04,720
Speaker 1: podcast and become a Coast in Cider to hear the

3
00:00:04,800 --> 00:00:08,240
Speaker 1: rest of this fascinating conversation and check out recent shows

4
00:00:08,640 --> 00:00:11,879
Speaker 1: featuring guests sharing stories about growing up in a haunted

5
00:00:11,920 --> 00:00:15,600
Speaker 1: house that was possessed by an evil presence, a nightmarish

6
00:00:15,680 --> 00:00:18,079
Speaker 1: encounter with a UFO in the dead of night, and

7
00:00:18,200 --> 00:00:21,040
Speaker 1: the financial horror stories from those who won the lottery

8
00:00:21,280 --> 00:00:23,560
Speaker 1: and lived to regret it. Head on over to Coast

9
00:00:23,560 --> 00:00:25,640
Speaker 1: to Coast am dot com and sign up for Coast

10
00:00:25,640 --> 00:00:28,880
Speaker 1: in Cider to hear these programs and many more truly

11
00:00:28,960 --> 00:00:32,879
Speaker 1: thought provoking shows from Coast to Coast. Now here's a

12
00:00:32,960 --> 00:00:37,280
Speaker 1: highlight from Coast to Coast AM on iHeartRadio and welcome

13
00:00:37,280 --> 00:00:39,320
Speaker 1: back to Coast to Coast George nor with you. The

14
00:00:39,360 --> 00:00:43,240
Speaker 1: Curse of Oak Island. Randall Sullivan the author contributing editor

15
00:00:43,240 --> 00:00:46,400
Speaker 1: to Rolling Stone for more than twenty years, for whom

16
00:00:46,400 --> 00:00:49,200
Speaker 1: he originally reported on Oak Island back in two thousand

17
00:00:49,240 --> 00:00:53,440
Speaker 1: and four. His work has appeared in Esquire, Outside Men's Journal,

18
00:00:53,720 --> 00:00:56,840
Speaker 1: Washington Post, The Guardian. He's also the author of the

19
00:00:56,880 --> 00:01:01,920
Speaker 1: Price of Experience, Labyrinth, and The Miracle Detect an untouchable Randall.

20
00:01:01,960 --> 00:01:03,640
Speaker 1: Good to have you on the program first time. I

21
00:01:03,720 --> 00:01:07,120
Speaker 1: understand right, Yes it is. Thank you, George, well welcome

22
00:01:07,120 --> 00:01:09,400
Speaker 1: and good to talk with you. What a great story.

23
00:01:09,840 --> 00:01:13,319
Speaker 1: Oak Island. Tell us a little bit about the setting.

24
00:01:13,600 --> 00:01:16,200
Speaker 1: I sell a little bit about it, but kind of

25
00:01:16,240 --> 00:01:20,640
Speaker 1: give us a description of this island if you could. Well,

26
00:01:20,640 --> 00:01:24,039
Speaker 1: it's about a mile long and at its widest point

27
00:01:24,080 --> 00:01:27,160
Speaker 1: about a half a mile wide. A thousand fee wide

28
00:01:27,200 --> 00:01:31,679
Speaker 1: is its narrowest point, just off the coast of Nova Scotia,

29
00:01:31,720 --> 00:01:38,640
Speaker 1: about fifty miles south west of Halifax. It was for

30
00:01:38,720 --> 00:01:42,000
Speaker 1: many years just extraordinary because it was covered with oak trees.

31
00:01:42,040 --> 00:01:45,959
Speaker 1: It was the holy island that had this forest of

32
00:01:46,000 --> 00:01:48,440
Speaker 1: oaks on it. No one could understand why, but they

33
00:01:48,440 --> 00:01:50,760
Speaker 1: were very happy to have the oak trees to harvest.

