The Mystery of Oak Island – Treasure Hunt or Legendary Hoax?

Hello and welcome to the Conspiracy [music] Show. I’m Richard Sarat. Oak Island is a 140 acre [music] island located 200 m off the southshore of Nova Scotia, Canada. The treecovered [music] island is but one of nearly 360 small islands in Nova Scotia’s Mahon Bay. The island [music] is privately owned and prior permission must be granted before anyone can set foot [music] on the tiny island. But this small, seemingly unremarkable island [music] has been for hundreds of years at the center of one of the world’s greatest [music] mysteries.
For centuries, treasure hunters have ventured to Oak Island to try and recover a vast treasure which according to legend lies at the bottom of the money pit, protected by a series of ingenious traps. As treasure hunters have attempted to recover [music] the bounty from the money pit, cleverly engineered flood tunnels flood the shaft with seawater. There are numerous theories as to what the treasure is and who [music] put it there. Some speculate the money pit holds a pirates horde of gold buried there [music] by Captain Kid or perhaps Blackbeard. Others believe the pit may have been dug by the legendary Knights [music] Templar and that Oak Island is the last resting place of the Holy Grail or [music] even the Holy Arc of the Covenant. On this episode of the Conspiracy Show, we’ll explore the mystery of the Oak Island treasure. We’ll meet two Oak Island researchers who believe they know what lies at the bottom of the Money Pit and who put it there. We’ll also meet a woman whose family spent several years living on Oak Island searching for the treasure. And of course, [music] we’ll hear from a skeptic who will argue that the Oak Island money pit contains no treasure and that the pit is simply a natural phenomenon, likely a sinkhole.
Me, [music] I just want the truth, and I’m willing to follow it wherever it leads. It is time to redefine reality. IC enigma called the Cathedral of Pain.
>> That’s how cynical I am now about the process. Mainstream media, they’ve thrown [music] in the towel. They’re going to ignore it. They’re going to make it >> has been engineered by the Illuminati.
>> There’s no doubt.
>> Well, as you know, I specialize in unsolved mysteries of all kinds. And when I first read about the Oak Island mystery, I was determined to visit it, to explore it for myself at firsthand, cuz I love to explore mysteries at [music] firsthand.
It began in 1795.
Three young men, Smith, Vaughn, and McInness, had taken a day off work and gone out to Oak Island. It was about a mile long, half a mile wide, and in those days uninhabited, and covered in [music] oak trees. As the three young men walked across the island, they came across a clearing. Beside this clearing was one very large oak tree, and from one of its branches, a ship’s block and tackle hung down [music] over the top of what the boys could see at once, was a shaft.
Thinking of pirate treasure, as I think we might have done if we had been teenagers in 1795, the boys began to dig. They went down further and at the 20ft level, which was a tremendous achievement for three teenage boys, they came to a platform of oak logs. They wrenched these out, but still nothing except soil.
The boys went home, told their families, and a while later, an adult expedition came to the island. And at 90 ft, they uh discovered an inscribed stone of some sort. They didn’t know what it meant. It had ciphers on it. And they took the stone out. And they came back the next morning. And the uh pit [music] which had been dry all summer suddenly was full of water to about 30 ft from the top which was uh the ocean level at that point. So it was flood trapped.
Well the inscription uh it was a bunch of uh hieroglyphics of some sort. Uh people guess what it was. Uh some people translated it in 1860s as being uh 40 ft below 10 million pounds are buried. That would be pound sterling. Money pit goes down. It’s been dug down to about 170 ft. And uh they found layers of wood [music] every 10 ft as they went down as if u you know somebody was sealing it.
And in fact, when they [music] broke open those layers of wood down to 90 ft, that’s when the flooding started.
[music] And uh so it’s theorized that that was actually an air seal [music] to uh stop the water from coming up. And then they discovered a tunnel that ran from the money pit uh out to Smith Cove at the east end of the island. So there was a a artificial beach and a flooding system that went from Smith Cove. And after that, about 20 years after that, they discovered a second similar tunnel that went to the Southshore Cove about 300 ft away.
>> The water from those flood tunnels, which was the Atlantic itself, would be able to pour into the money pit. And we assume that the designers had intended to drown anybody who came into the pit.
One expedition after another has attempted to get the money pit. Nobody has succeeded. Although one or two very interesting things have come up on the drill bit on the pod orga which they used. The drill went into what appears to have been a subterranean treasure chamber of larch.
It then went through two boxes which might have been coffins [music] or which might have been treasure chests.
>> So the Enslow company had had found this stone. The code seems to be pretty simple. It seems to be a single letter simple substitution cipher. And if you run it through a cryptographic analyzer, what it says is 40 ft below 2 million pounds lie uh buried. So, the question is is this evidence that there’s treasure in the pit? Well, there’s a couple of [music] things that would uh make me uh suspicious of this. Number one, the stone is nowhere to be found these days. So, there’s actually no evidence of it having existed other than people claiming that it existed, [music] but it’s missing. It’s not in a museum.
