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Oak Island Money Pit: Unsolved Mystery
- smacktoward 12y agoIt would be awesome if they finally got to the bottom and discovered a pile of "E.T." cartridges for the Atari 2600.
- eitally 12y agowhile reading this, I kept thinking to myself that while excavation seems an insurmountable task at this time, if things started via a tunnel excavation from the coast that was already 150' below the surface, then building up from there wouldn't necessarily have been a major endeavor at all.
- piratebroadcast 12y agoI'd give anything to know what is buried there. I've been fascinated with this since I was a kid.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- wuliwong 12y agoI've only known about it for a few years but I'm fascinated.
- JasonFruit 12y agoThe article is interesting but painful to read; it's as though it was written by a near-illiterate who painstakingly reviewed every letter over and over to eliminate obvious mistakes. Then, when you've survived the pain, you meet the usual suspects: "Who wrote Shakespeare's plays?" "Look, the Knights Templar!" "It's a Freemason conspiracy!" I wasted my time here.
- burkaman 12y agoNear-illiterate seems like an unnecessarily harsh insult. I had no issues reading it, and the author doesn't seem to believe the Shakespeare and Freemason theories, they're just cataloguing the most common explanations.
- Houshalter 12y agoI didn't notice any spelling or grammar mistakes and it pulled me in enough to make me read the whole thing. It's very, very thorough; someone did their research and spent a lot of time writing this. He was only explaining popular theories that have been proposed. Not claiming there is any truth to them. This is like saying wikipedia isn't reliable because they list the exact same crazy theories and even some other ones in their documentation of the site: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oak_Island#Treasure_theories https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oak_Island#Treasure_theories
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- gwern 12y agoIt's hard not to read the whole thing and think the people involved were very foolish, and it's an example of the lengths to which people can push wishful thinking and confirmation bias and ignore basic arguments like 'how could someone bury treasure in such a difficult to excavate way without anyone noticing them constructing it all, and how did they ever expect to retrieve it?' For example, we're repeatedly told about the scanty traces of things dug up like coconut, and then later this bombshell is dropped: > In 1937, Hedden and his contractors returned to Oak Island. This time the company would encounter intriguing findings. Burrowing down one of the many auxiliary tunnels pock marking the island, the team stumbled upon a number of fascinating items including a miner's oil lamp with whale oil and unexploded dynamite at 65 feet. Where on earth did those come from? Are the pirates supposed to have brought dynamite with them a century or two before? This suggests to me that (1) all the previous expeditions and drillings have littered the island with all sorts of equipment and junk, and hence nothing found after the first expedition means much of anything or (2) the flood tunnels and other geological oddities move debris around and that is responsible for the dynamite, in which case there may never have been anything to explain in the first place. > It appears far too simple to dismiss the efforts of respected lawyers, businessmen, doctors, actors and even an esteemed president. Does it now.
- bunderbunder 12y ago> Are the pirates supposed to have brought dynamite with them a century or two before? Yup. Didn't you know pirates have the ability to transcend space and time? Captain Kidd regularly traveled to the late 19th century in his tricked-out DeLorean to score all sorts of goodies for his crew. Not just dynamite, but also souvenir coconut monkeys (they make great gifts) and clean-tasting pasteurized lager beer.
- krapp 12y agoThus making the rap battle between Al Capone and Blackbeard completely plausible: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yf9gulYfUh4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yf9gulYfUh4 (I accept my downvotes with dignity.)
- Houshalter 12y ago
- Jun8 12y agoOh boy, this comes up every few years. I guess the words "unsolved mystery" must excite some specific neural pattern in our brains. It's far from the last great unsolved mystery, though, as claimed in the title: I would definitely put (i) deciphering the last part of Kryptos (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kryptos http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kryptos), (ii) deciphering the Voynich Manuscript (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voynich_manuscript http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voynich_manuscript), and, if you insist on adding treasure to the equation (iii) the Beale Ciphers (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beale_ciphers http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beale_ciphers) on any list of unsolved mysteries that fuel the imagination.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- jonny_eh 12y agoThere's also deciphering the ancient Greek written language "Linear A" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_A http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_A It was recently added to unicode, and we don't even know what the characters mean.
