Mystery: The Oak Island Money Pit

It was the History Channel late one night when I heard about this story. It was about a group of guys digging a hole. Now, before you stop listening, I want to let you know that it wasn't just a hole in the ground, but some huge operation. People were digging with heavy machines. Camera crews were there. Some of the people in there were going on camera talking about a treasure. Now, obviously I was intrigued. Old men talking about digging for treasure felt so bizarre. I would normally imagine kids or some pirate movie talking about this stuff, and it almost seemed like a fake documentary until I found out about just how much money they were spending on it. At one point, it was even funded by President Roosevelt. Actor John Wayne was also invested. And that's when I realized that this was something different. This was a mystery that had been going on for over two hundred years when it was discovered, a story that goes into the tale of a pirate burying a fortune and an island off the coast of Canada and strange items were found, a stone with mysterious writings on it. And what makes this even weirder was that as you started digging you would find platforms made out of wood every ten feet or so, all with different layers of protection. Also, items were left on there without an explanation. As time went by, the pit saw death, ghosts and strange tales of a curse that surrounds it, and to this day it baffles explorers. So today we're going to go visit the Oak Island money bit. My name is Edwin and here it's a dark memory. It was in seventeen ninety five when a team named Daniel McGuinness and his two friends rode to the island to explore, just four teenagers, I suppose. When they were walking around with not much to do, they found a large depression on the ground. Now Daniel was like, hmm, maybe there's some pirate treasure here. It looked like a hole in the ground that had been covered up with tree trunks and leaves, So they thought that maybe something was underneath. So they took out all of the things that were covering it and they found a shaft and they started digging and found oak logs, flagstones, and wooden platforms, all placed about three yards apart. As it went lower and lower. At the time, the pirate stories and thefts hadn't been gone for too long, so they thought it was possible that one of them, you know, one of the pirates, had something buried there. They were so interested in finding out what was there that eventually they bought land on that island along with another man named Samuel Ball. They just kept on digging. They started getting a few more people to help out, and they kept finding objects whenever they'd go back to dig, even during the hot summers. Eventually, though, in eighteen oh four, found something about ninety feet deep, and this thing was what drove people to come up with all of these strange theories about the place. So here's what happened in eighteen oh four. During this time, the original group and a few other people that joined in had been coming together with only their tools, you know, shovels and pickaxes, convinced completely that there was treasure in there. One of the new additions to the group was Simon Lynz was the son of Irish immigrants and eager to make something of his life. To help with a dig, Simon brought along Colonel Robert Archibald, Captain David Archibald, and Sheriff Thomas Harris. They got together and formed the Onslough Company, created officially to find the treasure on Oak Island. They went back to the pit by the end of the year, and this would be the third attempt to find the gold or whatever was under there. So they started getting rid of the backfill that had been left behind from the last time they were there, and that's where things got weird. They were about twenty five feet in further than they had ever gotten before, and just five feet after that they found a solid object. Now imagine what this must have felt like, becoming an official digging team and then striking something on your first excursion together. When they kept going, found that there had been another platform made out of wood, obviously created by someone. Why would they have to install platforms there after all? They were so excited then, so they kept going and just when they got ten more feet deeper, boom, they strike another solid object, another platform, but this one had some type of sap on it. It almost seemed like it had been added there to protect something like the treasure that was underneath. And so they kept going ten more feet and they found another platform made out of timber, this time with scattered fibers of coconut shells. Why were those there? There was convinced that there was something there, so they kept going, finding more platforms made out of timber every ten feet. Since the coconut fibers had been found at sixty feet in, they kept going for another thirty and that's when they found it. A stone. It wasn't a diamond, though it was a tablet shaped stone. On it were strange symbols writing made up of dots, lines, arrows, circles, and crosses. From what I read, it took them a while to get it out, but they managed to do so to take a closer look, and for the longest time they thought that nobody would ever be able to figure out what it meant. In fact, it was until the eighteen sixties when finally a professor of languages named James Latchi from the Dalhousie University figured it out. And it is so strange. The professor applied a code where a certain figure or shape meant a letter of the alphabet. Here is what it said, forty feet below two million pounds are buried. This would put the treasure at about one hundred and thirty feet underground. Now they had some theories as to who it could have been, likely from English descent and someone who really liked making a big deal out of things, like kind of eccentric, and if you know much about pirates, you know that they were kind of like that. And that's when the story of Captain Kidd comes in. In short, Captain Kidd was a pirate actually named Captain William Robert Kidd, who was a Scottish sea captain in the late seventeenth century. He settled in early New York City and was commissioned privateer. He would sail and attack ships that were pirates and the French, starting in May of sixteen ninety six, but then he joined the other side once he started sailing to Madagascar and the Indian Ocean. Now he was a pirate himself. One time he took a bunch of money and got back to New York and then buried it in Gardiner's Island. Eventually it was dug up and he was