September 19, 2025 • 51 mins
SEASON 9 BEGINS FRIDAY OCTOBER 31ST
This week's episode takes us to a windswept island off the coast of Nova Scotia in Canada, where in the summer of 1795, three young men made a discovery that would haunt generations to come.
What began as idle curiosity about a depression in the earth would ignite an obsession that has endured for over two centuries.
Since that fateful day, Oak Island has drawn treasure hunters, engineers, and dreamers from around the world, each convinced they can succeed where countless others have failed. But the island seems to guard its secrets jealously, and those who seek to uncover them find themselves confronting something far more complex and mysterious than they ever imagined…
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello, it's Richard mc lean smith here with Unexplained on
an end of season break. We'll be dipping back into
the archive each week until season nine begins on Friday,
October thirty first. This week's episode takes us to a
windswept island off the coast of Nova Scotia and Canada, where,
in the summer of seventeen ninety five, three young men
(00:20):
made a strange discovery that would haunt generations to come.
What began as idle curiosity about a depression in the
earth would ignite an obsession that has endured over two
centuries Since that fateful day. Oak Island has drawn treasure hunters, engineers,
and dreamers from around the world, each convinced they can
(00:42):
succeed where countless others have failed. But the island seems
to guard its secrets jealously, and those who seek to
uncover them soon find themselves confronting something far more complex
and mysterious than they ever imagined. This is Unexplained, Season three,
episode eleven, Into the Abyss. Maybe it had been the
(01:16):
effects of an unusually dry summer causing unfamiliar variations in
the color of the grass, or perhaps it was just
the way. The light had fallen that morning, which caused
Donald to take notice either way. If there was one
thing the three farmers now standing over the peculiar impression
in the ground could agree on, it was that none
(01:38):
of them had seen it before. Donald had called on
them as soon as he'd found it that morning, suggesting
they come and check it out for themselves. Seemingly manufactured,
it looked like a thirteen foot wide circle had been
carved into the ground, positioned in a small clearing under
the bow of a large solitary oak. It was certainly
(02:01):
strange that they hadn't come across it before. Or three
of them had lived and worked on the island for
a number of years, and with it being just over
one hundred and forty acres worth of land, there was
barely an inch of it that they hadn't seen. Being
first and second generation immigrants themselves, the men knew only
too well how transitory the local population had been through
(02:25):
the years, But since the island was thought to have
been entirely uninhabited prior to its incorporation only a few
decades ago, they were stumped as to what the strange
marking could be. Maybe it was just a well, or
some kind of fire pit, suggested one of the men,
that had long since been filled in an ancient burial mound, perhaps,
(02:47):
suggested another. The year was seventeen ninety five, and the
place a two and a half kilometer long island known
locally as Oak Island, situated just two hundred metres off
the east coast of a stretch of land recent settlers
called Nova Scotia. Perhaps it shouldn't have been such a
(03:11):
surprise for Donald to have stumbled on something so strange
that morning, for the island had always been somewhat of
an enigma, a stranger in the midst The clue was
in the name Oak Island, inspired by the interloping evergreen
oaks that were dotted all across it, reaching upwards of
(03:33):
ninety feet with bare trunks and flat splayed out canopies.
They dwarfed the many surrounding pine trees that were far
more common to the region. In fact, it is said
that Oak Island was the only island out of three
hundred sixty four in the surrounding Mahone Bay that was
home to such a species. Perhaps they had pondered on
(03:56):
this when they decided to make a quick excavation of
the area that morning to see what they might find,
or perhaps they did not. Nonetheless, there was little chance
they could possibly have anticipated just quite what was going
to happen next. You're listening to Unexplained and I'm Richard
(04:18):
McLean Smith. Into the Abyss Part one. The men had
only made it two feet down when one of them
struck something hard. Assuming it to be a large rock,
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he tried digging a few feet to the side, only
to hit something similar again. It wasn't until they'd cleared
more of the earth away that they discovered the entire
area of the circle had been covered over with flat stones.
After removing the slabs, a few more hours of digging
revealed some kind of pit that seemed to narrow to
(05:02):
about seven foot in diameter under the flagstones. With the
soil having been obviously displaced and refilled before, it was
easy to follow the contours of the original dig Pickaxe
markings on the inside of the wall gave further indication
of the previous excavator's work. By the afternoon, having reached
(05:25):
just under ten feet in depth, one of the men
struck something solid again. Clearing the mud away, they found
a layer of rotting timbers that had been carefully positioned
deep below the surface. Believing they might finally have an
answer to the purpose of the pit, the men pulled
up the wood, only to find an empty two foot
(05:48):
pocket of air underneath. Undeterred, they continued to dig until
the early evening, making it a further eight feet down,
when once again their shovels struck timber. Utterly Perplexed, the
men pulled up the next row of logs, only to
find nothing but dirt underneath. With the light fading quickly
(06:13):
and not having ladders long enough to dig any further,
the men call it a day. Any suggestion of the
pit being a burial chamber has been thoroughly dispelled, since,
despite being twenty feet down already, they had found nothing
to show for their efforts. But in the days that followed,
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slowly something began to dawn on them, a clear reason
why someone might go to all the trouble of digging
a secret pit on the edge of a tiny, nondescript
island and fortifying it to keep it safe. Back in
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seventeen oh one, in the city of London, a man
had been condemned to death and eventually hung at the
infamous Execution Dock, located in Wapping on the banks of
the River Thames. His name was William Kidd, and like
many of the unfortunates for whom Execution Dock would be
their final destination, he was a pirate. There was much
(07:21):
a victim, as he was a participant of the rampant
scheming and corruption perpetuated by British gentry in matters of
trade and expansion. Kidd had none the less exhausted all
favors by the time the noose was placed around his neck,
and though his life would be short, his legend was
only just beginning. It had long been suspected that Captain
(07:45):
Kidd had buried a significant portion of his stolen wealth
in an effort to curry favor lest he ever be captured. Indeed,
a large stash of it had already been discovered shortly
before his execution on Gardiner's Island, a small outcrop at
the northern tip of New York State. But few believed
(08:06):
there wasn't more. And if you were looking for somewhere
to hide a treasure trove of gold and jewels far
from the usual shipping lanes of the trade, as Donald
Antony and John would shortly come to believe you couldn't
have found a better spot than the anonymity and seclusion
of Oak Island. Returning to the site a few days later,
(08:29):
convinced of their destiny, the men managed a further fifteen
feet but were left disappointed, finding only another shelf of timber.
Frustrated and realizing they had neither the skill or the
financial means to carry on, the men were forced to
bring an end to their adventure, or so they had
all told each other. In truth, John Smith had very
(08:54):
different ideas. Over the next few years, Smith surreptitiously secured
ownership of the pit, buying up the land and a
number of the plots around it. Finally, by eighteen o three,
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along with three other investors, with whom he formed the
Onslow Company, he was ready to tackle the mystery again.
Before long, they had made it to another five feet down,
where again they find yet another floor of timbers, But
this time there is something else, a layer of charcoal
scattered across the top of it. Since it was common
(09:38):
to use charcoal fires to draw fresh air into mining shafts,
it was now clearer than ever that a significant operation
had once taken place here the company soon make it
almost ninety feet in depth, uncovering a further four timber shelves,
each at ten foot intervals, and incredibly layers of cocoanut fibers,
(10:02):
suggesting that whatever was down there had likely traveled from
some distance, the nearest cocoanut trees being thousands of miles away.
Not only that, but as the men well know, cocoanut
fibers were often used to pack precious cargo. Then, at
ninety feet down they find something extraordinary. Having anticipated finding
(10:29):
another layer of wood, the team instead find a thick
slab of stone measuring two feet long and one foot wide.
Peeling it carefully from the mud, they are astonished to
find there is an inscription carved on to its under side,
Only it's not in any language that they have ever
seen before. Made from thirty nine geometric symbols spaced out
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over what seems like eight words, it appears to be
some kind of code. A short time later, the workers
notice water seeping up from under the hole, but decide
to ignore it and continue to dig. That afternoon, at
roughly ninety eight feet, once again, the shovels hit wood,
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and a ninth timber platform is unearthed after prising the
logs apart, only to find more mud and clay below.
The team finished for the day, convinced they are only
feet away from the objects of their wildest desires. Spirits
are understandably high when the crew return to work the
(11:38):
following morning, only to find a solemn looking John Smith
waiting for them by the pit, wringing his hat in
his hands. The pit has completely filled with water. All
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hands work fearios to bail out the water, but the
level refuses to budge. With no other option, the company
pulls the rest of their money and hires a mechanical pump.
