The Money Pit

[Ask For More]

Ok, i'm on a unsolved mysteries mood today
Have a look at this :


What lies at the bottom of the Money Pit?

Imagine yourself walking through the trees of a wooded island rumored to hide buried pirate treasure. Suddenly you come across a depression in the ground. It's roughly circular and there's a tree standing above it with a branch that has been cut and appears to have been used as a pulley. Your imagination is fired and hope soars. You run off to get your friends and digging equipment.

You and two friends return the next day, shovels in hand, ready to claim your prize. The digging is easy. The dirt loose. Only two feet down your shovel strikes rock. As you clear the dirt away you find a neatly arranged layer of flagstone covering a circular area 13 feet in diameter. You pry the stones out, expecting treasure but there's only more dirt.

You begin again. Digging down 8 more feet with no luck. Suddenly you hit wood. This is it. You scrap away the dirt only to find a platform of oak logs covering the pit. You pull out the logs and resume your digging.

Ten more feet and still nothing. Finally, you strike wood. This MUST be it. As you clear the area you find another level of oak logs.

Now you know there's something valuable here. Why else would anyone go to so much trouble?

Now 20 feet below the surface you heave to again. Another 10 feet. Another set of oak boards.

Disappointed, you and your friends decide that you can't go any further alone. You leave but vow to return to retrieve your treasure.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Now imagine that it's more than 200 years later. The pit has been explored to more than 150 feet. The treasure, if any, that was buried is still there, protected by an ingenious booby trap that floods the pit with sea water anytime someone gets close.

Group after group after group have tried to solve the riddle. Neither brute force nor technology have been able to overcome the problems. Six lives have been lost and millions of dollars spent trying to uncover the secrets of what has become known as the Money Pit. Still, no one knows what lies at the bottom, who built it or why. There are numerous theories but little proof.

This is the story of Oak Island, Nova Scotia, one the most frustrating and intriguing mysteries of all time.



Anyone else interested by this?

 

[unusuallyconfused]

Very intriguing, yes very interesting. Your full of interesting facts this evening. I bet you are very enertaining!

Barbara

 

[Starfish]

That is so interesting. Are there pictures on the net?
I would love to see.

While I read your discription, I could smell the salt air, and I had the same feelings I had when I saw the movie The Goonies. Very cool.

 

[Ask For More]

Not much in the way of pictures, but check this link for info!

Jus kidding

[Edited by Ask For More on 05-25-2001 at 10:16 PM]

 

[Ask For More]

What the hell....

Might as well reel out some bait


The Discovery

One summer day in 1795 Daniel McGinnis, then a teenager, was wandering about Oak Island, Nova Scotia (see Geography) when he came across a curious circular depression in the ground. Standing over this depression was a tree whose branches had been cut in a way which looked like it had been used as a pulley. Having heard tales of pirates in the area he decided to return home to get friends and return later to investigate the hole.

Over the next several days McGinnis, along with friends John Smith and Anthony Vaughan, worked the hole. What they found astonished them. Two feet below the surface they came across of layer of flagstones covering the pit. At 10 feet down they ran into a layer of oak logs spanning the pit. Again at 20 feet and 30 feet they found the same thing, a layer of logs. Not being able to continue alone from here, they went home, but with plans of returning to search more.

It took the three discoverers 8 years, but they did return. Along with The Onslow Company, formed for the purpose of the search, they began digging again. They quickly got back to 30 foot point that had been reached 8 years ago. They continued down to 90 feet, finding a layer of oak logs at every 10 foot interval. Besides the boards, at 40 feet a layer of charcoal was found, at 50 feet a layer of putty, and at 60 feet a layer of coconut fiber.

At 90 feet one of the most puzzling clues was found - a stone inscribed with mysterious writing.

Note: For more information about the stone inscription and to try your hand at translating the stone's inscription go here.

After pulling up the layer of oak at 90 feet and continuing on, water began to seep into the pit. By the next day the pit was filled with water up to the 33 foot level. Pumping didn't work, so the next year a new pit was dug parallel to the original down to 100 feet. From there a tunnel was run over to The Money Pit. Again the water flooded in and the search was abandoned for 45 years.

 

[Isolde]

Very intriguing, yes very interesting. Your full of interesting facts this evening. I bet you are very enertaining!

Barbara

Trust me...he is very entertaining...

 

[Ask For More]

It's all good!

The Booby Trap

As it turns out, an ingenious booby trap had been sprung. The Onslow Company had inadvertently unplugged a 500 foot waterway that had been dug from the pit to nearby Smith's Cove by the pit's designers. As quickly as the water could be pumped out it was refilled by the sea.

This discovery however is only a small part of the intricate plan by the unknown designers to keep people away from the cache.

In 1849 the next company to attempt to extract the treasure, The Truro Company, was founded and the search began again. They quickly dug down to 86 feet only to be flooded. Deciding to try to figure out what was buried before attempting to extract it, Truro switched to drilling core samples. The drilling produced some encouraging results.



First Hints of Treasure


At 98 feet the drill went through a spruce platform. Then it encountered 4 inches of oak and then 22 inches of what was characterized as "metal in pieces""; Next 8 inches of oak, another 22 inches of metal, 4 inches of oak and another layer of spruce. The conclusion was that they had drilled through 2 casks or chests filled will coins. Upon pulling out the drill they found splinters of oak and strands of what looked like coconut husk.

One account of the drilling also mentions that three small gold links, as from a chain, were brought up. Unfortunately no one knows where they have gone.

Interestingly, the earth encountered beneath the bottom spruce platform was loose indicating that the pit may have gone even deeper. A later group of searchers would find out how much deeper.

