As has been noted, there is no contemporary documentation of the original discovery. The first accounts with any details weren’t published until the early 1860s. There is no way to ascertain what the original hole was actually like; there is a good chance the whole thing was a hoax from the start.
Two of the supposed original discoverers (who were adults, not boys) already owned land on the island.
After the legend had been growing for more than a century.
And investors wouldn’t have spent tens of millions of dollars investigating cold fusion if it didn’t actually occur.
If you assume parts of the story are true, it may encourage you to accept other parts. But if you take each separate claim and try to analyze it on its own merits, I think the pendulum swings more towards the hoax/wishful thinking side than the “must be true” side.
Just because one or more stories has a possible true ring to it doesn’t make their accumulation any more valid. There is more that is unlikely than otherwise to this whole mess.
It reminds me of the statemtent/question, “So many reports of alien sightings! They can’t all be false!” If each one is ridiculous, the sheer volume of them doesn’t make them any more true.
The retort to that is often, “But they can’t all be swamp gas!” No, they probably aren’t. Many things from many different sources, exhibiting different logic errors, have all been lumped together. And that’s what I think the Oak Island stories are.
The last major attempt to find a treasure was in the 1970’s, I believe. This involved driving a cofferdam down-and a CCTV camera was lowered into the pit.
Supposedly, the camera showed the image of a human hand and a treasure chest.
Has a videotape of this survived?
As for the elaborate design of the pit-has this ever been seen anywhere? I mean, drains designed to flood the pit if disturbed, eleborate platforms (exactly what purpose would that serve)?
Again, it seems to me that whoever built it and buried something, must have retrieved it.
I saw some of the images on a TV special. They were blurry and it’s one of those "what can you find’ type things. I mean, once they say “ooh, that’s a chest” yes, it does sort of look like a chest.
And, honestly, we don’t really know if there was a “design” elaborate or no. Historical details are blurry and have been heavily edited to make an exciting tale.
Well, hoaxes were certainly popular in the 1800s, judging from the Silver Lake monster and reports by one Samuel Clemens. Financial foolishness also has a long lineage: one classic on the topic is Mackay’s Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, first published in 1841 and still in print.
