X-Zone Broadcast Network - James McQuiston and Oak Island

 

This week I moved from UFOs back to Oak Island. James McQuiston was the guest who has worked with the Laginas at Oak Island, been in their “War Room,” and has offered his insights into the source of the treasure. For those interested, you can listen to the interview here:

https://www.spreaker.com/episode/43032989

James McQuiston

McQuiston provided an earlier history of Nova Scotia and Oak Island, suggesting an occupation in the area going back to nearly 1600. He suggested that Scots had been induced to settle Nova Scotia and they had arrived with those who had a variety of technical skills to include blacksmiths and carpenters. Their job would be to construct, well, basically, a village or town.

According to McQuiston’s history, a couple of decades after they arrived, they were forced out of the area. They had brought with them, originally, a treasure to be used to finance building the settlements. When they were forced to leave, in April (1632, I believe he said) they decided to bury their treasure because travel on the North Atlantic was dangerous given the weather. I think Titanic proved that. You can learn more about all this here:

www.oakislandgold.com

One thing that had always bothered me was that I didn’t believe the pirates, hiding their booty on Oak Island, would have had the ability to build the Money Pit, as it has been described. But the retreating Scots would have had the people with the necessary training to do just that. So, we have moved from pirates to Scots, which is a much better solution.

Although I believe that Joy Steele had provided us with a solution that fits more of the facts, and much of what the Laginas brothers and their team have uncovered on Oak Island supports her theory, McQuiston does offer a tempting alternative. Some sort of British military facility seems to fit what the Laginas have found there. Joy Steele’s theory covers that. I do have to say, however, that extending the history of the island by a couple of hundred years does change the dynamic to a degree.

McQuiston also provides some insight into the behind-the-scenes workings on Oak Island. Although an NDA prohibited him diving too deep into what is going to happen and information about some of the finds, he did describe what he believes will be the end game here… and no, he didn’t rule out the finding of a treasure, but it seems that he’s more excited by the quest than the outcome.

Next up is Dr. Abraham (Avi) Loeb, to provide insight into his theory that an alien artifact passed through the Solar System over two years ago. If you have questions, post them to the comments section and I’ll get them answered during the show.

Oak Island - The End is Near

The end is near, I believe. There were clues in the last episode, though I confess I didn’t pay close attention. I really no longer care about all the debris they are finding on the surface because it will not lead to a treasure… though it will lead to a solution.

 

The analysis of the ox shoes found was interesting but only because their expert was able to provide such detailed information about them. We learned that there were shoes used in the winter for better traction and shoes used in the summer to protect the hooves from rocks and pebbles. It meant that the number of shoes they had found suggested a long-term occupation and the dates for the shoes put it in the range of 1650 to 1750. I’d bet it was closer to 1750.

 

The shoes and other material suggested it was the British military who had occupied the island at the time and I have to wonder if there are some records buried in some archives that would provide some documentation for this. We also have the discovery of the pine tar pit, of the infrastructure that suggests some sort of port or nautical repair facility, and the obvious use of the triangular swamp area that would have facilitated the repair of wooden sailing ships. 

All of this leads us to the point where there is no money pit, but there was an occupation of the island for the repair of ships. True, with the British military there, someone would have had the expertise to design and build the money pit. It moves it away from pirates burying their loot to a military operation to protect something of value but that just seems to be a reach too far. The alleged system of booby traps seemed to be too complex for the builders to defeat, even if they had built them. 

We know, based on the many dives and the work of the Lagina brothers that there is some sort of underground cave system that opens to the sea. So, rather than booby traps, we have a natural phenomenon that creates the illusion of booby traps. That, and a water table that is quite high seems to be the reason that those earlier diggers at the alleged money pit were unable to defeat the water. Everything they have found this season leads us to the solution that Joy Steele proposed a number of years ago. She talked about it at length on the radio version of A Different Perspective. Once again, you can listen to our discussion here:

 https://www.spreaker.com/episode/12059035 

The second clue, and I might be speculating wildly here, is what the announcer said last night. Seems to me, as he explains the situation, he used to say that the curse required the deaths of seven before the treasure would be found. I believe last night he said there had to be seven deaths before the mystery was solved. 