put on trial for piracy and the murder of one of his crewmates. But there was another rumor, and that was that another treasure had been buried in Oak Island. And this was because Captain Kidd had confessed at the end of his life that he had hidden another treasure. Now there's a little evidence as to where this actually was. The present day treasure hunters use it to back up their digging expeditions. They say that an old sailor living on the coast of New England who was always kind of mysterious and didn't speak to many people, told the story of his younger years that he had been on board the ship with Captain Kidd that he helped them bury four million dollars in gold in quote a secluded island east of Boston. So obviously people started digging around the islands in there, and I can imagine it became a big deal at the time, with people bringing forth ideas of where the treasure could actually be buried. So that brings us back to the dig. They were already ninety eight feet deep this time when they found the next platform. Of course, they were tired of everything, but they just couldn't stop. What if the treasure was right under them this time, So they cracked a platform instead of removing everything and just to take a look. But when they saw more dirt and all that stuff, they decided to call it a day and come back to continue the dig. Some other time. But when they came back they found a devastating scene. Water had filled most of the pit, and in a panic, they started using buckets to empty the water out to hopefully be able to continue the dig. Sadly, the water kept filling up the pit. No matter how much water they got out, they just stared at it. Now the pit was a well, and yet the Onslow company refused to give up, so they hired mister Carl Mosher, who had a pump. That he could get the water out, they said, And soon they noticed that the water level was going down, and it was possible that it could have been a mechanism like a trap to stop people from getting to the gold. But just when they had gotten to the same level they had left off, when the water started rising the first time, the pomp stopped working and the water started rising all over again. They decided to think about some other solutions and come back into the day. One of the ideas was that what if instead of digging into the pit, you dig around the pit and then carve your way inside. Remember this was a pretty big operation now, kind of like a small oil rig set up around this random spot on an island. But they got to work and just over ten feet into the dig water started filling up the new one. It was then when they just couldn't take it anymore. The Onslow Company was going to shut down for good. That pit, now looking like a well, remained like that for almost forty years. In eighteen forty one of the original diggers helped form the Truro Company along with some pretty successful and respected other men, and finally in eighteen forty nine they went in for a fourth attempt. Once again. They were almost at ninety feet deep when water started filling it up again, and this was despite their best efforts with a pump to get everything out. This time though, they had a plan. They sent a hand operated augur into the water, and that's how they were going to find out what was under there, and they finally found some stuff. First, they kept going through more platforms than other foreign material, but eventually they found three small links of gold well part of a gold chain. And the search kept going, with the crew itself even removing people from the team on suspicion of stealing valuables from the search. This is what I find the best hint that there was something actually there. You know, when people started going against each other, but soon things would take a turn. Tragedy was about to join the efforts, and with that came the stories of ghosts. Up next, I'll tell you more about them. Okay. So it was eighteen sixty one by this time, and now there was a company called the Oak Island Association in charge of digging. One day, when they were struggling to pump water out, one of the boilers exploded, killing one of the crew members and several others were also injured. Unfortunately, this would not be the last death. They kept digging until eventually the Oak Island Association stopped operations all together. Then the Oak Island Treasure Company started up, and in eighteen ninety seven, death came to pay another visit. As one of the workers, a man named Maynard Kaiser, was being hoisted up to the surface, the rope slipped from the pulley and he fell to his death. That's when word started going around that the place was cursed. This malevolent spirit would eventually kill them too, so they straight up refused to go back into the pit. They say that this time they were able to get to one hundred and twenty six feet and that's when they bumped into an iron surface that they couldn't go past, but they managed to dig around it after finding more and more platforms. Eventually they found some parchment paper verified as authentic by a university, and also a few other items. But soon their lease was up and they were forced to close up shop. And that's when other companies at even the presidents and actors started getting behind funding this treasure hunt, spending hundreds of thousands of dollars into this thing without finding anything but things like traces of gold coins and even old china. But the legends are what really interests me in this thing, like the story of Captain Kid who stashed his treasure there, but also others that talk about William Shakespeare. A man by the name of Peter Amundsen, a freemason, believes that if you can crack the code inside of Shakespeare's writing, you will end up in Nova Scotia and Island. To come up with this, he used an elaborate system of capitalization errors, spelling mistakes, and page numbering that was incorrect and just plain and organized. You know how they say that there are lost manuscripts out there, Well, according to Peter, that is a treasure, but I don't know if that's a treasure, it would likely be filled up with water, making everything there kind of useless. So that moves on to the next idea, which is about the Knight's Templar. They haven't mentioned in previous episodes, but in short, the Knight's Templar, or just the Templars, were one of the wealthiest and most powerful organizations in Europe. The story says that they were ordered to be arrested in thirteen oh seven and some of them fled to Scotland, saying that they took priceless religious treasures like the Holy