Speaker 1: M. Hey everybody, it's me Josh and for this week's
Speaker 1: s Y s K Select, I've chosen the Oak Island Mystery.
Speaker 1: It's one we've gotten requests to do for a long time,
Speaker 1: and even after we did it, we've still gotten requests
Speaker 1: to do it. So here it is again. It's a
Speaker 1: good one from two thousand fifteen. And as an added bonus,
Speaker 1: keep an ear out for a surprise cameo by a
Speaker 1: Globo de la muerte before we knew what it was
Speaker 1: called Enjoy. Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from house
Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and Jerry
Speaker 1: So this is stuff you should know. UD say, you're
Speaker 1: no Scotia accent? Uh no, no, sir? Well was that
Speaker 1: not just a howdy? It did some funny though. That
Speaker 1: was my Heath Hall version. We've talked about. You love
Speaker 1: that show, didn't you know? I never really watched it.
Speaker 1: I don't. Thinking of my other podcast Ghost, I didn't
Speaker 1: watch Haul much. Yeah, that's I did. I was from
Speaker 1: the South though, you know Toledo. The you all thought
Speaker 1: that was like yokol stuff. No, I mean like it
Speaker 1: was on every once in a while. I just passed by,
Speaker 1: you know what wasn't Mini Pearl. She had the hat
Speaker 1: with the price tag on. Still started and then there
Speaker 1: was like some guy with the banjo. I think, I
Speaker 1: think this is one of the most off requested shows
Speaker 1: Oak Island. Yeah, I've had a lot heard. I didn't
Speaker 1: really know much about it, but it seems like every
Speaker 1: other week someone saying, Oaka Island, guys, do Oak Island.
Speaker 1: We're gonna do Oka Island. We want everybody to be quiet,
Speaker 1: that's right, So that's what we're doing. Did you know
Speaker 1: much about this ahead of time? No, not at all.
Speaker 1: I did. It's one of those things like you hear
Speaker 1: about and you hear a little more and you don't
Speaker 1: really dig in. But so the whole thing is just
Speaker 1: kind of this neat legend that's kind of out there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know how I missed it. And then once
Speaker 1: you start digging in, you're like, yeah, I understand you
Speaker 1: say that with the skeptical tone. Well, I think this
Speaker 1: is one of those cases where there's no treasure. I
Speaker 1: don't know, there's some weirdness. There's some things that make
Speaker 1: me say this is very odd. But I also understand
Speaker 1: the skeptical point of view. So well, what I've just
Speaker 1: kind of demonstrated is a little bit of the middle
Speaker 1: of the road approach to Oak Island, which is unusual.
Speaker 1: Most people approach Oke Island either as true believe or
Speaker 1: treasure hunters or total skeptics. Like, there's not a lot
Speaker 1: of middle of the road. It's a divisive island as
Speaker 1: far as islands go. It's only like a hundred and
Speaker 1: something acres. It's not a big island. It's off the
Speaker 1: coast of Novas Gootia a hundred forty acres. Yeah that's
Speaker 1: not that's not big. Yeah, but for as small as
Speaker 1: it is, you know, it's pretty divisive. Yeah. I don't think. Uh,
Speaker 1: I don't see what the big deal about being skeptical
Speaker 1: about the I mean, a buried treasure. I mean, who cares. Oh,
Speaker 1: if you're a skeptic, you have to pooh pooh everything. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: anything that's even remotely frivolous has to be squashed. But
Speaker 1: this isn't even like supernatural or anything. It's just I mean,
Speaker 1: I guess there's the curse thing. Yeah, that's that's all.
Speaker 1: That's all TV. That's not even lower from what I
Speaker 1: understand that new it's like literally just a media creation,
Speaker 1: like strictly from the TV show that before that. I mean,
Speaker 1: like people didn't really see it as a curse. There's
Speaker 1: just buried treasure on Oak Island. Yeah, and if it's
Speaker 1: the eighteen hundreds and you're digging for things, there's a
Speaker 1: good chance he might die. Yeah, it's dangerous, it is mean,
Speaker 1: it's cursed. I read this really great article written in
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty five by Mildred rest All, Yeah, from the
Speaker 1: New York Times. No, this was in like Ottawa magazine
Speaker 1: and it was written by her. Yeah, I read one.
Speaker 1: It might have been the same one. I wonder it
Speaker 1: was like within a very short time of her husband
Speaker 1: and sun dying. I thought, wow, these ladies really composed.
Speaker 1: But then I read a little further and found out
Speaker 1: that Mildred rest All and her husband, Robert, who moved
Speaker 1: their family to Oak Island so Robert could hunt for
Speaker 1: the treasure in nineteen fifty nine. I think um started out.