34
00:01:52,280 --> 00:01:55,680
Speaker 1: And then in the late seventeen hundreds, three young men,

35
00:01:56,040 --> 00:02:02,280
Speaker 1: teenage boys discovered this depression. It turned into a shaft

36
00:02:02,440 --> 00:02:05,400
Speaker 1: that had been dug, a fantastic shaft that had been

37
00:02:05,480 --> 00:02:10,360
Speaker 1: dug who knows when. And that's led to a series

38
00:02:10,400 --> 00:02:15,040
Speaker 1: of fantastic and extraordinary discoveries that have baffled and this

39
00:02:15,160 --> 00:02:18,399
Speaker 1: defied people for more than two centuries. It truly has

40
00:02:18,480 --> 00:02:22,360
Speaker 1: fascinated people. What are they looking for? What keeps them

41
00:02:22,360 --> 00:02:25,639
Speaker 1: so fascinated by the island rental? Well, part of it

42
00:02:25,680 --> 00:02:28,960
Speaker 1: is that all of history's mysteries, Oak Island might be

43
00:02:29,000 --> 00:02:32,119
Speaker 1: the most open end. There's so many possibilities and there's

44
00:02:32,160 --> 00:02:34,760
Speaker 1: so many things that people have found that could connect

45
00:02:34,760 --> 00:02:38,520
Speaker 1: to this or that theory. And obviously people have come

46
00:02:38,600 --> 00:02:41,560
Speaker 1: up with dozens of theories. And part of what's both

47
00:02:41,760 --> 00:02:44,360
Speaker 1: exciting and frustrating about trying to write about it is

48
00:02:44,400 --> 00:02:47,880
Speaker 1: that there's very few that you can completely dismiss because

49
00:02:47,919 --> 00:02:54,440
Speaker 1: there's something there supported and what no one could deny

50
00:02:54,600 --> 00:02:57,959
Speaker 1: was that some fantastic works were created and there had

51
00:02:58,000 --> 00:03:02,000
Speaker 1: to be some fantastic reason that people did it. In

52
00:03:02,120 --> 00:03:05,640
Speaker 1: terms of settlers or visitors to the island, where did

53
00:03:05,680 --> 00:03:09,760
Speaker 1: they come from? All over the place? That area specifically

54
00:03:09,800 --> 00:03:14,480
Speaker 1: by the island was mostly a former British colonists. A

55
00:03:14,560 --> 00:03:18,880
Speaker 1: lot of them were immigrated there after the Revolutionary War

56
00:03:19,000 --> 00:03:22,840
Speaker 1: or shortly before they fought on the loyalist side the

57
00:03:22,880 --> 00:03:27,240
Speaker 1: British side, or they got land brands from the British

58
00:03:27,240 --> 00:03:29,919
Speaker 1: Crown and they were as a nearby town called Chester

59
00:03:30,080 --> 00:03:34,280
Speaker 1: where that was the first real settlement, but Oak Island

60
00:03:34,880 --> 00:03:38,000
Speaker 1: was gradually selection the British. The way the British did

61
00:03:38,040 --> 00:03:41,400
Speaker 1: everything in those days, they would just chop things up

62
00:03:41,400 --> 00:03:43,760
Speaker 1: in the most geometrical way, every piece of land they

63
00:03:43,760 --> 00:03:45,800
Speaker 1: came across, and they did the same with Oak Island.

64
00:03:46,080 --> 00:03:49,960
Speaker 1: They divided it up into four acre plots and you

65
00:03:50,000 --> 00:03:54,080
Speaker 1: could buy one of them if you could afford it,

66
00:03:54,120 --> 00:03:57,240
Speaker 1: and so I got o'greland was a series of plots

67
00:03:57,400 --> 00:04:02,280
Speaker 1: and people began to buy them up. And around the

68
00:04:02,320 --> 00:04:05,560
Speaker 1: time that these boys found the money there. What was

69
00:04:05,600 --> 00:04:10,240
Speaker 1: it that captured your attention and interest in Old Island? Well,

70
00:04:10,280 --> 00:04:12,480
Speaker 1: I mean, the discovery is that people made in that

71
00:04:12,520 --> 00:04:15,760
Speaker 1: fifty year period between about seventeen ninety five and eighteen

72
00:04:15,840 --> 00:04:19,640
Speaker 1: forty five just boggle the mind. And you know when

73
00:04:19,680 --> 00:04:25,800
Speaker 1: you realize, well, you just can't help but think somebody

74
00:04:26,160 --> 00:04:28,640
Speaker 1: had must have had some incredible reason for doing this.