- thirdtruck 12y agoSounds like a good way to accidentally summon an elder god via emoticon. Now I have a new novel plot...
- pavel_lishin 12y agoMaybe cstross will feature it in his next Laundry novel.
- mindcrime 12y agoRemember, demonology is just a branch of applied mathematics!
- thirdtruck 12y ago
- ChrisArchitect 12y agouggh. I thought money pit was a reference to the scam tourist trap businesses that operate 'tours' to this thing. The worst lamest thing on a family trip to Nova Scotia years ago that we still laugh about. "It was just a hole and a sign!"
- Zelphyr 12y agoI kept reading thinking, "Wow, surprised they haven't blamed the Freemasons for this!" when, suddenly, "oh, there it is..." Disclaimer: I'm a Freemason. Disclaimer 2: No, I don't know where any treasure is buried. It's really not that sexy.
- mrbill 12y agoI am as well (Gray Lodge, Houston). I've found that nobody likes to make fun of Freemasonry and all the conspiracy theories surrounding the organization more than us Masons ourselves. :)
- kelvin0 12y agoYes, of course the lower echelons of Freemasonry are completely oblivious and makes for plausible denial for the organization as a 'hole' (pun-intended).
- dredwerker 12y agoWow - I never expected to find Freemasons on HN. Don't know why but i thought it was a) dying out and b)it was for old people. Well older than my 43 years of age :)
- Zelphyr 12y agoYou'd be surprised. Most of the guys in my lodge are younger than 45 and many work in technology.
- freehunter 12y agoHow do you know someone is part of a "secret society"? They'll tell you.
- mrbill 12y agoWe're not a secret society. We're a society with secrets.
- TrainedMonkey 12y ago"According to authors Graham Harris and Les MacPhie, Borehole 10X terminated in a cavity carved out of bedrock. Within the stone chamber were what appeared to be a severed hand, a corpse and several treasure chests (2005). Prompted by the video images, the Triton Alliance initiated approximately 10 diving excursions into the subterranean cavern. No treasure was extracted as a result of the divers' investigations." Any chance of recovering that video? Personally I thought of something like Nemo's underground/underwater base. Unfortunately by simply smashing through layers of timber treasure hunters most likely flooded/collapsed entire tunnel system.
- terhechte 12y agoI remember seeing pictures from that video in a book that I once owned. Calling it "treasure chests" is a bit overly optimistic. I'd say "square shadow". I concur though that, whatever was there (if there even was anything to begin with) has long been destroyed now by all the treasure hunters.
- thaumaturgy 12y agoThat for me is the greatest tragedy of this: if there ever was treasure there, its historical value would have been far greater than the value of the supposed gold there, and the historical value has been entirely destroyed in the pursuit of the gold. Regardless of what it actually belonged to -- even a ship's manifest -- that parchment would have been valuable, and it's destroyed forever now.
- Houshalter 12y agoOn the other hand it would have anyway. Without the incentive on treasure, it would have been abandoned entirely. And anything degradable would have deteriorated long ago by now.
- OakIslandRobot 12y agoI do not believe that Borehole 10X was the location where the Masons buried this treasure. It would not have been logical for these educated Masons to have left the treasure below the water table where the destruction and deterioration of it could occur from salt water. I believe what was located at Borehole 10X was a cavern created by the Masons off of the main treasure tunnel to locate an underground ``Burial Site``. After their return from Havana and losing thousands of their comrades to sickness, it was inevitable that deaths would occur on the island and In order to keep their location secret, they could not bury them in the ground or at sea, but placed the bodies in caskets made from the ship's wood and put them in the cavern. What was seen from the camera lowered into Borehole 10X were the remnants of this. I believe the parchment material found with the letters VI was a piece of the King James VI Bible, placed within a casket. The printing of this bible was done by a John Baskerville a printer, Freemason, and good associate of both Grand Masters – Benjamin Franklin and Washington Shirley. In 1757 John Baskerville had invented a woven cloth paper which he used to print his Bibles. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baskerville http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baskerville
- theklub 12y agoDid anyone mention the TV show they have out on this now? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Curse_of_Oak_Island http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Curse_of_Oak_Island
- at-fates-hands 12y agoI actually got sucked into the show, and the two brothers seem to have a really good approach by looking at other areas, instead of the just going after 10X and continuing in the same vein so many others had. The Shakespeare guy was actually really interesting. A little nutty, but he did turn up several more signs on the stones. I'm hoping this comes back for another season and would love to see these guys finally solve the mystery. I think they have several good leads and have pushed closer to a solution than anybody else.