The difference? Have they admitted, subtlety, that there is no treasure but just a mystery to be solved? The mystery has shifted from a search for that nonexistent treasure, but to who had built those facilities back some fifty or more years before the boys found the “money pit.” That answer seems to be the British military and I believe they abandoned Oak Island when better port and repair facilities were built on the main land and some what south of Oak Island. 

But they didn’t leave any treasure buried there.

The Curse of Oak Island - Season 8: Same Old Same Old

 

Yes, I have been sucked into the new season of The Curse of Oak Island. But I saw nothing new in it other than the Lagina brothers had to quarantine for two weeks before they were allowed to roam free in Canada. During that time others on Oak Island continued to march in the same direction that we have watched for the last several years.

Oak Island

Yeah, the guys working with metal detectors managed to find more coins on the surface of the island. Yeah, they found an old ax head that had been lost centuries ago. Yeah, they put a butterfingers diver into one of the many bore holes they have dug over the years. He found one of the gold “things” that we’ve heard about, but then dropped it so that it is now buried in the sand and dirt some 200 feet down. They may never retrieve it.

They have found evidence, substantial evidence, that there was some sort of occupation on Oak Island centuries ago. They have found structures that success some sort of port or repair facility, most likely built by the English in decades past. The coins and other material lead to that conclusion. The latest find, which might be a Chinese coin just suggests that the British traveled the world and as they did so, picked up coins and souvenirs in exotic locations.

What struck me as interesting was the find of what they thought might have been the entrance to a tunnel system that could lead to that mythical money pit.

Joy Steele

Archaeological examination showed that it was some sort of tar pit which would have been used to repair ships adding to the idea that Oak Island had served as a repair facility until better ports were built to the south.

And this takes us back to Joy Steele. You might remember her. She suggested that she had solved the mystery of Oak Island because some of the evidence reminded her of the tar kilns found all over the east coast of North America. You can read my assessment of her theory here:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2019/03/curse-of-oak-island-nearing-solution.html

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2017/05/the-mystery-of-oak-island-solved-by-joy.html

You can listen to the interview I conducted with her on the A Different Perspective radio show here:

https://www.spreaker.com/episode/12059035

The real point here is that everything found by all the digging, metal detecting and historical research is explained by the simple fact that the English had created a facility on the island and they used it for decades. And, if there was such a facility, then the idea of pirate treasure is, well, scuttled. How would pirates sneak onto the island to create the elaborate money pit? That doesn’t even consider that a pirate wouldn’t have had the technical expertise to create the money pit.

I will note, apropos of nothing at all, that an English garrison on the island would probably have had that expertise. Given that their occupation probably lasted decades, they would have had the time to build the money pit… No, I don’t think they did, I’m just saying that the Royal Navy could have done it. Can’t think of a good reason for it, but they could have done it.

Anyway, I expect more of the same this season. Exciting finds of old coins, maybe some more jewelry and other artifacts but we have to remember the island has been occupied for centuries. Nothing found led to a treason because, frankly, there is no treasure and never was. I wish there was. I wanted there to be a treasure but sometimes reality just slaps you in the face.

The Demise of History's Project Blue Book

For those of you keeping score at home, you know that Project Blue Book was closed in 1969 after the University of Colorado study, known as the Condon Committee, determined that the Air Force had done a good job investigating UFOs, that UFOs posed no threat to national security and that nothing of scientific value could be learned by further research. Doesn’t matter that the truth is that the Air Force did a half-assed job, that elements of UFO research did affect national security and that there was scientific value of continued research, even that research only helped identify a new natural phenomenon.

