True Crime with Kendall Rae - What’s Buried on Oak Island?! Is It Cursed?

Episode Date: October 26, 2023

Oak Island is a small island off the coast of Nova Scotia, Canada. It’s most well known for different theories of buried treasure being somewhere on the island, and what happens to the people who go there in attempts to find what’s buried in the ground. Archive episode disclaimer: This is an older archive episode, so the production quality is going to sound different compared to newer episodes. And since this is an older recording, it’s possible that certain updates may not be included. Donate to NCMEC through my campaign! https://give.missingkids.org/campaign/kendall-rae/c438796 Check out Kendall's other podcasts: The Sesh & Mile Higher Follow Kendall! YouTube Twitter Instagram Facebook Mile Higher Zoo REQUESTS: General case suggestion form: https://bit.ly/32kwPly Form for people directly related/ close to the victim: https://bit.ly/3KqMZLj Discord: https://discord.com/invite/an4stY9BCN CONTACT: For Business Inquiries - [e-mail]

Why waste the next 120 days earning less interest when you can grow your cash faster than fast right now? Open a new savings or checking account with Motive to enjoy speedy savings with the 5.75% 120-day GIC, eligible only on transfers from another financial institution. Apply today at MotiveFinancial.com slash GIC 120, limited time offer conditions apply. MotiveFinancial.com slash GIC 120, limited time offer, conditions apply, motivefinancial.com slash GIC 120. Hey everyone, it's Kendall Ray. I just wanted to jump in here with an editor's note. This is actually an older archive episode,

so the production quality is going to sound a bit different from my newer episodes. And since this is an older recording, it's possible that certain updates may not be included. Now onto the episode. Hello guys and welcome back to my channel. So today I'm going to be telling you about one of the biggest treasure hunts of all time, as well as a possible curse. Today we are talking about Oak Island is a really small island off the coast of Nova Scotia, Canada.

It's actually only about a mile long, and this island is actually thought of to be filled with a bunch of treasure, whether that's jewels or gold or straight up money. This has become known as the money pit, actually. But since it's been discovered, things haven't gone great for the excavators and people working on trying to recover the treasure.

So a lot of people think that it could be possibly cursed. So before we get started with the story, the dates and the facts from this story are not known to be 100% accurate. This has been information that's been passed along from person to person. So the beginning parts of the story are a little foggy. So no one knows who exactly discovered the treasure or the money pit, but there is one story that

seems to be the most widely believed, so I thought I would share that version of things with you guys. The story goes that sometime between 1795 and 1799, a 16 year old guy named Daniel McKinnis was on the island for a fishing trip. And apparently while he was walking around the island, he discovered kind of a depression in the stand. The depression was on the southeast side of the island, and this would become known as the money pit. So the next day, Daniel brought his two friends back there, and they decided to start digging it up. And as they started digging down, they got two feet down before they realized that there was a layer of flag stone.

So they thought, wow, there must be something under here, someone's trying to protect it. So they've removed the flag stone and they kept going. And then they realized as they dug that every three meters down, there was a layer of oak wood. Now, the story goes that they ended up digging with three of them, 30 feet down down that day like removing things out and everything But that's where they decided to stop although I really have a hard time believing the Doug 30 feet down

That sounds really hard to do three dudes with a shovel in 1700 so according to the story they dug 30 feet down they realized It's gonna take a lot more than three dudes with a shovel to dig this up. So for whatever reason, the money pit was abandoned for the next nine years. This is when the three of them, the same three, as before, decided to come back to the money pit and do a full excavation.

And they somehow were able to get financial support from a local labor force to help dig this up. And then sometime around the year 1802, a group known as the Oneslow Company, sailed from Nova Scotia to Oak Island to look for the treasure. So they ended up continuing the excavation down to 90 feet and they found logs every 10 feet after the 30 mark.

They also found mysterious layers of coconut fiber, putty, and charcoal. Very strange things that seems like they were possibly put there on purpose, but for what reason. And then when they got deep enough, they eventually found this large stone with symbols on it. This is one of the most interesting things about Oak Island, I think. So here is the stone. Now we believe that this is just some type of hieroglyphs. We don't know exactly what this says. There's various researchers that say that it means you know different things. Every expert is going to claim

something different. But the most widely accepted translation of this is 40 feet below two million pounds lie buried. So if this is really what it says, that is a lot of money and it would definitely be something awesome to find today because of inflation. I mean today two million pounds would be hundreds of millions of dollars, but it's hard to say because this could be an incorrect translation. The researcher ended up saying that he got this translation from a school teacher who had been long since dead and no one's been able to track it down to anyone who can actually tell us what it means. But if that's really what it says, there's definitely a lot of money somewhere.