Speaker 1: They met because they were both circus performers with nerves
Speaker 1: of steel who rode motorcycles in a huge globe sphere. Well,
Speaker 1: he would go like upside down and she would go
Speaker 1: side to side and they would miss each other hundreds
Speaker 1: of times in an act. And now after that, I
Speaker 1: was like, oh, yeah, this lady, she's tough as nails. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you never seen one of those acts. I just didn't
Speaker 1: realize that that's what they did, got you, Yeah, and
Speaker 1: that it seems kind of odd to have that. I
Speaker 1: thought it was a newer act from No, it's totally fifties.
Speaker 1: Screams fifties really, Yeah, see I thought it screened seventies.
Speaker 1: Oh it does too, Yeah, you're right, sure, Yeah, evil kine,
Speaker 1: Evil is why that screams that? All right, So let's
Speaker 1: dive in here. Ah well, yeah, the rest dolls. When
Speaker 1: they moved to nineteen fifty nine, they were hardly the
Speaker 1: first people that moved to Oak Island and set up
Speaker 1: residents there in order to find the treasure. But prior
Speaker 1: to seventeen um, Oak Island was just another island. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's still just another island. Well, just because of all
Speaker 1: of the attention that's been paid to it. It's not
Speaker 1: it's no longer. It's been changed forever. Prior to sev though,
Speaker 1: it was just like whatever, there's Oak Island until a
Speaker 1: local kid from Nova Scotia named Robert McGinnis Daniel McGinnis sorry, um,
Speaker 1: decided to go explore. Yeah, and this, Um, you won't
Speaker 1: find any two people that agree on these uh legend stories,
Speaker 1: even with Daniel McKennis, because it's you know, none of
Speaker 1: the stuff was really written down until much later. Nothing
Speaker 1: was written down in seving was documented until like the
Speaker 1: nineteen hundred well Sir Star Trek came along. Certainly things
Speaker 1: like this weren't documented, um because he was just a boy.
Speaker 1: He was sixteen years old. Uh, he was on a
Speaker 1: fishing expedition. And as the story goes, and we'll just
Speaker 1: use the most commonly agreed upon story here, he was, Um,
Speaker 1: he was just kind of traps around the island and
Speaker 1: found uh, like a block from a pulley attached to
Speaker 1: a tree, an oak tree, and then a big sort
Speaker 1: of cleared out area underneath it where it looked like, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, someone had maybe been digging and rebar ing something. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's like a depression under this block tackle block from
Speaker 1: a pulley. Yeah, it was just cleared out. And he
Speaker 1: was like, huh but jennything, there's a pirates As you're
Speaker 1: down there. Yeah, I mean, being a teenager, he was like,
Speaker 1: there's yeah, pirates all are are all over the place. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's entirely possible. We're talking the eighteenth century. We're
Speaker 1: talking a time when piracy was still very much in
Speaker 1: the public imagination. Bury treasure was a hot thing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, there is such a thing. And at the
Speaker 1: very least if no one, if no single pirate ever
Speaker 1: buried his treasure, there is a lot of rumor about
Speaker 1: buried treasure of pirates. I think it makes total sense.
Speaker 1: You know that you can't carry that stuff around all
Speaker 1: the time because you get robbed and looted. So you,
Speaker 1: you know, bury that junk, come back for it later. Right,
Speaker 1: make a weird, funny looking map that looks like a
Speaker 1: sweaty pillow case, and um, put a big X in
Speaker 1: the middle of it. So and then put that in
Speaker 1: a coffee can and then bury that in your backyard.
Speaker 1: That's right, you got to bury twice because it's so nice.
Speaker 1: That's the pirates. Can you say it like a pirate? No,
Speaker 1: I didn't not need he would do that. Um, all right,
Speaker 1: So he starts digging. He's his interest is peaked. He
Speaker 1: gets a couple of friends comes back the next day. Uh,
Speaker 1: Anthony Vaughan and John Smith and um, it's a pseudonym,
Speaker 1: you think. Uh. And so they start digging, reportedly go
Speaker 1: down about ten feet and found a layer of like
Speaker 1: a platform of oak logs. Yeah, which is you're not
Speaker 1: supposed to find that when you dig into a hole
Speaker 1: under a pulley. No, you're not supposed to it's no worthy.
Speaker 1: First they found a stone that they took to be
Speaker 1: man made, like two ft down, and then ten feet
Speaker 1: down they found an oak platform, and then supposedly every
Speaker 1: ten feet after that, Uh, they kept finding these platforms. Um,
Speaker 1: and we'll just go ahead and call this the money pit.