But now we learn that Project Blue Book has again been closed and by that I mean that the History Channel’s (yes, I know the name is officially History but does that make sense without some sort of qualifier?) show, Project Blue Book has been cancelled. No more can we follow the ridiculous tales of Dr. J. Allen Hynek engaging in fist fights, Captain Quinn (who, I suspect was a stand-in for Ed

Captain Quinn, UFO Expert.

Ruppelt) flying missions chasing flying saucers, and Soviet aircraft equipped with atomic bombs crashing in Canada.

Though there has been speculation about the reason, I think ratings had something to do with it. In the second season, it seems that the ratings in that coveted 18-49 demographic (because those of us older than 49 apparently don’t have the disposable income to buy products or we’re so set in our ways that advertising won’t sway us), have dropped by just under 33% and overall the ratings are down nearly 22%.

Oh, there are some bright spots, and with Project Blue Book average just over 1.03 million viewers each week, I suspect the ad revenue just couldn’t keep up with the production costs. By contrast, Curse of Oak Island had nearly 3.5 million viewers.

But there is another problem. Those who visit here regularly know that in that first season, I was something of a champion of the show. True, they played with the facts, but I could separate the fact from the fiction and to be fair, their telling of the various UFO stories wasn’t completely off base. It seemed to inspire some to look a little deeper for information about the case presented. I noted this in other posts.

But the second season was completely outrageous. We had an Air Force general subjecting a witness to water boarding, we had Hynek and Quinn finding a huge “underground base,” and the story of the Roswell crash that was so fictionalized that it was nearly unrecognizable, not to mention that Roswell is not a case that was investigated by Blue Book. There is no Blue Book file on Roswell.

In fact, the final season was so bad that I simply stopped watching it. I no longer cared what they did, what their stories were, or how hard they attempted to bend their stories to make them seem as if there might be some semblance to a case in the Blue Book files.

Here’s something else. In typical Hollywood fashion, the writers thought they had to jazz up the stories to make them more interesting because what is a TV show without some murder, some gunfights, a car chase or two, and Soviet spies? I would think that a show about an investigation into the possibility of alien visitation wouldn’t need to rely on explosions and car chases to hold a viewer’s interest. We are talking about alien visitation after all. Surely there was enough in the Blue Book files to inspire some stories that didn’t rely on these tricks.

Sure, we’d expect some embellishments because what is Hollywood if not filled with embellishments? They can take any story that is exciting, interesting, and factual, and add something that they believe with enhance those traits, even when not needed or when they actually detract from the story.

But I digress…

The point is that Project Blue Book is no more. We just won’t get any resolution to what happened to Quinn or if the Soviets penetrated Blue Book to learn their secrets, or if Mimi Hynek ever figured out what was really going on. Personally, I don’t think the demise came any too soon. For me, the program just didn’t work any more and was doing more harm than good. Maybe, someday, someone working on a flying saucer story out there will ask for my advice on how these fictional accounts should be done… oh, they won’t listen, but it would be nice to be asked.

Curse of Oak Island and Red Water

As those of you who visit here know, I have about given up on Curse of Oak Island. They had been tearing up the island for years and all they have to show for all that destruction are some crummy artifacts that are essentially worthless and a pack of speculations that are laughable in the extreme.

Oak Island, obviously.

Remember back in the early days when we were repeatedly shown that lousy video from Borehole 10X. There were images seen on that video that resembled a body, there was a hammer seen, and some sort of box that suggested treasure. When was the last time they showed that? Certainly not after they managed to put a diver down to the bottom of the hole and he found nothing of the sort. There was no body or tool or box. It was just an empty cavern that had a current in the water that suggested a connection to the ocean.

We were told they had found a mythical treasure vault because one of the holes they drilled had penetrated some sort of wooden structure. Never mind that the island is riddled with tunnels and holes and excavations in which wood was used to prop up everything. This, they said was the vault… except they haven’t been able to find it again and their one connection to it produced nothing but that wood.

