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.

Oak Island - The Solution?

What ever happened to the search for the Money Pit? Wasn’t that the whole point of the show? To find the treasure that was supposed to be hidden at the bottom of the pit? Now we have them mucking about in the swamp (pun intended) trying to prove that it was manmade and that there is some sort of ship buried in the mud there.

Yes, we know that Smith’s Cove probably was created artificially and that the structures uncovered had nothing to do with the alleged flood system built to

The Money Pit, decades ago.

protect the treasure. Clearly this was a repair facility constructed in a location that was convenient in the New World. In the eighteenth century there just wasn’t the infrastructure that was needed. By the time the boys got to Oak Island in 1795 and invented the tale of a Money Pit, the east coast of the United States and Canada had built the port facilities that made Oak Island obsolete and unimportant. It was abandoned for the better facilities in a less hostile environment that sailors who’d spent months at sea would appreciate.

Remember back in the first season when they were looking for the original Money Pit? Remember Borehole 10X which supposedly revealed a long dead body, a tool or two, and a box that might hold some of the treasure? We saw, repeatedly, a video that seemed to show these things, but then a diver managed to get to the bottom of the Borehole and found… nothing. Some debris that had fallen into it from the surface, but nothing to indicate any sort of treasure. We aren’t treated to those videos any more because the dive had given us the answers about what was at the bottom of the borehole.

They continued their search to find the original Money Pit, even with the distractions of a Roman sword found in the ocean near the island that turned out to be a modern replica, the idea that the Knights Templar had somehow gotten to the New World before those in Europe knew about it so they could hide a treasure, and all the things found on the surface that suggested that people had used the island for decades before the boys began digging. But the point is that they found nothing to indicate a treasure buried deep on the island.

We keep hearing about the box drains that somehow supplied the booby traps with water that thwarted those boys when they dug too deep. But the real problem is that divers, who got down deep enough reported a current tugging at them. That indicates that the problem wasn’t a drain system, but an opening to the ocean that allowed the water in. Remember, it was reported that the depth of water in the Money Pit rose and fell with the tide. That wouldn’t have happened with a drain system created to booby trap the Money Pit.

So now we get to this season and the effort seems to be to find some sort of evidence in the swamp area. They are trying to find evidence that it is man-made. I think they have that right. The swamp is man-made. I think it worked something like a dry dock for wooden ship repair. I think the site was abandoned as better facilities farther south were built.

I have been interested in the mystery of Oak Island for fifty years. I have been interested in it since I first learned about it. I was fascinated with the story. And who isn’t captivated by a tale of pirate treasure? But we have the answer. The Laginas have done everything humanly possible to get to the bottom of the myth and I believe they have succeeded. They have proved the British were there decades before the Money Pit was “discovered.” The have found evidence of maritime activity associated with the island. They have opened up some very interesting historical avenues and, ironically, they have shown there is no treasure there.

I have followed stories of lost gold, of lost mines, of lost treasures for decades. Very few of them are true but most of them have a great historic tradition with lots of people trying to find them. But, most of them are just that. Stories. Oak Island was just one such story. We have a solid solution to it, thanks in no small part to the Laginas, but it is time to move on.

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 - 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.”

Curse of Oak Island - Nearing the Solution? (March 2019)

I believe the mystery of Oak Island has been solved. The Laginas boys have provided many hints that have been overlooked and Joy Steele provided the history that brings it all together. The sad thing is that there is no treasure and there probably never was any treasure, regardless of what the breathless narrator tells us every week and season after season.

Let’s look at some of the evidence.

Several years ago, the Laginas boys wondered if the triangular swamp on the island was nature or manmade. They speculated that it might have been created by linking two small islands separated by a narrow, shallow channel. The evidence they have uncovered recently seems to suggest this is the case.

While “diving” in the swamp, which means using some scuba or other breathing apparatus, they searched the bottom of the swamp that was what, five feet, six feet from the surface. They found things that suggested ships had been there including pieces of planking and iron nails. At one point they wondered if a ship had been scuttled there for some reason. The point is that they were finding the sort of

Joy Steele, the woman who
solved the mystery.

debris that we’d associate with sailing ships.

