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I think _______ made the money pit

  • Captain Kidd (privateer)

    Votes: 6 9.8%
  • Gangs Of Pirates (Thar be booty in that pit, arrr)

    Votes: 9 14.8%
  • The French (just to spite english or americans after their gold)

    Votes: 3 4.9%
  • The Vikings (the viking settle ment of vinland it thought to be on the nova scotia coast, which is w

    Votes: 2 3.3%
  • The Spanish (If you're worried about prirates and you've lost a lot of ships to a recent raid by the

    Votes: 3 4.9%
  • British Navy (on the run with lots of lovely treasure after/dureing the american war of independance

    Votes: 7 11.5%
  • Native Americans (dosen't fit with the artifacts found but native americans could theoreticly have m

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Aliens (Aparently they made the pyramids too :rolleyes: )

    Votes: 6 9.8%
  • Another Theory?

    Votes: 14 23.0%
  • The Templars (after escaping from La Rochelle)

    Votes: 11 18.0%

  • Total voters
    61
A

Anonymous

Guest
Where are they now - Oak Island Money Pit

I first heard this story some years ago, but little since. I read that the owners of the island are currently in some legal wranglings but that future excavations are planned. I also read at Csicop that the Money Pit is more likely to be a natural feature rather than a man-made treasure pit from 200 years ago.

Has the Money Pit myth been debunked or are we to get another excavation soon?
 
ive not heard about this is it a pit full of money (i know it sounds dumb to ask)

if you have any links to info please post them in here youve sparked my imagination

casio
 
Great links, especially the CSICOP one! If only more articles were so well referenced - intriguing data there regarding the masonic/templar link. Nice one.
 
I also enjoyed the Templar and Freemasonry links, having only just finished reading "The Second Messiah" - highly recommended. Also the Masonry connections in Sherlock Holmes were new to me.

Even better, the CSICOP article had a Triton in it! In fact the whole article was more Fortean than many I've read in FT!
 
Money Pit

A regular contributor to FT, Lionel Fanthorpe has written an excellent book on the subject, which I'm sure is available on the Net.
I've followed this story for years, hadn't heard the suggestion that it could be a natural phenomena, and from what I know of the construction involved find it very hard to believe.

PS: If you happen to talk to the good vicar DON'T ask him to sing !!!:eek!!!!:
 
Oak Island Treasure

http://www.oakislandtreasure.com/info.htm

I watched a TV prog the other night about this. Basically, some blokes a couple of hundred years ago did a little digging on an island, and others followed, and now a huge underground/undersea building project has been unearthed. It includes tunnels, a deep shaft with wooden platforms at intervals, an artificial lagoon (or two) and mysterious words written on stone slabs.

Nobody knows who did the original earthworks, or why, how or when, and most importantly, what's at the bottom of the ever-flooding shaft?

There's lots on the 'net about it so I've put up a representative site.

Anyone know anything?
 
A big part of the problem seems to be that various over-enthusiastic excavators throughout the pit's history have so comprehensively screwed the site up that it's now almost impossible to tell what's the original construction/sinkhole/whatever and what's one of the innumerable other filled-in exploratory pits. And the contents, if any, won't have been unscathed. If there was really some parchment down there, for instance, it's a safe bet it disintegrated into goo long ago when those bright sparks decided drilling right through it was a good idea. I suppose it all comes down to whether anyone's interested enough to chuck the vast amounts of cash at the mystery that will be needed to settle it conclusively.

I'm a little confused over the state of play on the alleged system of tunnels that's supposed to make the thing fill up with water. Some proponents of the pit as a genuine enigma seem to claim that these tunnels are completely established beyond doubt - that people have found unmistakably constructed tunnels. The same applies to the 'artificial beach'. In both cases believers confidently assert that they're man-made features. But I personally haven't seen much to prove definitively that this is true. How were these claims arrived at? Whenever people have tried to dig down to a presumed flood tunnel and block it, for example, they seem to have met with little success. At this year's UnCon, Lionel Fanthorpe was even talking about there being some kind of labyrinth at the bottom of the pit - impressive stuff if true, but has anyone actually found it? Without doing a great deal of comparative research I can't tell where facts end and wishful thinking starts...

I could be totally wrong about this, but it seems to me that a lot of the things that make the story so compelling when you first run into it are just not supported by much evidence. So does anyone know more about these claims? Is there good evidence that there really is a constructed flooding apparatus? Or is it just a case of digging too deep into a very porous rock structure underlying the island, whose many passages and voids let water in naturally?
 
I live close to Oak Island and have taken an interest in the subject of the money pit since moving to the area 10 years ago.

I have read most of what has been written on the subject and, like Tomsk, I don't believe the existence of the side tunnels has been adequately demonstrated.

The details of all the diggings are - as far as I remember - covered in William Crooker's book Oak Island Gold, published sometime in the eighties. Subsequent authors, I suspect, have taken the basic details of the digs from there and simply added their own theories.

One of the more recent books - Oak Island and Its Lost Treasure by Graham Harris and Les MacPhie - is presented as an investigation by engineers as to how the Money Pit was constructed. However it seems to me that they completing skim over the subject of the side tunnels.