The plan works perfectly as the water is soon drained
from the pit, but then, with only eight more feet
to go, disaster strikes when the pump breaks down. By
(12:23):
the end of the day, the water line is back
to where it started. Believing they knew roughly where the
treasure might be, the team dig a second tunnel from
which they planned to dig across to the first one
once they had reached the required depth of one hundred
and ten feet or so, but the crew only make
it as far as twelve feet before their access pit
(12:45):
is also completely flooded, Having run out of money, the
Onslow Company is forced to give up, and so the
pit's secrets will remain submerged by water for the next
forty years. As for the stone, with its peculiar coded markings,
it is left in the possession of John Smith, the
(13:06):
landowner and one of the pit's original discoverers. However, believing
it to be worthless, the code is never deciphered and
the stone soon forgotten about. By eighteen forty five, with
Donald mc kinnis having died and John Smith vowing never
to waste another cent on the hopeless venture, it is
(13:28):
left to the third of the original finders, Anthony Vaughan,
to take up the reins. Now in his sixties, Vaughn,
together with another seven investors, forms the Truro Syndicate, and
by eighteen forty nine finally secures the rights to start
his own attempt to locate the treasure. That summer, the
(13:50):
largest team yet sets up camp and immediately gets to
work draining the pit. After two weeks, they have drained
it to within five feet of the bottom. Returning the
following day, however, the crew is devastated to find that
once again the waters have returned, but this time they
have a new plan. After constructing a wooden platform over
(14:15):
the pit, a large drill is dropped into it, with
the hope of at least determining what materials are buried
further down. They will not be disappointed. Passing the bottom
of the hole marked by the shelf of timber ninety
feet down, they drill on to roughly one hundred and
fifteen feet. Deciding they have gone deep enough, the crew
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watch with bated breath as the device is withdrawn from
the depths and pulled finally into the light of day.
Just as the last section is removed, something sparkles in
the light. The foreman hurriedly inspects the drill head and
is astounded to find three small links of a gold chain,
(15:00):
as well as fibers of oak, suggesting the high likelihood
that the drill had broken through the walls of some
kind of chest. Finally they had found it. Getting it
out would be another matter, entirely owing to the incessant
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flooding of water. Just as the Onslow team had realized
their best chance was to access it from a parallel shaft,
Believing the treasure to be roughly one hundred and ten
feet down. Incredibly, the team managed to dig a secondary
channel to one hundred nine feet and are even able
to start tunneling across before disaster strikes again, and just
(15:49):
as if something had been suddenly uncorked, water rushes into
the pit. But as the team regroups to assess their options,
one of the men notices something interesting. The water is
rising and falling with the tide. Tasting it, he is
amazed to find it is salty, suggesting that rather than
(16:13):
being the water table, it must be coming from the sea.
One hundred meters to the east of the dig site
lies Smith's Cove, named after one of the area's earliest
known settlers, Edward Smith, sometime in the mid seventeen hundreds.
Being the closest stretch of coastline to the pit, the
(16:34):
crew naturally assume it to be the most likely source
of the floodwater. With the beach being fairly small, the
chief engineer suggests they construct a dam to better see
what they are dealing with. Making quick work, it isn't
long before they have blocked off the cove and drained
it completely of water. What they discover next astounds them.
(17:00):
Or of the inlet is found to be completely covered
with coconut fiber and eel grass, under which they find
beech stones carefully laid out. The cove, it transpires, has
been synthetically constructed and underneath all the rocks. Finally they
find the source of all their problems. It is some
(17:22):
kind of booby trap made from a series of eight
inch wide drains of flat stone fanning out like five
fingers into the ocean. Together, the drains converge into one
single drainage channel that disappears underneath the island, heading straight
for the excavation site. The team immediately gets to work
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locating the main drainage tunnel in the hope of blocking
it off completely. Yet another shaft is dug twelve feet
to the east of the original, revealing an underground channel
of water thirty five feet down. Next, timbers are driven
into the ground to block it off, and when a
fourth borehole twenty feet to the south of the original
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is dug to one hundred ten feet with no sign
of water, it appears their plan is working finally, with
no danger of water making it past the blocking timbers,
the team are ready to dig through to the treasure.
All is going well when within two feet of the
original shaft. Workers tunneling through the clay on their knees
(18:30):
in the dark, notice the walls have become wet, and
soon their knees are damp, and before long their feet
and calves are drenched. Two the tunnel is filling with water. Mercifully,
the workers are able to scramble out and get back
to the surface before it is too late, while the
(18:52):
rest of the team watch with sinking hearts as one
by one the three surrounding boreholes steadily fill up with water.
After trying again to unsuccessfully find the central flood tunnel,
the Truro Company's hunt for treasure is also forced to
come to an end. In eighteen fifty seven, John Smith
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becomes the second of the three original Oak Island treasure
hunters to die. Ownership of his land is passed from
his sons, who, having watched the fabled treasure pit steadily
ruin their father, are only too happy to sell it
on to a Henry Stephen, who in turn sells it
to local landowner Anthony Graves. The Trurou company return in
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eighteen fifty nine for one final stab, but their considerable
efforts will once again prove futile. However, Rumours about the
island's apparent treasure are beginning to grow, and within two
years a new crop of hunters arrive on the island
ready to claim its reward. The Oak Island Association, led
(20:08):
by Jotham McCully, draft in over sixty men and thirty
horses to assist them, as well as employing the latest
mining technology, from an iron pump engine to industrial sized
winches and pulley systems. However, their heavy handed approach digging
three further holes and tunnels around the original pit results
(20:31):
in yet more flooding and the eventual collapse of the
original shaft, resulting in only the upper thirty feet of
it now being accessible. In the process of re excavating
the original pit, the pump boiler ruptures, spraying scolding water
onto a nearby worker and burning him to death. But
(20:54):
what's worse from the perspective of the Oak Island Association
is that they are running out of money, and with
news of the fatal accident now spreading, there is little
hope of raising fresh capital. A short time later, however,
with work halted, Jotham McCully hears a story about one
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of the first artifacts to be found in the original
pit a mysterious stone inscribed with a strange cryptic message.
What's more, as rumour would have it, the stone is
still on the island, having apparently been integrated into John
Smith's old fireplace. Wasting no time, McCully, whose company now
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owns the property, takes a chisel to the fireplace and
sets about removing it piece by piece. He hasn't been
working long when he spots one particular slab a little
smoother than the others, pressed into the wall at the back.
Freeing it up, he turns it around to find, much
(21:58):
to his amazement, a strange cryptic message etched onto the
other side of it. Realizing it might be their last chance,
McCully has the stone loaded onto a horse and cart
and dispatched immediately to Halifax, the nearest major city. For
(22:21):
the next few weeks, the curious stone is placed in
the window of a bookshop to drum up interest in
the Oak Island treasure hunt in an effort to sell
more shares to keep the company going. Many come to
view the peculiar artifact and attempt to decipher the code,
but no one can crack it. Regardless excitement generated by
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the stone's mysterious origins is enough to raise another two
thousand dollars what equates to roughly fifty thousand today, enabling
the Oak Island Association to continue their search for a
few more years. However, like all all who had come
before them, the company will fail, becoming the third formal syndicate,
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forced to admit defeat in the search for what many
have come to believe is the lost treasure of pirate
Captain William Kidd. A short time later, the stone is
brought to the attention of James leache, a professor of
languages at Halifax's Dalhousie University. A keen amateur cryptographer, Leechi
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sets about trying to decipher the message, assuming it to
be a simple substitution code, whereby each symbol simply represents
a letter of the English alphabet. It is not long
before Leechie believes he has cracked the code. The message,
he believes, reads forty feet below two million pounds are buried.
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It has been some twenty odd years since doctor Leechy's
interpretation of the flagstone code, and the rumors of buried
riches on Oak Island have reached mythical proportions Due to
complications of ownership. It isn't until eighteen ninety three that
a fourth team are able to secure the thirty thousand
(24:20):
dollar lease agreement to begin the next assault on what
many believe to be the hiding place of the long
lost treasure of infamous pirate Captain William kidd On first
arriving at the site, the new group of treasure hunters,
led by a Frederick Blair, known as the Oak Island
Treasure Company, find it much changed from Donald mc kinness's day.
