The Curse of Oak Island
 

Has anyone else started watching this show? I am a sucker for this kind of thing and so far it has been very interesting. You can watch the first two episodes in the link below. Since this was filmed over the summer, if any of you have figured out what happens please use spoilers for anything that hasn't aired yet.

http://www.history.com/shows/the-curse-of-oak-island

For those who aren't familiar, very briefly, it is about an island on the eastern shore of Canada that is rumored to have buried treasure from possibly the Knights Templar dating back to the 1300s. In 1795 an apparent secret hiding space was discovered in which levels of wooden planks were buried every 10 feet. Digging down around a hundred feet, they found some gold link chain and a few other things. Eventually they dug to a point that causes the hold to be flooded by sea water as if it was some sort of boobie trap, which is believed to come from some type of tube that is out in the ocean.

Another person in the 1970s dug alongside the original hole but also got his hole flooded by sea water. These guys now who are on the show purchased most of the island and are trying to solve the mystery with help from the guys who dug their own hole in the 1970s. The hole curse aspect is just kind of meh and I don't really pay attention to it, but I am sure the producers just like the added element it presents. The mystery and adventure is really interesting. It is nice to see a show like this that is actually producing some results so far.

The second episode last night produced some interesting results.

I've been watching this too. Always been interested in this story, ever since I was a kid.

EXTREMELY interesting show, this is my kind of tv... there most certainly IS something strange down in there somewhere.

I sure hope those guys find it... they certainly wouldnt be allowed, but I wish they could get permission to bring in the biggest excavators with the longest booms and dippers known and just dig the hell outta the area until they get down to whatever it is.

What confounds me, is how the ancient people, whoever they may have been, engineered these extremely intricate water traps fed by the sea with ancient technology, or even got down that deep in the first place.

Well they did purchase most of the island, so I imagine once they get enough evidence they can just dig it up however they want. But of course for TV purposes they will need to draw out the process.

Cant believe I forgot to check it out last night, did they find anything interesting in the sediment tank?

They didn't do too much with the sediment tank last night. They spent a few minutes sifting through the debree and found some shards of metal and little bones which were most likely small animals. They concluded they needed a better way to sift the material because there was so much. It mainly focused on what I posted about above in the spoiler tag.

Did they come up with any theories about the "tusk" poking out of the shore, besides it maybe being a way to sink boats trying to come in?

They didn't go into that at all. Some divers went underwater and found some large rectangular stones that seemed out of place and were all lined up directly and pointing towards the hole on land. Still no signs of how the water gets into the hole either. It seems like they should just dig up the entire cove though, lol.

Its certainly one helluva mystery, this is tv worth watching.

They had mentioned that other hunters used RED dye down in the hole and it came out into the coves, seems to me, that if you did that again and had some divers in the water, they could easily find where the water is coming in.

I thought it was pretty dumb that they didn't set up a sieve screen inside the tank to separate the largest bits.

Yeah that is the one bad thing about it being a series long event. We will be probably be scratching our heads a few times with them not being more proactive and/or efficient in their methods.

I speculate that whatever treasure there was has already been found. It's just been so long and so many attempts have occured. I think if they haven't found anything yet, they aren't going to. Unless they already did. But yeah, this shit is interesting as hell. I GOTTA KNOW!

No way. You aren't getting to the bottom unless you shut off the water.

sounds like a hardy boys book

it's very puzzling. HOW some one pre-1800 built this is unknown. WHY is unknown - you certainly wouldn't go through this much effort for a prank.

I'm not really expecting an answer to any of it, and certainly not holding my breath for treasure.

no they actually purchased the controlling interest of the company that owns the land.

its been quite the ordeal by the sounds of it.

agreed this is some awesome shit.


hoping like hell they figure it out

or dive like that crazy old man who dug the other tunnel did...

Yeah, but suppose you have to dig further. Digging underwater doesn't work so well.

Hell, if all they need is someone crazy sign me up. I'd gladly die for a share of the spoils.

yeah that's true...


**** I don't know then.

Man... to HELL with that diving business, that old man was NUTS.

It seems like if they just did another big dye release and had divers stationed at the various places offshore, they could find the inlets and plug them up.

Yep...that's what I said earlier.

Shut off the water.

My solution is to use the corrugated steel flood walls they used to shore up New Orleans.

They stand them up straight, have a vibrating attachment for a backhoe, or a cool vertical ranking rig, and drive them well into the ground.

