Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from the house stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot Com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Speaker 1: Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and Jerry So
Speaker 1: this is Stuff you should Know. Oh d, so you're
Speaker 1: Nova Scotia accent. Uh no, no, sir, what was that?
Speaker 1: Just a howdy? Okay? It did sound funny though. That
Speaker 1: was my Heath Hall version. We 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 you how much? Yeah I did. I was from
Speaker 1: the South to Toledo. Do you I thought that was
Speaker 1: like yocol stuff? No, I mean like it was on
Speaker 1: every once in a while. I just passed by. You
Speaker 1: know what, wasn't Mini Pearl? She had the hat with
Speaker 1: the price tag on. Still that's all anyone started there.
Speaker 1: And then there's like some guy with the angel I think.
Speaker 1: I think that's 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's saying Oka 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: It's one of those things like you hear about and
Speaker 1: you hear a little more and you don't really dig in.
Speaker 1: But so the whole thing is just kind of this
Speaker 1: neat legend that's kind of out there. Yeah, I don't
Speaker 1: know how I missed it. And then once you start
Speaker 1: digging and you're like, uh, I understand you say that
Speaker 1: with the skeptical tone. Well, I think this is one
Speaker 1: of those cases where there's no treasure. I don't know,
Speaker 1: there's some weirdness, there's some things that make me say
Speaker 1: this is very odd, but I also understand the skeptical
Speaker 1: point of view. So well, what I've just kind of
Speaker 1: demonstrated is a little bit of the middle of the
Speaker 1: road approach to Oak Island, which is unusual. Most people
Speaker 1: approach Oake Island either as true believe or treasure hunters
Speaker 1: or total skeptics. Like, there's not a lot of middle
Speaker 1: of the road. It's a divisive island as far as
Speaker 1: islands go. It's only like a hundred and something acres.
Speaker 1: It's not a big island. It's off the coast of
Speaker 1: Nova Scotia. Hundred forty acres. That's not that's not big. Yeah,
Speaker 1: But for as small as it is, you know, it's
Speaker 1: pretty divisive. Yeah. I don't think. Uh, I don't see
Speaker 1: what the big deal about being skeptical about the I
Speaker 1: mean a very treasure. I mean, who cares. Oh, if
Speaker 1: you're a skeptic, you have to poop 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'd
Speaker 1: stand up 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. I read
Speaker 1: this really great article written in nineteen sixty five by
Speaker 1: Mildred rest All. Yeah, read from the New York Times.
Speaker 1: No This was in like Ottawa magazine and it was
Speaker 1: written by her. Yeah, I read one. It might have
Speaker 1: been the same one. I wonder it was like within
Speaker 1: a very short time of her husband and sun dying.
Speaker 1: I thought, Wow, this ladies really composed. But then I
Speaker 1: read a little further and found out that Mildred Restall
Speaker 1: and her husband, Robert, who moved their family to Oak
Speaker 1: Island so Robert could hunt for the treasure in nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty nine. I think um started out. They met because
Speaker 1: they were both circus performers with nerves of steel who
Speaker 1: rode motorcycles in a huge globes fear. Well, he would
Speaker 1: go like upside down and she would go side to side,
Speaker 1: and they would miss each other hundreds of times in
Speaker 1: an act. And now after that, I was like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: this lady, she's tough as nails. Yeah, you never seen
Speaker 1: one of those acts. I just didn't realize that that's
Speaker 1: what they did, got you, Yeah, and that it seems
Speaker 1: kind of odd to have that. I thought it was
Speaker 1: a newer act from No, it's totally fifties screams fifties really, Yeah,
Speaker 1: see I thought it screened seventies. Oh it does too. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you're right, sure, yeah, evil kine evil is why that
Speaker 1: screams that? All right, so let's dive in here a well, yeah,
Speaker 1: the rest dolls when they moved to nineteen fifty nine,
Speaker 1: they were hardly the first people that moved to Oak
Speaker 1: Island and set up residents there in order to find
Speaker 1: the treasure. But prior to sevent um, Oak Island was
Speaker 1: just another island. Yeah, it's still just another island. Well,
Speaker 1: just because of all of the attention that's been paid
Speaker 1: to it. It's not it's no longer. It's been changed forever.
