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

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