(24:45):
The once lush green grove now an open wound, scarred
and pock marked with numerous holes full of water. Like
many before them, the company make a start digging fresh
holes and making industrial strength efforts to drain the seawaters away,
but just as before, the same problems persist. In March
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eighteen ninety seven, labourer Maynard Kaiser is helping to drag
water up from one of the pits when the bucket
snags on the rope. After ordering the men to stop,
he is fixed to the pulley system before luring himself
into the pit, the bottom of which lies somewhere in
the dark ninety feet below him, carefully easing himself in
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line with the bucket. He has just untangled it when
the rope gives a sudden jerk, slipping two feet before
being caught again on the pulley. A greatly relieved Kaiser
has just enough time to look up before the rope
jerks loose again, sending the unfortunate Kaiser disappearing into the
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darkness below. He becomes the second man to die in
pursuit of the supposed treasure of Oak Island. With the
rest of the team too shocked and saddened to return
to work, the operation is brought to an immediate halt.
That night, deep in sleep, one of the workers turns
(26:19):
restlessly in his bed. Somewhere inside his head, he is
visited by the specter of Captain Kidd, who delivers a
terrifying warning cease digging now, or else more will die.
With news of the nightmare permeating the camp, the crew
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refuse to return to work. It will be a year
before the Oak Island Treasure Company are able to start
digging again. This time, the team begins with another exploration
of the material below the bottom of the pit, the
discovery of what seems to be loose pieces of metal
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buried at approximately one hundred and fifty feet, as well
as a small piece of parchment bearing the Roman numeral
for the number six, only serves to convince the company
further that they are not on a hiding to nothing.
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Despite extensive efforts to plug the tunnels from Smith's Cove,
the boreholes continue to flood. In response, an engineer suggests
putting a red dye into one of the pits so
they can find out precisely where the waters are coming from.
With a small team assembled to the east above Smith's Cove,
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the dye is poured into the hole. After nearly an
hour of waiting, however, they have seen nothing, But then
one of the crew spots it a garish wash of
red bleeding into the sea from the south shoreline. Realizing
they had been plugging the wrong tunnels all along, the
(28:03):
team undertake a sustained process of dynamiting along the southern
edge of the dig site in the hope of uncovering
the real flood tunnel. But just like the many previous efforts,
having only brought further destruction to the increasingly scarred landscape,
the company draws a blank. With enthusiasm for the work
(28:24):
beginning to Wane Company, found of Frederick Blair, buys out
the remaining shares and in nineteen o five takes full
ownership of the license to dig on the island. For
the next twenty five years, he leases it out to
a variety of unsuccessful ventures, and by the early nineteen thirties,
(28:45):
as described by Frederick Griffin in the Toronto Star Weekly,
where once the ground above Smith's Cove was littered with
the majestic oaks that gave the island its name, by
now there were barely half a dozen left clinging on
for dear life. The land has become a battlefield of
torn earth and empty boreholes. In nineteen thirty five, steel
(29:10):
magnet Gilbert Headen is the next to answer the siren
corn of treasure, purchasing half the island and a digging
lease from Blair. After three years and fifty thousand dollars
just under a million today, Hedden's team make a number
of interesting discoveries, finding a minus oil lamp, some dynamite
(29:32):
buried at sixty five feet, as well as an as
yet undiscovered chamber that appears to have been one of
the original flood tunnels, the problem being it is almost
impossible to tell if any of these artifacts had been
left prior to seventeen ninety five. It has also become
impossible to tell which hole exactly was the original pit
(29:55):
that started the whole adventure off in the first placed
gives up in nineteen thirty eight. When Frederick Blair dies
in nineteen fifty one, the site lease reverts to mel Chapel,
who had been a partner of Blair's twenty years previously.
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Chapel had also been one of the diggers who witnessed
Maynard Kaiser fall to his death. Though it was said
that Chapel had once himself seen gold flakes coming off
a drill during one of the earlier excavations, he had
no interest in seeking the treasure, remembering all too well
the warning from his colleague that death stalked all who
(30:41):
sought it. It was in nineteen fifty nine that Robert
and Mildred Restore negotiated a deal with mel Chapel to
try their luck at cracking the mystery. In the nineteen fifties,
Robert and his wife Mildred worked a traveling show called
thee of Death, which involved the married couple riding motorbikes
(31:04):
around a metal sphere at sixty five miles per hour.
The pair traveled the world before settling in Canada. It
was at some point in the nineteen fifties that the
Dare Devil's got wind of the intriguing treasure hunt occurring
on Oak Island. Soon after agreeing a lease with Chapel,
Robert and his son Bobby moved to the island to
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begin work and are joined by the rest of the
family soon after the following year, they succeed in pumping
out almost all the water from the main shaft. For
the next five years, however, the family struggled to keep
the water held back long enough to make a thorough
exploration of the site. Once again, the treasure remains tantalizingly
(31:50):
out of reach. In August nineteen six, Robert and Mildred
are preparing to head to nearby Chester to run a
number of errands when Robert heads to the site to
make a final check on a new gasoline pump. The
(32:12):
pump had been installed next to one of the new
shafts that they had been digging at Smith's Cove. Telling
him not to take too long, Mildred watched her husband
as he stepped into the muggy afternoon air and made
his way down at the cove. A few miles away
on the mainland, Jim Kaiser, one of the Restall's key laborers,
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was carrying out some chores at home. Though he wasn't
scheduled to work that day, he had the most peculiar
desire to stop what he was doing immediately and head
to Woke Island, back above Smith's Cove. As Robert nears
the shoreline, he is overcome by a strange smell of
(32:56):
rotten eggs. It seems to be emanating from one of
the newly dug pits. Robert's son Bobby, is helping to
burn waste materials when he looks up to see his
father peering down at something from the edge of the pit,
before going stiff and falling straight in. Bobby tears down
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to the cove, only to find his father's lifeless body
floating in the water at the bottom of the pit.
Moments later, everything goes black as he too loses consciousness
and falls straight into the hole. Another worker, Carl Graser,
who had witnessed the whole thing, races to the edge
(33:41):
of the pit. Seeing the two bodies in the water.
He has only just reached the top of a ladder
descending into it when he becomes the third man to
lose consciousness, falling from the ladder with a splash into
the hole. He is in turn followed by worker Cyril Hilts,
who has made it half way down the ladder before
(34:03):
he too succumbs to the strange fumes in the pandemonium.
A further two workers, Andrew Dumont and Leonard Kaiser, attempting
to rescue the others, make it as far as the
water before their bodies give up too. Incredibly, New York
fire fighter Captain Edward White, who just happens to be
(34:26):
visiting the dig site at the time, is miraculously able
to pull Kaiser and Dumont free, but for the others
it is too late. Back at Jim Kaiser's home, there
is a frantic knock at the door. He opens it
to find his uncle in a desperate state with some
(34:46):
terrible news. Jim immediately races to Oak Island to find
a team of fire fighters assembled at the top of
Smith's Cove, trying to figure out the safest way to
retrieve the bodies. Without thinking, Jim borrows a vintage Second
World war gas mask from one of them and jumps
(35:07):
straight into the hole. One by one, he pulls out
the dead bodies of his friends. The tragic death of
the men, especially both Robert and Bobby Restall, marks the
end of the rest All involvement with Oak Island, with
(35:31):
Mildred having no interest in pursuing what is starting to
look increasingly like a cursed errand ownership of the lease
is transferred to Robert Dunfield in the summer of nineteen
sixty five. The bullish Dunfield wastes little time in bulldozing
twelve feet away from the surface of the original pit,
(35:52):
and uses the resultant clay to clog any tunnels coming
up from Smith's Cove. Next, he constructs a causeway joining
the island to the mainland for the first time. Back
in nineteen sixty three, businessman Fred Nolan discovered that, unbeknownst
to Restall and Robert Dumfield at the time, a few
(36:15):
minor lots of Oak Island were still available to purchase.
