TOP MIND-BLOWING DISCOVERIES OF 2024 | The Curse of Oak Island

[narrator]
In the money pit area,
brothers Rick and Marty Lagina
are about to get their first
opportunity of the year
to personally inspect
the ongoing renovations
that are being made in
a mid-18th century structure
known as the garden shaft.
Before we get dressed,
I wanna show you something.
When you go down,
when I talk about something,
you’ll have a good idea.
Okay, towards
the bottom of the shaft,
this is set 16 here.
This is where we’re seeing
that infiltration of water.
This is the bad area where
all the water’s–
-You’ll see when we get there.
-[Marty] Okay.
That is very puzzling.
It is. It is.
And it’s just this area.
You’ll see as you go down.
It’s not undermining your shaft,
is it, Roger?
No. And that’s why I want to try
to stop or at least contain it.
Anyways, we’ll get you guys
dressed.
You’ll have a good idea.
We’ll talk on the way down.
-This is yours.
-This is me?
Yeah, and this is Rick.
This is for you.
Okay.
As we all know,
200-and-some years,
water’s always been the problem.
Now we’re encountering it
ourselves
and we have to devise a way
to shut it down,
or at least diminish it.
The bottom of the garden shaft
could be incredibly important
to solving the mystery.
It needs to be dealt with.
All right!
I feel like Ghostbusters.
[narrator] Since returning
to the island three weeks ago,
representatives from
Dumas Contracting Ltd.
have extended the refurbished
82-foot deep shaft
down to 87 feet,
with the ultimate goal
of reaching a total depth
of nearly 100 feet.
It is here that
the Oak Island team
hopes to breach a mysterious
seven-foot high tunnel
that they have discovered
during their strategic
core drilling operation.
A tunnel that has been
carbon dated
to as early
as the 17th century,
and which runs east to west
toward the so-called
“baby blob”
where high concentrations
of gold, silver,
and other metals
have been detected
in groundwater
between depths of 80
and 120 feet.
-All right. Here we go.
-Let’s go, guys.
[dramatic music playing]
[Rick] Care needs to be taken
to try to understand
what’s happening
inside of the shaft.
In a number of ways,
this water issue
has to be dealt with.
So… this is 60?
Oh yeah. So it’s starting
from this set here.
This is where our water starts.
Right here.
And then it comes in
along the side.
So our plan today is
we’re gonna go
one set above this,
we’re gonna punch
nine holes in here,
and we’re gonna get
some urethane in there.
Could stop all this water
we see coming in.
[Marty] What they wanna do is
use this fast-setting urethane
and they’re gonna grout it
and try and stop the water.
You see those two 2x6s?
See the crack?
[Rick] They use
a specialized compound,
expanding foam, if you will,
in layman’s terms.
Spray it under pressure.
And as it expands,
it will seal off
that intrusion of water,
possibly completely.
Okay.
I’ve landed.
[laughs]
[dramatic music plays]
Okay. Roger, I have
lots of questions.
-Yep.
-Where are we
compared to where
we were last year at the bottom?
-Are we below that depth?
-That’s right.
-About four, five feet lower.
-Well below.
Yeah. Right now, we’re at
87 feet from the top.
So we’ve gone down
about four feet, roughly.
Right. But how far
is that down there?
Uh, it’s not very much further.
I’ll just open this up,
this little hatch here,
so it’ll give us a better idea.
Okay. We’re looking at dirt
nobody else has ever seen.
-Ever. Right?
-Right. Right there. For sure.
[Marty] I’ll say this, Roger.
You’re very close
to that tunnel we hope
is just a few feet below here.
-Yeah, pretty cool, eh?
-Oh yeah. I’d say.
This is a tunnel we didn’t know
anything about.
It’s not described
in the narrative.
We gotta get down there.
[Roger] That’s what I’m hoping.
When we start probe drilling
and start punching away.
-Yeah.
-Short of an artifact recovery,
gold, silver,
the most important relevance
of this shaft
is that horizontal drilling.
Yep.
[narrator] Depending
on what the team finds
once they reach
the believed tunnel below,
Dumas will also be able
to use a probe drilling device
to search for evidence
of valuables
up to 40 feet
in every direction.
Should any important clues
be discovered
during this process,
and the existing tunnel
is inaccessible,
Dumas can construct
a new tunnel
in order to reach them.
[dramatic music playing]
Later that morning…
[Terry] If you’re there,
that’s good.
[narrator] …as Dumas
continues their work
on the garden shaft…
-[Moya] Hey, Terry.
-[Terry] Hi. Thanks for coming.
KL14.5, we’re down 138.
[narrator] …nearly 60 feet
to the southwest,
geologist Terry Matheson
and archaeologist
Moya MacDonald
supervise the core
drilling operation
in borehole KL14.5,
a borehole
that is on target
to penetrate the center
of Aladdin’s Cave
nearly 150 feet underground.
