S03 Episode 11: Into the Abyss (Pt.2 of 2)

That's allbrds dot com you're listening to. Unexplained into the Abyss Pop two. It has been some twenty odd years since doctor Leechy's interpretation of the Flagstone Code and the rumors of buried riches on Oak Island have reached mythical proportions.

Due to complications of ownership, it isn't until eighteen ninety three that a fourth team are able to secure the thirty thousand dollar Least agreement to begin the next assault on what many believed to be the hiding place of the long lost treasure of infamous pirate captain William Kidd. On first arriving at the site, the new group of treasure hunters led by a Frederick Blair known as the Oak Island Treasure Company, find it much changed from Donald

mckinness's day. The wants lushed green grove, now an open wound, scarred and pockmark, with numerous holes full of water. Like many before them, the company make a start digging fresh holes and making industrial strength efforts to drain the sea waters away, but just as before, the same problems persist. In March eighteen ninety seven, laborer may Not is helping to drag water up from one of the pits when

the bucket snags on the rope. After ordering the men to stop, he is fixed to the pulley system before lowering himself into the pit, the bottom of which lies somewhere in the dark ninety feet below him. Carefully easing himself in line with the bucket, he has just untangled it when the rope gives a sudden jerk, slipping two

feet before being caught again on the pulley. A greatly relieved Kaiser has just enough time to look up before the rope jerks loose again, sending the unfortunate Kaiser disappearing into the darkness below. He becomes the second man to die in pursuit of the supposed treasure of Oak Island. With the rest of the team too shocked and saddened to return to work, the operation is brought to an immediate halt. That night, deep in sleep, one of the

workers turns restlessly in his bed. Somewhere inside his head, he is visited by the specter of Captain Kidd, who delivers a terrifying warning cease digging now, or else more will die. With news of the nightmare permeating the camp, the crew refused to return to work. It will be a year before the Oak Island Treasure Company are able to start digging again. This time, the team begin with another exploration of the material below the bottom of the pit.

The discovery of what seems to be loose pieces of metal buried at approximately one hundred and fifty feet, as well as a small piece of parchment bearing the Roman numeral for the number six, only serves to convince the company further that they are not on a hiding to nothing. Despite extensive efforts to plug the tunnels from Smith's Cove,

the boreholes continue to flood. In response, an engineer suggests putting a red dye into one of the pits so they can find out precisely where the waters are coming from. With a small team assembled to the east above Smith's Cove, the dye is poured into the hole. After nearly an hour of waiting, however, they have seen nothing, but then one of the crew spots it a garish wash of

red bleeding into the sea from the south shoreline. Realizing they had been plugging the wrong tunnels all along, the team undertake a sustained process of dynamiting along the southern edge of the dig site in the hope of uncovering the real flood tunnel. But just like the many previous efforts, having only brought further destruction to the increasingly scarred landscape, the company draws a blank. With enthusiasm for the work

beginning to wane. Company found of Frederick Blair buys out the remaining shares and in nineteen o five takes full ownership of the license to dig on the island. For the next twenty five years, he leases it out to a variety of unsuccessful ventures, and by the early nineteen thirties, as described by Frederick Griffin in the Toronto Star Weekly, where once the ground above Smith's Cove was littered with

the majestic oaks that gave the island its name. By now there were barely half a dozen left clinging on for dear life. The land has become a battle field of torn earth and empty ball holes. In nineteen thirty five, steel magnet Gilbert Headon is the next to answer the siren corn of treasure, purchasing half the island and a

digging lease from Blair. After three years and fifty thousand dollars just under a million today, Heddon's team make a number of interesting discoveries, finding a minus oil lamp, some dynamite buried at sixty five feet, as well as an as yet undiscovered chamber that appears to have been one of the original flood tunnels. The problem being it is almost impossible to tell if any of these artifacts had

been left prior to seventeen ninety five. It has also become impossible to tell which hole exactly was the original pit that started the whole adventure off in the first place. Heddon gives up in nineteen thirty eight. When Frederick Blair dies. In nineteen fifty one, the sight lease reverts to mel Chapel, who had been a partner of Blair's twenty years previously. Chapel had also been one of the diggers who witnessed