They have dug up Smith’s Cove and found all sorts of structures that suggest some sort of military or nautical facility on the island. They have actually found historical records that seem to match those structures to actual installations built in the 1700s proving that someone was there in the years before the alleged Money Pit was found. In fact, everything they have found suggests an occupation that was abandoned before the boys showed up to start digging away at their imagined treasure.

I bring all this up because of something I saw in the last episode. Before I get to that, I want you all to remember that a few episodes ago they tossed some red dye into one of the holes they had dug to see where it would come up. At Smith’s Cove they had found a stone structure and by structure, I mean two stones that were tipped together to suggest the possibility of a triangle-shaped stone drain (changed from the box drain they spent years telling us about) that would lead to the Money Pit. Eventually, some red water trickled out and they all said that it proved a connection to the pit, whichever pit they’d tossed the dye into.

Now, we have them using an excavator to dig down deeper, farther inland, until they hit the water table. There was water seeping into the hole and that water had the same strange, reddish-orange color of that water that had been seen back on Smith’s Cove. What does this tell us? Well, I’d say that it showed that there was some sort of natural element that colored some of the water on the island. What they had seen in that earlier episode was not evidence of the dye migrating to Smith’s Cove, but a result of tapping into a water source that had been stained. In other, plainer words, they found nothing of interest and yet hyped it as some kind of proof of the treasure.

I was going to ask, “At what point do they admit defeat, pack up and go home?”

But the answer is obvious. When the ad revenue dries up and the show becomes a liability rather than an asset.

I believe that we have the answers here. We know what was going on, and the explanation of a military or nautical installation makes more sense than a hidden treasure of the Knights Templar, the lost manuscripts from William Shakespeare, or the French crown jewels.

But, in the positive, they have answered the question of what is hidden on Oak Island. Nothing of importance.

The Curse of Oak Island - Season Seven

Yes, I know that a new season of The Curse of Oak Island is beginning, but I’m just not sure I have the patience or the stamina to participate in it. There are too many unanswered questions that no one on Oak Island wants to answer.

Oh, you want an example.

Oak Island

They mention that stone tablet found at the 90-foot level with a strange code on it, that has been deciphered as saying that below is more than two million pounds. No one seems to want to know why those who buried the mythical treasure would leave such an artifact. It serves no useful purpose for those who buried the treasure. They know what is down there. They put it there. They would have no reason to advertise the fact.

However, if I’m looking for investors in my company with a mission to find the treasure, then such an artifact would be valuable. It is hard evidence (pun intended) that the treasure exists. Of course, the stone has disappeared… or rather, it seems to have been traced to a book bindery operation that used the stone in part of the binding process. They have found what might be a couple of letters on that stone, but why, if it is valuable and related to the treasure, was it allowed to be ruined in that fashion?

And there is one clue that no one seems to notice. The alleged code refers to two million pounds… is that the weight of the treasure (unlikely) or a reference to the monetary system of the English. Doesn’t this rule out pirates and others who weren’t from England? Doesn’t that suggest something about the treasure that tells us that it wasn’t the Knights Templar (as opposed to the Night King)? Doesn’t that rule out the manuscripts of Shakespeare, or the Arc of the Covenant or some of the other speculations?

No one seems to question the story of the teenagers who started this whole thing with their attempted excavations back in 1795. Has anyone ever seen teenagers get obsessed with something? Can you imagine the teenagers sitting round, spotting what they think might be an indication that something had been buried and escalated that into pirate gold and buried treasure? Has no one ever wondered if they just didn’t make it up about the treasure as a way to spend an afternoon? Maybe there is treasure down there. Maybe it’s pirate treasure. We might be about to become rich… and then overwhelmed with their speculations and imagination they begin to dig.

Has no one worried that nearly everything they have found is on the surface of the island? It is no secret that people had been around it for more than 200 years. But the discoveries in Smith’s Cove seem to suggest something of a port facility or an

Joy Steele

emergency repair facility rather than anything to do with pirates. Joy Steele’s theory makes more sense each time they make another find in Smith’s Cove. The island wasn’t used to hide a treasure but as a repair facility for British ships.

