
Oak Island Money Pit: Unsolved Mystery - trevin
http://www.oakislandmoneypit.com/
======
gwern
It'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.

~~~
kazinator
How someone could bury the treasure without anyone noticing them? Well, the
same way they dug the hole without putting the treasure into it, I would
think.

Why nobody would notice you is that it's 1600- or 1700-something and you're
somewhere in the woods of what will be Canada one day.

What I don't get is why someone would play an elaborate prank, knowing that
they probably won't be around to watch people's faces who try to find the
treasure. No, it was no prank: this was a real pirate cache site.

I think that treasure had been there before, but it had been removed by the
time those boys discovered the site. The encrypted sign was left behind,
that's all.

I believe the encrypted sign was originally at the surface, perhaps not buried
at all. Heck, maybe that sign had been put up in a nearby tree or whatever.
The pirates used that sign so they can return to the site and recover the
treasure. The treasure was 40 feet below that. When the pirates (or whoever)
removed the treasure, they just threw the sign deep into the hole and buried
it. So then the idiots who came later thought that the sign pointed down
another 40 feet from there. (Why would anyone do that, doh!)

Pirates often left themselves clues to find their caches, like encrypted signs
and such. Think about it: thousands of miles of ocean and coast-line (all of
it self-similar) in a world without GPS navigation.

~~~
ChuckMcM
I suspect that this might be more accurate, in that several times folks put
things there and took them back. There are interesting questions about sand
deposits and the history of the island, and of course if it was a "good spot"
to bury treasure during a time of privateering then perhaps there are several
interesting places. Some of the more elaborate underground construction though
seems to be in support of prohibition[1] (well in support of smuggling in
liquor during prohibition).

A couple of things are hard to dispute, square cut timbers don't just "appear"
underground, so someone put them there. But it could be for much more mundane
reasons (like gold mines in the Sierra Nevada Mountains)and it makes for a
spicy tale to through in pirates.

[1]
[https://www.google.com/search?q=prohibition+tunnels](https://www.google.com/search?q=prohibition+tunnels)

~~~
gwern
You're assuming the original descriptions are trustworthy and not heavily
biased. Yeah, maybe they were 'square-cut timbers'... or maybe it was
driftwood and they were desperate to find something (see the 'treasure chests'
in
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8149351](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8149351)
), or maybe natural processes produce squarish timbers (are the Giant's Steps
produced by giants?), or maybe the original reports of squarish timbers were
made up (wouldn't be the first time, to say the least).

~~~
ChuckMcM
You are no fun at all at parties I bet :-)

Everything you say is true, and it could all be one giant hoax by some land
owner who said "I know, I bet if I make up a great story I can sell this
worthless land for a few bucks!" What I did, and its useful for any story, is
to make a "Charitable Assumption" which is to converse on the topic with the
assumption that the other party is being as truthful and/or as accurate as
they can. By doing so we can engage in conversation and perhaps learn new
things. The trick is that one can make a charitable assumption and continue
the conversation without believing that the assumption is "true" in the
literal sense. It is sort of like a temporary stipulation for the purposes of
discourse.

If we take the story at face value then the existence of non-natural
artifacts, both timbers and other things, are considered "true" during our
discussion. Then we can explore alternative reasoning (or even carry the
existing reasoning further down the path) as to how or why that came about.
What is important here is that there is no compulsion, either explicit or
implied, in that sort of discourse that "forces you to believe" something
which you don't.

~~~
bunderbunder
You gotta decide which story to take at face value, though. In some versions
it's only one layer of wood of unspecified shape and arrangement. In others
it's layers of wood at regular intervals. In others it's specifically square-
cut timber. Generally the more recent retellings of the tale have more of
these juicy details than the older ones.

The thing about a good story is, it's hard to resist the urge to make it even
better.

------
recurrie
I'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
And mysteries only get better with age.

------
smacktoward
It would be awesome if they finally got to the bottom and discovered a pile of
"E.T." cartridges for the Atari 2600.

------
Jun8
Oh 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.

~~~
jonny_eh
There'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
Sounds like a good way to accidentally summon an elder god via emoticon. Now I
have a new novel plot...

~~~
pavel_lishin
Maybe cstross will feature it in his next Laundry novel.

~~~
mindcrime
Remember, demonology is just a branch of applied mathematics!

------
sbov
The similarity of the history of this island to the history of many software
projects I've worked on is amazing.

------
poslathian
Worth 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
That'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-
lon...](http://www.pinterest.com/judah55/viking-gokstad-and-tune-longships/)

------
TrainedMonkey
"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
I 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
That 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
On 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.

------
JasonFruit
The 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.

~~~
Houshalter
I 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)

------
brotoss
Pardon 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
Sounds like you should raise money and launch your own expedition.

~~~
sgarman
Let's kickstart it! We can feed the team with potato salad.

------
gaoshan
That 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
Yes, but she also gets to play softball for x years. There's value in that.

~~~
wavefunction
If (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
I 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..."

~~~
ZoF
Those comments were made by two different accounts.

~~~
giarc
Oops... didn't notice that.

------
Houshalter
I 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]

------
jcrawfordor
"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)

------
Zelphyr
I 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.

~~~
freehunter
How do you know someone is part of a "secret society"? They'll tell you.

~~~
mrbill
We're not a secret society. We're a society with secrets.

~~~
freehunter
A secret society is a club or organization whose activities, events, and inner
functioning are concealed from non-members. The society may or may not attempt
to conceal its existence.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secret_society](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secret_society)

------
billyhoffman
If 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.

------
ChrisArchitect
uggh. 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!"

------
wuliwong
Jeez 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
This one is SO OLD though. It was in the books I read as a kid 30 years ago.

~~~
wuliwong
Isn't it being old kind of the point? People are actively attempting to
excavate it.

------
piratebroadcast
I'd give anything to know what is buried there. I've been fascinated with this
since I was a kid.

~~~
wuliwong
I've only known about it for a few years but I'm fascinated.

------
theklub
Did 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
I 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.

------
eitally
while 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.

~~~
hemancuso
Sounds cheap.

------
hiharryhere
All 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
It'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.

------
JohnnyDouglas
Thanks 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
Was the movie Goonies inspired by this?

~~~
JohnnyDouglas
I'd never seen the similarity until you mentioned it. But I don't think so.

------
yoodenvranx
I 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
Someone 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/)

------
hristov
Hmm, sounds like the pirate Kidd played a lot of dwarf fortress in his days.

------
bjcubsfan
There's a treatment of this story on the great podcast Skeptoid.
[http://skeptoid.com/mobile/4129](http://skeptoid.com/mobile/4129)

------
tempodox
Oh my. I'm sure they also uncover the true identity of the Loch Ness monster
down there.

------
ccarter84
Weird this is blocked by corporate firewall...

~~~
tomelders
The plot thickens....

------
OakIslandRobot
The (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”.