As I remember from Crooker's book the entrance into to at least one of the side tunnels from the pit was noted by diggers before one of the floods. I don't remember the dimensions but it was too small for a person to enter. What has always been on my mind is that if it was too small for a person to enter, how then was it dug in the first place?

No one I have spoken to and nothing I have read has answered that question. The earliest date for the construction of the money pit is the mid 1700s - I don't know if there was technology available at that time to dig a narrow tunnel several hundred yards long.

As to what is happening now - the island has been closed to visitors for some years now. I have heard that work continues however. There was some sort of high tech radar survey going on last summer which may continue this summer.

Kent
 
I've read quite a bit on the subject. I think it's fairly clear that somebody buried something there.

But how in the hell did the people who did it ever expect to get it back up?

What ever WAS there has probably been dynamited and/or washed away into oblivion.
 
Did anyone see the Time Team special about the dig in central London ? It was on a week or so ago . They dug out two huge water tanks/wells which still had the remains of the devices used to draw water up .

http://www.channel4.com/history/timeteam/lond_water_wheel.html

The wells were not quite as deep but seemed to have similar artifacts e.g.the end of a barrel , large wood beams and bits of metal .Obviously the Oak Island pit is not a well , due to the sea water but it is interesting to compare .
 
Maybe the people who dug the Money Pit didn't want whatever is at the bottom of it to be retrieved? Just a thought.
 
Ogopogo said:
But how in the hell did the people who did it ever expect to get it back up?

A suggestion made years ago, was that once the pit was dug a side tunnel was run out and the "treasure" stored at the end of this side tunnel, probably close to the surface.

Only the person doing the design & directing the digging, would have any any idear where to dig, to recover the "treasure" the easy way.

The flooding tunnels etc. was to make the hard way even harder!!!

Oh! And they sugested that the "treasure" was probably recoverered within a few years of being buried!!!!!

The problem always has been, who would have the skills & organised manpower, within the time frame during which the pit was dug, to have constructed it & why no record of such a team of people missing for six to twelve months, at least?
 
The Money Pit

Vale, Fellow Forteans,

Does anyone have the most recent information on the Money Pit saga? The last thing I heard about it was that some consortium by the name of TRITON was attempting to encase the entire vertical shaft with some kind of metal sheathing -- I suppose a bit like a giant cigar container -- but I have never heard how that came about.

That is one of those mysteries that seems genuinely intriguing, regardless of whether or not there actually is any treasure buried in the pit. The fact that traps of such complexity were actually constructed seems very interesting -- or maybe none of it was ever really constructed, and evidence misconstrued or fabricated.

Anyway, I would greatly appreciate it if any of you could steer me to a good source of current information on the subject, preferrably as close to scholarly as possible!
 
Re: The Money Pit

Falcorious said:
Does anyone have the most recent information on the Money Pit saga? The last thing I heard about it was that some consortium by the name of TRITON was attempting to encase the entire vertical shaft with some kind of metal sheathing -- I suppose a bit like a giant cigar container -- but I have never heard how that came about.
Most board members will know that I often manifest as a Triton, but I deny any connection with this consortium!

The money pit has been discussed on other threads here - it's always worth using Search before starting new threads....

But having said that, the Search engine does not like short words, so searching for Money AND Pit will not work, nor will Oak AND Island!

I'll try Money AND Island and report back.....

Yes, here's one.
 
Yes, indeed.

Thank you. I did find several once I performed a search or two.
 
I have a copy of The Encyclopedia of Unsolved Mysteries by Colin Wilson, published in 1986.

It has a good chapter on it, and refers in turn to Rupert Furneax's book The Money Pit. This guy reckons the pit could only have been built by army engineers, and suggests the British Army's Royal Engineers built it to hold payroll money in readiness for a swift retreat from the war of independence in about 1780.


http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0245543368/robinreviews-21)]Link to Amazon[/URL]
 
I revived this thread because Oak Island is for sale:

http://www.igsreality.ca/treasureisland.htm

It is Nova Scotia's most mysterious piece of private property -- a 56-hectare island of spruce and fir and famous legend, nestled next to the coast south of Halifax. For more than two centuries, Oak Island has been scoured by treasure seekers in search of pirates' gold.

A ramshackle causeway connects it to the mainland, where a sign now warns visitors: "No Trespassing."

The 79-year-old man who lives in the house at the other end of the causeway, and who co-owns four-fifths of the island, says that after a lifetime of looking for its elusive treasure, he is now willing to sell Oak Island for the right price.

"We're asking $7-million," Dan Blankenship said yesterday. "If we factored the buried treasure into the price, then we'd be asking $50-million instead."

Mr. Blankenship's decision to sell the island is stirring anxiety among area residents and members of the Oak Island Tourism Society, a community group that hopes to resurrect public tours on the island and turn it into a protected heritage site.

"My worst fear is that a developer will buy it and put a subdivision of fancy, seaside homes in there," says Danny Hennigar, a society board member. "The anchorage on the side facing the western shore is perfect for boats and yachts.