Do that close to the shore, where the flood shaft would be at its shallowest depths. Boom. Pump out the shaft. Profit.

the old man was obsessed, ROFL. even admitted it himself.

and admitting it is the first step.

crazy that the whole bay is man made too.

How do you find the inlets for the water though? This isn't a bucket you can hold up to find the hole.

My bad, I seen your post, wasnt trying to steal it as my own idea.

Yeah, I mean c'mon... something is weird about the whole damn thing, theres gotta be something down there, something crazy important.

I think what you're asking is how do you pinpoint the openings, if you have divers offshore they should be able to get a pretty good fix on where its coming in based on where the dye is strongest.

I think thats what you're asking...

It's cool...I was just agreeing with you.

You wouldn't be able to tell. You would have to use a large amount of dye to get enough saturation to be visible when diluted amongst the hundreds of thousands of gallons of water. The diver's would be blinded, and the whole cove flooded with dye. And there would be a time delay in when the dye would travel so it's not like you can say exactly where the dye was at when it becomes visible in the shaft or across the island.

Thats interesting, it denies some of what the show says but confirms others, like the coconut fibers and the fact that there is a layer of freshwater over the heavier seawater.

What I didnt care for, was the statement that "Triton" restricted access to certain areas... are they trying to help get to the bottom of this or what, why would you restrict some areas?

I have been watching this and been reading about this for over 20 years.

There seems to be a lot of people who've been following this for decades, I'm always looking into weird mysteries and the first time I ever heard of it was maybe two weeks ago when an ad for it came on.

I think it'd be very hard to do. To see the whole shore of water turn red, yes, but to see a particular spot? I'd think you'd need to be below water to see it, and as murky as the water is, I don't think you'd be able to catch it before you were immersed in it. Not without assistance anyway.

Maybe a infrared camera could detect something quickly, or backlight with some sort of solvent, or hot water and a thermal camera.

Even then, it'd be hard to stop water from getting in. I guess you could pump hydraulic cement in. But with five box drains, just cut off the main shaft. Which is likely just a trench they dug and filled with gravel covered with coconut fiber and buried.

Holy grail?

I'm not sure why this is so nuts.

Is it more nuts than free diving? Or scuba diving in deep ocean water? What is so nuts about it?

What he did, with that gear that was likely primitive THEN, sure, a bit nuts, but with modern means?

This.

If they're willing to spend enough money, I bet theres a way to do it.

Who knows, but someone went through a LOT of trouble to hide whatever it is... considering the era they think it was built in its something of an engineering miracle.

Give me half a million and I have it in months. It might not even take that much.

Like I said, the easiest no fuss way to ensure you cut it off is to build a water tight wall sub soil.

It's done every single day all across the world.

It's really not. Pretty simple design and execution from the info we have so far. Just need time and labor.

Both the existing main shaft as it sits today, and 10X were likely dug in the same way it was originally dig before filled back in. By hand, raising and lowering buckets.

They mentioned that old guy had found it before as well. But it is cool that on one of these mystery shows they actually found what they were looking for where it was supposed to be at. The dating of it is even more perplexing.

Rarely do we get to hear that, yes, there is a good chance this mystery has origins from 700 years ago and that there is more to it than simple legend and tales.

If these brothers have the jack to do that, I hope they spend it.

getting to the bottom = making money

They should be able to sonar it like they do for oil.

Assuming there's anything down there at all. There's a chance there's nothing down there and there's a chance that someone already got to it and didn't say anything. Some tycoon has the Ark of the Covenant as their mantle piece lol.

how would the beams still be in place?

You can watch this at history.com btw. For those without cable.

I know dick about most things involved in this. I know the lore and all, but I do not know dick about excavation and the like. My question is, why can't they get several large pumps and pump out the well. Now I realize it will continue to fill with water, but it seems like it would be easier to watch where the water in the bay is going. It would have to create some kind of small current I would imagine. If they think they find some sort of anomaly, then dump some dye near that and see if it comes up the pipe.

Last, my understanding about the lore and the theories and such, is that there are several shafts that will allow water into the pit.

Side note: Does anybody think the pit was built as a fools trap to punish the greedy? Sort of a sadistic puzzle to show how greed/obsession can be dangerous. If this is built by religious zealots after all...

The side notes an interesting theory, Bowener, but it sure seems like a lot of trouble to go through for a lesson in the sin of greed.

So everyone who has lived on the island just didn't notice the massive dig going on? It's there. No doubt. From the moment it was discovered, is been a focus of the area.

Damn you people! lol, I first heard of this during the I think History Channel show about the Templars and the American Rune Stones. Now I am having to stream them and will from now on be addicted to this show. I hope they find something, doubt they will.