And it seems like someone went to a lot of work to just rig up this whole island, like putting the stone in there and all these extra materials and stuff, making these layers. But one thing I do want to know is we don't actually even know if the stone is from Oak Island. That's how much sketchiness is around this whole story. You kind of have to believe that the stone was found there because there's no evidence or proof that it definitely was found there. It's claimed to have been found there, but we're not even sure. And what makes it even worse is the stone's been lost. Someone was not careful with this stone

and it was straight up lost like a long time ago. So as people were still trying to excavate the pit, it kept flooding. Multiple people would go there and have the same issue. They would dig really far down and then all of a sudden it would flood all the way up to the top almost. It would fill with like 60 feet of water at a time or more. The excavators tried to dig like tunnels to remove some of the water but those

ended up just flooding too. And so many people think that the way that this was set up was like some type of booby trap that someone literally like dug tunnels out to the ocean so that every time they would dig down the tunnels would like open up and it would start to flood with water. So who did all of this work and what were they hiding? So then in 1861 there was another attempt to excavate the site. This time it was a company called the Oak Island Association and they were going to attempt to excavate the area. They ended up digging not only the money pit but also two more shafts.

And during this dig they had built platforms for the workers to be on to access the tunnels along the way. But at one point, one of the platforms at 92 feet collapsed. And this one collapsing caused two more platforms to collapse as well. And the workers actually believed that all of this stuff coming down ended up pushing the treasure deeper into the hole, bearing it even more. Why waste the next 120 days earning less interest when you can grow your cash faster than fast right now? Open a new savings or checking account with Motive to enjoy speedy savings with the 5.75% 120-day GIC.

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And by like the 1900s, there had been nothing found in the whole except for a few tools, but it is not even clear if the tools were treasure or part of the people who buried the treasure or if it was just part of the excavation teams because there had been so many over the last, you know, hundred or so years. And then in 1909, President Roosevelt was part of something

called the Old Gold Salvage Group. And he and his group actually arrived on Oak Island. And this time the area was cleared out to over 113 feet. And the divers were sent down to investigate. It's crazy. There was still nothing found. This group also examined something known as Smith's Cove. This is where the drain tunnels had been reportedly seen shooting water out of.

But when they were there, there was absolutely nothing found. And the group ended up leaving in November of 1909. However, President Roosevelt actually kept up with Oak Island for a long time. He was always super curious about it, and he had planned to go back during his presidency, but he never did for some reason. There was a lot of people who really thought there was something very important here. So then in 1965, four workers died because there were mysterious poisonous fumes leaking from one of the tunnels in the hole. There was a guy named Robert RESTALL and he had his 18-year-old

son working there too, as his co-worker. They went to Oak Island in 1959 after signing a contract with one of the property owners there. And in 1965 they were there trying to seal what they thought would be a stormed drain in the Smiths cave. And they dug a shaft down to 27 feet. But then on August 17th, Robert Restall was overwhelmed with hydrogen sulfide fumes. His son went down into the shaft to try to help his father and he ended up dying as well. And this is just like the flooding. They have no idea what caused these fumes or why this was happening. So this is around the time that people started to think that Oak Island could be cursed. And then in 1971, a group of workers excavated a 235-foot tunnel in one of the shafts. And according

to the workers, they ended up putting a camera in there now Of course, there's like no proof of this. They claim that they saw tools human remains and chests however these pictures have never been confirmed They are unclear to look at apparently and we've never been able to prove that that was even real and before they could do anything else with that shaft it ended up collapsing and they abandoned the site. During the 1990s, they actually kind of stopped further excavation on the island because the owners of the island were having some legal troubles. The current owners of the land are called the Triton Partners and they've had a major lack of financing actually. So then in 2005, a portion of the island was actually sold for $7 million. And today, 78% of the island is actually owned by Oak Island Tour Group and the other,

you know, remaining percentages are left to private families that own different parts of the island. There were a lot of battles going back and forth about the island. People wanting to get back there and start digging it up again, but there was a lot of things getting in everyone's way. So then in January of 2011, Oak Island Treasure Act became effective. This act basically allows treasure hunting

