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SYSK Selects: Is there treasure on Oak Island? · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: M. Hey everybody, it's me Josh and for this week's
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: s Y s K Select, I've chosen the Oak Island Mystery.
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: It's one we've gotten requests to do for a long time,
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: and even after we did it, we've still gotten requests
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: to do it. So here it is again. It's a
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: good one from two thousand fifteen. And as an added bonus,
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: keep an ear out for a surprise cameo by a
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: Globo de la muerte before we knew what it was
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: called Enjoy. Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from house
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and Jerry
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: So this is stuff you should know. UD say, you're
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: no Scotia accent? Uh no, no, sir? Well was that
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: not just a howdy? It did some funny though. That
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: was my Heath Hall version. We've talked about. You love
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: that show, didn't you know? I never really watched it.
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: I don't. Thinking of my other podcast Ghost, I didn't
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: watch Haul much. Yeah, that's I did. I was from
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: the South though, you know Toledo. The you all thought
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: that was like yokol stuff. No, I mean like it
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: was on every once in a while. I just passed by,
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: you know what wasn't Mini Pearl. She had the hat
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: with the price tag on. Still started and then there
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: was like some guy with the banjo. I think, I
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: think this is one of the most off requested shows
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: Oak Island. Yeah, I've had a lot heard. I didn't
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: really know much about it, but it seems like every
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: other week someone saying, Oaka Island, guys, do Oak Island.
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: We're gonna do Oka Island. We want everybody to be quiet,
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: that's right, So that's what we're doing. Did you know
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: much about this ahead of time? No, not at all.
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: I did. It's one of those things like you hear
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: about and you hear a little more and you don't
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: really dig in. But so the whole thing is just
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: kind of this neat legend that's kind of out there. Yeah,
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: I don't know how I missed it. And then once
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: you start digging in, you're like, yeah, I understand you
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: say that with the skeptical tone. Well, I think this
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: is one of those cases where there's no treasure. I
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: don't know, there's some weirdness. There's some things that make
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: me say this is very odd. But I also understand
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: the skeptical point of view. So well, what I've just
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: kind of demonstrated is a little bit of the middle
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: of the road approach to Oak Island, which is unusual.
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: Most people approach Oke Island either as true believe or
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: treasure hunters or total skeptics. Like, there's not a lot
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: of middle of the road. It's a divisive island as
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: far as islands go. It's only like a hundred and
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: something acres. It's not a big island. It's off the
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: coast of Novas Gootia a hundred forty acres. Yeah that's
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: not that's not big. Yeah, but for as small as
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: it is, you know, it's pretty divisive. Yeah. I don't think. Uh,
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: I don't see what the big deal about being skeptical
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: about the I mean, a buried treasure. I mean, who cares. Oh,
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: if you're a skeptic, you have to pooh pooh everything. Absolutely,
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: anything that's even remotely frivolous has to be squashed. But
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: this isn't even like supernatural or anything. It's just I mean,
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: I guess there's the curse thing. Yeah, that's that's all.
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: That's all TV. That's not even lower from what I
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: understand that new it's like literally just a media creation,
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: like strictly from the TV show that before that. I mean,
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: like people didn't really see it as a curse. There's
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: just buried treasure on Oak Island. Yeah, and if it's
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: the eighteen hundreds and you're digging for things, there's a
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: good chance he might die. Yeah, it's dangerous, it is mean,
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: it's cursed. I read this really great article written in
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: nineteen sixty five by Mildred rest All, Yeah, from the
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: New York Times. No, this was in like Ottawa magazine
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: and it was written by her. Yeah, I read one.
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: It might have been the same one. I wonder it
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: was like within a very short time of her husband
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: and sun dying. I thought, wow, these ladies really composed.
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: But then I read a little further and found out
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: that Mildred rest All and her husband, Robert, who moved
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: their family to Oak Island so Robert could hunt for
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: the treasure in nineteen fifty nine. I think um started out.