The Truro Company returned in 1850 with plans to dig another parallel hole and then tunnel over to the Money Pit. Just like before, as they tunneled over, water began to rush in. They brought in pumps to try to get rid of the water but it was impossible to keep the water out. During the pumping someone noticed that at Smith's Cove during low tide there was water coming OUT of the beach.

This find lead to an amazing discovery - the beach was artificial.

 

[Ask For More]

No one's interested

 

[Renegade]

AskForMore

*Raises hand* I am!

 

[Starfish]

Yeah, Me too!

I just had to do some poopy stuff, and it is getting late...

almost time for sex!

I love the Money Pit, and think that Ren, You and I should get our survival gear out, and go survey the site, and determine what we'll need to plugg up that water channel.

Maybe Ren can just stick his dick in it, long enough to hold back the water, and for us to get down in there and get the goods. Who's goods do you think are down there?

 

[Renegade]

G.R.

I'm liking your ideas.

 

[Ezzy]

I saw it on Discovery channel...

A couple of times and yes it does intrigue me.

Though for the life of me I can't think why one of the big companies hasn't bought the whole island and put a caisson around the place and taken it down a foot at a time.

Sure it would take time and effort but is there no multi billionaire who has enough moxxy to put some of their personal fortune on the line and just do the job right.



EZ

 

[Mensa]

Six down, one to go!

The curse states that one more must die before the treasure is recovered.

Any volunteers?

 

[Starfish]

Ren? You get to fuck the big hole. Wanna die too, while you are at it?

 

[Renegade]

We've all got to die one day. Might as well do it while trying something new.

 

[Starfish]

Don't you want to see what is down in the hole before you stick your dick in it? There could be a sea monster.... named Siren, with big narly teeth.



Do you want to see some weird pics I took. I am not even sure what they are of. You tell me?

 

[Renegade]

Do you want to see some weird pics I took. I am not even sure what they are of. You tell me?

Sure thing.

 

[Starfish]

Here, To me, is what looks like a cloud above those flowers, but in front of the trees. When I took the picture, it wasn't in the view finder.

http://grspicturesandstuff.homestead.com/files/Dames_Rocket_2.jpg



This I thought was light, until I realized it was in front of the tree, and that it has a sort of middle to it... where it looks very purple. Is that a spirit? I am not suprised if it is. This place is obviously haunted, I just thought I'd never catch anything on film.....

http://grspicturesandstuff.homestead.com/files/Tarragon.jpg

 

[Renegade]

Hmmm. Not sure what they could be. Don't know about them being spirits, although I do believe in such things. You should hear this one story a friend of mine from another board told me once. Those are some very nice pics though.

 

[Starfish]

I don't know either.

I am showing these also, because they were taken at the same time, and I don't see anything on them. I wondered about something being on the lense, but when I checked, there was nothing and I had just cleaned the lense with vinager the day before, so it was actually lint free and spotless.

I would like to hear your friends story, Please, do tell...

in private or here...which ever.


http://grspicturesandstuff.homestead.com/files/Dames.jpg


http://grspicturesandstuff.homestead.com/files/Dames_3.jpg

 

[Renegade]

Eh, it was posted at another BB long before I even found Lit. I'll look for it, but it's somewhere under a years worth of threads, so don't hold your breath. lol

Basicly, him and his wife stayed at a motel and stayed in a room where they later found out to be haunted. They both think that they both saw a ghost while there. It was a pretty interesting story. His son was conceived while they were there too.

Too this day, that had to be one of the more interesting threads I've read.

 

[Ask For More]

Artificial beach

It turns out that the pit designers had created a drain system, spread over a 145 foot length of beach, which resembled the fingers of a hand. Each finger was a channel dug into the clay under the beach and lined by rocks. The channels were then filled with beach rocks, covered with several inches of eel grass, and then covered by several more inches of coconut fiber. The effect of this filtering system was that the channels remained clear of silt and sand while water was still allowed to flow along them. The fingers met at a point inland where they fed sea water into a sloping channel which eventually joined the Money Pit some 500 feet away. Later investigations showed this underground channel to have been 4 feet wide, 2 1/2 feet high, lined with stone, and meeting the Money Pit between the depths of 95 to 110 feet.

To the Truro Company, the answer was now simple - just block off the water flow from the beach and dig out the treasure. Their first attempt was to build a dam just off the beach at Smith's Cove, drain the water, and then dismantle the drain channels. Unfortunately a storm blew up and destroyed the dam before they could finish.

An interesting note: the remains of an older dam were found when building the new one.

The next plan was to dig a pit 100 feet or so inland in the hopes of meeting with the water channel underground at which point they could plug the channel. This scheme too failed. And this was the last attempt by the Truro company to uncover the secrets of Oak Island.

 

[Guest]

Runs in tackles Ask For More to the ground in snuggles then runs out of the thread giggling!

 

[Ask For More]

Gadzooks! I've been besmirched!

 

[Weird Harold]

I am showing these also, because they were taken at the same time, and I don't see anything on them. I wondered about something being on the lense, but when I checked, there was nothing and I had just cleaned the lense with vinager the day before, so it was actually lint free and spotless.

I don't think there is anything strange about the bluring in the first two pictures. A UV filter or Hze filter would have probably eliminated them.

comparing the two sets of pictures, I notice that the second set have no visible shadows, indicating it was probably overcast when they were taken. The two with the strange hazy spot show shadows pointing toward the camera, indicating to me, that the haze is probably sun-glare. It is typical of the kind of glare that occurs on a partly cloudly day with a lense pointed sunward.