After swiftly buying them up, he undertakes a few minor
excavations but finds little of interest. However, with the construction
of Dumfield's causeway. Nolan is excited at the prospect of
getting better equipment to continue his search, but Dumfield refuses
(36:38):
to let him use it. What he hadn't realized, however,
was that Crandall's Point, the land abutting the causeway, was
also still available to purchase. When Nolan finds out, he
buys it, immediately denying all access from the causeway. The
(36:58):
petty stalemate results in Dumfield quitting the project for good
and returning to his native California. Some might say he
got off lightly. Only a few weeks prior to Dumfield's
(37:18):
voluntary eviction, Jim Kaiser, who had stayed on to assist Dumfield,
is spending the night at the dig site in the
old Restall family home when he waits to find the
whole cabin shaking violently while having the sensation of a
heavy weight on his chest. Looking up, moments later, he
(37:42):
was confronted by a pair of red eyes staring at
him from out of the darkness. Running from the bed
in terror, he heads straight outside into the cold night air,
but finds no sign of anybody. The next morning, having
finally got back to sleep, Kaiser finds his body covered
(38:04):
in bruises, including five on his arm, long and thin,
as if a hand had gripped him there. It wasn't
long after that reports of a genuine curse first came
to light. That Worn, specifically that seven treasure hunters would
have to die before the island gave up its treasure,
(38:28):
with the construction worker scolded in eighteen sixty one and
Maynard Kaiser's fall of eighteen ninety seven added to the
horrific quadruple tragedy of the rest All operation. So far,
there had been six by nineteen sixty nine. In the
(38:52):
one hundred and seventy four years since Donald mc kinnis,
John Smith and Anthony Bourne first uncovered evidence of a
potential treasure pit, not one person had succeeded in digging
down any further than the ninety foot bottom carved out
by the Onslow Company in eighteen o three. But all
(39:12):
that was about to change. It was in April of
nineteen sixty nine that businessman Daniel Blankenship and David Tobias
formed the Triton Alliance, buying up the majority of the
island and moving in at the first opportunity in what
was by far the most sophisticated operation to date. The
(39:35):
alliance begins by digging sixty different boreholes close to the
original pit to draw up a detailed plan of the
geology underneath. They soon discover the bedrock to be located
at roughly one hundred and sixty feet below, but incredibly
there also seems to be some kind of wooden layer
(39:56):
forty feet below this. The follow year, labourers uncover evidence
of what could well have been the original dam constructed
at smith Cove to create the original flood tunnels, a
set of logs laid out in a U shape with
Roman numerals carved into them. They also discover a litany
(40:19):
of artifacts, including wrought iron scissors, an iron ruler, and
a wooden sled that pre date the time before Donald
mcinness first spotted something in seventeen ninety five. But the
best is yet to come. Since there was no way
of preventing the sea water flooding the now myriad tunnels
(40:41):
and boreholes, and with the risk of structural collapse too
high to send people down them, the team construct a
vast twenty seven inch diameter steel pipe, which they hope
will allow for direct access to underneath the dig site
in spring in nineteen seventy one. The team choose a
(41:02):
borehole numbered ten X for the purpose and proceeded to
carve it out to a depth of two hundred and
thirty five feet before threading the pipe down it all
the way to the bottom. What made TENX so special
was that they had good reason to believe it led
(41:22):
directly to an artificial cavity that had at some point
been dug out of the bedrock. Before sending anyone down, however,
Blankenship and Tobias decided to use a camera to first
investigate what was down there. With the team set up
on the edge of Borehole ten X, they gathered excitedly
(41:44):
around a bulky TV monitor. As the camera was slowly
lowered down, They watched with profound anticipation as it dropped
deeper through the casink, through the pitch black of the water,
and finally out into the open of the chamber below.
Squinting at the monitor, they see soft, angular shapes beginning
(42:07):
to emerge from out of the darkness, things which seemed
foreign to the surrounding geology, all covered over in a
thick layer of silt, and one shape more recognizable than
the others, protruding from out of the mud the arm
of a skeleton. Believing they had finally unearthed the location
(42:31):
of the fabled treasure, the Triton team employ a diver
to take a closer look. In October nineteen seventy one,
Alan Sagar, a retired lieutenant commander and former de mining expert,
answers the corps. With the casing too narrow to wear
(42:56):
an oxygen tank, Saga is forced to hugger a small
bottle of compressed air to his chest as he is
lowered manually on steel cable into the pipe, and with
no radio communication, Saga and the crew have only the
cable with which to give each other signals. At ninety
(43:16):
feet down, feeling the chill of the water at his feet,
Sega tugs on the cable for the Winch team to
stop adjusting his mouthpiece. He gives another two tugs and
is soon descending again, dropping steadily until he is completely
submerged under the water in total darkness. He soon descends
(43:41):
past one hundred and fifty foot level, then two hundred feet,
until finally he emerges at the bottom end and into
the cavity. Saga takes a moment to compose himself before
turning on the camera the images of which are being
fed back live to the surface, and points it into
(44:02):
the space. Turning on his torch, he directs it into
the gloom. Suddenly he can see everything. Unexpectedly, the cavern
that stretched off some distance behind was much bigger than
had been first assumed. On the floor of it, just
(44:24):
as the previous footage had revealed, there appeared to be
a number of oblong containers and a pole, perhaps the
handle of a tool, poking up from out of the
soft mud, And sure enough, there to the side of it,
the arm of a skeleton reaches up out of the silt.
(44:44):
Back on the surface. Crowded around the monitor, a nervous
excitement to spreading throughout the team as they struggle to
contain themselves. But then Sega takes a step forward into
the cavern, instantly sending a bar cloud of silt billowing
up into the space, blocking out the light. Realizing he
(45:06):
can no longer proceed, Sega has little choice but to
get back into the pipe and head back to the surface.
Once in place, he tugs twice again on the cable
and is greatly relieved when moments later, he feels it
taking his weight and lifting him upwards a just over
(45:27):
half way. With Saga still submerged some distance underwater, he
has the strange sensation that he is being pulled back
into the pipe. He realizes with horror that it is
the suit caught on one of the welds in the pipeline.
Unaware of what has happened, the workers above continue to
(45:50):
winch him up, but with Saga's body unwilling to budge,
the suit is beginning to pull apart, and now the
breathing apparatus is coming undone as well. Sega pulls furiously
on the cable while simultaneously struggling to free himself, when
(46:11):
finally something dislodges and he is suddenly free, once again
being pulled steadily up to the surface. After Saga's close call,
nine other divers are tasked with helping to retrieve the
(46:31):
apparent items from the cavity at the bottom of Hold
ten X, but none are successful. In nineteen seventy six,
Daniel Blankenship tries to enter the cavern himself. However, having
only made it halfway down the pipe, Blankenship hears the
ominous sound of creaking steel, which is followed by a
(46:54):
cascade of debris falling on his head from above. Sensing
imminent danger, Blankenship demands an immediate evacuation. Miraculously, he is
pulled free just as the casing collapses completely below him.
When the twenty seven inch wide steel piping is dug
(47:15):
out later, they discover a section of it has been
entirely closed in to some The cavity at two hundred
and thirty five feet deep and the items allegedly spotted
in it is the strongest evidence that a genuine horde
of treasure has been stashed away on the island. Others
(47:36):
have questioned whether it may have in fact, only been
created by dynamiting that had been carried out by the
Triton Alliance some time prior to its discovery. Either way,
like all others before them, Blankenship and Tobias will leave
the island empty handed, and though many others even to
(47:59):
this day have since attempted to unlock the island's secrets,
it resolutely refuses to give them up, or so it
was thought. In a startling revelation that has only recently
come to light, it was claimed by Fred Nolan that
(48:23):
in nineteen eighty, whilst digging in a region just above
the south shore known as the Swamp, he discovered three
old and empty oak chests. Then something else came to light.
Thanks to the extensive research carried out on the subject
of the Oak Island Treasure by the Fantastic Blockhouse Investigation Team,
(48:47):
it seems those empty chests just might have been rediscovered before,
In fact, all the way back in seventeen ninety five.
According to Carma, who had taken part in some of
the earlier excavations, in nineteen twenty five, his grandmother Lucy Vaughan,
(49:09):
a descendant of Antony Vaughan, one of the first discoverers
of the pit, had taken him into the basement of
her home and shown him an old looking chest made
of oak. Opening it up, it was revealed to contain
twenty five white canvas bags, each stuffed with gold coins
(49:30):
that she said had come from Oak Island. And then,
in a two thousand and seven newspaper interview, a descendant
of Donald McInnis made a similarly startling revelation. In the
weeks after Donald uncovered the first signs of the pit
in seventeen ninety five, he John Smith and Anthony Vaughan
(49:53):
had in fact also uncovered three separate chests stuffed full
of lute. It had long been believed in the McInnis
now known as McGinnis family, that on finding the treasure,
the men had sworn to secrecy, agreeing never to reveal
the truth of it to anyone. After all, there's no
(50:16):
telling what lengths people will go to when told there
is treasure to be found. Thank you as ever for listening.
Unexplained as an Avy Club production, the podcast created by
(50:36):
Richard mclin Smith. All other elements of the podcast, including
the music, are also produced by me Richard mclin Smith. Unexplained.
The book and audiobook is now available to buy worldwide.