It’s not in somebody’s home. It’s not in a library. It’s nowhere.
It would make me wonder why would somebody who buried the treasure, if there is a treasure there, let’s assume that there is for a second. If there was, why would somebody have to bury a stone, not only saying this is where you’ll find it, but here’s how much treasure is here. Wouldn’t they already know that?
>> One of the theories I looked at uh when I was researching the first book, of course, was that it was a natural phenomena. Uh there have been sink holes uh found in the area like that, but nothing that deep and nothing that elaborate with those uh platforms and things like that.
>> When you look in the geography of the Mahon Bay area and indeed all over Nova Scotia, that you find limestone and anhadrite strata, which you also find under Oak Island, and they lend themselves to the formation of natural cavern structures. Um, and indeed when uh people have drilled on the mainland close to Oak Island, so for example, in I believe it was the 1970s, people were digging a sewer system on the mainland and struck a natural underground cavern.
In the 1870s, a woman who had bought had farmland on Oak Island was plowing her land and broke through the land, her plow and oxen and herself broke through into a natural limestone cavern 12 ft under. Um, it was a sinkhole. The description from the eyewitnesses who were there in that expedition, the early ones 200 years ago, said that the sides of the shaft were brick hard clay. They could see where a pick had struck into the hard clay, where a shovel had cut into the hard clay. But the stuff that they were taking out was soft lomy backfill where somebody had actually dug it out. It’s artificial. It’s an artifact. It’s the work of human beings.
>> Over the years, people have discovered various things which uh certainly suggest that somebody had been there a long time ago. For example, coconut fiber in the muddy pit itself and along the beach. Of course, there are no coconut trees in Nova Scotia. The nearest coconut trees would be probably in uh South Carolina. And uh so everybody assumed that whoever came there and buried treasure uh came on a ship that had coconut dunage in it.
Dunage fiber was used to hold cargo from shifting and also to absorb moisture in the hold of gallions. So whoever came there came from a tropical place and uh most guesses are that it was the Caribbean. And so, doesn’t this indicate that uh somebody from the Caribbean must have dug this pit? I don’t think that’s necessarily so. All the presence of coconut fiber indicates is that coconut fiber got in there somehow.
>> The first guess uh among people in the area was that it was pirate treasure and Captain Kid’s name came up and before he was hung, he claimed he had hidden a large treasure somewhere in the New World where only me and the devil could ever find it. They figured, of course, he was BSing them. and uh they hung him.
>> And this was the version of the story that I heard when I was a little boy, my grandfather and he had heard when he was a little boy from his uncle that it was Captain Kid possibly. Um but when you look at actual historical accounts of uh how frequently people actually buried treasure, there’s lots of claims that there’s buried treasure, but actual uh verifiable instances of buried treasure, they’re very few. The question would have to be asked, why would kids bury it instead of spend it? pirates weren’t necessarily known for their fiscal planning sense. So, it’s not clear to me why he would secret it away or any of these other groups would secret it away.
For whom?
Other theories that have been suggested uh are all over the place. Uh one interesting one is that the original manuscript is authored under the name of Shakespeare but authored by Francis Bacon who were put there. There are also theories that that it’s much earlier than that that uh it was perhaps the Masons that did it. the Knights Templar.
Of course, one of the wildest of all the theories was that the Oak Island mystery had something to do with the supposedly lost Kingdom of Atlantis and that the highly technical, long-lost Atlantean civilization was secretly at the back of whatever we think or guess might be buried under Oak Island.
Bob Russell and Middler Rustall were kind of an interesting family. They were daredevils. They rode something called the the Globe of Death. Bob Restall first heard about the treasure hunt in the mid-50s. He was an adventurer and he decided he could find it.
>> I’m, you know, I have to admit that I was kind of bedazzled by it all, but if my dad believed in it, then it must be something fantastic.
Oh, they had no hydro. [music] They had no telephone. It wasn’t well insulated.
The ice formed on the inside [music] of the place. It was a really rough life.
It was a hard life.
>> But his was a pick and shovel operation.
And uh most of the those years that he spent there, it really was very [music] uh primitive work. He had an old pump that kept breaking down. and uh he was always sure that any day now he would >> [music] >> uh come up with a treasure but unfortunately he obviously never did.
>> I think they were captured [music] by the sort of romantic spirit of treasure hunting. The trouble is is that for any human effort, the more we put into it, the more committed we become to it.
>> And dad [music] uh just took a look. He knew he had to hurry up and get changed to go to the bank, [music] but uh he just took a look down the new shaft and he tumbled in. And then Carl Graaser, our millionaire investor from United States, rushed in and he too fell into the shaft.