Joy Steele, in her book, The Oak Island Mystery Solved, suggested that the British Navy had used the island as a repair base in the 18^th century. That accounts for the various bits of British material found there, the possibility of a British camp there, and all those coins and other metallic remnants found on the surface that can be traced back to the British. You can read Steele’s theory here:

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

And, for good measure, you can listen to my interview with her here:

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

But what has solidified this is what they have discover as they dig up Smith’s Cove. They have found the remains of a dock or a wharf and other structures that suggest that there was a landing place for ships. The more they dig around, the more they are finding that suggests that someone used the island for years but not as a “bank” burying a treasure at an unreasonable depth, but as a port to make necessary repairs to their sailing vessels.

Remember the legend of mysterious lights seen on the island before the boys allegedly dug up the treasure or rather attempted to. Could those have been camp fires, and if so, doesn’t that suggest something more than an overnight party? (Sorry, I got caught up in the narrator’s sentence structure.) I mean, those lights would tell us that someone was on the island for some reason. And given that the lights were reported for years, it suggests something of a semi-permanent camp, which in turn, explains the lights.

We need to also remember that most of the “finds” on the island have been near the surface. Everything that was supposedly hidden deep such as the body and

Dan Blankenship, the man responsible for
Bolehole 10X.

box at the bottom of Borehole Ten X have turned out to be optical illusions. They have found evidence of deep tunnels, and claimed to have touched a vault found during the 19^th century. They haven’t located that again. Nothing of real value has been found buried deep (bones, a bit of pottery and some fragments of paper) and all that surface material is not very valuable either. In other words, their excitement is somewhat overplayed.

Now, we are left with the latest exciting discovery. The red dye they tossed into one of their holes seems to have resurfaced at Smith’s Cove. I think with all the digging, all the tunnels, all the shafts that have been sunk over the last two hundred years, not to mention the high-water table and the underground flow of sea water, that it is surprising that the dye hasn’t surfaced in other places.

I have to say, I had hoped when we reached the end of the series (which can’t be all that far off), they would have found the treasure. It would have to be a big one based on the millions they have poured into the search. But I think they know the answer and that is there is no treasure except in the continued production of the TV show.

As long as the audience is huge, as long as we all tune in week after week, and as long as I keep promoting the show here (well, I’m not that much of a factor) they’re going to find a reason to keep digging. When all is said and done, we’ll all know there is no treasure and the real tragedy are those men who lost their lives for a dream that turned into a nightmare.

Curse of Oak Island - In the Year 2019

Yes, I know that I haven’t written much about the new season of Curse of Oak Island… probably because there isn’t much that is new. They are still chasing that iron cross they believe was created and then dropped by the Knights Templar. Sure, they have an analysis that suggests it was made from iron mined in the Middle Ages but that doesn’t mean that it was dropped on Oak Island at that time.

We have them using seismic detonations to determine what is hidden below the surface of the island. They found a void that seemed to be in the place that a deeply buried underground vault had been located by earlier researchers. Turned out that it was a place filled with sand as opposed to the harder ground around it. There was no vault there.

They’ve installed a coffer dam so that they can dig up a beach looking for proof of the booby trap system created to protect their nonexistent (yes, I said it) treasure. The beach may, in fact, be something of an artificial construct but I think it was to facilitate the repair of British ships in the 18^th century and not a clever way to protect a treasure.

Of course, we see that the metallic wall erected to protect the beach is now leaking… not badly, but leaking none-the-less. When the Laginas called the company that erected it, it seemed that their solution was some sort of silicon gel that the Laginas had to apply. I’m wondering why the company didn’t want to get it right the first time, especially when the problem was being broadcast to what is basically an international audience.

I could go on in this vein, but what’s the point. The problems might be new but the solutions are the same. They might be finding more “treasure” on the surface of the island, but it is more like the debris you would find in any area that had been inhabited for hundreds of years. Random losses and not some kind of hidden wealth.

As I have said, I have been interested in Oak Island for decades. I first learned about it in a book I bought in the 1960s. I have followed the expeditions and commentary on it in other books, in magazine articles and television documentaries. I applaud the Laginas for their attempts to find the treasure, but when you bring in a rock that has been squared and used in a leather tanning

Joy Steele... Oak Island Researcher.

process that smoothed it out, only to claim this is THE stone tablet found centuries ago, I lose my patience. Are we really to believe that this stone, that has no writing on it, once held the clue that treasure was hidden below?