You can purchase from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Waterstones and
other bookstores. Please subscribe to and rate the show wherever
(50:57):
you get your podcasts, and feel free to get in
touch with any thoughts or ideas regarding the stories you've
heard on the show. Perhaps you have an explanation or
a story of your own you'd like to share. You
can find out more at Unexplained podcast dot com and
reaches online through x and Blue Sky at Unexplained Pod
and Facebook at facebook dot com. Forward Slash Unexplained podcast
Hello, it's Richard mc lean smith here with Unexplained on
an end of season break. We'll be dipping back into
the archive each week until season nine begins on Friday,
October thirty first. This week's episode takes us to a
windswept island off the coast of Nova Scotia and Canada, where,
in the summer of seventeen ninety five, three young men
(00:20):
made a strange discovery that would haunt generations to come.
What began as idle curiosity about a depression in the
earth would ignite an obsession that has endured over two
centuries Since that fateful day. Oak Island has drawn treasure hunters, engineers,
and dreamers from around the world, each convinced they can
(00:42):
succeed where countless others have failed. But the island seems
to guard its secrets jealously, and those who seek to
uncover them soon find themselves confronting something far more complex
and mysterious than they ever imagined. This is Unexplained, Season three,
episode eleven, Into the Abyss. Maybe it had been the
(01:16):
effects of an unusually dry summer causing unfamiliar variations in
the color of the grass, or perhaps it was just
the way. The light had fallen that morning, which caused
Donald to take notice either way. If there was one
thing the three farmers now standing over the peculiar impression
in the ground could agree on, it was that none
(01:38):
of them had seen it before. Donald had called on
them as soon as he'd found it that morning, suggesting
they come and check it out for themselves. Seemingly manufactured,
it looked like a thirteen foot wide circle had been
carved into the ground, positioned in a small clearing under
the bow of a large solitary oak. It was certainly
(02:01):
strange that they hadn't come across it before. Or three
of them had lived and worked on the island for
a number of years, and with it being just over
one hundred and forty acres worth of land, there was
barely an inch of it that they hadn't seen. Being
first and second generation immigrants themselves, the men knew only
too well how transitory the local population had been through
(02:25):
the years, But since the island was thought to have
been entirely uninhabited prior to its incorporation only a few
decades ago, they were stumped as to what the strange
marking could be. Maybe it was just a well, or
some kind of fire pit, suggested one of the men,
that had long since been filled in an ancient burial mound, perhaps,
(02:47):
suggested another. The year was seventeen ninety five, and the
place a two and a half kilometer long island known
locally as Oak Island, situated just two hundred metres off
the east coast of a stretch of land recent settlers
called Nova Scotia. Perhaps it shouldn't have been such a
(03:11):
surprise for Donald to have stumbled on something so strange
that morning, for the island had always been somewhat of
an enigma, a stranger in the midst The clue was
in the name Oak Island, inspired by the interloping evergreen
oaks that were dotted all across it, reaching upwards of
(03:33):
ninety feet with bare trunks and flat splayed out canopies.
They dwarfed the many surrounding pine trees that were far
more common to the region. In fact, it is said
that Oak Island was the only island out of three
hundred sixty four in the surrounding Mahone Bay that was
home to such a species. Perhaps they had pondered on
(03:56):
this when they decided to make a quick excavation of
the area that morning to see what they might find,
or perhaps they did not. Nonetheless, there was little chance
they could possibly have anticipated just quite what was going
to happen next. You're listening to Unexplained and I'm Richard
(04:18):
McLean Smith. Into the Abyss Part one. The men had
only made it two feet down when one of them
struck something hard. Assuming it to be a large rock,
(04:39):
he tried digging a few feet to the side, only
to hit something similar again. It wasn't until they'd cleared
more of the earth away that they discovered the entire
area of the circle had been covered over with flat stones.
After removing the slabs, a few more hours of digging
revealed some kind of pit that seemed to narrow to
(05:02):
about seven foot in diameter under the flagstones. With the
soil having been obviously displaced and refilled before, it was
easy to follow the contours of the original dig Pickaxe
markings on the inside of the wall gave further indication
of the previous excavator's work. By the afternoon, having reached
(05:25):
just under ten feet in depth, one of the men
struck something solid again. Clearing the mud away, they found
a layer of rotting timbers that had been carefully positioned
deep below the surface. Believing they might finally have an
answer to the purpose of the pit, the men pulled
up the wood, only to find an empty two foot
(05:48):
pocket of air underneath. Undeterred, they continued to dig until
the early evening, making it a further eight feet down,
when once again their shovels struck timber. Utterly Perplexed, the
men pulled up the next row of logs, only to
find nothing but dirt underneath. With the light fading quickly
(06:13):
and not having ladders long enough to dig any further,
the men call it a day. Any suggestion of the
pit being a burial chamber has been thoroughly dispelled, since,
despite being twenty feet down already, they had found nothing
to show for their efforts. But in the days that followed,
(06:34):
slowly something began to dawn on them, a clear reason
why someone might go to all the trouble of digging
a secret pit on the edge of a tiny, nondescript
island and fortifying it to keep it safe. Back in
(06:56):
seventeen oh one, in the city of London, a man
had been condemned to death and eventually hung at the
infamous Execution Dock, located in Wapping on the banks of
the River Thames. His name was William Kidd, and like
many of the unfortunates for whom Execution Dock would be
their final destination, he was a pirate. There was much
(07:21):
a victim, as he was a participant of the rampant
scheming and corruption perpetuated by British gentry in matters of
trade and expansion. Kidd had none the less exhausted all
favors by the time the noose was placed around his neck,
and though his life would be short, his legend was
only just beginning. It had long been suspected that Captain
(07:45):
Kidd had buried a significant portion of his stolen wealth
in an effort to curry favor lest he ever be captured. Indeed,
a large stash of it had already been discovered shortly
before his execution on Gardiner's Island, a small outcrop at
the northern tip of New York State. But few believed
(08:06):
there wasn't more. And if you were looking for somewhere
to hide a treasure trove of gold and jewels far
from the usual shipping lanes of the trade, as Donald
Antony and John would shortly come to believe you couldn't
have found a better spot than the anonymity and seclusion
of Oak Island. Returning to the site a few days later,
(08:29):
convinced of their destiny, the men managed a further fifteen
feet but were left disappointed, finding only another shelf of timber.
Frustrated and realizing they had neither the skill or the
financial means to carry on, the men were forced to
bring an end to their adventure, or so they had
all told each other. In truth, John Smith had very
(08:54):
different ideas. Over the next few years, Smith surreptitiously secured
ownership of the pit, buying up the land and a
number of the plots around it. Finally, by eighteen o three,
(09:14):
along with three other investors, with whom he formed the
Onslow Company, he was ready to tackle the mystery again.
Before long, they had made it to another five feet down,
where again they find yet another floor of timbers, But
this time there is something else, a layer of charcoal
scattered across the top of it. Since it was common
(09:38):
to use charcoal fires to draw fresh air into mining shafts,
it was now clearer than ever that a significant operation
had once taken place here the company soon make it
almost ninety feet in depth, uncovering a further four timber shelves,
each at ten foot intervals, and incredibly layers of cocoanut fibers,
(10:02):
suggesting that whatever was down there had likely traveled from
some distance, the nearest cocoanut trees being thousands of miles away.
Not only that, but as the men well know, cocoanut
fibers were often used to pack precious cargo. Then, at
ninety feet down they find something extraordinary. Having anticipated finding
(10:29):
another layer of wood, the team instead find a thick
slab of stone measuring two feet long and one foot wide.
Peeling it carefully from the mud, they are astonished to
find there is an inscription carved on to its under side,
Only it's not in any language that they have ever
seen before. Made from thirty nine geometric symbols spaced out
(10:55):
over what seems like eight words, it appears to be
some kind of code. A short time later, the workers
notice water seeping up from under the hole, but decide
to ignore it and continue to dig. That afternoon, at
roughly ninety eight feet, once again, the shovels hit wood,
(11:17):
and a ninth timber platform is unearthed after prising the
logs apart, only to find more mud and clay below.
The team finished for the day, convinced they are only
feet away from the objects of their wildest desires. Spirits
are understandably high when the crew return to work the
(11:38):
following morning, only to find a solemn looking John Smith
waiting for them by the pit, wringing his hat in
his hands. The pit has completely filled with water. All
(11:59):
hands work fearios to bail out the water, but the
level refuses to budge. With no other option, the company
pulls the rest of their money and hires a mechanical pump.