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: They met because they were both circus performers with nerves
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: of steel who rode motorcycles in a huge globe sphere. Well,
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: he would go like upside down and she would go
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: side to side and they would miss each other hundreds
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: of times in an act. And now after that, I
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: was like, oh, yeah, this lady, she's tough as nails. Yeah,
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: you never seen one of those acts. I just didn't
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: realize that that's what they did, got you, Yeah, and
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: that it seems kind of odd to have that. I
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: thought it was a newer act from No, it's totally fifties.
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: Screams fifties really, Yeah, see I thought it screened seventies.
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: Oh it does too, Yeah, you're right, sure, Yeah, evil kine,
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: Evil is why that screams that? All right, So let's
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: dive in here. Ah well, yeah, the rest dolls. When
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: they moved to nineteen fifty nine, they were hardly the
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: first people that moved to Oak Island and set up
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: residents there in order to find the treasure. But prior
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: to seventeen um, Oak Island was just another island. Yeah,
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: it's still just another island. Well, just because of all
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: of the attention that's been paid to it. It's not
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: it's no longer. It's been changed forever. Prior to sev though,
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: it was just like whatever, there's Oak Island until a
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: local kid from Nova Scotia named Robert McGinnis Daniel McGinnis sorry, um,
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: decided to go explore. Yeah, and this, Um, you won't
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: find any two people that agree on these uh legend stories,
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: even with Daniel McKennis, because it's you know, none of
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: the stuff was really written down until much later. Nothing
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: was written down in seving was documented until like the
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: nineteen hundred well Sir Star Trek came along. Certainly things
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: like this weren't documented, um because he was just a boy.
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: He was sixteen years old. Uh, he was on a
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: fishing expedition. And as the story goes, and we'll just
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: use the most commonly agreed upon story here, he was, Um,
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: he was just kind of traps around the island and
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: found uh, like a block from a pulley attached to
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: a tree, an oak tree, and then a big sort
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: of cleared out area underneath it where it looked like, uh,
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: you know, someone had maybe been digging and rebar ing something. Yeah,
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: there's like a depression under this block tackle block from
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: a pulley. Yeah, it was just cleared out. And he
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: was like, huh but jennything, there's a pirates As you're
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: down there. Yeah, I mean, being a teenager, he was like,
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: there's yeah, pirates all are are all over the place. Yeah,
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: and it's entirely possible. We're talking the eighteenth century. We're
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: talking a time when piracy was still very much in
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: the public imagination. Bury treasure was a hot thing. Yeah,
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: I mean, there is such a thing. And at the
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: very least if no one, if no single pirate ever
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: buried his treasure, there is a lot of rumor about
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: buried treasure of pirates. I think it makes total sense.
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: You know that you can't carry that stuff around all
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: the time because you get robbed and looted. So you,
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: you know, bury that junk, come back for it later. Right,
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: make a weird, funny looking map that looks like a
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: sweaty pillow case, and um, put a big X in
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: the middle of it. So and then put that in
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: a coffee can and then bury that in your backyard.
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: That's right, you got to bury twice because it's so nice.
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: That's the pirates. Can you say it like a pirate? No,
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: I didn't not need he would do that. Um, all right,
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: So he starts digging. He's his interest is peaked. He
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: gets a couple of friends comes back the next day. Uh,
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: Anthony Vaughan and John Smith and um, it's a pseudonym,
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: you think. Uh. And so they start digging, reportedly go
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: down about ten feet and found a layer of like
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: a platform of oak logs. Yeah, which is you're not
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: supposed to find that when you dig into a hole
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: under a pulley. No, you're not supposed to it's no worthy.
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: First they found a stone that they took to be
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: man made, like two ft down, and then ten feet
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: down they found an oak platform, and then supposedly every
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: ten feet after that, Uh, they kept finding these platforms. Um,
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: and we'll just go ahead and call this the money pit.