- tgb 12y agoYup, the article did!
- gaoshan 12y agoThat pit and the various efforts to "find the treasure" remind me of a father that was spending $15,000 per year on his young daughter's softball efforts (coaching, training, traveling) in order to help earn her a scholarship to college. She eventually blew out a knee and her softball career ended before she even finished high school. If only he had instead invested that $15,000 a year himself he would have had her scholarship all taken care of. This pit is like that only with less light at the end of the tunnel.
- giarc 12y agoYes, but she also gets to play softball for x years. There's value in that.
- wavefunction 12y agoIf (and I do mean if) she actually enjoyed playing softball after all her father's pressure, she probably would have been able to play it much longer without the intense focus that eventually blew out her knew.
- giarc 12y agoI think your original argument was valid (make smart investments (educational RSPs) rather than personally motivated investments (softball). However, I would have backed it up by coming up with number of softball players/softball scholarships, expected return on RSPs over 10 years etc not anecdotal evidence like "If she actually enjoyed playing..."
- wuliwong 12y agoJeez man, HN what a bunch of curmudgeons. I personally love this stuff, real or not, it is a modern day treasure hunt. How isn't that fun???
- smackfu 12y agoThis one is SO OLD though. It was in the books I read as a kid 30 years ago.
- wuliwong 12y agoIsn't it being old kind of the point? People are actively attempting to excavate it.
- gwern 12y agoAt some point, the story just becomes sad. I like treasure hunts, but not at the expense of peoples' life savings - and multiple lives. And there should be treasure at the end of the hunt, not a story about peoples' delusions and wishful thinking and scams.
- JohnnyDouglas 12y agoThanks for posting this. I grew up a few hours away from there, I remember hearing about the 1980s efforts on the news at the time and finding it fascinating as any pre-teen boy would. I also feel like we're due for some recent maniacs to come along and start the whole fiasco over again.
- 0xdeadbeefbabe 12y agoWas the movie Goonies inspired by this?
- JohnnyDouglas 12y agoI'd never seen the similarity until you mentioned it. But I don't think so.
- brotoss 12y agoPardon my ignorance but how do we not have the technology to just like ground scan 300ft below the surface around the island and map it out? Like Sonar or something, idk.
- igrekel 12y agoSounds like you should raise money and launch your own expedition.
- sgarman 12y agoLet's kickstart it! We can feed the team with potato salad.
- tmp1234519029 12y agoI often wonder. It seems that our technology must suck at this or is simply too expensive to use.
- yaur 12y agoI don't think it would really be that hard to solve this from an engineering perspective (see for instance how the Brooklyn bridge was built) its just that anyone with enough money and sense to solve the problem properly is probably to smart to get involved with what IMO is likely a hoax that got out of hand.
- sjtrny 12y agoYou're looking for ground penetrating radar http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ground-penetrating_radar http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ground-penetrating_radar.
- krschultz 12y agoNot really. Not to get into politics, but the Israeli army is currently trying to find the tunnels from Gaza and haven't figured out a great technical option - and those are hollow spaces. In this case you are trying to pick out solid objects from other solid objects, that is tough.
- 12y ago
- hiharryhere 12y agoAll the contemporary excavators seem to have missed the real treasure. It's now a site that has huge tourism potential...Something worth far more in $$ than a few pieces of eight.
- CalvinRodo 12y agoIt's actually located in a beautiful location my wife and I got married at Oak Island Resort which is just on the mainland across the water from the island. Its a touristy area already its close to Peggy's cove and Lunenburg.
- poslathian 12y agoWorth sharing, google led me to this interesting fellow: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6hUrpcxD0uo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6hUrpcxD0uo He has a surprisingly interesting idea that the shaft of periodic wooden panels may be an ancient viking ship buried vertically. My own vote is for sinkhole + telephone game/hype machine.