The plan works perfectly as the water is soon drained
from the pit, but then, with only eight more feet
to go, disaster strikes when the pump breaks down. By
(12:23):
the end of the day, the water line is back
to where it started. Believing they knew roughly where the
treasure might be, the team dig a second tunnel from
which they planned to dig across to the first one
once they had reached the required depth of one hundred
and ten feet or so, but the crew only make
it as far as twelve feet before their access pit
(12:45):
is also completely flooded, Having run out of money, the
Onslow Company is forced to give up, and so the
pit's secrets will remain submerged by water for the next
forty years. As for the stone, with its peculiar coded markings,
it is left in the possession of John Smith, the
(13:06):
landowner and one of the pit's original discoverers. However, believing
it to be worthless, the code is never deciphered and
the stone soon forgotten about. By eighteen forty five, with
Donald mc kinnis having died and John Smith vowing never
to waste another cent on the hopeless venture, it is
(13:28):
left to the third of the original finders, Anthony Vaughan,
to take up the reins. Now in his sixties, Vaughn,
together with another seven investors, forms the Truro Syndicate, and
by eighteen forty nine finally secures the rights to start
his own attempt to locate the treasure. That summer, the
(13:50):
largest team yet sets up camp and immediately gets to
work draining the pit. After two weeks, they have drained
it to within five feet of the bottom. Returning the
following day, however, the crew is devastated to find that
once again the waters have returned, but this time they
have a new plan. After constructing a wooden platform over
(14:15):
the pit, a large drill is dropped into it, with
the hope of at least determining what materials are buried
further down. They will not be disappointed. Passing the bottom
of the hole marked by the shelf of timber ninety
feet down, they drill on to roughly one hundred and
fifteen feet. Deciding they have gone deep enough, the crew
(14:39):
watch with bated breath as the device is withdrawn from
the depths and pulled finally into the light of day.
Just as the last section is removed, something sparkles in
the light. The foreman hurriedly inspects the drill head and
is astounded to find three small links of a gold chain,
(15:00):
as well as fibers of oak, suggesting the high likelihood
that the drill had broken through the walls of some
kind of chest. Finally they had found it. Getting it
out would be another matter, entirely owing to the incessant
(15:26):
flooding of water. Just as the Onslow team had realized
their best chance was to access it from a parallel shaft,
Believing the treasure to be roughly one hundred and ten
feet down. Incredibly, the team managed to dig a secondary
channel to one hundred nine feet and are even able
to start tunneling across before disaster strikes again, and just
(15:49):
as if something had been suddenly uncorked, water rushes into
the pit. But as the team regroups to assess their options,
one of the men notices something interesting. The water is
rising and falling with the tide. Tasting it, he is
amazed to find it is salty, suggesting that rather than
(16:13):
being the water table, it must be coming from the sea.
One hundred meters to the east of the dig site
lies Smith's Cove, named after one of the area's earliest
known settlers, Edward Smith, sometime in the mid seventeen hundreds.
Being the closest stretch of coastline to the pit, the
(16:34):
crew naturally assume it to be the most likely source
of the floodwater. With the beach being fairly small, the
chief engineer suggests they construct a dam to better see
what they are dealing with. Making quick work, it isn't
long before they have blocked off the cove and drained
it completely of water. What they discover next astounds them.
(17:00):
Or of the inlet is found to be completely covered
with coconut fiber and eel grass, under which they find
beech stones carefully laid out. The cove, it transpires, has
been synthetically constructed and underneath all the rocks. Finally they
find the source of all their problems. It is some
(17:22):
kind of booby trap made from a series of eight
inch wide drains of flat stone fanning out like five
fingers into the ocean. Together, the drains converge into one
single drainage channel that disappears underneath the island, heading straight
for the excavation site. The team immediately gets to work
(17:45):
locating the main drainage tunnel in the hope of blocking
it off completely. Yet another shaft is dug twelve feet
to the east of the original, revealing an underground channel
of water thirty five feet down. Next, timbers are driven
into the ground to block it off, and when a
fourth borehole twenty feet to the south of the original
(18:08):
is dug to one hundred ten feet with no sign
of water, it appears their plan is working finally, with
no danger of water making it past the blocking timbers,
the team are ready to dig through to the treasure.
All is going well when within two feet of the
original shaft. Workers tunneling through the clay on their knees
(18:30):
in the dark, notice the walls have become wet, and
soon their knees are damp, and before long their feet
and calves are drenched. Two the tunnel is filling with water. Mercifully,
the workers are able to scramble out and get back
to the surface before it is too late, while the
(18:52):
rest of the team watch with sinking hearts as one
by one the three surrounding boreholes steadily fill up with water.
After trying again to unsuccessfully find the central flood tunnel,
the Truro Company's hunt for treasure is also forced to
come to an end. In eighteen fifty seven, John Smith
(19:19):
becomes the second of the three original Oak Island treasure
hunters to die. Ownership of his land is passed from
his sons, who, having watched the fabled treasure pit steadily
ruin their father, are only too happy to sell it
on to a Henry Stephen, who in turn sells it
to local landowner Anthony Graves. The Trurou company return in
(19:44):
eighteen fifty nine for one final stab, but their considerable
efforts will once again prove futile. However, Rumours about the
island's apparent treasure are beginning to grow, and within two
years a new crop of hunters arrive on the island
ready to claim its reward. The Oak Island Association, led
(20:08):
by Jotham McCully, draft in over sixty men and thirty
horses to assist them, as well as employing the latest
mining technology, from an iron pump engine to industrial sized
winches and pulley systems. However, their heavy handed approach digging
three further holes and tunnels around the original pit results
(20:31):
in yet more flooding and the eventual collapse of the
original shaft, resulting in only the upper thirty feet of
it now being accessible. In the process of re excavating
the original pit, the pump boiler ruptures, spraying scolding water
onto a nearby worker and burning him to death. But
(20:54):
what's worse from the perspective of the Oak Island Association
is that they are running out of money, and with
news of the fatal accident now spreading, there is little
hope of raising fresh capital. A short time later, however,
with work halted, Jotham McCully hears a story about one
(21:14):
of the first artifacts to be found in the original
pit a mysterious stone inscribed with a strange cryptic message.
What's more, as rumour would have it, the stone is
still on the island, having apparently been integrated into John
Smith's old fireplace. Wasting no time, McCully, whose company now
(21:37):
owns the property, takes a chisel to the fireplace and
sets about removing it piece by piece. He hasn't been
working long when he spots one particular slab a little
smoother than the others, pressed into the wall at the back.
Freeing it up, he turns it around to find, much
(21:58):
to his amazement, a strange cryptic message etched onto the
other side of it. Realizing it might be their last chance,
McCully has the stone loaded onto a horse and cart
and dispatched immediately to Halifax, the nearest major city. For
(22:21):
the next few weeks, the curious stone is placed in
the window of a bookshop to drum up interest in
the Oak Island treasure hunt in an effort to sell
more shares to keep the company going. Many come to
view the peculiar artifact and attempt to decipher the code,
but no one can crack it. Regardless excitement generated by
(22:44):
the stone's mysterious origins is enough to raise another two
thousand dollars what equates to roughly fifty thousand today, enabling
the Oak Island Association to continue their search for a
few more years. However, like all all who had come
before them, the company will fail, becoming the third formal syndicate,
(23:06):
forced to admit defeat in the search for what many
have come to believe is the lost treasure of pirate
Captain William Kidd. A short time later, the stone is
brought to the attention of James leache, a professor of
languages at Halifax's Dalhousie University. A keen amateur cryptographer, Leechi
(23:29):
sets about trying to decipher the message, assuming it to
be a simple substitution code, whereby each symbol simply represents
a letter of the English alphabet. It is not long
before Leechie believes he has cracked the code. The message,
he believes, reads forty feet below two million pounds are buried.
(24:00):
It has been some twenty odd years since doctor Leechy's
interpretation of the flagstone code, and the rumors of buried
riches on Oak Island have reached mythical proportions Due to
complications of ownership. It isn't until eighteen ninety three that
a fourth team are able to secure the thirty thousand
(24:20):
dollar lease agreement to begin the next assault on what
many believe to be the hiding place of the long
lost treasure of infamous pirate Captain William kidd On first
arriving at the site, the new group of treasure hunters,
led by a Frederick Blair, known as the Oak Island
Treasure Company, find it much changed from Donald mc kinness's day.
(24:45):
The once lush green grove now an open wound, scarred
and pock marked with numerous holes full of water. Like
many before them, the company make a start digging fresh
holes and making industrial strength efforts to drain the seawaters away,
but just as before, the same problems persist. In March
(25:09):
eighteen ninety seven, labourer Maynard Kaiser is helping to drag
water up from one of the pits when the bucket
snags on the rope. After ordering the men to stop,
he is fixed to the pulley system before luring himself
into the pit, the bottom of which lies somewhere in
the dark ninety feet below him, carefully easing himself in
(25:34):
line with the bucket. He has just untangled it when
the rope gives a sudden jerk, slipping two feet before
being caught again on the pulley. A greatly relieved Kaiser
has just enough time to look up before the rope
jerks loose again, sending the unfortunate Kaiser disappearing into the
(25:56):
darkness below. He becomes the second man to die in
pursuit of the supposed treasure of Oak Island. With the
rest of the team too shocked and saddened to return
to work, the operation is brought to an immediate halt.