That it was a couple of days is what I remember.
and that when they uh went to get the bodies, they too became overcome with fumes or at least not overcome but they could smell it and they weren’t going to die that way.
>> There have been six people altogether killed in the search for the treasure and the biggest tragedy was uh when the rest family arrived there and uh they came in 1959 state of 65 in 1965 uh the rest Mr. Restall, Robert Restall was killed along with his son Robert Jr. and uh that was pretty tragic obviously for Mildred Restall and I interview I’ve interviewed her several times over the years and u Mildred always told me she said I didn’t like it. She that was Bob’s dream. It was Bobby Junior’s dream. It was never mine. And she describes the living conditions as being pretty primitive. uh no running water, no electricity, uh having to take a boat to the mainland. There was no causeway then, but she stuck by her husband and uh by his dream.
>> Oak Island was beautiful and on beautiful sunny days, you know, [music] it was a lovely place and I can see how my mother was content to explore there and enjoy the place. Anyway, that you know there is a a a good side to they tried to do something different.
They did they worked to the best of their ability. They worked like dogs and they sacrificed. They used uh ingenuity and hard work. God they never ever took it easy, you know. So I I would just like them to be remembered as someone who also tried to get at the treasure.
failed. Okay.
>> I like to think that uh there’s a lot of sense in the old proverb, what man has done, man may do. [music] And I am a great believer in the power of human motivation, the power of the human mind. A determined woman, a determined man [music] can do anything on which their hearts are set. And I believe that it will one day yield its treasure. [music] And if I won the lottery, we’ve just had some recent news here in Europe that a massive prize of 148 million in the European lottery has been won by a British [music] couple. And I thought to myself, if I won anything like that amount in the lottery, the first thing I would want to do, Patricia and I would be over to Nova Scotia, and we would equip the best expedition that has ever yet been equipped. And by hook or by crook, I’d be down that shaft looking for [music] what was down there. I think it’s one of the seven wonders of the world. And I’d love to get down there [music] after it.
>> To date, about 200 and was it now 220 some years after the McKinnus and his friends uh first were taking the first tenative digs into the soil.
Multi-millions, many uh at least 10 million, I think more like tens of millions of dollars have been sunk into this endeavor. And so Oak Island has beencome to colloally be known as the money pit. And you can kind of take that two ways. Either it’s a pit with money somewhere in it or it’s a pit into which people have been sinking money for now hundreds of years. And I tend to favor the latter explanation.
>> Do you think Oak Island will ever give up its treasure?
>> No, I don’t. I don’t. [music] I do think there’s a treasure. I know there’s a treasure and I think it’s [music] immense beyond belief.
But now, you know, after they left, I mean, after [music] the the accident, uh the uh next person who came into the island changed [music] the surface, changed the terrain. It’s something like 20 ft lower than it was. It’s like decapitated.
I believe they had four pumps altogether and they were capable of taking [music] 2,000 gallons a minute. That’s four times what my dad did and it [music] still couldn’t keep up with the water.
And I think of course that all [music] that moving the earth has totally destroyed the inlet tunnel. And Dan Blankenship told me uh that he believed that there were many inlet tunnels. Not one, not two. He thought maybe 20 or 22.
And you [music] know something, I think he’s right. And I think there may not be 22. [music] There may be only six. It doesn’t matter. I mean, who’s going to spend millions or billions cutting off the water to maybe to see what’s under that cavern, you know, under the bedrock, in that cavern, under the bedrock.
So, I just I don’t see it happening. I don’t see that kind of investment going into it.
There are, it seems, as many theories as to what treasure lies at the bottom of the money pit as there are oak trees on Oak Island, pirate plunder, ancient religious relics, gold and silver coins from a shipwrecked Spanish gallion. One researcher even speculated that English philosopher Sir Francis Bacon [music] used the pit to hide documents proving him to be the author of William Shakespeare’s plays. I believe [music] the evidence suggests the money pit is not merely some natural phenomenon such as a sinkhole. [music] There is something very valuable buried on Oak Island. However, whatever is down there seems destined to remain there. The intricate system of flood tunnels used to booby trap the money pit appears to have been damaged beyond repair by a series of reckless [music] treasure hunters over the centuries.
Yet there is a real life version of buried treasure that is neither fable nor myth. And that is the buried treasure that lies within us all. A veritable gold mine of personal [music] fortune and wealth just waiting to be tapped. Down in our hearts and souls [music] dwells a treasure chestladen with gifts and talents that can take us anywhere and everywhere [music] we’ve ever hoped to venture. Now I’d like to know what you think. You can contact me through the website ww.theconspiracyshow.com.
In the meantime, don’t be afraid.
[music] [music] [music] Heat.
[music] [music] Heat.