Moving the 40,000-Pound Mystery (Season 13) | The Curse of Oak Island

[Marty] All right, guys. Today is the big day. Big day, big boulder. [Narrator] …Rick, Marty and Craig are on their way to Lot 8 on the western side of the island. I have a question for each of you.
What’s under it?
I’m thinking maybe a tunnel.
That would be absolutely fabulous.
Exciting as hell.
Well, let’s go find out then, shall we? It’s time.
[Narrator] After weeks of patiently waiting, they are about to remove a massive obstacle between them and possible answers to the Oak Island mystery: A 40,000-pound boulder. While this feature has never been documented by previous searchers, over the past two months, the team has been methodically excavating around and beneath the boulder by hand and discovered a series of evenly spaced stones holding it in place, as well as a backfilled void beneath it. [Fiona] I’ll show you, there’s a really good spot.
[Peter] All right.
[Narrator] After inserting a camera into the narrow space that was cleared under the boulder, video evidence was recorded of a possible tool… It’s gold looking.
[Doug] It certainly is.
[Narrator] …and even a gold-colored substance. And soil samples recently collected beneath it contained unnaturally high traces of lead. We’re seeing as high as 140 parts per million lead in that organic matter underneath the boulder. [Narrator] This has made Dr. Ian Spooner and the team speculate that there may be an old mine shaft underground that the boulder is concealing. [Marty] Morning, team!
[all] Morning!
-[Marty] Are we excited? -Whoo!
-Absolutely. -We are emboldened!
-You’ve been working on that one, haven’t you? -I have.
-[laughter] -What time is it, -Marty? -It’s time to lift that rock, Gary.
Oh, I can’t wait to get stuck in.
[Narrator] Now archaeologist Laird Niven has given the team permission to lift the boulder using a 130-ton crane. Here it comes, folks. Right there.
We’re about to get this show on the road.
It’s very exciting. I’ve been wanting to move the Lot 8 boulder as soon as I heard about it. Every scientist who has looked at it says that this giant boulder was moved into position.
Well, people don’t do that even today for no reason.
Back in the day, it would’ve been a massive undertaking, so it’s very exciting as to why this thing was placed there and what on earth is underneath it. [Laird] All of a sudden, the chains don’t look big enough.
[Jack] No, they don’t.
[Rick] It’s exciting. You can tell there’s a little bit of a buzz in the air that… people are hopeful that once the rock comes up out of the ground that there’ll be an aha moment and you’ll see something, i.e. answers to the Oak Island mystery. Here, in real time, we’re gonna get an answer. Is there something underneath it or not? [Marty] All right.
-Okay. -We’re gonna have liftoff.
[Scott] Everybody back up.
♪ ♪ -Here goes. -[Gary] Here we go.
[chuckles] Ooh. This is off the chain.
[shutter clicks] [Marty] Look at that.
-[Marty] Look at that. -[Alex] Nicely done.
-[Gary] Wow. -[Marty] Piece of cake. Big piece of cake.
[Gary] The heck is going on under there?
Laird, you’re up.
Initial observation is there’s no sterile subsoil.
We’re seeing organics that were introduced somehow.
Um, and not naturally.
[Marty] ‘Cause that dark soil’s not supposed to be under it.
[Craig] Yeah. Looks like a filled hole.
Exactly.
[Alex] And we don’t see any structures yet.
But that doesn’t mean there’s nothing down there.
There could be something much deeper under there.
-Absolutely. -Okay.
Right. I’m gonna get stuck in.
[Laird] It’s confounding to think about who got that out, how they got it out.
All right, here we go.
I’ll do this side first.
[Laird] And I think it reinforces the theory that this was a coordinated effort by a well-organized, large group of people for whatever reason.
-Nothing. -[Gary] No.
Just not getting any metal hits.
-Not on the outside. -[Fiona] That doesn’t really surprise me either though, ’cause if somebody did this and was wanting to hide it, you’re really gonna be careful about not dropping artifacts in there, too.
I think the mystery continues.
It’s possible we could’ve closed the door on it just now.
We could’ve picked this up and said, “Looks like it was -in place naturally,” but we didn’t. -Exactly.
[Fiona] When it was being lifted, I did not see any signs of any-any sort of, um, mechanical equipment touching the underside.
So it’s still a bit of a mystery how they ever would have moved this in the first place.