[Terry] This is a very
interesting area to all of us.
-Hey, Scott.
-Guys.
How ya doin’, Marty?
[man 1] So we’re gonna put
the Inuktun camera
down in KL14.5
I think we’re all hoping to see
some evidence
that men actually
excavated this cave.
What did we hit here?
Basically, we have ten feet
of open space,
is what I’m understanding.
That’s big. That’s bigger
than anything we’ve seen.
We have never seen
anything like this.
Paul, let’s get it in the hole
and see what we can see.
-Okay.
-Please.
Okay, Paul.
Line it up at the top.
Going into that caisson
right now.
[narrator] The Inuktun Spectrum
120 High Definition camera
that the team is using
to investigate
the massive cavern
is not only designed to operate
in low light conditions…
[Rick] There’s the water.
[narrator] …but is also able
to pan and tilt
for a 360-degree view
of its surroundings.
Okay, that’s right at 142
at the top of the caisson. Yep.
[Terry] We should be
inside the cave now.
[tense music playing]
[Scott] You can see silt
kind of moving past there.
Paul, just take her down
incrementally.
Okay.
[all exclaim]
There it is, right there.
Oh my gosh, look at that.
[Marty] We see something
that looks square.
Like a square-headed bolt,
which would clearly
be a man-made thing.
That’s what we’re looking for
in Aladdin’s Cave.
We’re looking for some evidence
human beings were inside it.
So I guess it’s possible, but
I would not call it definitive.
We need a miniature Gary
to go down and metal detect.
Now I would have the blower.
Take it down further, Paul.
[tense music playing]
[Scott] I think that was
not the bottom.
I think that’s potentially
a side wall.
Just trying to get any
indication of where we are.
[Rick] If there’s something,
i.e. a man-made something
underground,
that might have
significant importance
to what the island
is trying to tell us.
[Terry] Almost have some
kind of current
pulling sediment
across the lens.
[Scott]
See kind of a shadow there.
It looks like something
through the mist there.
[dramatic music playing]
Oh, you can see stuff now.
[all exclaim]
Okay. That’s interesting.
Woo. Trying to rotate around.
[Terry] Seems to be.
It looks wide open
but you can’t see through
that silt to the wall.
[Scott] Hm.
If anything, we’ve proven
it’s a wide-open cavity.
This is a good opportunity
to map it with the sonar.
[Terry] I agree.
[dramatic music playing]
[man 2] We’re in the cave
and what we see
is very interesting.
I mean, it could be man-made.
And so, for us,
if this proved anything,
it’s worth getting
the sonar into.
And so we’re gonna do that
in a few days.
Sonar’s gonna tell us
dimensions,
where it’s coming from,
going to.
We can look for openings
and we can use this to really
map out the underground
of the cave.
I’m really excited about
that because, to me,
this is potentially
a treasure location.
[Marty] Okay.
-I think we’re done. Don’t you?
-Yeah.
Let’s reconfigure.
[Scott] Good job, guys.
The boys are calling you
the Silver Fox.
[narrator] Rick and Marty Lagina
are about to join the operation
to help Dumas reach
the potential treasure tunnel
located just below
the garden shaft.
What are we gonna do?
Explain to us what
we’re gonna do.
So, uh, we gotta excavate
a bit more.
-Gotta chip some of that clay.
-Right.
-And then put another set in.
-Okay.
We’re now at 90… 93 feet.
Gotta be within two feet.
Something like that.
Somewhere around there.
Yeah.
Let’s get suited up and have
a go at this, big brother.
[laughter]
[narrator] Before Dumas
can finish construction
on the final wooden set
that will extend the
garden shaft into the tunnel,
several feet of hard clay
must be removed.
It is a task
that Rick and Marty
are more than eager
to help complete.
It’s gonna be exciting.
To go down in that shaft
and actually do some digging
and maybe be part of unearthing
an original tunnel
would be incredibly gratifying.
All kinds of thoughts are
streaming through my head.
I mean, you can’t help it.
This is an exciting moment.
Ready.
We’re gonna go down deep
into the garden shaft,
big brother and I.
-[Paul] All set.
-[Rick] Let’s go.
My brother and I
are gonna be miners,
and our heritage is mining.
Our grandfather came here
in order to work in the mines
up in Michigan.
It’s really an amazing thing
that’s happening here.
A confluence of heritage.
[Paul] Very good.
[Marty] That’s right.
Now we can begin.
Marty, that’s gonna be
your corner.
-That beam there.
-Okay.
[Paul] Yours is called
the Destroyer.
-Mine is?
-Yeah, yours is Destroyer.
-[Rick] All right.
-[Paul] You got Big Betsy.
[Rick] Cool.