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: What's what everyone calls it? Yeah, this main location is
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: the money pit because just the first oak platform alone
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: says there's treasure buried here. That's right. Uh. So basically
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: they they got down as far as they could for
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: three teenage boys with picks and shovels, and said, uh,
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: this this isn't We're not finding anything, and where we
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: need help? Basically, Yeah, we need to bring in some
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: old timey equipment. Yeah, Bigger tools, gets some old timey
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: funding and maybe get some old timey other people involved
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: and they did, but it took like nine years before
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: they came back I think yeah. And they filled it
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: back in because they didn't just want to leave a
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: big empty hole there. It's an obvious sign that there's
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: a treasure there. So, like you said, nine hours later,
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: they did come back, um with investors. Nine years later.
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: What say ours? No? I said years. I will bet
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: you all the money on Oak Island that you said ours? Uh.
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: At any rate, it was nine years and they came
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: back and formed with some funding from the Onslow Company. Um,
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: and that'll be a common refrain here. Uh. And apparently
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: I did some writing on modern treasure hunting and it's
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: all about the funding you. Oh, it's it's just like
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: any business. You. These dudes have boats and equipment, but
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: they're like, if you want a piece of this action,
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: we need some dough out there and find the stuff.
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: It's like selling future contracts. Yeah, yeah, a potential treasure exactly.
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: And it's not just treasure hunting that does that. Like
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: lots of archaeological expeditions are funded like that. If if
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: your local universities, like we got enough problems as it is,
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: we can't find your dig, you can go to private investors,
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: who ultimately it's still treasure hunting, it's just churched up
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: church Don called archaeological things. So they come back as
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: the on Slough Company and dig down deeper this time,
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: and they did find some interesting things, notably h things
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: that shouldn't be there, like coconut fiber and charcoal and
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: putty and coconuts obviously not native to Nova Scotia. So
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: they're like, someone has put something down here. Well yeah,
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: also at the time, um, coconut fiber was used as
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: a packing material though, so clearly somebody was using it
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: as as some sort of construction material. Wasn't accidentally dropped
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: there there? Yeah, that's right. Um, So a legend has
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: it they dug down until they hit ninety ft and
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: then found a flat stone with a coded inscription that
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: they could not make sense of. Uh. Since then, other
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: people have supposedly translated it to read forty ft below
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: two million pounds are buried. Um, there's no stone today,
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: there's no rubbing, there is no photograph. No, it's called
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: the famous Cipher Stone. Yeah, and it was supposedly lost
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: in like but yeah, there's no evidence. Yeah, and so
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: anything you run across like in a book or on
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: the web or something is conjecture. No, there's no document
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: of this cipher stone, but they do think that something
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: that accounts for the cipherstone did exist at point, but
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: no one knows for certain exactly what it said. And
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: if you're wondering two million pounds of what I assumed
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: that they made British currency, Yeah, that would be funny
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: though it was just like two million pounds of pirates
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: scat coconut husks. Uh. So they get down to about
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: close to a hundred feet and then go home for
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: the day and and drink rum, I would imagine, and
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: then come back and it's full of water. And they
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: tried to bail it out, but they were basically like,
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: this is you know seven, well, I guess this point
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: it was the eighteen hundreds or eighteen hundreds, but we're
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: still screwed, right. So the Robert McGinnis and what was
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: the name of the company came back with a company
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: company what what you just described as the process that
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: people have followed in the troubles that people have run
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: into in the every every ever since. And we'll talk
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: about some of the following expeditions because mcguinness's troubles. Didn't
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: put anybody else off after this, Okay, so Chuck, something
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: really weird happened to the McGinnis expedition, the second one,
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: when he grew up became a man, came back with
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: the Onslow company and dug down became a man. They
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: went to bed after drinking a bunch of them, like
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: you said, and then they woke up and the pit
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: had filled with water. And it's basically been filled with
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: water ever since. Yeah, which is a problem if you're
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: a treasure hunter. You want dry conditions as much as
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: possible to get to the treacher. Water is an impediment, um.