Speaker 1: Prior to seventeen five, though, it was just like whatever,
Speaker 1: there's Oak Island until a local kid from Nova Scotia
Speaker 1: named Robert McGinnis Daniel McGinnis sorry, um, decided to go explore. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and this, Um, you won't find any two people that
Speaker 1: agree on these legend stories, even with Daniel mckinnis, because
Speaker 1: it's you know, none of the stuff was really written
Speaker 1: down until much later. Nothing was written down in sevent
Speaker 1: nothing was documented until like the nineteen hundred Well Star
Speaker 1: Trek came along. Certainly things like this weren't documented, um
Speaker 1: because he was just a boy. He was sixteen years old. Uh,
Speaker 1: he was on a fishing expedition and uh, as the
Speaker 1: story goes, and we'll just use the most commonly agreed
Speaker 1: upon story here. He was, um, he was just kind
Speaker 1: of trapes around the island and found like a block
Speaker 1: from a pulley attached to a tree, an oak tree,
Speaker 1: and then a big sort of cleared out area underneath
Speaker 1: it where it looked like, uh, you know, someone had
Speaker 1: maybe been digging and reburying something. Yeah, there's like a
Speaker 1: depression under this block tackle block from a pulley. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was just cleared out. And he was like, huh,
Speaker 1: but j anything, there's a pirate stretcher down there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, being a sevent teenager, he was like, there's yeah,
Speaker 1: pirates all are are all over the place. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: it's entirely possible. We're talking the eighteenth century. We're talking
Speaker 1: a time when piracy was still very much in the
Speaker 1: public imagination. Bury treasure was a hot thing. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: there is such a thing. And at the very least
Speaker 1: if no one, if no single pirate ever buried his treasure,
Speaker 1: there is a lot of rumor about buried treasure of pirates.
Speaker 1: I think it makes total sense. You know that You
Speaker 1: can't carry that stuff around all the time because you
Speaker 1: get robbed and looted. So you you know, bury that junk,
Speaker 1: come back for it later. Right, make a weird, funny
Speaker 1: looking map that looks like a sweaty pillow case and um,
Speaker 1: put a big X in the middle of it. So
Speaker 1: and then put that in a coffee can and then
Speaker 1: bury that in your backyard. That's right, you gotta bury
Speaker 1: twice because it's so nice. Uh the pirate really can
Speaker 1: you say like a pirate? No, I did not need
Speaker 1: he would do that. Um, all right, So he starts digging.
Speaker 1: He's his interest is peaked. He gets a couple of
Speaker 1: friends comes back the next day. Uh, Anthony Vaughan and
Speaker 1: John Smith and use him, you think probably? Uh? And
Speaker 1: so they start digging. Reportedly go down about ten feet
Speaker 1: and found a layer of like a platform of oak logs. Yeah,
Speaker 1: which is you're not supposed to find that when you
Speaker 1: dig into a hole under a pulley. No, you're not
Speaker 1: supposed to it's not worthy. First they found und a
Speaker 1: stone that they took to be man made, like two
Speaker 1: ft down, and then ten feet down they found an
Speaker 1: oak platform and then supposedly every ten feet after that, Uh,
Speaker 1: they kept finding these platforms. Um, and we'll just go
Speaker 1: ahead and call this the money pit. What's what everyone
Speaker 1: calls it. Yeah, this main location is the money pit
Speaker 1: because just the first Oak platform alone says there's treasure
Speaker 1: buried here. That's right. Uh. So basically they, um, they
Speaker 1: got down as far as they could for three teenage
Speaker 1: boys with picks and shovels and said, uh, this this
Speaker 1: isn't we're not finding anything and were we need help? Basically, yeah,
Speaker 1: we need to bring in some old timey equipment. Yeah,
Speaker 1: bigger tools, gets some old timey funding and maybe get
Speaker 1: some old timey other people involved. And they did, but
Speaker 1: it took like nine years before they came back I think. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And they filled it back in because they didn't just
Speaker 1: want to leave a big empty hole there. It's an
Speaker 1: obvious sign that there's a treasure there. So, like you said,
Speaker 1: nine hours later, they did come back, um with investors
Speaker 1: nine years later. Now 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 know. 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 fund your dig you can go to private