I had hoped they would find treasure. I believe they have solved the mystery. The answer does not involve treasure but a very different history that has been exploited for profit for a couple of hundred years. I think Joy Steele is closer to the answer than a claim of pirate treasure. I don’t think the Knights Templar were involved. I think it was a repair facility created in the 18^th century. I’m sorry to say that because I really would have rather seen a huge treasure found, even if I don’t get any of it. That would be exciting. Instead we have Al Capone’s Vault (don’t get the reference? Google it.)

Curse of Oak Island - Season 6, Episode 1

So, yes, I watched the first episode of the new season of Curse of Oak Island and have to say that nothing seems to have changed. We’re still teased with what is being found, including a gold coin but we don’t know if it was found deep inside one of those holes they have dug, or if it was discovered on the surface as

Oak Island

practically everything else has been. In other words, without some sort of context, this means little and is just one more example of what we have seen season after season.

In the preview show that ran in the hour before the new season started, we saw the coffer dam that they will erect at some point. That is an impressive structure but I have to ask, how would pirates, or British sailors, or whoever, do that in the 16^th or 17^th century? If we are to believe that these long-gone people built some sort of drainage system that would flood the Money Pit, we have to wonder how they could have done it so long ago with their state-of-the-art shovels and pulley systems that would have been all they had. And, we’ve seen that the Laginas boys have scraped down, below what was the surface of the beach, and there was no evidence of that boobytrap or drainage system. In years past, we did see they found some sort of channel or stone lined ditch that didn’t seem to be the legendary boobytrap that we’ve heard so much about. It’s not really the same thing though.

Anyway, this episode didn’t give us much in the way of new data. They did test the lead “Knights Templar” cross they had found, on the surface, last year. The tests seemed to show that the lead didn’t originate on the North American continent, but we didn’t find out where the lead had been mined. But then, we do know that ships from Europe had landed on the island in centuries past, not to mention people living on the island so the cross really doesn’t tell us much of anything.

I didn’t really expect much from this first episode. They weren’t going to solve the mystery or find the treasure. In fact, I had heard or read somewhere that this season will be longer than those aired in the past. That means they’re going to drag this one out for a lot longer.

However, I have to say, that I don’t think they’re going to find the treasure. I have been interested in this since the 1960s when I first heard about it. I have read many of the books and articles about it, and for a time believed that there was a treasure hidden on the island. Since that time, I have watched each season of Curse of Oak Island and I think the Laginas accidently solved the mystery long ago. I think, once they got to the bottom of Bore Hole 10X, which Dan Blankenship had explored so long ago, and which held some interesting images, we had the answer. There was no chest down there. There was no body that seemed to be lying down there. Everything seen in those old videos or photographs turned out to be nothing more than optical illusions of the rough bottom.

They also have put a diver down, in a new hole they drilled, and he found that there was a current down there. It seemed that the area was connected with the ocean, and that the reason the Money Pit flooded was not really a boobytrap, but they had tapped into that underground water source. The flooding was the end result of tapping into the source of the water that filled the pit.

But we also have to ask, once again, who had the technical ability to build a structure of that nature. While the engineering capability might have existed in Europe or China in that time frame, it wouldn’t have existed on a pirate ship or a British man-of-war. They simply couldn’t have dug down more than 90 feet, created the elaborate drainage system that boobytrapped the Money Pit, and certainly wouldn’t have been able to block the boobytrap to get back at the treasure if and when the wanted to retrieve it.

Joy Steele

Joy Steele, I think, have provided the true story of Oak Island. I think her theory, that Oak Island have been some sort of way station, a place where British ships could go for repairs, is the correct one. Her theory explains everything that has been found to this point without inventing a treasure. Her theory is based on history rather than speculation. I have reported on this in other blog postings. You can read more about it here:

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

When we get to the end of this season, which will probably be the last season, there will be no treasure found. Given all that we have seen in past seasons, and all the speculation that has not panned out, there really is nothing more to learn. I hate to say it, but I don’t think there was ever a treasure. I think the story evolved from a trio of boys who had heard tales of pirate gold, found something that they didn’t understand on the surface and wildly speculated on what they would soon dig up… They found nothing, family legends notwithstanding, but that didn’t mean that others didn’t buy into the story. We’ve had two centuries of digging, mythmaking, and speculation but we’ve had nothing in the way of real evidence. At the end of the season, I think that everyone will agree that even if there was a treasure at some point, it is no longer there.