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: And it became such an impediment that ultimately McGinnis and
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: on the Onslow company just kind of gave up. I
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: guess they ran out of funding, right, Yeah, which has
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: also been a refrain over the years. You can only
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: dig so long until the person eventually who's funding he says,
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna pull the plug. But years later, Um, a
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: question was raised about that flooding. People started to wonder
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: was that actually an engineered booby trap? Right? And that's
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: become a question among treasure hunters for centuries on. Yeah.
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: Of course the skeptics will say, no, it is just
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: uh seawater, because later they found out that it was
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: actually saltwater UH. And there are other similar underground water
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: tunnels on the island. So they're like, no, this is
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: just going on on this island. And and the believers
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: will say no, it was a booby trap set by
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: the pirates. But the believers in this case have a
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: kind of strange evidence UM to back up their ideas.
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: So in eighteen forty nine, after the mcguinnis expedition, the
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: second one left many years after UM, the Truro company,
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: which is and it's tough to say, they showed up
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: to the island to look for the money pit, and
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: they started digging again, right And when they started digging,
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: they ran into the same problem. There the shaft that
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: they dug filled with water. So they started to think,
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: we'll wait a minute, maybe this is purposeful at the
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: very least, maybe there's some sort of sea caves. And
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: if there's sea caves that are filling this thing up,
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: potentially we could stop up the sea caves and then
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: we can avoid the water problem and keep digging. So
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: they sent people from the expedition to look all over
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: the shoreline of the island and they found something really
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: astounding that, from what I understand still to this day,
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: is the one thing that confounds all skeptics when it
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: comes to Oak Island. They found what can really only
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: be described as a man made drainage system that basically
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: accepts the incoming tide and potentially funnels the tied to
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: the money pit. Yeah. So you know, they continue to
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: dig and drill because they were encouraged by finding like
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: things they said were metal or maybe even gold on
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: the Augur's um and even more coconut husk. Yeah, so
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: they were like, there's something down there, but they, like
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: you said, it kept flooding and that this is when
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: they realized it was seawater and they noticed, hey, it's
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: actually filling up and and falling back down with along
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: with the tides. So that's when they built a temporary
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: Coffer dam to kind of see what was going on.
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: And that's when they found this five finger drain and uh,
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: which yeah, there's really no explanation that didn't just accidentally happen. No,
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: And what gives it away is it's um. It's a
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: hundred and forty five ft wide, and it's about the
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: height of high the difference between high tide and low tide,
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: so it's clearly meant to funnel the tied into this drain. Yeah,
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: there's five drains. They're obviously finger drains. Finger drains are
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: like French drains basically, and they all connect into one
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: larger drain. But the real dead giveaway was the appearance
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: again of coconut fiber. Coconut fiber was used to keep
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: the sand out of the stone drain um, and a
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: layer of coconut fiber on an island off of the
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: coast of Nova Scotia suggests man's intervention. That's right, but
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: what that means who knows. Again, treasure seekers will say
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: that they put this to uh keep you from finding
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: that treasure. Right, it was evidence in favor of the
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: idea that the money pit is booby trapped. Yeah, and
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: I think skeptics will say that the I think there
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: was a theory that there was a lot of weird
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: freemason uh rituals going on, and maybe they buried some
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: stuff there and not treasure necessarily, but um, maybe they
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: built this drain to keep people from digging into their Yeah,
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: modern treasure hunters are like great, let me find whatever
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: the Mason's buried. Yeah, you know, even if it's not
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: gold ingots could be like, you know, the Secrets of
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: the Freemasons, or yeah, the Ark of the Covenant. Yeah right,
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: they said that could be down there, or the Holy Grail.