That night, deep in sleep, one of the workers turns
(26:19):
restlessly in his bed. Somewhere inside his head, he is
visited by the specter of Captain Kidd, who delivers a
terrifying warning cease digging now, or else more will die.
With news of the nightmare permeating the camp, the crew
(26:40):
refuse to return to work. It will be a year
before the Oak Island Treasure Company are able to start
digging again. This time, the team begins with another exploration
of the material below the bottom of the pit, the
discovery of what seems to be loose pieces of metal
(27:00):
buried at approximately one hundred and fifty feet, as well
as a small piece of parchment bearing the Roman numeral
for the number six, only serves to convince the company
further that they are not on a hiding to nothing.
(27:22):
Despite extensive efforts to plug the tunnels from Smith's Cove,
the boreholes continue to flood. In response, an engineer suggests
putting a red dye into one of the pits so
they can find out precisely where the waters are coming from.
With a small team assembled to the east above Smith's Cove,
(27:42):
the dye is poured into the hole. After nearly an
hour of waiting, however, they have seen nothing, But then
one of the crew spots it a garish wash of
red bleeding into the sea from the south shoreline. Realizing
they had been plugging the wrong tunnels all along, the
(28:03):
team undertake a sustained process of dynamiting along the southern
edge of the dig site in the hope of uncovering
the real flood tunnel. But just like the many previous efforts,
having only brought further destruction to the increasingly scarred landscape,
the company draws a blank. With enthusiasm for the work
(28:24):
beginning to Wane Company, found of Frederick Blair, buys out
the remaining shares and in nineteen o five takes full
ownership of the license to dig on the island. For
the next twenty five years, he leases it out to
a variety of unsuccessful ventures, and by the early nineteen thirties,
(28:45):
as described by Frederick Griffin in the Toronto Star Weekly,
where once the ground above Smith's Cove was littered with
the majestic oaks that gave the island its name, by
now there were barely half a dozen left clinging on
for dear life. The land has become a battlefield of
torn earth and empty boreholes. In nineteen thirty five, steel
(29:10):
magnet Gilbert Headen is the next to answer the siren
corn of treasure, purchasing half the island and a digging
lease from Blair. After three years and fifty thousand dollars
just under a million today, Hedden's team make a number
of interesting discoveries, finding a minus oil lamp, some dynamite
(29:32):
buried at sixty five feet, as well as an as
yet undiscovered chamber that appears to have been one of
the original flood tunnels, the problem being it is almost
impossible to tell if any of these artifacts had been
left prior to seventeen ninety five. It has also become
impossible to tell which hole exactly was the original pit
(29:55):
that started the whole adventure off in the first placed
gives up in nineteen thirty eight. When Frederick Blair dies
in nineteen fifty one, the site lease reverts to mel Chapel,
who had been a partner of Blair's twenty years previously.
(30:19):
Chapel had also been one of the diggers who witnessed
Maynard Kaiser fall to his death. Though it was said
that Chapel had once himself seen gold flakes coming off
a drill during one of the earlier excavations, he had
no interest in seeking the treasure, remembering all too well
the warning from his colleague that death stalked all who
(30:41):
sought it. It was in nineteen fifty nine that Robert
and Mildred Restore negotiated a deal with mel Chapel to
try their luck at cracking the mystery. In the nineteen fifties,
Robert and his wife Mildred worked a traveling show called
thee of Death, which involved the married couple riding motorbikes
(31:04):
around a metal sphere at sixty five miles per hour.
The pair traveled the world before settling in Canada. It
was at some point in the nineteen fifties that the
Dare Devil's got wind of the intriguing treasure hunt occurring
on Oak Island. Soon after agreeing a lease with Chapel,
Robert and his son Bobby moved to the island to
(31:27):
begin work and are joined by the rest of the
family soon after the following year, they succeed in pumping
out almost all the water from the main shaft. For
the next five years, however, the family struggled to keep
the water held back long enough to make a thorough
exploration of the site. Once again, the treasure remains tantalizingly
(31:50):
out of reach. In August nineteen six, Robert and Mildred
are preparing to head to nearby Chester to run a
number of errands when Robert heads to the site to
make a final check on a new gasoline pump. The
(32:12):
pump had been installed next to one of the new
shafts that they had been digging at Smith's Cove. Telling
him not to take too long, Mildred watched her husband
as he stepped into the muggy afternoon air and made
his way down at the cove. A few miles away
on the mainland, Jim Kaiser, one of the Restall's key laborers,
(32:35):
was carrying out some chores at home. Though he wasn't
scheduled to work that day, he had the most peculiar
desire to stop what he was doing immediately and head
to Woke Island, back above Smith's Cove. As Robert nears
the shoreline, he is overcome by a strange smell of
(32:56):
rotten eggs. It seems to be emanating from one of
the newly dug pits. Robert's son Bobby, is helping to
burn waste materials when he looks up to see his
father peering down at something from the edge of the pit,
before going stiff and falling straight in. Bobby tears down
(33:18):
to the cove, only to find his father's lifeless body
floating in the water at the bottom of the pit.
Moments later, everything goes black as he too loses consciousness
and falls straight into the hole. Another worker, Carl Graser,
who had witnessed the whole thing, races to the edge
(33:41):
of the pit. Seeing the two bodies in the water.
He has only just reached the top of a ladder
descending into it when he becomes the third man to
lose consciousness, falling from the ladder with a splash into
the hole. He is in turn followed by worker Cyril Hilts,
who has made it half way down the ladder before
(34:03):
he too succumbs to the strange fumes in the pandemonium.
A further two workers, Andrew Dumont and Leonard Kaiser, attempting
to rescue the others, make it as far as the
water before their bodies give up too. Incredibly, New York
fire fighter Captain Edward White, who just happens to be
(34:26):
visiting the dig site at the time, is miraculously able
to pull Kaiser and Dumont free, but for the others
it is too late. Back at Jim Kaiser's home, there
is a frantic knock at the door. He opens it
to find his uncle in a desperate state with some
(34:46):
terrible news. Jim immediately races to Oak Island to find
a team of fire fighters assembled at the top of
Smith's Cove, trying to figure out the safest way to
retrieve the bodies. Without thinking, Jim borrows a vintage Second
World war gas mask from one of them and jumps
(35:07):
straight into the hole. One by one, he pulls out
the dead bodies of his friends. The tragic death of
the men, especially both Robert and Bobby Restall, marks the
end of the rest All involvement with Oak Island, with
(35:31):
Mildred having no interest in pursuing what is starting to
look increasingly like a cursed errand ownership of the lease
is transferred to Robert Dunfield in the summer of nineteen
sixty five. The bullish Dunfield wastes little time in bulldozing
twelve feet away from the surface of the original pit,
(35:52):
and uses the resultant clay to clog any tunnels coming
up from Smith's Cove. Next, he constructs a causeway joining
the island to the mainland for the first time. Back
in nineteen sixty three, businessman Fred Nolan discovered that, unbeknownst
to Restall and Robert Dumfield at the time, a few
(36:15):
minor lots of Oak Island were still available to purchase.