Speaker 1: investors who ultimately it's still treasure hunting. It's just churched
Speaker 1: up church don called archaeological things. So they come back
Speaker 1: as the on Slough Company and dig down deeper this time,
Speaker 1: and they did find some interesting things, notably things that
Speaker 1: shouldn't be there, like coconut fiber and charcoal and putty
Speaker 1: and coconuts obviously not native to Nova Scotia. So they're like,
Speaker 1: someone has put something down here. Well yeah, also at
Speaker 1: the time, um coconut fiber was used as a packing
Speaker 1: material though, so clearly somebody was using it as as
Speaker 1: some sort of construction material wasn't accidentally dropped there there,
Speaker 1: that's right. Um, so a legend has it they dug
Speaker 1: down until they hit ninety feet and then found a
Speaker 1: flat stone with a coded inscription that they could not
Speaker 1: make sense of. Uh. Since then, other people have supposedly
Speaker 1: translated it to read forty ft below two million pounds
Speaker 1: are buried. Um, there's no stone today, there's no rubbing,
Speaker 1: there is no photograph. No, it's called the famous cipher Stone,
Speaker 1: and it was supposedly lost in like but yeah, there's
Speaker 1: no evidence. Yeah, and so anything you run across, like
Speaker 1: in a book or on the web or something, is conjecture. No,
Speaker 1: there's no document of this cipher stone. But they do
Speaker 1: think that something that accounts for the cipherstone did exist
Speaker 1: at some point, but no one knows for certain exactly
Speaker 1: what it said. And if you're wondering two million pounds
Speaker 1: of what I assumed that they met British currency, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that would be funny. Those just like two million pounds
Speaker 1: of pirates scat coconut husks. Uh. So they get down
Speaker 1: to about close to a hundred feet and then go
Speaker 1: home for the day and and drink rum I would imagine,
Speaker 1: and then come back and it's full of water, and
Speaker 1: they 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 eight hundreds, but we're still screwed, right, So
Speaker 1: the Robert McGinnis and what was the name of the
Speaker 1: company came back with the company what what you just
Speaker 1: described as the process that people have followed in the
Speaker 1: troubles that people have run into in the every every
Speaker 1: ever since. And we'll talk about some of the following expeditions,
Speaker 1: because McGinnis's troubles didn't put anybody else off right after this. Okay,
Speaker 1: so Chuck, something really weird happened to the McGinnis expedition,
Speaker 1: the second one when he grew up became a man,
Speaker 1: came back with the Onslow company and dug down became
Speaker 1: a man. They went to bed after drinking a bunch
Speaker 1: of them, like you said, and then they woke up
Speaker 1: and the pit had filled with water. And it's basically
Speaker 1: been filled with water ever since. Yeah, which is a problem.
Speaker 1: If you're a treasure hunter. You want dry conditions as
Speaker 1: much as possible to get to the treasure. Water is
Speaker 1: an impediment UM. And it became such an impediment that
Speaker 1: ultimately mcginnison on the Onslow company just kind of gave up.
Speaker 1: I guess they ran out of funding, right, Yeah, which
Speaker 1: has also been a refrain over the years. You can
Speaker 1: only dig so long until the person eventually who's funding
Speaker 1: he says, I'm gonna pull the plug. But years later, UM,
Speaker 1: a question was raised about that flooding. People started to
Speaker 1: wonder was that actually an engineered booby trap? 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 drop 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 kind of 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 chaft 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 Maine drainage system that basically
Speaker 1: accepts the incoming tide and potentially funnels the tied to
Speaker 1: the money pit. Yeah. Um, So you know, they they
Speaker 1: continue to dig and drill because they're encouraged by finding
Speaker 1: like things they said were metal or maybe even gold
Speaker 1: on the Augur's um and even more coconut husk. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So they were like, there's something down there, but they,
Speaker 1: like you said, it kept flooding and that this is
Speaker 1: when they realized it was seawater and they noticed, hey,
Speaker 1: it's actually filling up and and falling back down with
Speaker 1: along with the tides. So that's when they built a
Speaker 1: temporary coffer dam to kind of see what was going on.