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: You want to talk about some of the legends of
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: what's down there as well? Okay, So, um, the the
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: the predominant one that Robert McGinnis initially thought of was
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: that it was pirate treasure because he was a teenager
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: in the seventeen nineties, right. Um. Successive people have come
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: to see the money pit if it is sabotaged like
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: it is, and the the construction that went into it
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: is something that would have had to have been carried
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: out by a group more sophisticated and better funded and
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: better organized than Captain Kidd's crew, more sober at the
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: very least. Yeah, exactly. So one of the rumors of
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: what treasure is buried down there is that the Freemasons
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: buried something, or the Knights Templar buried something, because the
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: Knights Templar, you know, they were like the militant arm
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: of fundamental Christianity in like the the tenth century during
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: pilgrim images a k. The Crusades to the Middle East, right, Yeah,
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: so that means they got a lot of dough over
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: the years they accumulated great wealth, had a big um
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: falling out with the Catholic Church of course. Yes, supposedly
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: they were found worshiping Baffa met the goat headed yeah,
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: breasted Satan and that that's sort of like the statue, right,
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: and it's exactly like the statue Oklahoma. Yeah, the one
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: that's being constructed by the Satanic Temple right now. Yeah,
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: I put that on our Facebook page. It was very divisive.
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: I can imagine, no surprise. Um, I thought it was
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: just a nice, cool looking piece of art. I mean, man,
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: it's pretty well done. Yeah, it looks look nice. Um.
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: So yeah, so the Knights Templer has all this dough.
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: They have a falling out with the Catholic Church for
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: obvious reasons that you just pointed out, and then they
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: buried their treasure, so I guess the Catholic Church wouldn't
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: get their hands on it, right. But among that treasures
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: supposedly is the Holy Grail, which is what um the
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: night we're looking for in Monty Python and the Holy
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: Grail and the Ark of the Covenant, which is what
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: Indiana Jones is looking for in Indiana Jones and and uh,
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: no raiders have lost ark um. And so some people
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: have said, this is where the Knights Templar buried their treasure,
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: this is where the Ark of the Covenant is. And
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: then other people have said, whatever, the Knights Templar never
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: made it to Nova Scotia. But the Freemasons obviously took
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: over the secrets and protections of the Knights Templar. They're
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: like the modern day Knights Templar society. And uh, they
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: probably buried the arc and or the Holy Grail. Duh. Yeah.
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: And apparently a lot of um Masons have been on
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: these excavation teams over the years, which of course is
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: evidence that they're looking for their their old stuff, right
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: or I mean, it also is entirely possible that there
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: is a rumor among Masons that this is true. Whether
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: it's true or not, that could have gotten some Masonic
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: adventures to go. Look. You know, another theory um that's
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: been thrown out there is that um Marie Antoinette uh,
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: during the French Revolution said got all her jewelry together
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: and gave it to a woman and said flee, and
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: she fled to Nova Scotia, and then the French navy
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: came along and constructed this elaborate system to bury her jewels.
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: There's another little, uh possible theory, and supposedly evidence that
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: backs that up is that the woman who was given
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: the jewels, who was entrusted with the jewels, was spotted
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: in Nova Scotia some time after that. What was she
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: doing there burying jewels? Another unusual Nova Scotia link is
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: um that of Francis Bacon. Yeah, I like this one.
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: So remember Francis Bacon from the scientific Method. He was
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: the guy that really first put that down in written form.
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: Brilliant man. Possibly Shakespeare. That's one of the theories is
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: that he was the real Shakespeare. And the idea is
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: that that he hid his manuscripts in the money pit
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: on Oak Island. And that seems kind of far fetched,
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: but apparently Francis Bacon owned land in Nova Scotia. Yeah,
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: and um, he was a preserver of things in mercury
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: and supposedly they found flasks of mercury on the island. Um.
