The Curse of Oak Island: Unnatural Findings Near Buried Treasure Site (Season 11)

NARRATOR: …Marty Lagina and geoscientist Dr. Ian Spooner join other members of the team in the northern region of the swamp where they have made a potentially important discovery.

Okay. What are we up to today, gentlemen?

Well, quite honestly, Marty, I feel like we found something that’s rather significant. Steve’s standing on top of this boulder, where at the bottom, there’s definitely a disturbance here. This is one of John Edwards’, the theorist’s spots in the swamp. The way to unlock Nolan’s Cross is built into the cross itself.

NARRATOR: One week ago, researcher John Edwards pointed the team to this location claiming that based on its proximity to the boulders of Nolan’s Cross, he believed that they might find a buried treasure connected to the Knights Templar.

-That boulder was put there.
-That boulder was put there.

NARRATOR: And, incredibly, as Billy Gerhardt excavated the area, a massive boulder was discovered sitting atop a potentially man-made stone formation.

So, we want to know whether that thing was moved or not?

Yep.

NARRATOR: Now the team has asked Dr. Spooner to examine the site in order to determine if it is merely a natural feature or if it really could be man-made.

So I want to roll that boulder over and see what’s underneath it.
-Mm-hmm.
-MARTY: Okay.
Well, let’s position ourselves over there and get after it.
IAN: Good to go.
MARTY: I’ll tell you what I find interesting about John Edwards’ presentation. How in the world are all these unrelated theorists, they keep focusing in on Nolan’s Cross. Are you gonna try and pick that up?
JACK: Oh, I think he is.
MARTY: If Nolan’s Cross is real from a standpoint that it was constructed by people, that is a giant thing to me.
IAN: Really, what I want to look at carefully is this surface right here.
Okay. So this is getting interesting here.
Here’s a cobble that I just turned over.
There’s a stick up here that obviously was in between the boulder and the sediment.
So I think it’s possible that boulder was moved around.
JACK (chuckles): Nice.
IAN: People were moving around boulders.
MARTY: To what end?
IAN: If you wanted to move water through this area, if you wanted to get drainage here, you’d move stones, you’d move things around. You know?
MARTY: Yeah.
It just seems like people were manipulating or trying to change the water level in the swamp for whatever reason.
-Yeah.

NARRATOR: If Dr. Spooner and Billy are correct, that the area around this feature was artificially drained in the past, could that offer evidence to support the theory of researcher John Edwards, who believes it may have been created centuries ago by members of the Knights Templar?

-IAN: Ooh.
-JACK: What’d you find?
Right at the base of the swamp material, some nice cut wood.
-JACK: Oh.
-GARY: Oh, right.
IAN: Yeah, so I’ll take that in, we’ll carbon-date that and see what we come up with.
-GARY: Yeah.
-JACK: I think we have to continue digging around and see if we find any other oddities…
-Yeah.
-and hopefully, some metals, too.
Yep.
Okay, we’ll let you do your thing.
Steve and I are gonna run, do some other stuff.
-GARY: Okay, mate.
-See you, guys.

NARRATOR: The following morning…

GARY: Battle plan is we’re gonna find some good stuff today.
-Let’s have at ‘er, then.
-All right.
JACK: That’s a big tree.
GARY: Really leggy, isn’t it?
BILLY: That’s the first tree stump that we found up in this end.
-Yeah.
-GARY: Yeah, we found two layers of trees over there. It was another layer of trees underneath the top one.
Mm-hmm.
So, maybe it suggests that people cleared this section off.
GARY: Yep.
That’s a big stump.

NARRATOR: Several weeks ago, while digging near the middle of the swamp, Billy unearthed several other tree stumps. Because trees are not able to naturally grow in marsh environments, these findings have suggested to Dr. Ian Spooner that the swamp may have been artificially manipulated hundreds of years ago.

JACK: That’s a big timber.
(strains):
Oh, yeah.
That’s a big log.
That’s definitely been chopped.
Almost too straight to be growing in the swamp, right?
That’s a good point.
This was brought here.
That’s definitely been chopped several different times.
Yeah, that was brought here for something.
I’ll toss it aside.
(grunts)
BILLY: You see how it’s lined with rocks?
JACK: Yep. I’ll walk around and take a look.
BILLY: I’ll bail that out a little bit and see if we can see a little more.
JACK: Yeah, this is definitely rocks.
Yeah.
That looks muddy there, but it’s rocks just underneath.
-Mm-hmm.
-Certainly looks like a rock-lined depression.
-JACK: Yeah.
-So, somebody dug a pit here, I would say.
Oh, wow, look at this.
Circular group of rocks.
This is crazy.
We came here because of John Edwards’ theory, and I believe we found something unique…
That is very, very cool.
…a hidden stone feature that has the potential to be very special.
It’s incredible.
That’s what this is.
-Lots of things to consider.
-One thing for sure, we have definitely got to stand down now, ’cause this looks really, really old.
JACK: And we need to get Rick down here, and I think the guys need to come take a look at this.
BILLY: Agreed. Maybe they’ll see more than we do.
-GARY: Yeah.
All right, mate, let’s go tell the guys.
I’ll reposition.
-Yeah. Bloody good digging, Billy.
-Yeah.
-RICK: Hey, guys.
-GARY: Hey, chaps.
What do we have?
Check out that circle of stones.
JACK: This is just what was here when Billy bailed the water out.
-Yeah.
So, this was in place? You didn’t pull out any rocks or anything?
Basically, I just cleaned the edges off. We didn’t really dig any. We figured it was enough of a feature that we needed to call you guys over and give us a better evaluation of what this is.
BILLY: Yeah. It’s almost like somebody engineered it.
You can see the one-over-two, two-over-one.
I see what’s described as a one-over-two, two-over-one construct. And it would only reinforce to me that this is an intentional, purposeful construct.
But we need to do more work to understand it completely.
JACK: But no metals.
No metals, but we didn’t find any metals at the paved area or on the stone roadway.
-True.
GARY: So, maybe it’s an older construct.
BILLY: At face value, it just suggests to me that people may have been on Oak Island a little bit before what we thought.
Did you check that board? Is that a stake there?
Go get that one.
Should be a– no, well, you can go down there.
JACK: That’s definitely been cut.
Yeah. And there’s-there’s more in here.
It’s loaded with wood all along this line.
Let’s see that one.
You got a few of these?
These are– these are kind of like what Fred found.
-The big, long strokes with an ax.
-CRAIG: Mm-hmm.
Maybe this is a candidate for C-14.
Yeah.

NARRATOR: During one of his many investigations of the triangle-shaped swamp, Fred Nolan discovered several uniform lines of wooden stakes, which were carbon-dated to as early as the 1500s. Fred was convinced they were survey markers, used centuries ago to help artificially create the brackish bog.

Is it possible that the Oak Island team has found a similar stake? At a site believed to mark a location where treasure could be buried?

But it doesn’t seem natural to me.
D-Do you think this is natural, Laird?
I don’t think that’s natural.
-GARY: This is really cool.
-RICK: What does it mean?
This might not be the only feature around here. You know, my thought is to have Dr. Spooner come out and maybe try to core through it somewhere.
-Yeah.
CRAIG: And see what he comes up with.
I don’t think we should do anything more here physically until Dr. Spooner comes in.
CRAIG: If people were here and building something at John Edwards’ site, we’ve really got to be careful when we’re examining it. It may tell the story of who was there.
It could be a game changer.