"Oak Island has never been designated a protected, special place in Nova Scotia, even though everyone here sees it as a special place."


Rynner: Another Oak Island thread here, if you're in a merging mood.
 
naitaka said:
Rynner: Another Oak Island thread here [URL removed], if you're in a merging mood.
Consider it done!
 
Call me a complete thicko, but I have heard about this for years and not actually known how the story of the Oak Island Money pit began..

Who discovered it ?

Why is it called the Money Pit ?

Has anyone actually found any treasure ?

What is the mystery ?

You can call me lazy as well cos I can't be bothered to follow any of the links... So would anyone be kind enough to answer my questions here ??

Thanks in advance (now you can call me presumptuous !) haarp
 
I'm no expert, but as I understand things:

1)The pit was first discovered by a youngster called Daniel McGinnis in the late 18th century. He found a strange circular depression in the ground, with a tree overhead that either had, or looked as if it had recently had, a pulley/block and tackle attached to it.

2) Because various hopeful souls over the years have been convinced it's got money in it, and have in turn poured in all their own money in an effort to get at it?

3) No, not really. The odd bit of parchment has been turned up by drilling, a strangely-inscribed stone and a link or two of gold chain. Some excavators have said they drilled through some oak, then some 'metal in pieces', then some more oak, and assumed this was a chest full of coins.

4) There are several mysteries - maybe the biggest one is whether there's actually any mystery at all - it could all just be a natural feature. If it's not, then the mystery is who the hell could have made such a complex, booby-trapped underground structure, with flood tunnels and an artificial beach, at least as far back as the eighteenth century. Naturally this leads into speculations about the Templars and other favourite personal hobby-horses. When was it made, and why? Without mechanical help, digging a 200-odd foot deep pit would have taken a while. Presumably something was at the bottom of the thing - what? A treasure hoard, or perhaps a captive alien, as I seem to remember Lionel Fanthorpe hinted at the Uncon? And how come there doesn't seem to be any evidence of all the workmen that would presumably have been needed to dig it on the surface?
 
The Oak Island money pit: hand footage?

In this month's FT is mentioned the Oak Island money pit, a pit on an island in Nova Scotia that supposedly contains hidden treasure.
It mentions that a probe was sent deep downinto the pit in the 70's (?) and it allegedly showed what looked like a human hand.
It wasn't clear if the indication was that it was some mysterious hand of some sort or just the body of an earlier adventurer.
Does anyone know anymore about this or if any footage/images from this probe exist on the web anywhere?
 
who built the oak island money pit and why?

The oak island money pit has undergone extensive excavations and refused to yeald any thing paticully expensive looking.

The artifacts aledgedly found on the island and the pit are:

~Copper coin, bosun's whistle, and iron ring bolt imbedded in a ~rock at Smith's Cover - 1795-1802
~Inscribed stone
~Gold links - 1849
~Remains of the old cofferdam
~Wood and end of a keg pulled out when the Pit collapsed
~Blue clay
~Parchment
~Anchor fluke of ancient design - 1931 - since disappeared
~Dump with thousands of broken pottery flasks
~Rock with "1704" inscribed on it.
~Nail, washer
~Scissors, heart stone
~Original cofferdam - logs 2 feet thick up to 65 feet long with Roman numerals marked on them.
~Nails and metal-straps
~Leather shoes
~3 drilled rocks and ask piles analyzed to be burned bones

The question about the pit that most intregues me is that of who built it and Why...

Seams that over the years everyone who lived in that area has been blamed includeing the privateer captain Kidd, the french, Brits on the run from revolutionarys, Aliens (the marks on the stone they found are sillmilar to the markings on the alien artifacts on the roswel 'autopsy' video), native americans and hoaxers.

Unless it is a hoax then personally i would say it's definatly man made, as there are few natural processes that make sqare pits in hard clay infilled with soft clay and neat layers of logs packed at greater depths with putty and coconut fibres (from the carabian, oak island is off the canadian coast) going down to depths of more than 90ft. not to mention the man made flood tunnels for the construction of which a large dam had to be built.

So who or what could have built it? and why bother?:confused:

link to a useful and comprehensive site on the money pit I nicked some info from for this post

***note to mods: the money pit thread in the notes and queareys section is clearly about current or recent developments and excavations this thread is for dicussion of the history of the pit before all the excavations began and the structure, man made or natural etc so should not be merged as althogh both threads concern the pit they deal with 2 very different facets of the subject.***
 
I saw that on TV

a while back ! That was a cool story. I think they said now the site is off limits and/or owned by a couple of families or something..anyway I'll check out the site you posted . I think it was a bunch of dumb Pirates that did it.
 
What about the Templars? The later artifacts could all have been dropped by treasure hunters who came along later.

Cujo
 
Cujo said:
What about the Templars? The later artifacts could all have been dropped by treasure hunters who came along later.

Cujo

Ah, so thats where they've hidden the grail and the arc.
Makes sense I can see them possibly building an elaborate defence system to hide what would have been the most valuble treasure in their world.

my moneys on cap'n Kidd though :)
 
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