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: I don't buy that one because I've always believed that
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: Shakespeare was Shakespeare and not Francis Bacon or his sister
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: or in the other various uh crack pot theories about
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: who really wrote that stuff. I like Francis Bacon and Shakespeare,
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: you know, yeah, yeah, just the thought of it, or like,
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: do you think the evidence is Uh, I don't know
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: about the evidence. I don't know enough about it, but
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: I like the thought of it. He seems like a
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: pretty cool dude. Uh. So some of the other um
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: treasure hunters started flocking there in the mid to late
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: eighteen hundreds because that was just a big time for
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: treasure hunting. Yeah. Well, the California gold Rush was going
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: on in eighte This is why the forty Niners are
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: called that. That's right, And uh, I think there's kind
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: of a treasure fever, yeah, going through the land. That's
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: a good way to say it. So, um, the Eldorado
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: Company in eighteen sixty six went out there, and they
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: there were various methods over the years to try and
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: block off the flow of water. They tried digging shafts
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: and tunnels, They tried to divert it, they tried to
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: intercept it um and basically all that ended up doing
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: was causing a nightmare for future expeditions, to the point
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: where people had had had a hard time even finding
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: the original money bit to begin with. Right, A lot
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: of the um, A lot of the landmarks, I guess
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: you'd call them, we're just utterly destroyed. Yeah, supposedly. In
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: that article I read from um Mrs Restall, she said
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: that there's no there weren't any more oaks on Oak
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: Island any longer. Oh, no more coak trees, yeah, which
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: because of excavation just tore them all down. Yeah, So
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: it would be very tough to find your way around
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: if whatever directions were written at a time when there
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: were plenty of oak trees and used oak trees as guides,
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: you know, like go to this oak tree and turn left.
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah yeah yeah. So um yeah, the excavation has definitely
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: changed the face of that island tremendously. Uh. One thing
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: we do have that is tangible, um as far as
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: I don't know if you call it evidence or not,
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: because it really doesn't say much. But Frederick Blair in
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: eight nine, in the eighteen nineties came with the Oak
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: Island Treasure Company and he actually found something that still exists.
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: It's a little bitty tiny piece of parchment paper and
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: it looks like a curse of letters. V I are
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: on it, but I mean it's small, and it really
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: leads to nothing other than something man made, is there?
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: V I? You know, I don't think anyone's any conjecture
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: about what that means. Six maybe six billion pounds buried,
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: set down right, Um. And then the twentieth century has seen,
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: or saw since we're in the twenty first century now,
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: successive waves, pretty constant waves of people coming looking for
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: the Oak Island treasure. UM. One of them was a
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: young Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who also was a mason. H
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: He came along as an investor, and apparently UM always
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: pine to go back to Oak Island to search for
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: the treasure, like it got in his blood. All right.
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: So after this message break, we are going to look
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: at a few more of the things that have been
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: discovered there over the years and what this all means.
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: So Chuck I was saying, the twentieth century saw a
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: wave after a wave of treasure hunter come dig and
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: then leave penniless. One of those people though that, and
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: we also talked about how Oak Island has been utterly changed.
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: Probably nobody changed the topography and geography of Oak Island
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: more than a guy named Robert Dunfield, who was an
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: engineer I believe, or no a geologist. In in in nine
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: he built a bridge a highway, yeah, from the mainland
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: to Oak Island. And right after he did that, right
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: after it was completed, he started moving heavy equipment in
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: and just started digging like crazy. Yeah. He got down
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: a hundred feet I'm sorry, a hundred and forty ft
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: down a hundred feet wide. And uh kept everything a
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: secret until two thousand three, and didn't They didn't find
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: a lot. They found some porcelain dishware from the six undreds,
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: which is you know, what was that doing? There could
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: find for sure the early UM. But he of course
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: didn't find a lot either, ultimately in the way of
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: riches because UM, he kept having problems despite his machinery
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: with collapsing UH, caves, heavy rains, more tide, water and um.
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: But he did say there was a cavern under some limestone.