Speaker 1: What's what everyone calls it? Yeah, this main location is
Speaker 1: the money pit because just the first oak platform alone
Speaker 1: says there's treasure buried here. That's right. Uh. So basically
Speaker 1: they they got down as far as they could for
Speaker 1: three teenage boys with picks and shovels, and said, uh,
Speaker 1: this this isn't We're not finding anything, and where we
Speaker 1: need help? Basically, Yeah, we need to bring in some
Speaker 1: old timey equipment. Yeah, Bigger tools, gets some old timey
Speaker 1: funding and maybe get some old timey other people involved
Speaker 1: and they did, but it took like nine years before
Speaker 1: they came back I think yeah. And they filled it
Speaker 1: back in because they didn't just want to leave a
Speaker 1: big empty hole there. It's an obvious sign that there's
Speaker 1: a treasure there. So, like you said, nine hours later,
Speaker 1: they did come back, um with investors. Nine years later.
Speaker 1: What say ours? No? I said years. I will bet
Speaker 1: you all the money on Oak Island that you said ours? Uh.
Speaker 1: At any rate, it was nine years and they came
Speaker 1: back and formed with some funding from the Onslow Company. Um,
Speaker 1: and that'll be a common refrain here. Uh. And apparently
Speaker 1: I did some writing on modern treasure hunting and it's
Speaker 1: all about the funding you. Oh, it's it's just like
Speaker 1: any business. You. These dudes have boats and equipment, but
Speaker 1: they're like, if you want a piece of this action,
Speaker 1: we need some dough out there and find the stuff.
Speaker 1: It's like selling future contracts. Yeah, yeah, a potential treasure exactly.
Speaker 1: And it's not just treasure hunting that does that. Like
Speaker 1: lots of archaeological expeditions are funded like that. If if
Speaker 1: your local universities, like we got enough problems as it is,
Speaker 1: we can't find your dig, you can go to private investors,
Speaker 1: who ultimately it's still treasure hunting, it's just churched up
Speaker 1: church Don called archaeological things. So they come back as
Speaker 1: the on Slough Company and dig down deeper this time,
Speaker 1: and they did find some interesting things, notably h things
Speaker 1: that shouldn't be there, like coconut fiber and charcoal and
Speaker 1: putty and coconuts obviously not native to Nova Scotia. So
Speaker 1: they're like, someone has put something down here. Well yeah,
Speaker 1: also at the time, um, coconut fiber was used as
Speaker 1: a packing material though, so clearly somebody was using it
Speaker 1: as as some sort of construction material. Wasn't accidentally dropped
Speaker 1: there there? Yeah, that's right. Um, So a legend has
Speaker 1: it they dug down until they hit ninety ft and
Speaker 1: then found a flat stone with a coded inscription that
Speaker 1: they could not make sense of. Uh. Since then, other
Speaker 1: people have supposedly translated it to read forty ft below
Speaker 1: two million pounds are buried. Um, there's no stone today,
Speaker 1: there's no rubbing, there is no photograph. No, it's called
Speaker 1: the famous Cipher Stone. Yeah, and it was supposedly lost
Speaker 1: in like but yeah, there's no evidence. Yeah, and so
Speaker 1: anything you run across like in a book or on
Speaker 1: the web or something is conjecture. No, there's no document
Speaker 1: of this cipher stone, but they do think that something
Speaker 1: that accounts for the cipherstone did exist at point, but
Speaker 1: no one knows for certain exactly what it said. And
Speaker 1: if you're wondering two million pounds of what I assumed
Speaker 1: that they made British currency, Yeah, that would be funny
Speaker 1: though it was just like two million pounds of pirates
Speaker 1: scat coconut husks. Uh. So they get down to about
Speaker 1: close to a hundred feet and then go home for
Speaker 1: the day and and drink rum, I would imagine, and
Speaker 1: then come back and it's full of water. And they
Speaker 1: tried to bail it out, but they were basically like,
Speaker 1: this is you know seven, well, I guess this point
Speaker 1: it was the eighteen hundreds or eighteen hundreds, but we're
Speaker 1: still screwed, right. So the Robert McGinnis and what was
Speaker 1: the name of the company came back with a company
Speaker 1: company what what you just described as the process that
Speaker 1: people have followed in the troubles that people have run
Speaker 1: into in the every every ever since. And we'll talk
Speaker 1: about some of the following expeditions because mcguinness's troubles. Didn't
Speaker 1: put anybody else off after this, Okay, so Chuck, something
Speaker 1: really weird happened to the McGinnis expedition, the second one,
Speaker 1: when he grew up became a man, came back with
Speaker 1: the Onslow company and dug down became a man. They
Speaker 1: went to bed after drinking a bunch of them, like
Speaker 1: you said, and then they woke up and the pit
Speaker 1: had filled with water. And it's basically been filled with
Speaker 1: water ever since. Yeah, which is a problem if you're
Speaker 1: a treasure hunter. You want dry conditions as much as
Speaker 1: possible to get to the treacher. Water is an impediment, um.
