The Mystery Treasure of Oak Island

One movie that tends to run on TV around Halloween is The Goonies, which is no surprise because plenty of people love a good treasure hunting story. And while these types of movies are fun to watch, there’s much more mystery shrouding true tales of treasure hunts. One of these tales takes place on Oak Island, a small island located near Nova Scotia.

It started back in 1795, when a young boy named Daniel McGinnis stumbled upon a depression in the ground under an oak tree. On a branch directly above, there was unnatural scarring that McGinnis associated with a rope and tackle system used to lower down materials into a shaft below, where the depression happened to be. Fantasies of pirates and buried treasure danced through his mind, so he returned the next day with two friends to start digging.

The boys used shovels and picks in hopes of uncovering treasure and as they dug, they noticed pick marks along the smooth clay walls of the shaft. Further evidence of the shaft being man-made surfaced when they hit a layer of flagstones at a depth of about four feet. As they continued digging deeper, they reached layers of packed logs at depths of 10 feet, 20 feet, and 30 feet.

Soon after, the boys realized they would need more help and industrial tools if they hoped to reach the bottom of the pit, which was named the Money Pit. It took nine years, but they eventually returned to the site with Simeon Lynds, a local businessman who helped fund a dig beginning in the summer of 1803.

After finding another series of wooden platforms at varying depths, the treasure seekers reached a stone, not native to the island, that was engraved with an illegible cypher. The stone was removed to reveal another layer of wood, beneath which the excavators believed to be the treasure. But nightfall descended and they decided the treasure could wait one more night.

When they returned to the pit, they found that it had flooded with seawater. Many attempts were made to pump out the water to no avail. The seemingly impossible task of continuing the dig through the flooded shaft caused the men to abandon the project.

Eventually a separate shaft was dug next to the original pit in an attempt to allow the water to drain into the new chamber. However, excavators were not successful in deterring the water. The crew figured out that the flooding was caused by a carefully rigged flood trap to stop people who got too close to the bottom of the pit. The tunnel that fed water into the pit was traced back to Smith’s Cove, 500 feet away.

Over the years, several different excavation crews made efforts to thwart the flood trap with dams, and plugs, and even dynamite. But none of these methods were able to beat the architect of the trap. In 1861, the Money Pit claimed its first recorded human life. As workers used a steam engine-powered pump to try removing water, a boiler burst and scalded a worker to death. The pit claimed four more victims in 1959 during yet another excavation attempt.

To this day, no one has been able to reach the bottom of the pit to find out if treasure truly does lie there. But one thing is for sure: there has been an assortment of strange occurrences that people have witnessed on Oak Island. Some of the paranormal activity that’s been reported includes hundreds (if not thousands) of pictures filled with superstitious orbs, strange lights burning during late hours on the shore, and the famous ghostly recounting of Peggy Adams, a young girl who claimed to have seen “a crowd of men in funny looking clothes” in the 1930s (likely referring to British soldiers dressed in uniforms of the late 1700s); but no footprints in the snow existed as evidence of the men’s presence.

Are these sightings connected with the Money Pit, perhaps the ghosts of the men that originally buried the treasure? And what are the mysterious origins of the pit? There are plenty of theories cycling around. Some say that Captain William Kidd buried a stash of treasure on an island east of Boston sometime in the 1600s. Others attribute the Money Pit with the famed Blackbeard, who boasted an underground treasure cache “where none but Satan and myself can find it.” there are also theories that suggest the pit is much older, perhaps built by the Vikings or the native Micmac people who lived there before the Europeans sailed over.

It may be many more years before the mysteries of the Money Pit are revealed. Meanwhile, it’s a fascinating story that appeals to all those who are treasure hunters at heart. Few have participated in treasure excavation efforts, but anyone can acquire their own treasure. The Captain 2 oz Silver Ultra High Relief Round is a great piece of silver bullion to add to your personal treasure cache, with a beautiful design depicting a pirate captain with his chest of treasure.

Burying your bullion collection in a flood trapped pit is not the most practical way to protect it. How do you keep your stash safe and sound? And what is your favorite story—true or fictional—of hunting for cursed treasure?