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: He did confirm one of these underwater caverns, supposedly, Yeah,
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: which accounts for potentially a natural formation. If you're a skeptic,
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: if you're a believer, then it just confirms the booby
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: trap thing. Um. He uh finally left after basically he
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: was the guy who demolished the most landmarks. Um. But
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: shortly after he left, a pair of guys who formed
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: what's called the Triton Alliance. Uh, David Tobias and Dan
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: blanket Ship. Uh. They started working and they actually brought
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: along some high tech stuff in nineteen seventy, which was
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: like underwater camera, video camera. It's probably the size of
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: a small car, right, that they lowered down there, and uh,
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: they well, they drilled the hole and they called it
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: bore Hole ten X, and they it was filled with water,
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: of course, as all holes in Oak Island do. But
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: they lowered this underwater camera down there, and they swore
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: to God that they saw evidence of human remains and
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: treasure tests. That's what they said. They whether you're convinced
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: or not, Um, Tobias and Blanketship were convinced enough that
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: to no, Blanketship still lives on Oak Island. Yeah, he
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: he became sort of the uh, the main guy that
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: remains today as the main guy. And this is n
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: seventy when they showed up. He's still on that island
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: and he's supposedly he's oh yeah, yeah, he's pretty easy old. No,
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: but it was the nineteen seventies when they showed up
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: and he still lives there. Now, that's what I'm saying
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: he is. He's an old feller. We hammered that out.
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: He's apparently an ordinary feller. Two because there was another
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: guy named Fred Nolan, who is a famous Oak Island explorer.
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: Um who Well, they ran a foul of one another, apparently, Um.
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: Blanketship had a rifle obviously in his hand during the argument,
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: and the cops had to come out and take the
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: rifle away. Really yeah, and supposedly now nobody is allowed
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: on Oak Island, although I guess there you can if
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: you're filming a TV show. Um, except for Dan Blanketship,
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: who's the only resident. Well he's a part of the
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: TV show. Okay, So he was like, come on, um, yeah,
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: what's that history channel? I think I don't know. Yeah,
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: there's a couple of the people that he's working with today,
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: uh Rick and Marty Lagina. Um I think are brothers
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: from Michigan, and they are the subject to the TV show,
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: which you'll have to check out at some point. Um.
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: But that's supposedly where the curse came from. Is that show?
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: Oh where had that? Really? Yeah? I did not know that,
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: So it's it's been a present since last year, right um.
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: Frederick Nolan also is the one who discovered um five
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: large cone shaped boulders that when you look at it above,
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: looks like a cross, and it's forever known as Nolan's Cross.
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: What does it mean? Who knows? Maybe the boulders were
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: just sort of a in the shape of a cross
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: by accident, but well, Fred Nolan bought five plots of
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: land bottom, so he was a resident there, an inhabitant
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: there too. I'm not sure what happened Old Fred Nolan though, Yeah,
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: I'm not sure. It's a good point. He may have
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: been lost to the curse of Oak Island. So we
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: we keep using like present tense, like it's a it's
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: entirely true. Does anyone with History Channel knows there's still
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: people who are looking actively for the treasure of Oak Island? Right? Yeah?
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: Like they believe that if you put all the evidence together,
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: no one's crossed coconut fibers, the finger drains, um, the
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: evidence from Blanketship and Tobias, their video of stuff like
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: if you put all this together, there is evidence that
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: there is treasure down there. Somebody just needs to dig
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: deep enough in the right place and then bam, they're
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: gonna find it. Right Yeah, I mean, man, it's they've
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: dug so deep though, and so wide. How how much
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: deeper could they have gone back in the pirate days?
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: You know, I don't know. It just seems very unlikely
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: to me there's any treasure there. Well, then you would
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: be in the skeptics camp, and you would definitely not
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: be alone. Uh yeah, but skeptic thinking there may have
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: been something buried or some weird thing going on there,
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: But I don't know about treasure. Who knows though. Uh.