Speaker 1: And it became such an impediment that ultimately McGinnis and
Speaker 1: on the Onslow company just kind of gave up. I
Speaker 1: guess they ran out of funding, right, Yeah, which has
Speaker 1: also been a refrain over the years. You can only
Speaker 1: dig so long until the person eventually who's funding he says,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna pull the plug. But years later, Um, a
Speaker 1: question was raised about that flooding. People started to wonder
Speaker 1: was that actually an engineered booby trap? Right? And that's
Speaker 1: become a question among treasure hunters for centuries on. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Of course the skeptics will say, no, it is just
Speaker 1: uh seawater, because later they found out that it was
Speaker 1: actually saltwater UH. And there are other similar underground water
Speaker 1: tunnels on the island. So they're like, no, this is
Speaker 1: just going on on this island. And and the believers
Speaker 1: will say no, it was a booby trap set by
Speaker 1: the pirates. But the believers in this case have a
Speaker 1: kind of strange evidence UM to back up their ideas.
Speaker 1: So in eighteen forty nine, after the mcguinnis expedition, the
Speaker 1: second one left many years after UM, the Truro company,
Speaker 1: which is and it's tough to say, they showed up
Speaker 1: to the island to look for the money pit, and
Speaker 1: they started digging again, right And when they started digging,
Speaker 1: they ran into the same problem. There the shaft that
Speaker 1: they dug filled with water. So they started to think,
Speaker 1: we'll wait a minute, maybe this is purposeful at the
Speaker 1: very least, maybe there's some sort of sea caves. And
Speaker 1: if there's sea caves that are filling this thing up,
Speaker 1: potentially we could stop up the sea caves and then
Speaker 1: we can avoid the water problem and keep digging. So
Speaker 1: they sent people from the expedition to look all over
Speaker 1: the shoreline of the island and they found something really
Speaker 1: astounding that, from what I understand still to this day,
Speaker 1: is the one thing that confounds all skeptics when it
Speaker 1: comes to Oak Island. They found what can really only
Speaker 1: be described as a man made drainage system that basically
Speaker 1: accepts the incoming tide and potentially funnels the tied to
Speaker 1: the money pit. Yeah. So you know, they continue to
Speaker 1: dig and drill because they were encouraged by finding like
Speaker 1: things they said were metal or maybe even gold on
Speaker 1: the Augur's um and even more coconut husk. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: they were like, there's something down there, but they, like
Speaker 1: you said, it kept flooding and that this is when
Speaker 1: they realized it was seawater and they noticed, hey, it's
Speaker 1: actually filling up and and falling back down with along
Speaker 1: with the tides. So that's when they built a temporary
Speaker 1: Coffer dam to kind of see what was going on.
Speaker 1: And that's when they found this five finger drain and uh,
Speaker 1: which yeah, there's really no explanation that didn't just accidentally happen. No,
Speaker 1: And what gives it away is it's um. It's a
Speaker 1: hundred and forty five ft wide, and it's about the
Speaker 1: height of high the difference between high tide and low tide,
Speaker 1: so it's clearly meant to funnel the tied into this drain. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's five drains. They're obviously finger drains. Finger drains are
Speaker 1: like French drains basically, and they all connect into one
Speaker 1: larger drain. But the real dead giveaway was the appearance
Speaker 1: again of coconut fiber. Coconut fiber was used to keep
Speaker 1: the sand out of the stone drain um, and a
Speaker 1: layer of coconut fiber on an island off of the
Speaker 1: coast of Nova Scotia suggests man's intervention. That's right, but
Speaker 1: what that means who knows. Again, treasure seekers will say
Speaker 1: that they put this to uh keep you from finding
Speaker 1: that treasure. Right, it was evidence in favor of the
Speaker 1: idea that the money pit is booby trapped. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: I think skeptics will say that the I think there
Speaker 1: was a theory that there was a lot of weird
Speaker 1: freemason uh rituals going on, and maybe they buried some
Speaker 1: stuff there and not treasure necessarily, but um, maybe they
Speaker 1: built this drain to keep people from digging into their Yeah,
Speaker 1: modern treasure hunters are like great, let me find whatever
Speaker 1: the Mason's buried. Yeah, you know, even if it's not
Speaker 1: gold ingots could be like, you know, the Secrets of
Speaker 1: the Freemasons, or yeah, the Ark of the Covenant. Yeah right,
Speaker 1: they said that could be down there, or the Holy Grail.