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 (Series?) Finale

I didn’t write anything about the Curse of Oak Island episode that aired on February 28 because, it seemed, based on the previews at the end, that we were about to be treated to some real, important revelations in the season finale. Not to mention that there was the steel plate they had run into some 70 feet below the surface in the latest hole they dug, they had found a ruby ring with a huge stone that suggested that maybe they had discovered the lost French crown jewels and there was a glimpse of a table filed with what looked to be treasure. I was, quite naturally, skeptical, but wondered if, finally, they had cracked the mystery of Oak Island and that they had finally beaten the curse.

We had now reached that season finale and we were waiting for the diver to take, well, the plunge. He headed on down, in the hole they had drilled that was much wider than any of the other holes and didn’t seem nearly as dangerous as dives taken in the narrower holes that had been drilled so much earlier. The water was filled with debris, clouds of mud so that there wasn’t much to see, but he reached the bottom and told us that there was a buoyancy that tried to lift him back to the surface. As I have said, this seemed to indicate that the water was surging up from below the island rather than falling down from some sort of booby trap. It seemed to indicate that the problem encountered two hundred years ago wasn’t from a system designed to protect a treasure, but from the naturally high-water table and to what seemed to be a network of natural tunnels or caves under the island.

The real point of the dive, however, was to identify material that had stopped the drilling and maybe gain a clue about what it protected. They had suggested it was a steel plate but no one seemed to know how it would have been put there hundreds of years ago or what purpose it might have served. It suggested a technology that was advanced for the time and added to the mystery, that is, until the material was identified. It wasn’t a steel plate but a granite boulder. It was a natural barrier and not an artificial one. Mystery solved… which, of course, didn’t allow them to penetrate that barrier. It just stopped them. They had no immediate solution about penetrating the plate, but then, it probably made no difference.

We were again treated to more Knights Templar connections and had to suffer through another of the segments in which the lead cross found on the beach is compared to a cross carved on a prison wall that seemed to match. I still say this Templar connection is weak and still wonder if that lead cross wasn’t planted there to underscore the Templar connection. We have seen, over the years, television shows and documentary producers salt an area so that the cast has something exciting to find. They’re just trying to jazz up the show which, when we get to the bottom line, is actually entertainment rather than a true search for information.

Finally, we end up in the war room with a huge group of people sitting around that table with all the treasure laid out on it. Both the Lagina boys and their kin are there, as well as Dan Blankenship and others who have been part of the search for these last several years. While the treasure looks impressive, Blankenship makes a comment that is quite telling. He said that 80% of the material on the table had been found on the surface. Though he didn’t mention it, much of that material had been found some distance from the money pit area as well.

So, we see the coins that they have found and which they deem important because of the dates on them. Many of them were from a time more than a hundred years before the money pit was “discovered.” But I’m thinking that I have a half dollar that was minted in 1855 and several pennies from 1857 and 1858. The point being that the date on the coin is not necessarily that date the coin was lost… and a quick Internet search shows that many similar coins available at a very low cost in case someone needs them to spice up the action.

No, I don’t believe the Lagina boys or those helping them, are responsible for salting the area. I am merely pointing out that these coins, found on the surface, well, down a couple of inches in the soil, don’t prove that anyone was running around the island at the time the coins were minted. I’m suggesting that having them dated from the late seventeenth century is not proof that they were dropped there at that time.

As an alternative, it is possible that inhabitants of the island, in the nineteenth century, were the ones who lost the coins, and not some treasure hiding group whether they were pirates, the Knights Templar or those who had escaped France with the crown jewels. That none of this was pulled up from any of the holes drilled around the original location of the money pit is the important point here. It is not proof of anything other than someone had lost these coins.

The few things that have been pulled up out of those holes, again, do not provide much in the way of evidence of a treasure. They are scraps of paper, a few bits of broken pottery, and, of course, those bone fragments. But these merely prove that the island has seen human occupation for a very long time, not that there is a treasure hidden on it, a point that seems to have gotten lost.

Red garnet in its natural environment.

That ruby that was so important the week before, with speculation that it was proof of a treasure turned out not to be a ruby. I thought the color was rather anemic and I do know that the deeper the color, the more expensive the ruby is, but this was a garnet, a semi-precious stone, that certainly could have been part of a treasure, but again, it was found, basically on the surface and away from the money pit area.

While they were sitting around the table, Marty Lagina, swept all the coins they had found, what 20 or 25 of them, into a pile to make the point that here was what the treasure would look like. But they weren’t gold and silver coins of any real value, but coins made of cheaper metal. Not much of a treasure, and worth, what, a hundred bucks or less.