- Gravityloss 12y agoThat's fascinating. The letters resemble Inuit writing a bit. EDIT: seems that script was created by missionaries in the 1840's. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inuktitut_syllabics http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inuktitut_syllabics Here are some pictures of Viking longships. It looks like they are not strongly longitudinally segmented, which is against the theory. http://www.pinterest.com/judah55/viking-gokstad-and-tune-longships/ http://www.pinterest.com/judah55/viking-gokstad-and-tune-lon...
- recurrie 12y agoI've spent summers at my family cottage, looking across the water at Oak Island for 40 years, and am always interested when it comes up. I've been on Oak Island and the myth is 100x more interesting than what is there now, the rusting remains of recent exploration efforts. So if a crew of pirates|Incas|freemasons|French Royalty spent the effort to dig elaborate tunnels and traps, where are the remains of their campsites? The middens? The cooking fires? All infrastructure to support a huge constriction project, all with hand tools? Everywhere else from that era you find the garbage that gets left behind - ashes, clay pipes, lost tools, buttons. These particular mysterious builders were not just super skilled, they were also the tidiest contractors known to history. Sadly, the whole story is a mishmash of charlatans, myth, and a lot of basic geology. There's no mystery.
- rsl7 12y agoAnd mysteries only get better with age.
- sbov 12y agoThe similarity of the history of this island to the history of many software projects I've worked on is amazing.
- ccarter84 12y agoWeird this is blocked by corporate firewall...
- tomelders 12y agoThe plot thickens....
- bjcubsfan 12y agoThere's a treatment of this story on the great podcast Skeptoid. http://skeptoid.com/mobile/4129 http://skeptoid.com/mobile/4129
- billyhoffman 12y agoIf you enjoy mystery or thriller books, Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child's fictional novel Riptide is very enjoyable, and is based in large part on the Oak Island Money Pit legend. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riptide_(novel) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riptide_(novel) No fringe conspiracy theories, just good adventure fiction. It's one of their non-Pendergast books that worth the read. Oh, and at the bottom of the pit in the book? (rot13) n fjbeq bs qnzbpyrf-yvxr eryvp, znqr bs enqvbnpgvir vevqvhz sebz n pbzrg. Vg jnf ohevrq gb orpnhfr ybbxvat ng vg rkcbfrf lbh gb rabhtu enqf gb xvyy lbh.
- jcrawfordor 12y ago"The Last Great Unsolved Mystery"? Really? I've got a list of a few more and they're even restricted to the treasure-and-crime kind. http://infohost.nmt.edu/~jcrawfor/mysteries.html http://infohost.nmt.edu/~jcrawfor/mysteries.html
- hristov 12y agoHmm, sounds like the pirate Kidd played a lot of dwarf fortress in his days.
- Houshalter 12y agoI found this on wikipedia which is interesting: >The appearance of a man-made pit has been attributed partly to the texture of sinkholes: "this filling would be softer than the surrounding ground, and give the impression that it had been dug up before",[38] and the appearance of "platforms" of rotten logs has been attributed to trees or "blowdowns" falling or washing into the depression.[39] An undetermined pit similar to the description of the early Money Pit had been discovered in the area. In 1949, workmen digging a well on the shore of Mahone Bay, at a point where the earth was soft, found a pit of the following description: "At about two feet down a layer of fieldstone was struck. Then logs of spruce and oak were unearthed at irregular intervals, and some of the wood was charred. The immediate suspicion was that another Money Pit had been found."[40]
- yoodenvranx 12y agoI wish some really rich person would just buy this island and pay some construction company a lot of money to excavate the whole thing. It can't be that hard to build a sufficiently large hole with modern technology.
- chadmaughan 12y agoSomeone did (Marty Lagina) and they attempted a number of things last year. This is the premise of a reality show on the History Channel called "The Curse of Oak Island." http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Curse_of_Oak_Island http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Curse_of_Oak_Island http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3455408/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3455408/
- tempodox 12y agoOh my. I'm sure they also uncover the true identity of the Loch Ness monster down there.
