# Mystery Of The OAK ISLAND MONEY PIT **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [December 4, 2005, 9:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mystery-of-the-oak-island-money-pit/334022 "2005-12-04T09:38:14Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 12\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![DMark](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e68b1a/32.png) [@DMark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DMark)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2005, 9:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mystery-of-the-oak-island-money-pit/334022/1 "2005-12-04T09:38:14Z")
I had never heard of this until **Fish** mentioned it in a recent thread. [Here](http://www.activemind.com/Mysterious/Topics/OakIsland/) is the story and history of this supposed buried treasure. This would make one hell of an interesting documentary or Hollywood film. Am I the only person who had never heard of the Oak Island Money Pit? ---
**Author:** ![Ice\_Wolf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/dfb087/32.png) [@Ice\_Wolf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ice_Wolf)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2005, 9:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mystery-of-the-oak-island-money-pit/334022/2 "2005-12-04T09:41:57Z")
[The Master knows.](http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a2_441.html) ---
**Author:** ![DMark](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e68b1a/32.png) [@DMark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DMark)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2005, 9:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mystery-of-the-oak-island-money-pit/334022/3 "2005-12-04T09:51:32Z")
> [@Ice Wolf](#): > > [The Master knows.](http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a2_441.html) Well, his final comment was “It’s a shame, but we’ll probably never know for sure.” So, even the Master doesn’t know… ---
**Author:** ![Ice\_Wolf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/dfb087/32.png) [@Ice\_Wolf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ice_Wolf)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2005, 9:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mystery-of-the-oak-island-money-pit/334022/4 "2005-12-04T09:55:20Z")
Yeah, but he _had_ heard of it. BTW - chances are you’re not the only one around here who hasn’t heard of this before. I read about it a few years ago myself. I reckon the treasure’s gone (just in case you’ve started packing your shovel and pick). ---
**Author:** ![DMark](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e68b1a/32.png) [@DMark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DMark)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2005, 10:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mystery-of-the-oak-island-money-pit/334022/5 "2005-12-04T10:00:08Z")
OK…I guess I must be the only one clueless. **Fish** let me know in the other thread that [this thread](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=347262) recently covered the subject. \>\>_DMark casually packs his shovel and pick and calls the airlines for a ticket up north_\<\< ---
**Author:** ![Fish](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/bc8723/32.png) [@Fish](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fish)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2005, 10:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mystery-of-the-oak-island-money-pit/334022/6 "2005-12-04T10:20:34Z")
If I were to venture an opinion on the Money Pit — assuming that mishmash of legend about Captain Kidd’s legendary buried treasure is true — then I’d say it’s more likely that somebody already came back and got the treasure well before the site was found by the first men to excavate it. Kidd, after all, came back to the United States and was arrested, extradited to England, and hanged for piracy. Any of the original crew who helped to bury the treasure might have taken it as a sign to go claim it. The question is whether any part of that original story is true. Probably not much of it, if anything, but it’s still a fascinating and niggling little unanswered question. ---
**Author:** ![Harmonious\_Discord](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/74df32/32.png) [@Harmonious\_Discord](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Harmonious_Discord)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2005, 12:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mystery-of-the-oak-island-money-pit/334022/7 "2005-12-04T12:06:51Z")
I’ve known about it for over 30 years, because I read all the time as a kid. There are shows about it shown ever year now. Somebody did excavating hundreds of years ago, but nobody knows absolutely who or why. ---
**Author:** ![TellMeI\_mNotCrazy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tellmei_mnotcrazy/32/3419_2.png) [@TellMeI\_mNotCrazy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TellMeI_mNotCrazy)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2005, 6:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mystery-of-the-oak-island-money-pit/334022/8 "2005-12-04T18:42:31Z")
First time I heard of it was in a recent thread here as well. I can’t say whether Fish started it, but I do remember that **Hal Briston** posted in it. Fascinating, I was also surprised that I had never heard of it. ---