Has no one wondered why the “discoveries” of the past haven’t been found again. I mean, there was talk of a buried vault found decades ago. Though they know the approximate location, they have not been able to find it with all the modern equipment and technology that they bring to the search. Could it be that the “evidence” of the vault was little more than finding the remains of attempts to get at the treasure some time earlier? I mean, they hit the beams and logs bracing those tunnels dug early in the search rather than some sort of a treasure vault.

Does no one remember the exciting finds that would suggest a treasure that have shown nothing of the sort? Dan Blankenship dug Borehole 10X and put a camera down it. The poor video seemed to suggest abandoned tools, a box of some sort and human remains. This was touted as evidence of the treasure in the early years of The Curse of Oak Island. But when a diver finally reached the bottom of the hole, he found nothing of the sort. The alleged artifacts were optical illusions recorded by the video camera rather than actual artifacts.

I could go on but there really is little point. We have been disappointed time and again by this hunt. Last week’s “astonishing” find is replaced by this week’s “astonishing” find. Do any of you remember the Roman sword found so long ago? Here was evidence that Europeans had arrived at Oak Island centuries before Columbus… but analysis showed it to be a modern replica.

Yes, I have been interested in Oak Island for half a century. I have mentioned this before. I have read the books and the magazine articles. In fact, in a book I wrote in the mid-1990s, I had a long chapter on Oak Island. I concluded the long discussion of Oak Island, writing:

It seems that we’ll have the answers in just a few years. When the story began in 1795 the technology to recover the treasure didn’t exist. The booby traps were big and clever enough to prevent the boys from finding anything. It could have been recovered fifty or hundred years ago if the work had been well planned and sufficient financing had been in place. Those problems are being resolved. Once they are, it seems that the Triton Alliance, or any of the treasure hunters that follow them, will finally solve the puzzle. The only downside will be if the treasure is so small that it doesn’t cover the expense of the search.

The Laginas have done everything they possible could to find the treasure. Their efforts have been extraordinary. What they have discovered, instead of a treasure, large or small, is that nothing of consequence is buried on Oak Island. It had been an exciting journey, but one that should have ended a couple of seasons ago.

Curse of Oak Island Flames Out Or I Just Don't Care Anymore

Okay, I give up. I just don’t care if there is a treasure on Oak Island or not, but I suspect there is not. I have been watching this show since it began but my interest in the subject started much earlier, as I have said before. I learned about Oak Island in a book, This Baffling World, that I bought in the early 1970s. It told of many strange things such as UFOs, which is why I bought it in the first place, but it also contained some of the more terrestrial mysteries such as Oak Island.

It told the traditional story, but it was interesting enough that I looked for other

One of the many attempts to get at the Money
Pit treasure.

information about that buried treasure. I found some magazine articles and when I found D’Arcy O’Connor’s The Big Dig: The $10 Million Search for Oak Island’s Legendary Treasure, I had to buy it. Of course, the book ended with the failure to find the treasure for a variety of reasons. Just the hints that something was there, but no real evidence of anything like millions of dollars in treasure.

In 1968, Dan Blankenship and David Tobias formed the Triton Alliance Ltd. with the purpose of recovering the alleged treasure. In 1971, Borehole 10X was enlarged and lined with steel. They wanted to put a video camera down, into a void they had discovered. According to the story, they saw a floating hand suspended in the dirty water. Another such probe picked up what looked like three chests, various tools, spikes and logs and finally what looked to be a human body. On The Curse of Oak Island, in the first seasons, they repeatedly showed this poor-quality video.

They enlarged the borehole to the point that someone could get down it and look around. Blankenship showing great courage, made a number of dives in his attempt to locate and recover the treasure. During a dive in November 1976, Blankenship heard a rumbling and demanded to be pulled up immediately. As he looked back down, he saw that some of the casing had collapsed. Access to the bottom was now blocked. They tried to reopen the borehole, but mechanical issues and other troubles finally forced them to abandon the attempt. Much later those problems would be resolved.