Grail. Some people have spent their entire live studying this, and in a book by Michael Bradley called Holy Grail Across the Atlantic shows evidence that this actually happened, so it is possible that somehow it ended up at the Oak Island money Pit. Today, the money Pit has gotten a little more popular as a show on the History Channel that I caught that one night, called The Curse of Oak Island keeps going. It has turned into a whole archaeological dig, with each episode promising that this time they have found some amazing treasures. But I don't want to leave today without first telling you the ghost story of this little girl named Peggy. And this is from an interview with Charlotte Adams, whose husband had worked under Headen and Hamilton at the Money Pit from nineteen thirty nine to nineteen forty five, and claiming that her daughter, Peggy, whose name is Peggy Franklin of Bridgewater, saw ghosts on the island and that happened when she was four years old in nineteen forty By the way, these are from transcripts from the interview that took place in nineteen seventy six on April twenty seventh. To be exact, I'll read directly from the transcript, and remember that this is Charlotte speaking here. I know of five people that have died in those pits. One was Maynard Kaiser, but that was long before I was born. And then there was two other Restalls and the Hilts Boy and Karl Graser. Kaiser died when he was guiding the horses. They were digging a hole with horses to pull the mud out, and the chain broke and drove him back into the pit where he drowned. That was March twenty sixth and eighteen ninety seven. Another man died back in eighteen sixty eight when a boiler used for pumping operation in the pit exploded and scalded him to death. Several others were injured in that accident. We had six children when we lived on the island, but they were mostly well growed up. Two of them was married and Harry was overseas, but we had to take two with us. The youngest one, Peggy, was not quite three years old when we went over the first winter. Peggy was the one that saw something over there on the island. God only knows what it was. I never seen it. Jack never seen it. But through that winter there was a little snow on the ground, and we used to have a little storage cabin near the money pit. She was out playing near there one morning when she came in the house, Mommy, she says, there's a crowd of men coming up from the shore. She was talking about smuggler's cove. And then she says, what pretty clothes they got on. There's big stripes down their paths. She was too young to know the colors of them. She was four years old. Then. It was the third winter we were over there. She was between four and five, and when Jack came home, I says, Jack, there's somebody on the island. Peggy says she's seen a pile of men coming up from the shore. There was snow on the ground, you know. So he goes down to the shore, but he says, there wasn't a track. This was down where the wharf was on the east side of the island. Hadn't built that wharf. So Jack went down and he couldn't see nothing. But Peggy said she did see men walking up from the shore. We thought it was someone coming from Chester across the bay by boat. Now we had never mentioned anything about pirates or the treasure to Peggy. We never mentioned to the children that everybody thought the island was haunted long ago. But anyway, we got to come home for Easter dinner. The day after Easter, we went back to the island. Her, Peggy and I went back along the footpath to our house on the island. I went in and Peggy was playing outside. I was making a fire on the stove and Peggy she went out to play, and after a while she came in and she was crying. I said, Peggy, what's the matter, And she says, Mommy, there's three big men down there. She says, there's one sitting on the wharf down there that looks like Luther the Big Man in the Madric comic strip. And she says, there's another one with the funny looking clothes on. And there's another one with a big patch on his eye. He must be blind. About that time, Jack came along and I says Jack. Peggy says, there's somebody down there. So he went down, but there was nobody there. That was all she ever saw. She never said anything about it after that. She never said I'm frightened over there, or hear anything at all, but she don't like to hear the story. Years later, my son in law took me to the Citadel Museum in Halifax when Jack was in the hospital, and my, oh my, when I went into this one room, it just came right to my mind that I bet you that was the kind of things that them people had on that Peggy saw. She had said that their clothes was so pretty, with red coats and pants with yellow stripes on their legs. It was old British Army uniforms in the museum. I remember when those coats were around when I was a little girl. People used to take those red coats and make quilts of them. She never saw anything like that. Again, three big men, she said there was no tracks in the snow. I remember she came in crying and saying, there's three big men down there. She was never a child with a big imagination. Never in her life before did she ever say anything like that. She didn't even say anything about any dreams. It was unusual for her to say it. I'll be sure to put links to all this material in the description of this episode in case you want to take a look and dig deeper into all the stories that surround this money pit, ironically named after all the money that has been spent on it. For me, the treasure truly lies in the stories of the place. They go back centuries in time, and though sometimes tragic, they still manage to fill Oak Island with legends and ghosts, and who knows, perhaps in my levolent spirit, I still guards the treasure. Nine D Underground in the Dark. This episode of A Dark Memory was researched by Medel Inguera and produced by me Edwin Kobaruyez. I want to thank you for your ideas for topics for episodes since I'm always hunting for them. If you have one, you can send it over to me at Hello at a Dark memory dot com. And for those of you who have followed the show for a while, I want to know what I can do to make this show better. You may have noticed a slight change of style in this episode, and I would really appreciate it if you could let me know what you thought about it over email. I'll leave my information in the description of this episode as well well, and I will reply to you. Podcasts don't have a comment section, so this will be the next best thing. Thank you very much for listening. Let see you soon.