Maynard Kaiser fall to his death. Though it was said the Chapel had once himself seen gold flakes coming off a drill during one of the earlier excavations, he had no interest in seeking the treasure, remembering all too well the warning from his colleague that death stalked all who sought it. It was in nineteen fifty nine that Robert and Mildred rest All negotiated a deal with mel Chapel

to try their luck at cracking the mystery. In the nineteen fifties, Robert and his wife Mildred worked a traveling show called The Globe of Death, which involved the married couple riding motorbikes around a metal sphere at sixty five miles per hour. The pair traveled the world before settling in Canada. It was at some point in the nineteen fifties that the Dare Devils got wind of the intriguing

treasure hunt occurring on Oak Island. Soon after agreeing a lease with Chapel, Robert and his son Bobby moved to the island to begin work, and are joined by the rest of the family soon after. The following year, they succeed in pumping out almost all the water from the main shaft. For the next five years, however, the family struggled to keep the water held back long enough to make a thorough exploration of the site. Once again, the

treasure remains tantalizingly out of reach. In August nineteen sixty five, Robert and Mildred are preparing to head to near by Chester to run a number of errands, where Robert heads to the side to make a final check on a new gasoline pump. The pump had been installed next to one of the new shafts that they had been digging at Smith's Cove. Telling him not to take too long, Mildred watched her husband as he stepped into the muggy afternoon air and made his way down to the cove.

A few miles away on the mainland, Jim Kaiser, one of the rest All's key laborers, was carrying out some chores at home. Though he wasn't scheduled to work that day, he had the most peculiar desire to stop what he was doing immediately and head to Woke Island, back above Smith's Cove. As Robert nears the shoreline, he is overcome by a strange smell of rotten eggs. It seems to

be emanating from one of the newly dark pits. Robert's son Bobby, is helping to burn waste materials when he looks up to see his father peering down at something from the edge of the pit, before going stiff and falling straight in. Bobby tears down to the cove, only to find his father's lifeless body floating in the water at the bottom of the pit. Moments later, everything goes black as he too loses consciousness and falls straight into

the hole. Another worker, Karl Grazer, who had witnessed the whole thing, races to the edge of the pit, seeing the two bodies in the water. He has only just reached the top of a ladder descending into it when he becomes the third man to lose consciousness, falling from the ladder with a splash into the hole. He is in turn followed by worker Cyril Hilts, who has made it halfway down the ladder before he too succumbs to

the strange fumes in the pandemonium. A further two workers, Andrew Dumont and Leonard Kaiser, attempting to rescue the others, make it as far as the water before their bodies give up. Two incredibly New York firefighter, Captain Edward White, who just happens to be visiting the dig sight at the time, is miraculously able to pull Kaiser and Dumont free, but for the others, it is too late. Back at Jim Kaiser's home, there is a frantic knock at the door.

He opens it to fight his uncle in a desperate state with some terrible news. Jim immediately races to Oak Island to find a team of fire fighters assembled at the top of Smith's cob trying to figure out the safest way to retrieve the bodies. Without thinking, Jim borrows a vintage Second World Wore gas mask from one of them and jumps straight into the hole. One by one, he pulls out the dead bodies of his friends. Are you always taking care of your family? Do you often

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slash Unexplained podcast. The tragic death of the men, especially both Robert and Bobby Restall, marks the end of the Restall involvement with Oak Island, with Mildred having no interest in pursuing what is starting to look increasingly like a cursed errand ownership of the lease is transferred to Robert Dunfield. In the summer of nineteen sixty five, the bullish Dunfield wastes little time in bulldozing twelve feet away from the surface of the original pit, and uses the resultant clay

to clog any tunnels coming up from Smith's Cove. Next, hen structs a causeway joining the island to the mainland for the first time. Back in nineteen sixty three, businessman Fred Nolan discovered that, unbeknowns to rest All and Robert Dunfield at the time, a few minor lots of Oak Island were still available to purchase. After swiftly buying them up,

he undertakes a few minor excavations, which finds little of interest. However, with the construction of Dunfield's causeway, Nolan is excited at the prospect of getting better equipment to continue his search, but Dunfield refuses to let him use it. What he hadn't realized, however, was that Crandall's Point, the land abutting the causeway, was also still available to purchase. When Nolan finds out, he buys it immediately denying all access from

the causeway. The petty stalemate was results in Dumfield quitting the project for good and returning to his native California. Some might say he got off lightly. Only a few weeks prior to Dumfield's voluntary eviction, Jim Kaiser, who had stayed on to assist Dumfield, is spending the night at the dig side in the old Restall family home when he wakes to find the whole cabin shaking violently, while having the sensation of a heavy weight on his chest.