Marty Lagina

And let’s not forget that on that table with their treasure was that toy pistol they had found. It wasn’t something from a hundred years ago, but a toy dropped by a child in the 1950s or 60s. Certainly not proof a treasure, but an interesting bit of the history about the search for that treasure.

As they wind down, they all look to the grand master at the table, Dan Blankenship. He’s the one who has been searching for the treasure for decades, and it was clear to me that he was extremely disappointed. They asked if he thought they should give up and his response was, “How much money do you have?”

To me that suggested he would sort of like to continue but realized that it might be useless to do so. He didn’t want to spend more money unless there was a lot of it around to spend. It was not the sort of enthusiastic answer you would expect from a man who’d spend more than half a century trying to find a treasure. It suggested that deep down he now realized that there was no treasure to find but he wasn’t willing to throw in the towel quite so soon.

Dan Blankenship.

They did go around the table asking about continuing the search, but I didn’t get the feeling there was much enthusiasm for that. Sure, they looked at what they had found and they talked about the Templar connection, and they sort of said they should go on, but the attitude reflected that of Dan Blankenship. In the end, the question was left in the air. The Laginas were going to reevaluate the season, study what they had learned, and then decide what to do.

I think this might have been the series finale rather than the season finale because they didn’t say then needed to finish the work. They didn’t talk about another hole to be drilled or a place to be searched and they didn’t seem to have a direction. They had taken it as far as they could and they had found nothing to indicate there was a treasure. Sure, there might have been something buried there at one time, but that treasure, if it ever existed, is long gone.

I think that the decision to return is going to be based on the ratings of the new treasure hunt they talked about last night. This one, Confederate gold at the bottom of Lake Michigan, had better historical documentation… which, of course, doesn’t mean it exists, only that there is documentation for it. If that show does well, if the ratings are high enough, I think the Curse of Oak Island will fade away as they begin the attempt to recover that gold… after all, one treasure hunt is as good as the next and as I have said, repeatedly, the gold is not in the ground by in the ratings.

Curse of Oak Island - A Mid-season Analysis

This is going to be rather short because there is really nothing new to report here. The Laginas boys are still digging up the island, but now they have another new, high-tech piece of equipment that will create a relatively huge hole in the island. This will make access to the bottom easier and maybe a little safer for the divers

Boring operations a long time ago... and yes, I said
"Boring operations," for a very good reason.

who will be going down into it but won’t yield anything of importance. We’ve been down this road so many times that it is beginning to look like the boy who cried “Wolf!”

Sure, they have made some interesting finds, but none of them actually suggest a treasure on the island. There were the two bone fragments, one apparently from a person of European heritage and one from someone from the Middle East. That doesn’t put a treasure on the island, but apparently it was enough to move us back to the idea that the Knights Templar had a hand in all this.

For those who don’t know, the Knights Templar were organized as a sort of military force (think Jedi) who became quite rich and powerful. Those not engaged in combat operations, organized a system of early banking (think Iron Bank). King Philip IV (think Lannisters) of France, heavily in debt to the Iron Bank… I mean the Knights Templar, ordered most of them arrested on the night of October 13, 1307, and eventually executed (didn’t that happen to the Jedi?).

The point is that the Knights Templar had accumulated massive wealth, and it is now suggested that in the nearly two hundred years before Columbus (yes, I know the Vikings had landed in Canada long before this and nearly every educated person knew the world was round), made their way to Oak Island to hide much of their wealth. With that, they’re off again, meaning the Laginas, to France to begin their quest for more knowledge of the Knights Templar, even though that had been explored in the past.

Don’t get me wrong. I enjoy seeing the interiors of those old buildings and a look at that cities of Europe, which is why I watch The Amazing Race. You get a good look at life in other parts of the world, but with Oak Island, we’re supposed to get a look at the treasure and not some new excuse for touring parts Europe.

At this point, with History telling us every chance they get that Curse of Oak Island is the number one rated cable show, we know they’re going to stretch it out as long as possible. This is why we keep coming back to points from the past that seemed to go nowhere and its why little reference is made about the provenance of documents and debris they have found, unless it fits into their narrative. Yes, the bones were from people who lived in the decades before the treasure hunt began in 1795, but they are also from a period in which travelers from around the world were finding themselves on the North American continent. Without some sort of context, the Laginas’ discoveries don’t actually lead anywhere. The narrator asks, “If such is true, then couldn’t this mean that such is also true,” which might be the case, but probably isn’t.