It's thought to be, and most likely, a single shaft dug towards the bay. There were said to have been five box drains, or evidence of, beneath the man-made beach. These five drains would converge, likely at a common point, with the shaft.

There is the anomaly though, that when they pumped the red dye out through the shaft, it appeared on the man-made beach, and along an adjacent shoreline. So there is a possibility of a second shaft, or another set of box drains connected to the main shaft.

Hell, there could be a natural fault line in the bedrock that spans the area and the sea water rises through it rather than through any shaft at all. Our at least that could explain the dye along the second shoreline.

I read about this treasure hunt about 9 years ago in a copy of Rolling Stone magazine. Some of the info they have was a bit more elaborate, especially the man-made beach.

Here is a VERY comprehensive history of the treasure hunt. http://worldtimeline.info/oakisland/oak1973.htm

The info on 10X makes me disappointed in the show. Apparently it's lined with steel 50ft down, then cement all the way to bedrock. It seems 10X is a known.

Also, someone already wanted to use my idea of flood walls, but finding feel through due to black Monday stock market crash I believe.

They need to find something already damn it. It kills me to not know what was/is down there. Some speculate that parts of the legend were fabricated, like the stone tablet. ANd that some of the stuff they found down there like bones and metals were just debris that washed in there from shore or from above. It just seems to me they could get down there if they really really wanted to. With our technology now days? They should get in there. Tear that ****ing island up.

The bones are likely animals that fell in. The metal rust likely from the metal shell surrounding the top 50ft of the shaft and it's covering. Really doubt much of anything would be able to make it down the flood shaft, sand/dirt and other sediment sure, but likely nothing else.

Some very interesting events in 1991.

So destroy an island for what is most likely going to be nothing? Sorry, but that is just stupid.

Meh, you wouldnt have to destroy the whole thing, its well over 200 acres IIRC, if I were in charge and had the money, the area in question would be ripped up pretty good.

Its not a perfect fix, but worst case scenario you just backfill it all and let nature take over again.

I remember reading about this As a kid. Still fascinated byit

Figuratively speaking.

After reading the entire oakislandmoneypit.com article Im left with only one conclusion. IF it is all factual and they DID find remnants of a dam of sorts in front of the drain boxes than it could have been dug out completely dry and then the dam pulled to allow the booby trap part.
Either that or some people terraformed that island with oak every 10 feet haha.

there are differing reports, some say that there never were beams, just "soft areas" where they thought something HAD been.

A lot of conflicting info out there.

If all reports of findings this far into the treasure hunt are true, then I far it hard to believe there is nothing down there.

Your remark of "most likely nothing", strikes me as very odd.

The Templars did it!

BTW, anybody watching America Unearthed?

That's another interesting show as well.

I can't stand when he gets into the BS Freemason conspiracies. But when he pulls out the "Minoans mined thousands of tons of copper in Michigan during the early Bronze Age" I admit I can't stop watching.

Its entirely too believeable to think that several different peoples were in North America long before Columbus.

I've never heard of Minoans in North America but I have read that the Vikings were here long before Columbus and of course theories of Africans influencing the Olmec as well.

That's interesting stuff..

To me the annoying thing about that show is that they constantly run up against legality issues so they often times introduce a story but can't really do anything about it.

Oh man. You gotta check out the show, or several other sources for research about pre-Columbian voyagers.

Just off the top of my head:

1. They've found Viking rune stones and land claims in Kentucky, North Carolina, and OKLAHOMA.
2. There's evidence that Minoans mined copper in the Great Lakes region for (possibly) 1000 years during the early Bronze Age.
3. There's a tribe of native Americans in southern California that are of Polynesian descent and similar cultures exist on the coast of Chile, suggesting Polynesians were migrating here during the 10th, 11th, and 12th centuries.
4. There's stone solar chambers of 8th-9th century Irish origin all over the American northeast.
5. There's substantial evidence that the Welsh were here before Columbus and intermingled with the Mandan Indians. President Jefferson even suggested that Lewis and Clark keep their eye out for people of Welsh descent during their explorations.
6. Possible Egyptian artificacts and inscriptions have been found in Arizona and Illinois.

We just laugh about it mostly. He's the master of building up to no conclusion.

"I can say without a doubt that it probably, maybe happened." ROFL

The next episode comes on tonight in a few hours. I know the previews have some stuff about the curse stuff so I hope they don't spend too much time on that.

That is incredible. It seems those ancient civilization may have been a lot more civilized than we care to admit?