Speaker 1: And that's when they found this five finger drain and which, yeah,
Speaker 1: 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.
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 uh. I think
Speaker 1: there was a theory that there was a lot of
Speaker 1: weird Freemason uh rituals going on, and maybe they buried
Speaker 1: some stuff there and not treasure necessarily, but um, maybe
Speaker 1: they built this strain to keep people from digging into
Speaker 1: their Yeah. Modern treasure huners are like, great, let me
Speaker 1: find whatever the Mason's buried. Yeah, you know, even if
Speaker 1: it's not gold ingots could be like, you know, the
Speaker 1: Secrets of the Freemasons, or yeah, the Ark of the Covenant.
Speaker 1: Yeah and all right, they said that could be down
Speaker 1: there or the Holy Grail if you want to talk
Speaker 1: about some of the legends of what's down there, might
Speaker 1: as well. Okay, So, um, the the the predominant one
Speaker 1: that Robert McGinnis initially thought of was that it was
Speaker 1: pirate treasure because he was a teenager in the seventeen nineties. Right. Um,
Speaker 1: Successive people have come to to see the money pit,
Speaker 1: if it is sabotaged like it is, and the the
Speaker 1: construction that went into it is something that would have
Speaker 1: had to have been carried out by a group more
Speaker 1: sophistic ca did, better funded and better organized than Captain
Speaker 1: Kid's crew, more sober at the very least. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: So one of the rumors of what treasure is buried
Speaker 1: down there is that the Freemasons buried something or the
Speaker 1: Knights Templar buried something, because the Knights Templar, you know,
Speaker 1: they were like the militant arm of fundamental Christianity in
Speaker 1: like the the tenth century during pilgrimage is a k
Speaker 1: the Crusades to the Middle East, right, Yeah, so that
Speaker 1: means they got a lot of dough over the years,
Speaker 1: they accumulated great wealth, had a big um falling out
Speaker 1: with the Catholic Church of course. Yes, supposedly they were
Speaker 1: found worshiping Baffa Met, the goat headed breasted Satan, and
Speaker 1: that that's sort of like the statue, right, It's exactly
Speaker 1: like the statue Oklahoma. Yeah, the one that's being constructed
Speaker 1: by the Satanic Temple right now. Yeah, I put that
Speaker 1: on our Facebook page. It was very divisive I can
Speaker 1: imagine no surprise. Um, I thought it was just a nice,
Speaker 1: cool looking piece of art. I mean, man, it's pretty
Speaker 1: well done, you know, it looks looked nice. Um. So yeah,
Speaker 1: so the Knights Templer has all this dough. They have
Speaker 1: a falling out with the Catholic Church for obvious reasons
Speaker 1: that you just pointed out, and then they buried their treasure.
Speaker 1: So I guess the Catholic Church wouldn't get their hands
Speaker 1: on it, right. But among that treasures supposedly is the
Speaker 1: Holy Grail, which is what um the Knights were looking
Speaker 1: for in Monty Python and the Holy Grail and the
Speaker 1: Ark of the Covenant, which is what Indiana Jones is
Speaker 1: looking for in Indiana Jones and uh, no raiders have
Speaker 1: the Lost arc Um. And so some people have said,
Speaker 1: this is where the Knights Templar buried their treasure, this
Speaker 1: is where the Ark of the Covenant is. Then other
Speaker 1: people have said, whatever, the Knights Templar never made it
Speaker 1: to Nova Scotia. But the Freemasons obviously took over the
Speaker 1: secrets and protections of the Knights Templar. They're like the
Speaker 1: modern day Knights Templar society, and and uh they probably
Speaker 1: buried the arc and or the Holy Grail. Duh. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And apparently a lot of Mason's have been on these
Speaker 1: excavation teams over the years, which of course is evidence
Speaker 1: that they're looking for their their old stuff, right or
Speaker 1: I mean, it also is entirely possible that there is
Speaker 1: a rumor among Masons that this is true. Whether it's
Speaker 1: true or not, that could have gotten some Masonic adventures
Speaker 1: to go. Look. You know. Another theory um that's been
Speaker 1: thrown out there is that um Marie Antoinette uh, during
Speaker 1: the French Revolution said got all her jewelry together and
Speaker 1: gave it to a woman and said flee, and she
Speaker 1: fled to Nova Scotia. And then the French navy came
Speaker 1: 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 very is uh crackpot 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. It 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 is going
Speaker 1: on in this is why the forty Niners are called that.