After swiftly buying them up, he undertakes a few minor
excavations but finds little of interest. However, with the construction
of Dumfield's causeway. Nolan is excited at the prospect of
getting better equipment to continue his search, but Dumfield refuses
(36:38):
to let him use it. What he hadn't realized, however,
was that Crandall's Point, the land abutting the causeway, was
also still available to purchase. When Nolan finds out, he
buys it, immediately denying all access from the causeway. The
(36:58):
petty stalemate results in Dumfield quitting the project for good
and returning to his native California. Some might say he
got off lightly. Only a few weeks prior to Dumfield's
(37:18):
voluntary eviction, Jim Kaiser, who had stayed on to assist Dumfield,
is spending the night at the dig site in the
old Restall family home when he waits to find the
whole cabin shaking violently while having the sensation of a
heavy weight on his chest. Looking up, moments later, he
(37:42):
was confronted by a pair of red eyes staring at
him from out of the darkness. Running from the bed
in terror, he heads straight outside into the cold night air,
but finds no sign of anybody. The next morning, having
finally got back to sleep, Kaiser finds his body covered
(38:04):
in bruises, including five on his arm, long and thin,
as if a hand had gripped him there. It wasn't
long after that reports of a genuine curse first came
to light. That Worn, specifically that seven treasure hunters would
have to die before the island gave up its treasure,
(38:28):
with the construction worker scolded in eighteen sixty one and
Maynard Kaiser's fall of eighteen ninety seven added to the
horrific quadruple tragedy of the rest All operation. So far,
there had been six by nineteen sixty nine. In the
(38:52):
one hundred and seventy four years since Donald mc kinnis,
John Smith and Anthony Bourne first uncovered evidence of a
potential treasure pit, not one person had succeeded in digging
down any further than the ninety foot bottom carved out
by the Onslow Company in eighteen o three. But all
(39:12):
that was about to change. It was in April of
nineteen sixty nine that businessman Daniel Blankenship and David Tobias
formed the Triton Alliance, buying up the majority of the
island and moving in at the first opportunity in what
was by far the most sophisticated operation to date. The
(39:35):
alliance begins by digging sixty different boreholes close to the
original pit to draw up a detailed plan of the
geology underneath. They soon discover the bedrock to be located
at roughly one hundred and sixty feet below, but incredibly
there also seems to be some kind of wooden layer
(39:56):
forty feet below this. The follow year, labourers uncover evidence
of what could well have been the original dam constructed
at smith Cove to create the original flood tunnels, a
set of logs laid out in a U shape with
Roman numerals carved into them. They also discover a litany
(40:19):
of artifacts, including wrought iron scissors, an iron ruler, and
a wooden sled that pre date the time before Donald
mcinness first spotted something in seventeen ninety five. But the
best is yet to come. Since there was no way
of preventing the sea water flooding the now myriad tunnels
(40:41):
and boreholes, and with the risk of structural collapse too
high to send people down them, the team construct a
vast twenty seven inch diameter steel pipe, which they hope
will allow for direct access to underneath the dig site
in spring in nineteen seventy one. The team choose a
(41:02):
borehole numbered ten X for the purpose and proceeded to
carve it out to a depth of two hundred and
thirty five feet before threading the pipe down it all
the way to the bottom. What made TENX so special
was that they had good reason to believe it led
(41:22):
directly to an artificial cavity that had at some point
been dug out of the bedrock. Before sending anyone down, however,
Blankenship and Tobias decided to use a camera to first
investigate what was down there. With the team set up
on the edge of Borehole ten X, they gathered excitedly
(41:44):
around a bulky TV monitor. As the camera was slowly
lowered down, They watched with profound anticipation as it dropped
deeper through the casink, through the pitch black of the water,
and finally out into the open of the chamber below.
Squinting at the monitor, they see soft, angular shapes beginning
(42:07):
to emerge from out of the darkness, things which seemed
foreign to the surrounding geology, all covered over in a
thick layer of silt, and one shape more recognizable than
the others, protruding from out of the mud the arm
of a skeleton. Believing they had finally unearthed the location
(42:31):
of the fabled treasure, the Triton team employ a diver
to take a closer look. In October nineteen seventy one,
Alan Sagar, a retired lieutenant commander and former de mining expert,
answers the corps. With the casing too narrow to wear
(42:56):
an oxygen tank, Saga is forced to hugger a small
bottle of compressed air to his chest as he is
lowered manually on steel cable into the pipe, and with
no radio communication, Saga and the crew have only the
cable with which to give each other signals. At ninety
(43:16):
feet down, feeling the chill of the water at his feet,
Sega tugs on the cable for the Winch team to
stop adjusting his mouthpiece. He gives another two tugs and
is soon descending again, dropping steadily until he is completely
submerged under the water in total darkness. He soon descends
(43:41):
past one hundred and fifty foot level, then two hundred feet,
until finally he emerges at the bottom end and into
the cavity. Saga takes a moment to compose himself before
turning on the camera the images of which are being
fed back live to the surface, and points it into
(44:02):
the space. Turning on his torch, he directs it into
the gloom. Suddenly he can see everything. Unexpectedly, the cavern
that stretched off some distance behind was much bigger than
had been first assumed. On the floor of it, just
(44:24):
as the previous footage had revealed, there appeared to be
a number of oblong containers and a pole, perhaps the
handle of a tool, poking up from out of the
soft mud, And sure enough, there to the side of it,
the arm of a skeleton reaches up out of the silt.
(44:44):
Back on the surface. Crowded around the monitor, a nervous
excitement to spreading throughout the team as they struggle to
contain themselves. But then Sega takes a step forward into
the cavern, instantly sending a bar cloud of silt billowing
up into the space, blocking out the light. Realizing he
(45:06):
can no longer proceed, Sega has little choice but to
get back into the pipe and head back to the surface.
Once in place, he tugs twice again on the cable
and is greatly relieved when moments later, he feels it
taking his weight and lifting him upwards a just over
(45:27):
half way. With Saga still submerged some distance underwater, he
has the strange sensation that he is being pulled back
into the pipe. He realizes with horror that it is
the suit caught on one of the welds in the pipeline.
Unaware of what has happened, the workers above continue to
(45:50):
winch him up, but with Saga's body unwilling to budge,
the suit is beginning to pull apart, and now the
breathing apparatus is coming undone as well. Sega pulls furiously
on the cable while simultaneously struggling to free himself, when
(46:11):
finally something dislodges and he is suddenly free, once again
being pulled steadily up to the surface. After Saga's close call,
nine other divers are tasked with helping to retrieve the
(46:31):
apparent items from the cavity at the bottom of Hold
ten X, but none are successful. In nineteen seventy six,
Daniel Blankenship tries to enter the cavern himself. However, having
only made it halfway down the pipe, Blankenship hears the
ominous sound of creaking steel, which is followed by a
(46:54):
cascade of debris falling on his head from above. Sensing
imminent danger, Blankenship demands an immediate evacuation. Miraculously, he is
pulled free just as the casing collapses completely below him.
When the twenty seven inch wide steel piping is dug
(47:15):
out later, they discover a section of it has been
entirely closed in to some The cavity at two hundred
and thirty five feet deep and the items allegedly spotted
in it is the strongest evidence that a genuine horde
of treasure has been stashed away on the island. Others
(47:36):
have questioned whether it may have in fact, only been
created by dynamiting that had been carried out by the
Triton Alliance some time prior to its discovery. Either way,
like all others before them, Blankenship and Tobias will leave
the island empty handed, and though many others even to
(47:59):
this day have since attempted to unlock the island's secrets,
it resolutely refuses to give them up, or so it
was thought. In a startling revelation that has only recently
come to light, it was claimed by Fred Nolan that
(48:23):
in nineteen eighty, whilst digging in a region just above
the south shore known as the Swamp, he discovered three
old and empty oak chests. Then something else came to light.
Thanks to the extensive research carried out on the subject
of the Oak Island Treasure by the Fantastic Blockhouse Investigation Team,
(48:47):
it seems those empty chests just might have been rediscovered before,
In fact, all the way back in seventeen ninety five.
According to Carma, who had taken part in some of
the earlier excavations, in nineteen twenty five, his grandmother Lucy Vaughan,
(49:09):
a descendant of Antony Vaughan, one of the first discoverers
of the pit, had taken him into the basement of
her home and shown him an old looking chest made
of oak. Opening it up, it was revealed to contain
twenty five white canvas bags, each stuffed with gold coins
(49:30):
that she said had come from Oak Island. And then,
in a two thousand and seven newspaper interview, a descendant
of Donald McInnis made a similarly startling revelation. In the
weeks after Donald uncovered the first signs of the pit
in seventeen ninety five, he John Smith and Anthony Vaughan
(49:53):
had in fact also uncovered three separate chests stuffed full
of lute. It had long been believed in the McInnis
now known as McGinnis family, that on finding the treasure,
the men had sworn to secrecy, agreeing never to reveal
the truth of it to anyone. After all, there's no
(50:16):
telling what lengths people will go to when told there
is treasure to be found. Thank you as ever for listening.
Unexplained as an Avy Club production, the podcast created by
(50:36):
Richard mclin Smith. All other elements of the podcast, including
the music, are also produced by me Richard mclin Smith. Unexplained.
The book and audiobook is now available to buy worldwide.
You can purchase from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Waterstones and
other bookstores. Please subscribe to and rate the show wherever
(50:57):
you get your podcasts, and feel free to get in
touch with any thoughts or ideas regarding the stories you've
heard on the show. Perhaps you have an explanation or
a story of your own you'd like to share. You
can find out more at Unexplained podcast dot com and
reaches online through x and Blue Sky at Unexplained Pod
and Facebook at facebook dot com. Forward Slash Unexplained podcast
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