to continue on the island, as long as it's under the terms of a license issued by the Minister of Natural Resources. And the most latest update is the show on the history channel. It's called The Curse of Oak Island. It started in 2014 and it's become a big hit, although they still have not found any treasure there. So there's a lot of theories about what could be on the Island and these are the most popular. So some people think that Marie Antoinette's jewelry could be buried on the

island, which is really, really interesting. Marie Antoinette was the last queen of France before the French Revolution, and some people believe that Oak Island could be the location of her missing jewels. There is no way to actually confirm this story, but apparently Mariantoinette instructed her maid to take her jewels and leave France before it was taken over. So her maid somehow got from France to Nova Scotia and buried her jewels. Or it's possible that the maid just took the jewels and heightaled it out of there, but guess we'll never know. But in 2017, a 500 year old brooch was actually found on the island, which made theory a lot more believable.

This also could support a pirate theory though, because the pirates would have treasure like this as well. Another theory has to do more with the pirates. Basically, in the1600s to early 1700s, there was a very well-known Scottish sailor named Captain William Kid. There was also a famous Captain named Henry Avery. It was reported that the two of them took their treasure together and they brought it to the cursed Oak Island and they ended up using Oak Island as kind of their community bank.

Another theory is that a famous pirate named Edward Teach could have also been the one to bury the treasure. Apparently Edward said that he buried his treasure where no one but Satan and myself can find it. And some people think that what he meant by that was that he buried it really deep down like close to hell. Where only Satan could find it. So, Oak Island maybe. Then there's a little

uh, Shakespeare conspiracy nugget in here for us. So this theory came out in 1953 when a man named Penn Leary actually wrote a book titled The Oak Island Enigma, a history and inquiry into the origin of the money pit. And in his book he wrote about how the pit was used to hide manuscripts that actually proved that France's bacon was the real author of all of William Shakespeare's work. So there's another theory called the Holy Grail theory, and that's basically where another author named Steven Sora claimed that he thinks the island was dug up by the Knights of Templar,

and that they actually buried the Holy Grail there, and that would be the cup that Jesus drank from on the island. The Knights of Templar were a Catholic military order to be created in 1139 in Israel. But the problem with this theory is that the Knights of Templar and Jesus were around hundreds of years before North America were even discovered. Then there's gotta be an Illuminati theory in their somewhere, right? There's another author, and his name is Mark Fanan, and in one of his books, he claims that there was a connection

between the pit and the Illuminati. Mark claims that the original creators of the site were actually part of the Freemasons, which is a very interesting topic. Basically, a international secret group, similar to Illuminati, but Mark thinks that there's a lot of people in the Freemason group that know the true meaning of the island and what is buried there.

So that's another interesting theory. Then there's a theory that it is just a single literally. That maybe those guys that first saw the depression actually just came upon a sinkhole and that it's something completely natural and that this island is just prone to more sinkholes. A lot of people think that a long time ago, there was a sinkhole that happened, and then over time, it was filled with trees and the flags down whatever else was down there coconut fiber and putty.

So this kind of makes sense, but I also feel like if they were telling us the truth about how they found this, that it was like literally layered and measured all out, that would be kind of crazy for that to just happen by chance, but what do I know? Another little interesting tidbit here to note though, is that in 1949 there was actually another money pit found pretty close to Oak Island about 15 minutes away. Some construction workers were apparently digging on the well of the shore of the Mahon Bay, which is a total of 15 minutes from

Oak Island. And this area was described as having a soft earth similar to the pit in Oak Island, and the workers actually found a layer of field stone about two feet down, and then they also found lots of spruce and oak at a regular angle. So could this really be the way that the pirates were bearing their treasure back then, and did they really make it so we couldn't get to it?

So apparently there's still a lot going on at this island. This is from Reddit literally four days ago. It says, I'm a local and was on the water Sunday cruising past Oak Island's money pit and there's lots of activity going on all summer here. So if you live close to this area or if you have theories about it, I would love to know your opinions on this topic.

I think it's really interesting and I just hope one day we find the treasure wouldn't it be wild to find like all of Morant when it's jewelry like I'd love to see it all? I really feel like the mage just took it and left though. That is gonna be it for me today guys. Thank you for joining me for another episode and make sure you follow the show on Spotify and Apple Podcast.

It really does help me out. If you want to watch the video version of this show, you can find it on my YouTube channel, which will be linked, or you can find it on my YouTube channel, which will be linked, or you can just search Kendall Ray. I will be back with another episode soon, but until then, stay safe out there. Why waste the next 120 days earning less interest when you can grow your cash faster than fast right now?

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