Speaker 1: That's right, and uh, I think there's kind of a
Speaker 1: treasure fever, yeah, going through the land. That's a good
Speaker 1: way to say it. So, um, the Eldorado Company in
Speaker 1: eighteen sixty six went out there, and they there were
Speaker 1: various methods over the years to try and block off
Speaker 1: the flow of water. They tried digging shafts and tunnels,
Speaker 1: they tried to divert it, they tried to intercept it
Speaker 1: um and basically all that ended up doing was causing
Speaker 1: a nightmare for future expeditions, to the point where people
Speaker 1: had had had a hard time even finding the original
Speaker 1: money bit to begin with. Right, A lot of the um,
Speaker 1: A lot of the landmarks, I guess you'd call them,
Speaker 1: we're just utterly destroyed. Supposedly in that article I read
Speaker 1: from um Mrs re Restall, she said that there's no
Speaker 1: there weren't any more oaks on Oak Island, any longer trees, Yeah,
Speaker 1: which because of excavation, just tore them all down. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so it would be very tough to find your way
Speaker 1: around if whatever directions were written at a time when
Speaker 1: there were plenty of oak trees and used oak trees
Speaker 1: as guides, 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: nine in the eighteen nineties came with the Oak Island
Speaker 1: Treasure Company and he actually found something that still exists.
Speaker 1: That'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: six feet down right, who knows? Um. And then the
Speaker 1: twentieth century has seen or saw since we're in the
Speaker 1: twenty first century now, successive waves, pretty constant waves of
Speaker 1: people coming, yeah, looking for the Oak Island Treasure UM.
Speaker 1: One of them was a young Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who
Speaker 1: also was a mason. Yeah, he came along as an
Speaker 1: investor and apparently um always pining to go back to
Speaker 1: Oak Island to search for the treasure, like it got
Speaker 1: in his blood. All right. So after this message break,
Speaker 1: we are going to look at a few more of
Speaker 1: the things that have been discovered there over the years
Speaker 1: and what this all means. So Chuck I was saying,
Speaker 1: the twentieth century saw a wave after a wave of
Speaker 1: treasure hunter come dig and then leave penniless. One of
Speaker 1: those people though that, And we also talked about how
Speaker 1: Oak Island has been utterly changed. Probably nobody changed the
Speaker 1: topography and geography of Oak Island more than a guy
Speaker 1: named Robert Dunfield, who was a an engineer I believe,
Speaker 1: or no geologist in he built a bridge of a
Speaker 1: highway yeah causeway, yeah, from the mainland to Oak Island.
Speaker 1: And right after he did that, right after it was completed,
Speaker 1: he started moving heavy equipment in and just started digging
Speaker 1: like crazy. Yeah. He got down a hundred feet I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: a hundred forty down a hundred feet wide and kept
Speaker 1: everything a secret until two thousand three, and didn't they
Speaker 1: didn't find a lot. They found some porcelain dishwaar from
Speaker 1: the sixteen hundreds, which is you know, what was that
Speaker 1: doing there could find for sure the early um. But
Speaker 1: he of course didn't find a lot either ultimately in
Speaker 1: the way of riches because um, he kept having problems
Speaker 1: despite his machinery with collapsing uh, caves, heavy rains, more tide,
Speaker 1: water and um. But he did say there was a
Speaker 1: cavern under some limestone. He did confirm one of these
Speaker 1: underwater cavern rumors. Supposedly, Yeah, its accounts for potentially a
Speaker 1: natural formation if you're a skeptic, if you're a believer,
Speaker 1: then it just confirms the booby trap thing. Um. He
Speaker 1: uh finally left after basically he was the guy who
Speaker 1: demolished the most landmarks. Um. But shortly after he left
Speaker 1: a pair of guys who formed what's called the Triton Alliance, Uh,
Speaker 1: David Tobias and Dan Blanket Ship. Uh. They started working
Speaker 1: and they actually brought along some high tech stuff in
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy which was like underwater camera video camera. It's
Speaker 1: probably the size of a small car, right that they
Speaker 1: lowered down there and uh, they well, they drilled a
Speaker 1: hole and they called it borehole ten X and they
Speaker 1: it was filled with water, of course, as all holes
Speaker 1: in Oak Island do. But they lowered this underwater camera
Speaker 1: down there and they swore to God that they saw
Speaker 1: evidence of human remains and treasure tests. That's what they said.