Speaker 1: You want to talk about some of the legends of
Speaker 1: what's down there as well? Okay, So, um, the the
Speaker 1: the predominant one that Robert McGinnis initially thought of was
Speaker 1: that it was pirate treasure because he was a teenager
Speaker 1: in the seventeen nineties, right. Um. Successive people have come
Speaker 1: to see the money pit if it is sabotaged like
Speaker 1: it is, and the the construction that went into it
Speaker 1: is something that would have had to have been carried
Speaker 1: out by a group more sophisticated and better funded and
Speaker 1: better organized than Captain Kidd's crew, more sober at the
Speaker 1: very least. Yeah, exactly. So one of the rumors of
Speaker 1: what treasure is buried down there is that the Freemasons
Speaker 1: buried something, or the Knights Templar buried something, because the
Speaker 1: Knights Templar, you know, they were like the militant arm
Speaker 1: of fundamental Christianity in like the the tenth century during
Speaker 1: pilgrim images a k. The Crusades to the Middle East, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: so that means they got a lot of dough over
Speaker 1: the years they accumulated great wealth, had a big um
Speaker 1: falling out with the Catholic Church of course. Yes, supposedly
Speaker 1: they were found worshiping Baffa met the goat headed yeah,
Speaker 1: breasted Satan and that that's sort of like the statue, right,
Speaker 1: and it's exactly like the statue Oklahoma. Yeah, the one
Speaker 1: that's being constructed by the Satanic Temple right now. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I put that on our Facebook page. It was very divisive.
Speaker 1: I can imagine, no surprise. Um, I thought it was
Speaker 1: just a nice, cool looking piece of art. I mean, man,
Speaker 1: it's pretty well done. Yeah, it looks look nice. Um.
Speaker 1: So yeah, so the Knights Templer has all this dough.
Speaker 1: They have a falling out with the Catholic Church for
Speaker 1: obvious reasons that you just pointed out, and then they
Speaker 1: buried their treasure, so I guess the Catholic Church wouldn't
Speaker 1: get their hands on it, right. But among that treasures
Speaker 1: supposedly is the Holy Grail, which is what um the
Speaker 1: night we're looking for in Monty Python and the Holy
Speaker 1: Grail and the Ark of the Covenant, which is what
Speaker 1: Indiana Jones is looking for in Indiana Jones and and uh,
Speaker 1: no raiders have lost ark um. And so some people
Speaker 1: have said, this is where the Knights Templar buried their treasure,
Speaker 1: this is where the Ark of the Covenant is. And
Speaker 1: then other people have said, whatever, the Knights Templar never
Speaker 1: made it to Nova Scotia. But the Freemasons obviously took
Speaker 1: over the secrets and protections of the Knights Templar. They're
Speaker 1: like the modern day Knights Templar society. And uh, they
Speaker 1: probably buried the arc and or the Holy Grail. Duh. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And apparently a lot of um Masons have been on
Speaker 1: these excavation teams over the years, which of course is
Speaker 1: evidence that they're looking for their their old stuff, right
Speaker 1: or I mean, it also is entirely possible that there
Speaker 1: is a rumor among Masons that this is true. Whether
Speaker 1: it's true or not, that could have gotten some Masonic
Speaker 1: adventures to go. Look. You know, another theory um that's
Speaker 1: been thrown out there is that um Marie Antoinette uh,
Speaker 1: during the French Revolution said got all her jewelry together
Speaker 1: and gave it to a woman and said flee, and
Speaker 1: she fled to Nova Scotia, and then the French navy
Speaker 1: came along and constructed this elaborate system to bury her jewels.
Speaker 1: There's another little, uh possible theory, and supposedly evidence that
Speaker 1: backs that up is that the woman who was given
Speaker 1: the jewels, who was entrusted with the jewels, was spotted
Speaker 1: in Nova Scotia some time after that. What was she
Speaker 1: doing there burying jewels? Another unusual Nova Scotia link is
Speaker 1: um that of Francis Bacon. Yeah, I like this one.
Speaker 1: So remember Francis Bacon from the scientific Method. He was
Speaker 1: the guy that really first put that down in written form.
Speaker 1: Brilliant man. Possibly Shakespeare. That's one of the theories is
Speaker 1: that he was the real Shakespeare. And the idea is
Speaker 1: that that he hid his manuscripts in the money pit
Speaker 1: on Oak Island. And that seems kind of far fetched,
Speaker 1: but apparently Francis Bacon owned land in Nova Scotia. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and um, he was a preserver of things in mercury
Speaker 1: and supposedly they found flasks of mercury on the island. Um.