Looking up, moments later, he was confronted by a pair of red eyes staring at him from out of the darkness. Running from the bed in terror, he heads straight outside into the cold night air, but finds no sign of anybody. The next morning, having finally got back to sleep, Kaiser finds his body covered in bruises, including five on his arm, long and thin, as if a hand had gripped him there.

It wasn't long after that reports of a genuine curse first came to light that warned specifically that seven treasure hunters would have to die before the island gave up its treasure, with the construction worker scolded in eighteen sixty one, and Maynard Kaiser's fall of eighteen ninety seven added to the horrific quadruple tragedy of the Restall operation. So far,

there had been six by nineteen sixty nine. In the one hundred and seventy four years since Donald mckinnis, John Smith and Anthony Vaughan first uncovered evidence of a potential treasure pit, not one person had succeeded in digging down any further than the ninety foot bottom carved out by the Onslow Company in eighteen oh three. But all that

was about to change. It was in April of nineteen sixty nine that businessman Daniel Blankenship and David Tobias formed the Triton Alliance, buying up the majority of the island and moving in at the first opportunity. In what was by far the most sophisticated operation to date, The Alliance begins by digging sixty different boreholes close to the original pit to draw up a detailed plan of the geology underneath.

They soon discover the bedrock to be located at roughly one hundred and sixty feet below, but incredibly the rulso seems to be some kind of wooden lay forty feet below this. The following year, laborers uncover evidence of what could well have been the original dam constructed at Smith Cove, to create the original flood tunnels, a set of logs laid out in a U shape with Roman numerals carved

into them. They also discover a litany of artifacts, including wrought iron scissors, an iron ruler, and a wooden sled that predate the time before Donald McKinnes first spotted something in seventeen ninety five. But the best is yet to come.

Since there was no way of preventing the sea water flooding the now myriad tunnels and boreholes, and with the risk of structural collapse too high to send people down them, the team construct a vast twenty seven inch diameter steel pipe, which they hope will allow for direct access to underneath

the dig site. In spring nineteen seventy one, the team choose a borehole numbered ten X for the purpose and proceeded to carve it out to a depth of two hundred and thirty five feet before threading the pipe down it all the way to the bottom. What made ten X so special was that they had good reason to believe it led directly to an artificial cavity that had at some point been dug out of the bedrock. Before sending anyone down However, Blankenship and Tobias decided to use

a camera to first investigate what was down there. With the team set up on the edge of Borehole ten X, they gathered excitedly around a bulky TV monitor. As the camera was slowly lowered down, They watched with profound anticipation as it dropped deeper through the casin, through the pitch black of the water, and finally out into the open

of the chamber below. Squinting at the monitor, they see soft, angular shapes beginning to emerge from out of the darkness, things which seemed foreign to the surrounding geology, all covered over in a thick layer of silt, and one shape more recognizable than the others, protruding from out of the mud, the arm of a skeleton. Believing they had finally unearthed the location of the fabled treasure, the Triton team employ

a diver to take a closer look. In October nineteen seventy one, Alan Sagar, a retired lieutenant commander and former demining expert, answers the corn with the casing too narrow to where an oxygen tank Segar is forced to hug a small bottle of compressed air to his chest as he is lowered manually on steel cable into the pipe, and with no radio communication, Segar and the crew have only the cable with which to give each other signals.

At ninety feet down, feeling the chill of the water at his feet, Segar tugs on the cable for the winch team to stop adjusting his mouthpiece. He gives another two tugs and is soon descending again, dropping steadily until he is completely submerged under the water in total darkness. He soon descends past the hundred and fifty foot level, then two hundred feet, until finally he emerges out the

bottom end and into the cavity. Segar takes a moment to compose himself before turning on the camera, the images of which are being fed back live to the surface, and points it into the space. Turning on his torch, he directs it into the gloom. Suddenly he can see everything. Unexpectedly, the cabin that stretched off at some distance behind was

much bigger than had been first assumed. On the floor of it, just as the previous footage had revealed, there appeared to be a number of oblong containers and a pole, perhaps the handle of a tool poking up from out of the soft mud, and sure enough, there to the side of it, the arm of a skeleton reaches up out of the silt. Back on the surface. Crowded around the monitor, a nervous excitement is spreading throughout the team