75
00:04:28,800 --> 00:04:32,040
Speaker 1: What would motivate people because it's something that I mean,

76
00:04:32,120 --> 00:04:35,440
Speaker 1: one engineering company that was hired said it would take well,

77
00:04:35,480 --> 00:04:39,480
Speaker 1: it's about one hundred thousand hours man hours that went

78
00:04:39,520 --> 00:04:42,320
Speaker 1: into creating this, which means forty men could have done

79
00:04:42,320 --> 00:04:46,240
Speaker 1: it in a year. Motivated forty men to work per

80
00:04:46,400 --> 00:04:51,400
Speaker 1: year to create this in the sixteen seventeen, fifteenth century.

81
00:04:51,440 --> 00:04:55,760
Speaker 1: Who knows when it was. It must have been. They

82
00:04:55,800 --> 00:04:58,640
Speaker 1: must have had a very good reason. And you want

83
00:04:58,640 --> 00:05:00,880
Speaker 1: to find out what that reason is, or at least

84
00:05:02,000 --> 00:05:04,880
Speaker 1: what it might be. And part of it is, you know,

85
00:05:04,920 --> 00:05:07,720
Speaker 1: you start pulling on, you know, this or that loose end,

86
00:05:07,760 --> 00:05:10,800
Speaker 1: and it always seems to just keep coming. You know,

87
00:05:11,120 --> 00:05:13,800
Speaker 1: there's more and more and more, And to this day

88
00:05:13,800 --> 00:05:17,440
Speaker 1: has anything been discovered. Well, a lot of things have

89
00:05:17,520 --> 00:05:21,000
Speaker 1: been discovered, but but and some of them are quite amazing.

90
00:05:21,160 --> 00:05:25,960
Speaker 1: But but no final explanation, No, no great treasure has

91
00:05:25,960 --> 00:05:30,600
Speaker 1: been recovered. You know, no ultimate purpose has been revealed.

92
00:05:30,600 --> 00:05:33,200
Speaker 1: But there's enough they keep finding, enough to make you

93
00:05:33,240 --> 00:05:37,400
Speaker 1: think something's there. Even even last you know, some of

94
00:05:38,520 --> 00:05:40,320
Speaker 1: what the two brothers who are running the search now

95
00:05:40,400 --> 00:05:43,839
Speaker 1: found was fantastic. I mean they pulled up, you know,

96
00:05:43,880 --> 00:05:47,040
Speaker 1: pieces of human bodies from one hundred and ninety feet

97
00:05:47,080 --> 00:05:52,760
Speaker 1: below ground. And this cross that was buried under rock

98
00:05:52,920 --> 00:05:56,599
Speaker 1: that well, the only match to it comes from the

99
00:05:56,640 --> 00:05:59,239
Speaker 1: early thirteen hundreds in a prison where the Knights Templar

100
00:05:59,279 --> 00:06:02,640
Speaker 1: were held for their execution. I mean, yes, but there's

101
00:06:02,720 --> 00:06:04,800
Speaker 1: one thing after another like this and the end the

102
00:06:04,800 --> 00:06:11,760
Speaker 1: original works are just I mean, somebody did something absolutely

103
00:06:11,760 --> 00:06:14,479
Speaker 1: fantastic either to hide either to bury or and conceal

104
00:06:14,640 --> 00:06:17,840
Speaker 1: something or well that's the only possibility really is something

105
00:06:18,600 --> 00:06:23,360
Speaker 1: was being buried there. But what it was and why

106
00:06:23,440 --> 00:06:28,320
Speaker 1: they went to such extraordinary lengths to protected from discovery

107
00:06:28,440 --> 00:06:32,800
Speaker 1: is a mystery. Were these skeletons were they like dumped

108
00:06:32,800 --> 00:06:35,400
Speaker 1: into a hole or well, they don't know for sure.