Speaker 1: I don't buy that one because I've always believed that
Speaker 1: Shakespeare was Shakespeare and not Francis Bacon or his sister
Speaker 1: or in the other various uh crack pot theories about
Speaker 1: who really wrote that stuff. I like Francis Bacon and Shakespeare,
Speaker 1: you know, yeah, yeah, just the thought of it, or like,
Speaker 1: do you think the evidence is Uh, I don't know
Speaker 1: about the evidence. I don't know enough about it, but
Speaker 1: I like the thought of it. He seems like a
Speaker 1: pretty cool dude. Uh. So some of the other um
Speaker 1: treasure hunters started flocking there in the mid to late
Speaker 1: eighteen hundreds because that was just a big time for
Speaker 1: treasure hunting. Yeah. Well, the California gold Rush was going
Speaker 1: on in eighte This is why the forty Niners are
Speaker 1: called that. That's right, And uh, I think there's kind
Speaker 1: of a treasure fever, yeah, going through the land. That's
Speaker 1: a good way to say it. So, um, the Eldorado
Speaker 1: Company in eighteen sixty six went out there, and they
Speaker 1: there were various methods over the years to try and
Speaker 1: block off the flow of water. They tried digging shafts
Speaker 1: and tunnels, They tried to divert it, they tried to
Speaker 1: intercept it um and basically all that ended up doing
Speaker 1: was causing a nightmare for future expeditions, to the point
Speaker 1: where people had had had a hard time even finding
Speaker 1: the original money bit to begin with. Right, A lot
Speaker 1: of the um, A lot of the landmarks, I guess
Speaker 1: you'd call them, we're just utterly destroyed. Yeah, supposedly. In
Speaker 1: that article I read from um Mrs Restall, she said
Speaker 1: that there's no there weren't any more oaks on Oak
Speaker 1: Island any longer. Oh, no more coak trees, yeah, which
Speaker 1: because of excavation just tore them all down. Yeah, So
Speaker 1: it would be very tough to find your way around
Speaker 1: if whatever directions were written at a time when there
Speaker 1: were plenty of oak trees and used oak trees as guides,
Speaker 1: you know, like go to this oak tree and turn left.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah yeah. So um yeah, the excavation has definitely
Speaker 1: changed the face of that island tremendously. Uh. One thing
Speaker 1: we do have that is tangible, um as far as
Speaker 1: I don't know if you call it evidence or not,
Speaker 1: because it really doesn't say much. But Frederick Blair in
Speaker 1: eight nine, in the eighteen nineties came with the Oak
Speaker 1: Island Treasure Company and he actually found something that still exists.
Speaker 1: It's a little bitty tiny piece of parchment paper and
Speaker 1: it looks like a curse of letters. V I are
Speaker 1: on it, but I mean it's small, and it really
Speaker 1: leads to nothing other than something man made, is there?
Speaker 1: V I? You know, I don't think anyone's any conjecture
Speaker 1: about what that means. Six maybe six billion pounds buried,
Speaker 1: set down right, Um. And then the twentieth century has seen,
Speaker 1: or saw since we're in the twenty first century now,
Speaker 1: successive waves, pretty constant waves of people coming looking for
Speaker 1: the Oak Island treasure. UM. One of them was a
Speaker 1: young Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who also was a mason. H
Speaker 1: He came along as an investor, and apparently UM always
Speaker 1: pine to go back to Oak Island to search for
Speaker 1: the treasure, like it got in his blood. All right.
Speaker 1: So after this message break, we are going to look
Speaker 1: at a few more of the things that have been
Speaker 1: discovered there over the years and what this all means.
Speaker 1: So Chuck I was saying, the twentieth century saw a
Speaker 1: wave after a wave of treasure hunter come dig and
Speaker 1: then leave penniless. One of those people though that, and
Speaker 1: we also talked about how Oak Island has been utterly changed.
Speaker 1: Probably nobody changed the topography and geography of Oak Island
Speaker 1: more than a guy named Robert Dunfield, who was an
Speaker 1: engineer I believe, or no a geologist. In in in nine
Speaker 1: he built a bridge a highway, yeah, from the mainland
Speaker 1: to Oak Island. And right after he did that, right
Speaker 1: after it was completed, he started moving heavy equipment in
Speaker 1: and just started digging like crazy. Yeah. He got down
Speaker 1: a hundred feet I'm sorry, a hundred and forty ft
Speaker 1: down a hundred feet wide. And uh kept everything a
Speaker 1: secret until two thousand three, and didn't They didn't find
Speaker 1: a lot. They found some porcelain dishware from the six undreds,
Speaker 1: which is you know, what was that doing? There could
Speaker 1: find for sure the early UM. But he of course
Speaker 1: didn't find a lot either, ultimately in the way of
Speaker 1: riches because UM, he kept having problems despite his machinery
Speaker 1: with collapsing UH, caves, heavy rains, more tide, water and um.
Speaker 1: But he did say there was a cavern under some limestone.