Given all this, I predict that there will be no major discovery this season. While the ratings remain high, they’ll just keep milking this for all they can. When we reach the end of the season, they’ll have drilled down to a reasonable depth and there will be hints of greater things to find… but we won’t get those results just yet. We’ll have to wait to see what was found with hints that it is extraordinary.

The problem here is that we’ve been through all that before. Remember the gold object and the treasure vault they seemed to have found just as one (the third, I think) season ended? Yet in the next, they were still looking for that vault and they couldn’t find that gold object even with a diver in the shaft looking for it.

Yes, I will be tuned in each week, trying my best to stay awake while they wander around with metal detectors, stand on the surface and watch as more drilling takes place and sitting around in their high-tech war room where they discuss the “exciting” finds of the week or the month or even seasons passed.

And next season, I’ll hope they make some progress in finding actual treasure rather than a few old coins, bits of wood, iron nails, and a cap gun from the 1950s. And yes, it seems that I’m writing this season off, but what have the found, really, that has any relevance to finding a treasure. I fear we’ll have to wait longer to learn any truth about the Curse, but then, I guess that’s why we all tune in. 

Curse of Oak Island - Episode One, Season Five

Like many of you, I have been sucked into another season of The Curse of Oak Island, and I did, of course, watch the season opener. And, of course, was

Yes, it's the same picture that I have
used in the past.

disappointed in the way that we are teased about important discoveries that somehow never seem to be quite as important as the commercials and teasers suggest.

Yes, I thought that the “pirate’s chest” that had been mentioned would be something found on the island. There seemed to be a hint that this was going to prove that there was money in the Money Pit. But, no. What we learned was that James Anderson, who seemed to be a real pirate, though I wasn’t sure if he was only a privateer which isn’t quite the same thing, had lived on Oak Island in the middle of the 18^th century. Could he be the man responsible for the Money Pit?

Well, that is an interesting coincidence. A real live pirate on Oak Island. Could it be (as the narrator would say), that Anderson had bought his property on the island so that he might be able to watch over his treasure? And if so, would he have had the engineering background and the labor force to create something as elaborate as the Money Pit with all the booby traps and false leads?

The Laginas boys, or rather their relatives, travel some fifty miles from the island to visit with a direct descendant of Anderson. He had Anderson’s chest in a back room of his house. We get to see it, and hey, it looked like a real pirate chest, just as we see in all the movies. When it is opened, we don’t see treasure, but letters and records and other rather mundane items… which, I should point out, are literally a couple of hundred years old. It doesn’t tell us much about the Money Pit, but it gives us some clues about Anderson.

And, we’re back digging holes around the site of the original pit, wherever it might have been. They hit water (what a surprise?) but it floods one of the bore holes they had dug last year. Could it be that they hit one of the original booby traps that has caused so much trouble in the past? Or could it be that the water table of the island is so high that they tapped into one of the many natural channels that seem to run under the island? I don’t know, but my guess is that they didn’t hit anything man-made.

They also continue their assault with metal detectors and find an old Spanish coin that seemed to have been cut. This, we’re told, is something that was done back in the 17^th and 18^th century and is just one more proof that something, or someone, has been on the island for hundreds of years… but we already knew that. History has proven that. James Anderson was there before the boys began digging and starting the rumors of a treasure. History has shown a presence of British soldiers on the island before the boys got there. We all get it. People have been screwing around on the island for hundreds of years.

The thing that really bothers me here is that there are big promises about what they’re going to find, but so far, all those promises have turned out just as those before. Remember the sword they found that might have suggested a Roman presence near the island that turned out to be a modern replica? Or the constant showing of the video made in Bore Hole 10X that seemed to show a box, a tool and human remains that turned out to be images created by the poor quality of the video and an overly enthusiastic interpretation of the images.

But none of that proved, and none of these new finds prove, there is a treasure hidden there… and remember, descendants of those who dug the original hole that would become the Money Pit, told us that the boys had found three chests with treasure. Even will all that working against them, the Laginas are there with some really big machines digging up more of this island.

I had hoped we’d get an answer about the Money Pit when the series started and I think we already have it. There is no treasure there and the only money to be found is in the production of the show. I hate to be so pessimistic, but I think we’re in for another season of disappointment as they attempt to sink the island with dozens of new holes that penetrate into the water under the island… and yes, I’ll be there to watch it all.

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?