After this, they planned a “Big Dig” with a new shaft large enough to encompass the earlier attempts, to be lined with steel to defeat the alleged boobytraps and to protect any divers brave enough to go down there. The stock market crash in 1987 ended those plans as investors pulled out and other sources of capital dried up. You might say the money dried up with the stock market.

There is another major problem with all this. There is no real evidence that any treasure is buried on the island. There might have been, but it might have been removed by those who buried it or, more likely, there might never have been any treasure buried there at all. Interestingly, now that we have the Laginas trying to get to the treasure we learn that the things they are finding today are the same sorts of things found during all those earlier attempts. These include wood and coconut husks and iron spikes. Those spikes, according to the analysis, had been forged prior to 1790 and the wood was carbon dated to 1575 plus or minus 85 years. All that suggested someone on the island long before the boys found the Money Pit in 1795, but again, that doesn’t prove there was ever a treasure hidden there.

I’m not going to go into all the items found in those earlier years and what was extrapolated from them. I wrote about it in a book, Lost Gold and Buried Treasure that was published in 1995, which, of course demonstrates my interest going back a couple of decades, if that is necessary. Back then I wrote, “Oak Island is unique in the field of treasure hunting. Everyone knows where the treasure is. At the bottom of the pit. Modern technology should be able to defeat the booby traps…”

This was before the Laginas showed up and used that modern technology to defeat the booby traps, if there were, in fact, any booby traps to defeat. Instead it seems that the high-water table of the island, and a series of natural underground chambers and caves might have given the impression of an elaborate maze of pits and booby traps. The question that no one seemed to ask, but I will now, “Who had the technology prior to 1795 to create the Money Pit as it is described today… and even if they did, would they have been able to recover the treasure?”

The real point is that I don’t believe there is a treasure there and I don’t think there ever was. We have been treated to breathless finds that turn out to be nothing extraordinary. A coin dated 1695 that proves nothing other than someone with a coin with that date on it had been on the island… not that it was dropped in 1695 or 1795 or even 1985… it could have been dropped two days before it was found.

We have iron artifacts, which are not gold, but iron, and these sorts of things have also been found on the island a half century ago. They prove nothing and worse yet, they were found close to the surface. Little has been pulled up to suggest any

Marty Lagina

hidden treasure. You might say that it just the trash left by human occupation.

I could go on, but I’ve written about this in the past on this blog. They have nothing to prove a treasure is there. But the real clue might have been in the last episode on April 2. Marty Lagina, in talking about the treasure and the history, seemed to be less than candid. His body language suggested, at least to me, that he was discouraged and might not even believe there is a treasure here anymore. Oh, I’m sure he did at one point, but he seems to have lost his enthusiasm for the search.

After six seasons of this, I’m tired. I can’t take more excitement over wood structures that were built by those looking for the treasure over the last two centuries. I’m tired of things found on the surface that prove human occupation but do not prove a treasure is buried there. I’m tired of guesses that have no real basis in fact and leaps of logic that tell us nothing but lead off on tangents. If the ratings remain high, I’m sure we’ll be treated to a seventh season, but those of us who pay attention know that the answer has already been found. If there ever was any treasure on Oak Island, it is long gone… and the more likely answer is that there never was any treasure to begin with.

Curse of Oak Island - Dan Blankenship Has Died

There is sad news for those of us who watch Curse of Oak Island. Dan Blankenship, the man who inspired so many treasure hunters and who was the “go to” guy when the Laginas had questions, has died. He was 95.

Dan Blankenship

I had wondered where he was this season and was delighted when he showed up in that golf cart recently. He had a chance to see what the Laginas had found in Smith’s Cove, and see some of his work validated, in a sense. But unlike seasons passed, the Laginas were not showing up at his house and he was missing from the War Room as they discussed their next assault on the island.