Speaker 1: He did confirm one of these underwater caverns, supposedly, Yeah,
Speaker 1: which accounts for potentially a natural formation. If you're a skeptic,
Speaker 1: if you're a believer, then it just confirms the booby
Speaker 1: trap thing. Um. He uh finally left after basically he
Speaker 1: was the guy who demolished the most landmarks. Um. But
Speaker 1: shortly after he left, a pair of guys who formed
Speaker 1: what's called the Triton Alliance. Uh, David Tobias and Dan
Speaker 1: blanket Ship. Uh. They started working and they actually brought
Speaker 1: along some high tech stuff in nineteen seventy, which was
Speaker 1: like underwater camera, video camera. It's probably the size of
Speaker 1: a small car, right, that they lowered down there, and uh,
Speaker 1: they well, they drilled the hole and they called it
Speaker 1: bore Hole ten X, and they it was filled with water,
Speaker 1: of course, as all holes in Oak Island do. But
Speaker 1: they lowered this underwater camera down there, and they swore
Speaker 1: to God that they saw evidence of human remains and
Speaker 1: treasure tests. That's what they said. They whether you're convinced
Speaker 1: or not, Um, Tobias and Blanketship were convinced enough that
Speaker 1: to no, Blanketship still lives on Oak Island. Yeah, he
Speaker 1: he became sort of the uh, the main guy that
Speaker 1: remains today as the main guy. And this is n
Speaker 1: seventy when they showed up. He's still on that island
Speaker 1: and he's supposedly he's oh yeah, yeah, he's pretty easy old. No,
Speaker 1: but it was the nineteen seventies when they showed up
Speaker 1: and he still lives there. Now, that's what I'm saying
Speaker 1: he is. He's an old feller. We hammered that out.
Speaker 1: He's apparently an ordinary feller. Two because there was another
Speaker 1: guy named Fred Nolan, who is a famous Oak Island explorer.
Speaker 1: Um who Well, they ran a foul of one another, apparently, Um.
Speaker 1: Blanketship had a rifle obviously in his hand during the argument,
Speaker 1: and the cops had to come out and take the
Speaker 1: rifle away. Really yeah, and supposedly now nobody is allowed
Speaker 1: on Oak Island, although I guess there you can if
Speaker 1: you're filming a TV show. Um, except for Dan Blanketship,
Speaker 1: who's the only resident. Well he's a part of the
Speaker 1: TV show. Okay, So he was like, come on, um, yeah,
Speaker 1: what's that history channel? I think I don't know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a couple of the people that he's working with today,
Speaker 1: uh Rick and Marty Lagina. Um I think are brothers
Speaker 1: from Michigan, and they are the subject to the TV show,
Speaker 1: which you'll have to check out at some point. Um.
Speaker 1: But that's supposedly where the curse came from. Is that show?
Speaker 1: Oh where had that? Really? Yeah? I did not know that,
Speaker 1: So it's it's been a present since last year, right um.
Speaker 1: Frederick Nolan also is the one who discovered um five
Speaker 1: large cone shaped boulders that when you look at it above,
Speaker 1: looks like a cross, and it's forever known as Nolan's Cross.
Speaker 1: What does it mean? Who knows? Maybe the boulders were
Speaker 1: just sort of a in the shape of a cross
Speaker 1: by accident, but well, Fred Nolan bought five plots of
Speaker 1: land bottom, so he was a resident there, an inhabitant
Speaker 1: there too. I'm not sure what happened Old Fred Nolan though, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm not sure. It's a good point. He may have
Speaker 1: been lost to the curse of Oak Island. So we
Speaker 1: we keep using like present tense, like it's a it's
Speaker 1: entirely true. Does anyone with History Channel knows there's still
Speaker 1: people who are looking actively for the treasure of Oak Island? Right? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Like they believe that if you put all the evidence together,
Speaker 1: no one's crossed coconut fibers, the finger drains, um, the
Speaker 1: evidence from Blanketship and Tobias, their video of stuff like
Speaker 1: if you put all this together, there is evidence that
Speaker 1: there is treasure down there. Somebody just needs to dig
Speaker 1: deep enough in the right place and then bam, they're
Speaker 1: gonna find it. Right Yeah, I mean, man, it's they've
Speaker 1: dug so deep though, and so wide. How how much
Speaker 1: deeper could they have gone back in the pirate days?
Speaker 1: You know, I don't know. It just seems very unlikely
Speaker 1: to me there's any treasure there. Well, then you would
Speaker 1: be in the skeptics camp, and you would definitely not
Speaker 1: be alone. Uh yeah, but skeptic thinking there may have
Speaker 1: been something buried or some weird thing going on there,
Speaker 1: But I don't know about treasure. Who knows though. Uh.