109
00:06:35,440 --> 00:06:38,520
Speaker 1: They're being brought up with you know, they're drilling down

110
00:06:38,520 --> 00:06:40,880
Speaker 1: there or using caisons really to go down and so

111
00:06:40,920 --> 00:06:42,719
Speaker 1: they were just all they know is that they were

112
00:06:43,120 --> 00:06:47,280
Speaker 1: partial skeletons of two people, one of European origin and

113
00:06:47,360 --> 00:06:51,320
Speaker 1: the other of Middle Eastern origin, because that what you will,

114
00:06:51,400 --> 00:06:55,080
Speaker 1: it's another one of those Oh well, okay, adds to

115
00:06:55,120 --> 00:06:58,000
Speaker 1: the adds to the mystery. Doesn't that to the mystery?

116
00:06:58,320 --> 00:07:00,760
Speaker 1: And you know, I mean things I you know, I

117
00:07:00,760 --> 00:07:03,479
Speaker 1: mean in the book and all along when when I

118
00:07:03,520 --> 00:07:06,200
Speaker 1: was first dealing with the first the producers and then

119
00:07:06,240 --> 00:07:08,280
Speaker 1: the brothers when we came the brothers who run the search.

120
00:07:08,320 --> 00:07:10,720
Speaker 1: Now I was very resistant to this whole Night's templar

121
00:07:11,360 --> 00:07:14,080
Speaker 1: idea and that it was the you know, it might

122
00:07:14,120 --> 00:07:17,040
Speaker 1: be the ark of the Covenant that down there. It

123
00:07:17,080 --> 00:07:20,720
Speaker 1: was so fantastic. But then you know, last summer they

124
00:07:20,800 --> 00:07:25,120
Speaker 1: found this um cross. You know, it was across. It

125
00:07:25,200 --> 00:07:27,000
Speaker 1: was like a human figure across, made out of a

126
00:07:27,080 --> 00:07:30,440
Speaker 1: human figure, and it matched exactly the image that had

127
00:07:30,440 --> 00:07:33,520
Speaker 1: been drawn or scratched on a wall at the prison

128
00:07:33,680 --> 00:07:37,600
Speaker 1: Dom prison in France where the Templars were held. So

129
00:07:38,320 --> 00:07:41,200
Speaker 1: I thought, well, well that is unusual, and say, okay,

130
00:07:41,240 --> 00:07:44,640
Speaker 1: I dismissed the templar theory anymore. And when you wrote

131
00:07:44,640 --> 00:07:47,120
Speaker 1: the article for Rolling Stone back in two thousand and four,

132
00:07:47,200 --> 00:07:50,640
Speaker 1: did you get much response. Yeah, I mean, people loved

133
00:07:50,680 --> 00:07:53,560
Speaker 1: the story, but loved the mystery. But then everybody has

134
00:07:53,560 --> 00:07:55,800
Speaker 1: an idea about what it is, and I don't know

135
00:07:55,840 --> 00:07:57,560
Speaker 1: if it's part of it is. You know, people have

136
00:07:58,600 --> 00:08:02,040
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, sort of fascinations and they want

137
00:08:02,080 --> 00:08:05,960
Speaker 1: to apply it to that. But I mean it excited

138
00:08:06,000 --> 00:08:09,040
Speaker 1: people tremendously because people love to know and to learn

139
00:08:09,040 --> 00:08:11,800
Speaker 1: that there's something out there we don't really understand, we

140
00:08:11,840 --> 00:08:15,360
Speaker 1: don't really know about, but that somebody will eventually get

141
00:08:15,400 --> 00:08:17,560
Speaker 1: to the bottom, to literally get to the bottom, to

142
00:08:17,600 --> 00:08:20,400
Speaker 1: get down there and find out what it is. Listen

143
00:08:20,440 --> 00:08:23,560
Speaker 1: to more Coast to Coast AM every weeknight at one

144
00:08:23,600 --> 00:08:26,600
Speaker 1: am Eastern and go to coast to coast am dot

145
00:08:26,640 --> 00:08:27,400
Speaker 1: com for more