Dan lived on the island since 1965, and he and a partner owned a great deal of it until recently. He always seemed excited by what was happening and certainly played a role in this latest attempt to find the treasure.

Notice of his death was posted on Facebook with a tribute to him. It said, in part, “A true Oak Island legend, Dan was a respected and admired man. His perseverance, ingenuity and passion inspired all.”

Oak Island, Red Glass and the Knights Templar

No, I wasn’t going to review each episode of The Curse of Oak Island because it just doesn’t seem to be worth the effort. They have all fallen into a pattern, and last week’s episode (No.2) was no exception. However, they did one thing that annoyed me.

Once again, near the surface, meaning buried in six or seven inches of soil, they found a hunk of jewelry that had a large red stone set in the center. This, they believed, was their first real find of treasure. They took it to a university geology department for analysis.

So far, so good.

Under microscopic analysis, it was determined that the stone was, in fact, red glass. The geologist mentioned that the formula for red glass had been found and lost multiple times over the centuries. The formula was either a family secret or a trade secret and because of that, the formula was something written in code…

WRITTEN IN CODE?

That perked up the ears of the treasure hunters, not to mention the narrator. Then, it was off the rails, again… The Knights Templar

Templar Battle Flag

used codes. They were the main bankers of the 14^th century until they were wiped out in one night, (just as the Jedi had been, but that is irrelevant to us here).

Doesn’t code imply some sort of nefarious purpose? Code implied that maybe the Knights Templar were responsible for the Oak Island treasure (though I’m unsure how they made this leap in logic).

Or maybe, just maybe, those who had discovered a way to create red glass had wanted to keep the secret for themselves. They used a code so that others couldn’t steal their formula. Maybe there just wasn’t a hidden purpose in that code at all and just maybe, or much more likely, it had nothing to do with the Knights Templar.

This is the thing that annoys me. They pick up something on the surface, clearly something created centuries ago, and then pile speculation upon guesswork upon faulty reasoning, and run with it. A piece of red glass, no matter how old, does not a treasure make, nor does a comment that some glass makers in ancient times tried to protect their formulas using codes does not lead to the Knights Templar.

Sure, there were other outrages in the episode, but this was the most egregious of them. I couldn’t let it pass without comment

Curse of Oak Island - Season Six Guesses

As I was sitting around, waiting for summer to officially begin in a couple of hours, I realized that the Lagina boys would be back at Oak Island if there was really a plan for Season Six. I had noticed, at the end of Season Five, as they sat around in their war room, that Dan Blankenship didn’t seem to be too enthusiastic for another assault on the island and said that it wasn’t his money to spend. They also had laid out all the treasure they have found over the five seasons that looked somewhat impressive until you realized that most of it had been found on the surface and not buried deep in the ground. Some of it was completely irrelevant. In those five seasons they hadn’t found much of anything to support the idea of a treasure on the island.

I had said that Season Six might not happen because it seems they had exhausted nearly every possibility of a treasure and without some positive results, they might just chuck it in… unless, of course, the ratings suggested something else. High ratings might be producing a bit of a treasure for those involved with the show.Anyway, I queried a friend in Nova Scotia and asked him if History and the Laginas had returned to Oak Island because, if they were going to return, they should be there by now. Remember, last year they showed up in May and here we are in the middle of June. He told me, “I believe they’re gearing up for yet another season, although I haven’t seen any recent funding announcement from the government.”

I also learned that The Curse of Oak Island is History’s Number One program and that it is the top cable program in its Tuesday night time slot. I know that I was there each week, yelling at the TV because I couldn’t believe the conclusions there were drawing on the material they were finding. But even with those negatives, meaning not actually finding anything of value, the ratings would dictate another season and that seems to be a good guess now. There will be a new season.

Excavations at the Money Pit.

But remember the hype from the beginning of Season Five. They “found” the actual “money pit,” which meant they thought they had located the original hole, though it was hinted at something better and more exciting. And, each week we were left with something of a cliff hanger as they teased about important discoveries to be revealed later. For me, when the season ended, I was disappointed because they had not found the pot of gold (or vault full of gold, or whatever) but just some trinkets close to the surface that in and of themselves weren’t really valuable.