Speaker 1: Skeptics will also say these are natural sinkholes, uh, instead
Speaker 1: of traps like we said earlier. Um. They will also
Speaker 1: say things like, you know, there's all kinds of underground
Speaker 1: caverns around here, there's nothing special. I don't know what
Speaker 1: they say about finding things like porcelain plates. I didn't
Speaker 1: see anything like that. But you know, when he when
Speaker 1: the stone has lost this inscripted stone. Um, when there's
Speaker 1: no evidence really to point to except this tiny piece
Speaker 1: of parchment paper, Like I don't know, it's pretty flimsy. Well,
Speaker 1: none of the excavations started to be documented until the
Speaker 1: nineteenth century, So all of mcguinness's early work is all
Speaker 1: based on hearsaying conjecture. It's all up for debate. Whether
Speaker 1: he was a teenager. Um was the block the tackle
Speaker 1: block for the pulley? Yea, was that added to the
Speaker 1: story later on? Um? If so, then all of a
Speaker 1: sudden that that depression under the tree branch just becomes
Speaker 1: a depression under a tree branch. You know. The pulley
Speaker 1: was the thing. It's it's excuse my physics joke, but
Speaker 1: the full crumb of this whole thing, you know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so um, if you if you start to look at
Speaker 1: it on its face, all of this legend, you realize
Speaker 1: that most of it is just legend, and that the
Speaker 1: only real physical evidence is that scrap of parchment paper
Speaker 1: that no one even knows whether that was planted or not. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's That's one of the things skeptics often say, is
Speaker 1: that anything you found there is could have been planted
Speaker 1: just to get money to fund the digs. Like look,
Speaker 1: we found this, uh, this parchment and this porcelain plate,
Speaker 1: and there's some gold dust on our auger did we
Speaker 1: mention the coconut fiber and the coconut fiber again? Right,
Speaker 1: so send us another like I don't know, tin mill, Yeah,
Speaker 1: and we'll keep digging, right, So, uh, there you have
Speaker 1: it again. Though, those those finger trains are just weird. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's weird for sure. It's cool. What who did what
Speaker 1: they're Yeah? Basically they just need to like strip mine
Speaker 1: the entire island all the way down there. You know.
Speaker 1: I don't know why anyone. I haven't thought of that yet. Yeah,
Speaker 1: just completely strip it of all its natural beauty until
Speaker 1: it's nothing left and to destrug your shoulders afterwards, say
Speaker 1: there's nothing here, right, Yeah? Go man. If you want
Speaker 1: to know more about Oak Island, apparently you can watch
Speaker 1: a weekly television show on it. You can also type
Speaker 1: oak Island into the search part how stuff works. And
Speaker 1: since I said search parts, time for listener mail. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna call this poison ivy follow up from JB. Guys
Speaker 1: have an interesting story about how you can get poison
Speaker 1: ivy from more than just touching it. When I was
Speaker 1: eight or so, we lived in California, had a big fireplace.
Speaker 1: One day we decided to get our own firewood from
Speaker 1: outside and got a couple of big logs my sister.
Speaker 1: We were both about seven at the time. Uh we
Speaker 1: She and I used the fire to rose marshmallows and
Speaker 1: mixed mors. Great night. Right an hour or so later,
Speaker 1: one of my sisters came into my parents room saying
Speaker 1: she couldn't breathe. Her face had swollen to twice its
Speaker 1: normal size, and her eyes were shut. Her throat was
Speaker 1: barely able to pass air through it. An emergency room
Speaker 1: trip and a shot or to the steroids later, she
Speaker 1: was okay, but it took a while to find out
Speaker 1: what happened. Apparently the poison ivy had been removed from
Speaker 1: the logs we got, but the SAP was stole in
Speaker 1: the wood, and when we burned them, the SAP was
Speaker 1: present in the smoke, and my sister was highly allergic
Speaker 1: and hailed it, got it in her throat and lungs,
Speaker 1: and it blew up her face like a red balloon.
Speaker 1: Best side note of this, we had passport photos. The
Speaker 1: next day we were moving to Germany, so her passport
Speaker 1: pick was a giant, red swollen balloon face and that
Speaker 1: is JB and Fort So, Oklahoma. Way to go. JB.
Speaker 1: That was a good story. You get the blue ribbon
Speaker 1: for it. And I guess she had that passport photo
Speaker 1: for a full decade unless you just had it retaken.
Speaker 1: Would you would you live with that passport photo? I
Speaker 1: totally what. I think it would be funny except for
Speaker 1: the whole You know, this doesn't look like you think
Speaker 1: that'd be a drag. It would be a huge drag.
Speaker 1: T s A like the hassle. Yeah, but I'm I'm
Speaker 1: well known in my family for making funny faces. Anytime
Speaker 1: I have a photo idea of any kind taken just
Speaker 1: for fun, I've always done it. That is so fun.
Speaker 1: Family likes it. Ah, you got anything else? Nope? Okay,
Speaker 1: Well thanks again for the awesome story, JB. If you
Speaker 1: have a great story, you can tweet to us at
Speaker 1: s Y s K Podcast. You can post it on
Speaker 1: our Facebook page at Facebook dot com, slash stuff you
Speaker 1: Should Know. You can put it in an email and
Speaker 1: send it to Stuff Podcast at how stuff works dot com.
Speaker 1: And in the meantime, while you're waiting around thinking of
Speaker 1: what to say, go hang out at our home on
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