Okay, well let’s go to the next step, which is sampling, correct?
And you guys got to do your thing -real carefully, all that. -Cleaning up, yeah.
We’re gonna clean up all the loose soils around the edge, clean up the loose soils in the middle, and see how far down it goes.
[Fiona] It could be much deeper than what we’re seeing -on the surface. -[Rick] I’m still very hopeful -there’s something under here. -Absolutely.
This could absolutely be the highlight of this year’s entire efforts.
There’s no question about that.
So we just got to let the work proceed.
You guys do your thing and we’ll come back.
-We’ll keep you posted, too. -Yeah, okay. All right.
-If we find treasure, we’ll let you know. -Okeydoke.
Let’s let ’em get to work.
[Narrator] Later that day… -[Craig] Hello. -[Ian] Hey, Laird. -Hey, how are you? -Hey, Fiona. -Hi.
-Wow. -Boulder’s gone.
That’s pretty impressive.
[Narrator] …Craig, Jack and Dr. Ian Spooner arrive at the site of the Lot 8 boulder. It came up like nothing.
Zero resistance. And interestingly, it looks like this may have been all -rock-lined. -[Ian] Yeah.
And we now have the opportunity to see if there’s metals in that soil that might tell us a little bit more about what was happening.
-Yeah. -It may help guide your work because if we see an area that’s, you know, high in metals, -we should be really careful with that. -Yeah, okay.
I think it’s a good idea just to run a quick XRF.
Okay.
Your machine’s taking a-an image -right off the surface, right? -Right off the surface. Yeah.
So, we can do the top of the upper layer, the top of the lower layer, and even hit it from the side -to get different ideas? Okay. -Yep.
[Ian] So, let’s get this thing sparked up.
I see you brought in the, uh, A-Team here, guys.
-[soft laughter] -Uh, I’m gonna come down there, and you guys can tell me what’s going on.
[Craig] Just getting ready to test the soil down there -for anything else. -[Ian] Anything else, yeah.
-Well, let’s run the XRF. -[Ian] Yes, so, I’m gonna scamper down there and do some scans.
Okay.
[Narrator] Because Dr. Spooner has previously detected lead in the soil beneath the boulder, he will now scan the entire area that was previously covered by the boulder with a Vanta XRF spectrometer. By emitting a stream of X-rays, the device can identify various types of metals in the soil that may not be natural to the environment. [Ian] So, we should be all warmed up.
-This is ready to go. -[Marty] Okay.
But, uh, I’m gonna get down in there…
Well, I like the instant gratification -of that machine, so hop on down there. -Yeah.
[Fiona] So, you’re in the area right now, where we had the high lead samples.
[Ian] It’s showing something that I didn’t see in the other sample…
It’s showing some silver, and copper there.
[Fiona] Silver is exciting, isn’t it?
-Yes, it is. -[laughs] So, to be clear, then you’re finding more of the silver content in the lower layer, not in that upper layer.
Well, and that’s very preliminary.
-It has to go to Emma. -Could that be from something seeping up that you could be detecting?
If there was silver here at one point, it could leach into that soil.
Well, what if it’s still there, underneath?
Yeah, I think there’s every possibility.
[Narrator] Could Fiona be correct that Dr. Spooner may have detected evidence of a large cache of silver buried deeper below this feature? If this was an air shaft, for a tunnel, then there would be forces that would be bringing up, let’s say mists and things.
-Yeah. -Super saturated air that could carry along and then condense under here.
Yeah, but where’s the silver coming from?
-Treasure, right? Yeah. -Yeah!
Well, that’s the conjecture.
I think it goes much deeper. Lifting the boulder initially confirms that it was placed by people.
The next step, uh, is for the archaeologists to carefully excavate the dark soils and then see what’s underneath them. Silver is just as exciting as gold when you’re talking about a treasure hunt and you’re talking about coins.
I mean, the Pitblado coin didn’t have any gold in it.
It was a silver coin, with copper.
Silver and copper. Showed up right here, so…
I want to know where the heck it came from, and we don’t know that yet.
Interesting results.
Anomalous results, we need to do more work.
-Yep. -And Craig and I -got plenty of other work to do. -[Fiona] Okay, that’s great.
[Marty] Perfect. All right, let’s get after it.
[Fiona] Okay.