- OakIslandRobot 12y agoThe (Untold) Story of The Oak Island Money Pit The Oak Island Money Pit was constructed by the “powers that be” that were and still are to this day, the secret force that controls the course of mankind on earth. This organization is known as - The “Freemasons”. The story of The Oak Island Money Pit begins in the 1760’s It was conceived by a number of Britain’s high ranking naval officers, who were also Masonic degree members of the Freemasons and belonging to the Masonic “Premier Grand Lodge of England”. These Masons were members of the Whig Party opposed to the next successor to the throne, the unstable King George III. These members were: Washington Shirley, 5th Earl Ferrers – Vice Admiral - Grand Master of the Masonic Lodge – Premier Grand Lodge of England George Anson, Baron Anson – Admiral of the Fleet George Keppel, 3rd Earl of Albemarle - Commander-In-Chief Augustus Keppel, 1st Viscount Keppel – Rear Admiral – Brother to George Keppel William Keppel – Lieutenant-General – Brother to George Keppel George Pocock – Admiral – Commander of the Invasion of Havana and Benjamin Franklin – First Grand Master of Pennsylvania who met in 1760 with the Grand Master of England to discuss their plan. The Mason’s plot originated after King George III’s destruction of the Whig’s political power with his redirection of this power to the Tory Party, and the Mason’s concern of the imminent invasion of England, during the Seven Years’ War, by the joint forces of France and Spain. Spain outlawed all forms of secret organizations, including the Freemasons. The Mason’s plan was to redirect a fortune to the “New World” (North America), to enable the transfer of the Masonic organization, if and when these fears materialized. Their plan entailed the capture of Havana in 1762. Havana’s Morro Castle was the Fort Knox of Spain, holding the South and Central America’s gold supply prior to its shipment to Spain. The invasion of Havana was under the command of George Keppel, with Admiral George Pocock and Keppel’s two brothers Augustus and William Keppel, commanding the actual attack. They were successful with the capture of Havana and Fort Morro and its unprecedented amount of treasure. They also captured a number of the Spanish Fleet, which was needed to accomplish their plan. Accordingly, Admiral Pocock returned to England with the main English fleet carrying a portion of the treasure, while Augustus and William Keppel along with their crew and Masonic engineers all sworn to secrecy, manned the 8 Spanish Galleons and the 2 British Man of War. This treasure was diverted to a small island off the coast of New England and Nova Scotia now called Oak Island. At Oak Island the treasure was buried based on the Masonic “Royal Arch” (Enoch’s Temple) consisting of nine arches going down nine levels by way of a main shaft (The Money Pit) which was dug down to the bedrock. From the ninth level another tunnel was constructed which ran back up to a point above the known water level, roughly 20 feet underground and at this point an enormous cavern was built to hold the treasure. The treasure was carted down the main shaft and placed up into this cavern. To conceal their plot they had the 8 Spanish ships dismantled with all the wooden parts not used in the construction of the shaft, tunnels and cavern burnt and all the metal parts (canons, anchors and bolts) were placed at the bottom of the main shaft. Flood tunnels were built out to the ocean to booby trap any treasure seekers attempts to follow down the main shaft. A large stone was placed at the air lock (8th level) as bait to activate the flooding. This stone had strange engravings on it to entice any unworthy treasure seekers to pause and take the bait (stone) away for deciphering, thus allowing time for the tunnels and main shaft to fill with water and be destroyed forever. The Masons knew exactly by their calculated mark above ground where the treasure cavern below ground was located, and could access it by digging down 20 feet. Once the treasure was secured in the cavern and all the evidence was hidden from the island, it was documented that the Keppels sailed back to England with 2 ships and a small portion of the treasure. They claimed that the remainder of the fleet had sunk in a hurricane on route. The Masons left several markers on the island to relocate the treasure. 1 large triangle or more precisely a crude Sextant 2 drilled holed stones 1 large stone cross These combined markers along with the Star Map are used to cross triangulate and a set degree on the sextant point to the “X” where the cavern is today located. Is the treasure still in this cavern? I believe it was removed in 1795 One of the three original discoverers of the Money Pit was Daniel McGinnis, who stated he was drawn to the island when he noticed strange lights appearing on the island just prior to his discovery. These lights were made by the Freemasons when they returned for their treasure. This Masonic party was headed up by George Washington, President of the United States – acting Grand Master of the Washington DC Masons. The treasure’s vast fortune was used, as planned, to further the power of the Freemasons in their new world, with them becoming “The New World Order”.