Here’s the deal, Rick.
You could be standing
a couple feet above the tunnel
we’ve been looking for
for at least two years.
-Right there.
-“Could”? We are.
Well, let’s get busy.
How do you work this thing?
[Paul]
Little bit at a time?
Yeah, okay.
-[Paul] Pump going on.
-[man on radio]
[Paul] Silver Fox and
his brother are ready to go.
[chuckles]
[air hissing]
[whirring]
[dramatic music playing]
[narrator] In order to break up
the hard clay
below the shaft,
Rick and Marty are using
a pneumatic jackhammer.
Then representatives from
Dumas Contracting Limited
will use the three-ton
hammer grab tool
to remove the materials.
[jackhammer whirring]
Yeah, baby!
This is no job for old men!
[chuckles]
Jackhammers themselves
weigh 60 or 70 pounds.
They tend to get stuck
in the clay.
It is some of the hardest work
I’ve done in many years.
All right, break time.
[all] Whoa, whoa!
[Rick] In the moment,
I’m an eyes and boots guy.
I’m down there.
I wanna get that clay
out of the hole,
I wanna find the tunnel, I…
I didn’t think of much else,
to be honest.
[jackhammer whirring]
[jackhammer straining]
[Marty] What do you
think you hit?
The last spade bit, I thought
I hit something different.
See that?
Try digging right up there.
[Rick] Look at that,
it’s nothing.
Really soft.
Hand me a bar?
Do you have a bar down here?
-[Paul] Yeah, right there.
-Right there.
[tense music playing]
[Rick]
[Paul]
[Rick] I thought at the bottom
of the spade bit
that I was on top of something,
and I thought, “Wow,
maybe I’m on a tunnel.”
[narrator] Could Rick Lagina’s
speculation
that he may have reached
the mysterious
and potentially ancient tunnel
be correct?
[dramatic music playing]
If so, the team may be
closer than ever
to the answers and reward…
that they’ve worked for more
than a decade to uncover.
[Rick]
“Right there” is
a relative term, isn’t it?
“Right there”
is a relative term.
Well, we got it all
loosened up for you.
[chuckles]
Now the hammer grab’s
gonna come down?
Yeah, we’ll hammer grab,
we’ll clean that hole.
Wood delineates
man made things, obviously,
when it’s way underground.
So we need to keep going.
We could be closer
than we’ve ever been
to this actual treasure,
or to where it was deposited.
When we start doing the tunnel,
you guys gonna come down
for a day?
-Yes.
-Try and keep us out.
That’s gonna be an experience.
That would be cool.
We gotta be really close.
We gotta be.
[Paul] We are.
[narrator]
Later that afternoon…
[Paul] So it seems like
we hit your target. Finally.
-You found her?
-Yeah. [chuckles]
[narrator] Rick Lagina,
Scott Barlow,
and Craig Tester
have just received
long-awaited news.
After extending
the garden shaft
to an approximate depth
of 95 feet
in the money pit area,
representatives from
Dumas Contracting Limited
have finally reached a believed
seven-foot-high tunnel
that leads toward
the baby blob,
and perhaps a vast cache
of buried treasure.
-You can actually see wood.
-Okay.
But it’s either collapsed
or whatever, who knows…
-Yeah.
-[Paul] Until we uncover more.
Okay. Get us dressed.
Let’s get going.
[Paul] Okay.
[dramatic music playing]
[Rick] Maybe, finally,
we can actually
put eyes and boots
on the tunnel
that was found by
the sonic drill program.
You get a little bit of chills.
Let’s go take a peek.
It’s been frustratingly slow
at times,
but it’s exciting.
[Gary] Good luck, guys.
-I’ll take you a picture.
-Thanks.
[Rick] If it was original,
it’s our belief
that we’re
talking hundreds of years ago.
[chuckles] Now, that…
that raises the bar.
There’s hope, there’s promise,
there’s the “you might find
the one thing,”
so I think there are
some answers here.
There you go.
So what are we
looking at here, Paul?
[dramatic music playing]
[Paul] That’s where we got
the sample outta the wood.
You feel anything?
[Rick] Uh…
Yeah.
There’s definitely wood
right here.
[music intensifies]
-See the bar here.
-[Paul] Yeah.
We drove that bar down
just for a guiding…
[Rick] Yeah?
So here’s the round log here.
[Rick] Oh, okay.
Right here, that’s wood?
-[Paul] That’s wood right there.
-[Rick] Oh.
-See that?
-[Paul laughs]
There’s some wood right there.
[Rick] But that’s right here.
See that right there?
That looks like wood there, too.
You know, there’s something
going on there.
[Paul]
[thudding on wood]
[Rick] Hear that?
That sound hollow?
Yeah.
[Rick] Listen to that.
That’s… That’s
one of the beams.
This beam is hollow