Speaker 1: They Whether you're convinced or not, Um Tobias and Blanketship
Speaker 1: were convinced enough that to No, Blanketship still lives on
Speaker 1: Oak Island. Yeah, he he became sort of the uh,
Speaker 1: the main guy that remains today as the main guy.
Speaker 1: And this is seventy when they showed up. He's still
Speaker 1: on that island and he's supposedly he's oh yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: he's pretty easy old. No, but it was the nineteen
Speaker 1: seventies when they showed up and he still lives there. No,
Speaker 1: that's what I'm saying he is. He's an old feller.
Speaker 1: We hammered that out. He's apparently an ordinary feller. Two,
Speaker 1: because there was another guy named Fred Nolan, who is
Speaker 1: a famous Oak Island explorer, UM who Well, they ran
Speaker 1: a foul of one another, apparently, Um Blankenship had a
Speaker 1: rifle obviously in his hand during the argument, and the
Speaker 1: cops had to come out and take the rifle away. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and supposedly now nobody is allowed on Oak Island, although
Speaker 1: I guess there you can if you're filming a TV show. Um,
Speaker 1: except for Dan Blanket Ship, who's the only resident. Well
Speaker 1: he's part of the TV show okay, so he was like,
Speaker 1: come on, um, yeah, what's that history channel? I think
Speaker 1: I don't know. Yeah, there's a couple of the people
Speaker 1: he's working with today, uh Rick and Marty Lagina. Um.
Speaker 1: I think are brothers from Michigan, and they are the
Speaker 1: subject to the TV show, which I'll have to check
Speaker 1: out at some point. Um. But that's supposedly where the
Speaker 1: curse came from? Is that show? Oh? Where had the really? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I did not know that, So it's it's been a
Speaker 1: present since last year. Um. Frederick Nolan also is the
Speaker 1: one who discovered, um, five large cone shaped boulders that
Speaker 1: when you look at it above, looks like a cross,
Speaker 1: and it is forever known as Nolan's Cross. What does
Speaker 1: it mean? Who knows? Maybe the boulders which is sort
Speaker 1: of a in the shape of a cross by accident,
Speaker 1: but well, fred Nolan bought five plots of land bottom,
Speaker 1: so he was a resident there, an inhabitant there too.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure what happened Old Fred Nolan though, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm not sure that'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, as anyone with History Channel knows, there's still
Speaker 1: people who are looking actively for the treasure of Oak Island, right,
Speaker 1: Like they believe that if you put all the evidence together,
Speaker 1: Nolan's crossed coconut fibers, the finger drains, um, the evidence
Speaker 1: from Blanketship and Tobias their video of stuff, Like, if
Speaker 1: you put all this together, there is evidence that there
Speaker 1: is treasure down there. Somebody just needs to dig deep
Speaker 1: enough in the right place and then bam, they're gonna
Speaker 1: find it. Right Yeah, I mean, man, it's they dug
Speaker 1: so though and so wide. How how much deeper could
Speaker 1: they have gone back in the pirate days? You know,
Speaker 1: it just seems very unlikely to me there's any treasure there. Well,
Speaker 1: then you would be in the skeptics camp and you
Speaker 1: would definitely not be alone. Uh yeah, but skeptic thinking
Speaker 1: there may have been something buried or some weird thing
Speaker 1: going on there. But I don't know about treasure. Who
Speaker 1: knows though, Uh. Skeptics will also say these are natural
Speaker 1: sinkholes instead of traps like we said earlier. Um. They
Speaker 1: will also say things like, you know, there's all kinds
Speaker 1: of underground caverns around here. There's nothing special. I don't
Speaker 1: know what they say about finding things like porcelain plates.