**Author:** ![Linty\_Fresh](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/c5a1d2/32.png) [@Linty\_Fresh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Linty_Fresh)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2005, 8:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mystery-of-the-oak-island-money-pit/334022/9 "2005-12-04T20:22:31Z")
I first read about this as a teenager in a book about famous buried treasure. I forgot about it for a few years until I read Cecil’s column, and it interested me enough to do a bit of research. Nothing scholarly, just some magazine articles. My humble opinion? It’s bunk. I cannot believe that pirates or anyone else 300 years ago would have dug a couple of hundred feet into the earth and booby-trapped the entire island just to bury treasure, any more than I could believe they could have accomplished this without leaving more around the site than a sinkhole and a ship’s pulley (which I also found hard to accept. Even if they had been stupid enough to leave _that_ piece of evidence on a tree, how did the rope last that long without snapping with the weight of the pulley?). Everything else is straight out of a cheap novel. A buried stone with a mysterious cipher that somehow got “lost” without anyone making transcription? Sure. Three gold links on a drill bit? You bet. Mysterious paper (or parchment, depending on whom you happen to believe) with letters recovered from the depths (after lying underwater for years, I might add)? Uh-huh. Not one fact about this legend is verifiable outside of hand-me-down legends, and most of it is crazy as hell. It’s a pipe dream. As far as Cecil’s take on this whole thing, well . . . I’m sure I’m going to hell for this, but [He’s been taken in before.](http://www.straightdope.com/columns/040305.html). ---
**Author:** ![Cunctator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/43a26b/32.png) [@Cunctator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cunctator)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2005, 9:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mystery-of-the-oak-island-money-pit/334022/10 "2005-12-04T21:30:32Z")
> [@Linty Fresh](#): > > Everything else is straight out of a cheap novel. A buried stone with a mysterious cipher that somehow got “lost” without anyone making transcription? Sure. As I posted in [this earlier thread,](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=6775624&postcount=2) there are some suggestions that the cipher was in fact transcribed and translated. Not that I’m inclined to believe the claims. ---
**Author:** ![Linty\_Fresh](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/c5a1d2/32.png) [@Linty\_Fresh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Linty_Fresh)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2005, 9:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mystery-of-the-oak-island-money-pit/334022/11 "2005-12-04T21:37:05Z")
> [@Cunctator](#): > > As I posted in [this earlier thread,](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=6775624&postcount=2) there are some suggestions that the cipher was in fact transcribed and translated. Not that I’m inclined to believe the claims. Well, OK, that’s one source, but I’m still skeptical. How was such a vital piece of evidence lost? Why would someone go through the trouble of concealing something that deeply and then leaving a stone down there in the first place? It goes back to independent verification: If the stone is lost, all we have is the professor’s word that this is an authentic transcription and translation. Frankly, I’m not convinced at all. ---
**Author:** ![Fish](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/bc8723/32.png) [@Fish](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fish)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2005, 10:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mystery-of-the-oak-island-money-pit/334022/12 "2005-12-04T22:56:38Z")
Why would someone go to the trouble of burying something so deep? I couldn’t say. It’s possible that what they (the treasure hunters) found was the beginning of a mine, abandoned and re-filled, and not a treasure cache at all. The idea of “a layer of flagstones every 10 feet” might just have been wishful thinking by later groups. They themselves could have put the pulley there to help their excavation, but years later when they recruited help, none could remember how it got there. What could the original miners have been looking for? _Fresh water_, maybe — but all they found was brine. I don’t consider this likely, merely a possibility. Why is it so deep? Because later diggers were stupider, more persistent and better equipped, that’s why. Surely they continued to find things which _they_ elected to pursue. The island is pocked with erosion tunnels and seawater? Nonsense, my boy, those are pirate booby traps. We’re getting close. I’m inclined to think that there _was_ something at the original site that prompted people to try to dig, and that the “evidence” was good enough for them. (Well, good enough considering there were stories sweeping the eastern seaboard of buried pirate gold.) The original tales say the first three men to find the site dug down some 20-30 feet on their own before electing to get help, so surely _something_ they saw was compelling. And it was compelling enough to enlist help, too — though if I were desperate to enlist help finding treasure, I might be tempted to turn to the block and tackle I’d left behind and say, “See? That was there when we arrived. Pirates did it, you see.” And who knows? Maybe at one time there had been something valuable there. Me, I tend to look at the pulley (if it was real) as evidence that somebody already came to retrieve what was once there.