The Curse of Oak Island: TOP 5 FASCINATING FINDS

For 226 years now, Oak Island has been home to a fascinating treasure mystery.
And although many compelling reports have surfaced over the generations about evidence of treasure, booby-trapped flood tunnels, and even a large stone bearing a carved message saying “40 feet below, 2 million pounds are buried,” most of that is all anecdotal with no hard evidence to verify any of it.
So tonight, we’ll be counting down the top finds the fellowship has made so far that indicate Rick, Marty, and the team are closer than ever to the ultimate answers.

Number five: The Slipway
We’re going to let him just kind of peel this away, and then we’ll hopefully expose it to some degree.
Hold up, Billy! There’s a timber right there.
Wow, there’s another beam right there. Right here.
That’s odd. In 2018, Rick, Marty, and Craig surrounded Smith’s Cove with a massive steel cofferdam in the hopes of finding important clues and also in an attempt to shut off the flood traps believed to feed seawater into the money pit.
There’s another piece. Here’s another piece there, yeah.
Look at all of those logs! This is quite different from what we’ve encountered down there. The logs are basically rollers, if you will. It’s like a subway.
This kind of signifies there’s quite a load, quite a load expected.
This could be the dwarf.
What they had found was indeed a wharf or slipway. The questions that arose were, who built it and when?

Guys, this is the part of the war room meetings I really like. We’ve got some information, some results. Sample number seven is the slipway. It’s the north arm on the east end. So the slipway, it was, we believe, red spruce. It’s reminiscent of some of the samples we did in other areas of Halifax. We had a fairly strong date on, and that’s 1771.
Wow, it is original features.
Yep, predates the money pit.
Yeah, this is quite impressive for me. This is the biggest thing that’s happened since we started this quest.

Number four: The Lead Cross
During season five, the Brooch brothers were trying their luck at Smith’s Cove. They made one of the most important finds in Oak Island history.

Someone here, Rick?
Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, what?
I see someone!
Oh!
Holy shimoli! All right, it’s a cross, that’s a cross!

Well, I first thought, I thought that looks like a medieval, a medieval cross, so I would say that is somewhere in between 1200 and 1600. So, Jack, if you can ring Tobias up…

Rick was already confident that he and Gary made a key find, but he, along with his brother and Craig, also knew they needed to apply some objective science to be sure.

Hello, Tobias.
Hi guys.

For that, they turned to geochemist Tobias Scott Roenick, who analyzed the lead isotope composition of the cross to find out where and when it came from.

I compared the lead isotope data of the cross that you gave me with my database of all bodies and metals here, and I think I got some pretty interesting results for you.
Comparing the data, I noticed that the lead isotopes of the cross are somehow related to European deposits, but I did not find any match with the quarries that were used in the 15th to 17th centuries.

I therefore went on and compared the lead isotopes of the cross with those of deposits where archaeologists know medieval mining took place, and I think I found a match there.

Really?
Yeah, and time period-wise, you think it’s pre-15th century then?
Um, I think it’s pre-15th century, yes.
Wow, you nailed it, Gary.
Yeah, where the heck did it come from?

The data of the cross is very consistent with the area of southern France.

Number three: The Paved Area
One year after discovering the cross, the team once again drained the swamp and conducted a massive excavation to investigate the theory long held by the late Fred Nolan that the swamp was man-made.

Look at that!
That’s remarkable!
Yeah, tell me that’s natural. Oh, there’s no way that’s natural, Rick. Look at it. It’s just layered right on top, and it’s so uniform. It’s just perfect.
I’ve seen some strange things in this swamp, but this is… I don’t know, I don’t know how you explain this.

This stick will tell me when that stone was placed.
If you date the stick, you know when that happened.
The results were nothing short of astonishing.

So you remember that squished stick?
There’s the dates we’re getting.
Wow, yeah, what are they? Around 1200 A.D.
Medieval. Medieval, baby!

Number two: The Stone Wharf
It began when Dr. Spooner launched an investigation of the southeastern corner of the brackish bog.

That’s great news! I’ve always felt there’s something weird about this one, right?

But what he first thought might be a wall of some kind was soon revealed to be something much more telling.

I didn’t expect to see this.
Do you hear that?
No, it is my belief, at least my initial belief, that it is a road or a pathway or a platform.

The swamp was drained, and the fact that this wharf, which Dr. Spooner determined to be at least 300 years old, was completely contained within the swamp, could only mean one thing: that the swamp is a man-made feature.

That looks exactly like an old Roman road.
It’s possible, you know. It indicates probably a loading or unloading from a ship. It means to me that something rather massive was occurring well before the discovery of the money pit on Oak Island.
Could it be an indirect indicator of treasure? Yes, because why go to all this expense and construct this road that seems to have been constructed to be hidden?

Number one: Silver in the Money Pit
Over the past decade, this team has drilled more than 100 boreholes and dug nine massive steel-cased shafts attempting to verify those incredible historic tales of treasure in the money pit.

We saw them find more pieces of parchment, a gold-plated button, and even video footage of numerous gold-colored objects more than 170 feet underground. But up until the fall of 2021, any verifiable evidence of treasure had eluded them as well.

Not really any wood that we were hoping to run into.
Clock is ticking. We’re running out of time.
Yeah, exactly.

Hey, guys, hello?

That’s when geoscientist Dr. Ian Spooner came up with a revolutionary plan.

So the idea is to look at water down drill holes that exist.
Okay, the water in those wells should reflect the chemistry of the ground that they interact with.

Well, how would we identify whether or not there was treasure?
I absolutely love this idea of Dr. Spooner’s.

If there’s a massive amount of metal down there somewhere, it should be leaching into the waters. Let’s test it for the very things which we seek.

Working with team members as well as chemist Dr. Matt Lupman, Dr. Spooner took samples from numerous boreholes and shafts that the team had previously dug.
It would lead to the greatest scientific discovery in Oak Island history.

So, I’ve got one question to ask.
Do you think there’s treasure in the money pit?
Oh, I like that lead.
No, you know I’m serious.
Do I? Yeah.
Small chance.
I do. I absolutely do. I believe that what they drilled into in 1897 is real, and I think it’s still there.
Right.

So, Doug, can you bring up the presentation?
I can’t.

Great.

[Music]

There is every reason to believe down in those holes that there is something close by that contains a very large amount of silver.

I guess I’m still trying to get a mental picture of how much silver it would take to give these levels. Like, is it a handful of silver, or is it a Gearheart dump truck load of silver?
It’s a Gearheart dump truck.
Oh, baby!

Are we closer to finding an actual physical treasure?
We’ve got a shaft here, and maybe it’s the money pit. I think the clues are adding up that ultimately we’ll get either ourselves there or someone there.