Speaker 1: I didn't see anything like that. But you know, when
Speaker 1: he when the stone has lost, this inscripted stone, Um,
Speaker 1: when there's no evidence really the point to except this
Speaker 1: tiny piece of parchment paper, like, I don't know, it's
Speaker 1: pretty flimsy. Well, none of the excavations started to be
Speaker 1: documented until the nineteenth century, So all of mcguinness's early
Speaker 1: work is all based on hearsaying conjecture. It's all up
Speaker 1: for debate. Whether he was a teenager. Um was the
Speaker 1: the tackle block for the pulley? Was that added to
Speaker 1: the story later on? Um? If so, then all of
Speaker 1: a sudden that that depression under the tree branch just
Speaker 1: becomes a depression under a tree branch. You know. The
Speaker 1: pulley was the thing. It's it's excuse my physics joke,
Speaker 1: but the full crumb of this whole thing, you know.
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, right, 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 Oak Island again, though, those those finger trains are
Speaker 1: just weird. Yeah, that's weird for sure. It's cool. What
Speaker 1: who did what they're Yeah? Basically they just need to
Speaker 1: like strip mine the entire island all the way down
Speaker 1: there you go. I don't know why anyone I thought
Speaker 1: of that yet. Yeah, just completely strip it of all
Speaker 1: its natural beauty right until it's nothing left and this
Speaker 1: strug your shoulders afterwards, say there's nothing here, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: go man. If you want to know more about Oka Island,
Speaker 1: apparently you can watch a weekly television show on it.
Speaker 1: You can also type Oak Island into the search bar.
Speaker 1: How stuff works. And since I said search parts, time
Speaker 1: for listener mail, I'm gonna call this poison ivy. Follow
Speaker 1: up from JB. Guys have an interesting story about how
Speaker 1: you can get poison ivy from more than just touching it.
Speaker 1: When I was eight or so, we lived in California
Speaker 1: had a big fireplace. One day, we decided to get
Speaker 1: our own firewood from outside and got a couple of
Speaker 1: big logs my sister. We were both at about seven
Speaker 1: at the time. Uh we She and I used the
Speaker 1: fire to rose marshmallows and mixed moors. Great night right.
Speaker 1: An hour or so later, one of my sisters came
Speaker 1: into my parents room things. She couldn't breathe. Her face
Speaker 1: had swollen to twice its normal size, and her eyes
Speaker 1: were shut. Her throat was barely able to pass air
Speaker 1: through it. An emergency room trip and a shot or
Speaker 1: to a steroids later, she was okay, but it took
Speaker 1: a while to find out what happened. Apparently the poison
Speaker 1: ivy had been removed from the logs we got, but
Speaker 1: the sap was still in the wood, and when we
Speaker 1: burned them, the sap was present in the smoke, and
Speaker 1: my sister was highly allergic and hailed it. Got it
Speaker 1: in her throat and lungs and it blew up her
Speaker 1: face like a red balloon. Best side note of this,
Speaker 1: we had passport photos the next day We're moving to Germany.
Speaker 1: So her passport pick was a giant red swollen balloon face.
Speaker 1: That 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 she just had it retaken.
Speaker 1: Would you would you live with that passport photo? No,
Speaker 1: I told you what. I think it'd be funny except
Speaker 1: for the whole You know, this doesn't look like you
Speaker 1: think that'd be a drag. It would be a huge drags,
Speaker 1: a like the hassle. Yeah, but I'm I'm well known
Speaker 1: in my family for making funny faces. Anytime I have
Speaker 1: a photo idea of any kind taken just for fun,
Speaker 1: I've always done it. That is so fun. Emily likes it. Ah,
Speaker 1: you got anything else? Nope? Okay, well thanks again for
Speaker 1: the awesome story, JB. If you have a great story,
Speaker 1: you can tweet to us at s Y s K Podcast.
Speaker 1: You can post it on our Facebook page at Facebook
Speaker 1: dot com, slash stuff you Should Know. You can put
Speaker 1: it in an email and send it to Stuff Podcast
Speaker 1: at how stuff works dot com. And in the meantime,
Speaker 1: while you're waiting around thinking of what to say, go
Speaker 1: hang out at our home on the web, Stuff you
Speaker 1: Should Know dot com for more on this and thousands
Speaker 1: of other topics. Is it how stuff Works dot com.