So now, maybe they’ll build that great coffer dam to find out what secrets are hidden on the beach that had been created with the coconut husks and that supposedly contained the drains that booby trapped the Money Pit. Maybe they’ll find the rest of the human bones that suggest two people had died on the island in the late 17^th century. I don’t know what they really expect to find, other than high ratings and sponsor’s cash.

Yes, I’ll be watching each week and I expect to be disappointed each week, but on the bright side, I think they are solving the mystery of Oak Island. It’s just not the answer they had wanted.

Curse of Oak Island - Season 5

Yes, I have seen the promos for the new season of Curse of Oak Island and it is filled with the same sort of hyperbole that has been teased in past seasons. Yes, they show an old key that unlocks an old chest but, of course, we don’t see the contents. And, yes, we hear the Laginas boys say that they have found the money pit. I still believe that if something truly spectacular had been found, the informtion would have leaked and the suspense would have been killed at that point.

Let’s unpack this and see what we can deduce.

Take that chest… we don’t know if they found it buried on Oak Island, though I suspect if it was, that would have been mentioned. It seemed that it was too good, meaning that a wooden chest buried for two hundred plus years would have deteriorated, especially in the environment of Oak Island. Too much water permeating the soil. It is difficult to believe there would have been much more than a pile of rotting wood and whatever was contained in the chest, unless it was clothes and books and the like. If the contents were metallic, they probably would have survived with the rotten wood collapsed on them.

Take the coin they find… once again it’s on the surface and looked like a blank disk in the promo. We’re told it’s from the 1600s but that doesn’t prove much of anything since it was apparently on the surface. This just fits in with what we’ve seen in past seasons. Coins found on or near the surface that are very old and look as if they have been out in the environment for a long time.

Take the claim they found the money pit… which could very well be true. But. They could be referring to the first excavation dug in 1795 by the boys who began digging there. It doesn’t mean that there is treasure at the bottom of the money pit, only that they know where that first pit was dug so long ago and have identified that location to their satisfaction.

In other words, the tease is just that… a tease. When we get into Season Five, which begins November 7, we’ll see the same thing that we’ve seen in the past. Remember the sword they found… that turned out to be a relatively modern replica? Remember the single coin they found that they took to Florida for someone to identify as being of Spanish origin in the 17^th century? Remember the campsite from British soldiers that proved… what, British soldiers had once camped on the island? Remember Bole Hole 10X with its chest at the bottom guarded by the remains of a human? Remember how they showed that over and over until the diver proved that there was no chest or human remains?

I will predict that when we get to the end of the season, there will be no treasure, except for the 1.5 million that Nova Scotia provided for the production. There won’t be a big treasure hidden by pirates or Knights Templar or the French crown jewels or the manuscripts of Shakespeare. There will be just another hole dug deep into Oak Island that will yield nothing of real value.

And yes, I would love to see them recover a treasure but does anyone think that

Joy Steele

those in the 17^th century could have dug a pit 200 feet deep with a series of booby traps to protect their treasure? The engineering problems seem to be just too great for this to have been done. The water table on the island suggests that there are no real booby traps and that would mean that the pit couldn’t have been dug so deep.

This will be another season with great teases but no payoff. They might have reached the “end game,” but that end game won’t provide treasure. Joy Steele probably found the real answer to this, as mentioned in my interview with her about this on the X-Zone Broadcast Network (xzbn.net). The money pit is the remains of a ship’s stores operation and not any sort of treasure. You can read my original post about it here:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2017/05/the-mystery-of-oak-island-solved-by-joy.html

and, of course, listen to the interview with Joy Steele here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rIwY6yiuN1w

But, as I say, I’ll be watching the new season and will undoubtedly be disappointed in what I see. But then, isn’t reality television about unreal situations?