as they struggle to contain themselves. But then Sega takes a step forward into the cavern, instantly sending a vast cloud of silt billowing up into the space, blocking out the light. Realizing he can no longer proceed, Sega has little choice but to get back into the pipe and

head back to the surface. Once in place, he tugs twice again on the cable and is greatly relieved when moments later he feels it taking his weight and lifting him upwards, but just over half way, with Saga still submerged some distance under water, he has the strange sensation that he is being pulled back into the pipe. He realizes with horror that it is the suit, caught on

one of the welds in the pipeline. Unaware of what has happened, the workers above continue to winch him up, but with Segar's body unwilling to budge, the suit is beginning to pull apart, and now the breathing apparatus is coming undone as well. Sega pulls furiously on the cable while simultaneously struggling to free himself, when finally something dislodges and he is suddenly free, once again being pulled steadily

up to the surface. After Segar's close call, nine are the divers aretasked with helping to retrieve the apparent items from the cavity at the bottom of hole ten X, but none are successful. In nineteen seventy six, Daniel Blankenship tries to enter the cavern himself. However, having only made it halfway down the pipe, Blankenship hears the ominous sound of creaking deal which is followed by a cascade of debris falling on his head from above. Sensing imminent danger,

Blankenship demands an immediate evacuation. Miraculously, he has pulled free just as the casing collapses completely below him. When the twenty seven inch wide steel piping is dug out later, they discover a section of it has been entirely closed in to some The cavity at two hundred and thirty five feet deep, and the items allegedly spotted in it is the strongest evidence that a genuine horde of treasure

has been stashed away on the island. Others have questioned whether it may have in fact only been created by dynamiting that had been carried out by the Triton Alliance some time prior to its discovery. Either way, like all others before them, Blankenship and Tobias will leave the island empty handed, and though many others even to this day have since attempted to unlock the island secrets, it resolutely refuseth to give them up, or so it was thought.

In a startling revelation that has only recently come to light, it was claimed by Fred Nolan that in nineteen eighty, whilst digging in a region just above the south shore known as the Swamp, he discovered three old and empty oak chests. Then something else came to light thanks to the extensive research carried out on the subject of the Oak Island treasure by the Fantastic Blockhouse Investigation Team, it seems those empty chests just might have been rediscovered before.

In fact, all the way back in seventeen ninety five. According to Carlmoscha, who had taken part in some of the earlier excavations. In nineteen twenty five, his grandmother Lucy Vaughan, a descendant of Anthony Vaughan, one of the first discoverers of the pit, had taken him into the basement of her home and shown him an old looking chest made of oak. Opening it up, it was revealed to contain twenty five white canvas bags, each stuffed with gold coins

that she said had come from Oak Island. And then, in a two thousand and seven newspaper interview, a descendant of Donald mckinnis made a similarly startling revelation. In the weeks after Donald uncovered the first signs of the pit seventeen ninety five, he John Smith and Anthony Vaughan had in fact also uncovered three separate chests stuffed full of loot.

It had long been believed in the McKinneys, now known as McGinnis family that on finding the treasure, the men had sworn to secrecy, agreeing never to reveal the truth of it to anyone. After all, there's no telling what lengths people will go to when told there is treasure to be found. Thank you to Andrew Maddocks for bringing

this fantastic story to my attention. If you enjoy listening to Unexplained and would like to help supporters, you can now go to Unexplained Podcast dot com Forward slash Support. All donations, no matter how large or small, are massively appreciated. All elements have Unexplained are produced by me, Richard McClain smith. Please subscribe and rate the show on iTunes. Feel free to get in touch with any thoughts or ideas regarding the stories you've heard on the show. Perhaps you have

an explanation of your own you'd like to share. You can reach us online at Unexplained podcast dot com or on Twitter at Unexplained pod. Now. It's time to take care of yourself. To make time for you, teledoc gives you access to a licensed therapist to help you get back to feeling your best. Speak to a licensed therapist by phone or video anytime between seven am to nine pm local time, seven days a week. Teledoc Therapy is

available through most insurance or employers. Download the app or visit telldoc dot com, Forward slash Unexplained Podcast Today to get started. That's t e l a d oc dot com Slash Unexplained Podcast