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: Skeptics will also say these are natural sinkholes, uh, instead
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: of traps like we said earlier. Um. They will also
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: say things like, you know, there's all kinds of underground
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: caverns around here, there's nothing special. I don't know what
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: they say about finding things like porcelain plates. I didn't
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: see anything like that. But you know, when he when
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: the stone has lost this inscripted stone. Um, when there's
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: no evidence really to point to except this tiny piece
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: of parchment paper, Like I don't know, it's pretty flimsy. Well,
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: none of the excavations started to be documented until the
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: nineteenth century, So all of mcguinness's early work is all
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: based on hearsaying conjecture. It's all up for debate. Whether
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: he was a teenager. Um was the block the tackle
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: block for the pulley? Yea, was that added to the
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: story later on? Um? If so, then all of a
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: sudden that that depression under the tree branch just becomes
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: a depression under a tree branch. You know. The pulley
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: was the thing. It's it's excuse my physics joke, but
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: the full crumb of this whole thing, you know. Yeah,
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: so um, if you if you start to look at
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: it on its face, all of this legend, you realize
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: that most of it is just legend, and that the
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: only real physical evidence is that scrap of parchment paper
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: that no one even knows whether that was planted or not. Well, yeah,
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: that's That's one of the things skeptics often say, is
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: that anything you found there is could have been planted
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: just to get money to fund the digs. Like look,
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: we found this, uh, this parchment and this porcelain plate,
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: and there's some gold dust on our auger did we
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: mention the coconut fiber and the coconut fiber again? Right,
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: so send us another like I don't know, tin mill, Yeah,
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: and we'll keep digging, right, So, uh, there you have
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: it again. Though, those those finger trains are just weird. Yeah,
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: that's weird for sure. It's cool. What who did what
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: they're Yeah? Basically they just need to like strip mine
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: the entire island all the way down there. You know.
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: I don't know why anyone. I haven't thought of that yet. Yeah,
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: just completely strip it of all its natural beauty until
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: it's nothing left and to destrug your shoulders afterwards, say
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: there's nothing here, right, Yeah? Go man. If you want
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: to know more about Oak Island, apparently you can watch
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: a weekly television show on it. You can also type
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: oak Island into the search part how stuff works. And
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: since I said search parts, time for listener mail. I'm
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: gonna call this poison ivy follow up from JB. Guys
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: have an interesting story about how you can get poison
• 34:44
  Speaker 1: ivy from more than just touching it. When I was
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: eight or so, we lived in California, had a big fireplace.
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: One day we decided to get our own firewood from
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: outside and got a couple of big logs my sister.
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: We were both about seven at the time. Uh we
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: She and I used the fire to rose marshmallows and
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: mixed mors. Great night. Right an hour or so later,
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: one of my sisters came into my parents room saying
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: she couldn't breathe. Her face had swollen to twice its
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: normal size, and her eyes were shut. Her throat was
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: barely able to pass air through it. An emergency room
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: trip and a shot or to the steroids later, she
• 35:18
  Speaker 1: was okay, but it took a while to find out
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: what happened. Apparently the poison ivy had been removed from
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: the logs we got, but the SAP was stole in
• 35:24
  Speaker 1: the wood, and when we burned them, the SAP was
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: present in the smoke, and my sister was highly allergic
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: and hailed it, got it in her throat and lungs,
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: and it blew up her face like a red balloon.
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: Best side note of this, we had passport photos. The
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: next day we were moving to Germany, so her passport
• 35:40
  Speaker 1: pick was a giant, red swollen balloon face and that
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: is JB and Fort So, Oklahoma. Way to go. JB.
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: That was a good story. You get the blue ribbon
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: for it. And I guess she had that passport photo
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: for a full decade unless you just had it retaken.
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: Would you would you live with that passport photo? I
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: totally what. I think it would be funny except for
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: the whole You know, this doesn't look like you think
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: that'd be a drag. It would be a huge drag.
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: T s A like the hassle. Yeah, but I'm I'm
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: well known in my family for making funny faces. Anytime
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: I have a photo idea of any kind taken just
• 36:17
  Speaker 1: for fun, I've always done it. That is so fun.
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: Family likes it. Ah, you got anything else? Nope? Okay,
• 36:25
  Speaker 1: Well thanks again for the awesome story, JB. If you
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: have a great story, you can tweet to us at
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: s Y s K Podcast. You can post it on
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: our Facebook page at Facebook dot com, slash stuff you
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: Should Know. You can put it in an email and
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: send it to Stuff Podcast at how stuff works dot com.
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: And in the meantime, while you're waiting around thinking of
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: what to say, go hang out at our home on
• 36:48
  Speaker 1: the web Stuff you Should Know dot com for more
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: on this and thousands of other topics is it, how
• 36:58
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