Could the Oak Island Money Pit be the Retrieval Pit?

Occasionally, when I have some time to kill, I like thinking of scenarios that could have taken place in the construction of the Money Pit. One came up the other day that is a bit disturbing, as it would mean the the treasure has long been recovered.

The thing that bothers me about the whole story, is the the initial account of how Daniel McGinnis came upon the clearing on the hill. He came across a curious circular depression in the ground. Standing over this depression was a tree whose branches were cut and reportedly, there was block and tackle hanging over the area from a large oak branch.

Now, think about this for a moment... With all the work, secrecy and planning that must have been involved by those that built this structure... why would you leave such evidence behind?

Is it possible, that this was the egress point, where the treasure was removed, and not a hole that was dug down... but dug upward? In McGinnis's account, 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 and so-on until it flooded.

I wonder if the actual treasure was in the area between the flagstones and the first platform.

This would mean the the original tunnel was started somewhere else, perhaps in the swamp area. It would have been dug on an angle downward towards the hill and then straight up. The log platforms could have been part of the cribbing for the vertical shaft, as they dug upward, the treasure was secured on the platforms they would build, and from there just keep going up until about 10 feet from the surface, where they deposited the treasure on the last platform and roofed it with flagstones.

This also means that they had a way of going back down. When first excavated, so much damage was done digging out the money pit that that perhaps they missed a side shaft adjacent to the piles of log platforms where the builders could have had ladders and pulley systems to hoist the treasure, and when done, just back out. This would have left a completely undisturbed area, with no signs of any digging.

Once back at the original downward shaft, they put in the booby traps from the swamp and cove at a higher angle upward to intersect the vertical shaft, but still below sea level. it was not meant to trap anyone digging down, but prevent anyone that had found the original entrance from getting any higher. It would mean that the original entrance may be in the swamp area, and they build a coffer dam to temporarily keep the sea away from the excavation. Once completed, they removed the coffer dam and let the swamp area fill in with water, covering everything.

The triangle stones and markers that were found point to the money pit. Why would they point to a place that was not designed to retrieve the treasure? That was where they would come back, erect a pulley system, dig down 10 or so feet and retrieve it.

After being retrieved, they could probably care less what the site looked like other than to fill back in the first 10 feet of soil. They would not care about removing the pulley block and tackle or any other evidence, because they had what they were after. It would make sense that there would be a depression in the ground as well.

Additionally, having the excavation area at or near sea level, in the swamp area, would have made it much easier to dump the fill removed from the tunnels into the ocean, instead of dragging it all down the hill, towards Smith's cover and then dump it farther out to sea.

Anyway, developing this scenario was an exercise in trying to come up with a reason why it has been so hard to find. Perhaps it is long gone... I kind of hope that is not the case, but there is some logic in this theory. I am sure others have also speculated along these lines so I doubt this is an original idea.

It does ignore some of the other findings, like the stone tablet found at 90 ft, but we do not have that original piece, nor do we really know if the symbols purportedly copied down were original, or it was hoaxed. It has too much of a simile to Poe's "Gold Bug", as it was the exact same type of cypher, and very easy to translate using the method outlined by Poe. As for other evidence, like gold chain and parchment, where exactly are those items today?

Irregardless of actually finding a treasure, I do believe it was once there, and there is still not enough evidence to discount the fact that it still might be there. Finding the truth in this is exciting, and I think the answer is probably going to be revealed very soon.

So, ATS peoples... do you think this possibility has any merit, or does it fly in the face of what has already been "discovered" ?

a reply to: charlyv

ehh I think your story falls apart in that the flag stones are there. Or that the wood is there. They would have to go back and replace it. you know to get the treasure out and then replace all those things.. I get what you are saying as platforms. I get it could be a way to lift out a heavy treasure in stages.

Well, actually. It does make sense if the people getting to it were not the owners of it. hmm maybe I'm wrong.

Interesting angle.

but not removing the evidence of a pulley makes no sense in any case I can think of.

And if your angle is true, what was the treasure doing so deep? As far as I have heard there are multiple wood platforms..

But you are probably right. There is nothing down there.

Maybe I can make a better post when I think your angle through more acutely.


ok you know way more about this than I do..

What is poe's gold bug and cypher?

originally posted by: Reverbs
a reply to: charlyv

ehh I think your story falls apart in that the flag stones are there. Or that the wood is there. They would have to go back and replace it. you know to get the treasure out and then replace all those things.. I get what you are saying as platforms. I get it could be a way to lift out a heavy treasure in stages.

Well, actually. It does make sense if the people getting to it were not the owners of it. hmm maybe I'm wrong.

Interesting angle.

but not removing the evidence of a pulley makes no sense in any case I can think of.

And if your angle is true, what was the treasure doing so deep? As far as I have heard there are multiple wood platforms..

But you are probably right. There is nothing down there.

Maybe I can make a better post when I think your angle through more acutely.

In this scenario , the treasure would have been 10 feet or so under the ground. An easy retrieval. The cribbing and platforms would have been built from the depths upward as to not leave any evidence of digging where the treasure was deposited. No need to go back and fill or rebuild anything. Anyway, it is just a theory , but fun to speculate!

a reply to: charlyv

but they left evidence as to where the digging was...
Or no one would even know about it.

I have to think through your idea more. Honestly even though I've watched 3 documentaries on this and researched it, I don't know as much as you and I don't know enough. I'm confused on the physics of what you are saying that they would dig from another hole and then go up. I get it in the way that they would know the depth and go in from another spot and lift it up from there, and in that case there is nothing left. I get that. But it seems like a confused way to get to it. Not what I would do. I am blunt of course so maybe that's just my personality speaking. Like one imagination I have is the angled tunnel was a way to attach ropes to something. And then you do the rest of the work. That makes a lot of sense to me. because a straight down hole would be almost impossible to attach or go down or what ever... I think if what you are saying is true the treasure was very deep.

My understanding is limited so I need a bit more.
Maybe you have a llink to the technical aspects or what people have found trying to dig it up?

If they were in a hurry for any reason I can see them leaving things behind like pulleys. But from my less informed view I would remove such things.

Obviously the wood planks would be left behind in your case, your idea of what happened. I can get that.

I am not clear on why anyone would bury treasure in a place that is damned near impossible to get to. I can't help but think that it is an awesome hoax.

a reply to: Reverbs

your view would be the work they put into "covering it up and making it impossible to get to the treasure was actually the work they put into recovering the treasure. I wonder on my own why is there so much dirt between all the "levels."

In any case a LOT of work was done.
This was not a backyard project.
Whatever happened, many people worked on it and didn't talk about it.

originally posted by: skunkape23
I am not clear on why anyone would bury treasure in a place that is damned near impossible to get to. I can't help but think that it is an awesome hoax.

It would be the top hoax of them all on my radar unless someone married a grey alien or something. But the hoax would be impossible to pull off unless someone had millions... Who could pull it off?

Maybe I'm unaware how to hoax something like this without an insane amount of work and then I would need to know what is the benefit of the hoax? A smug smile?

a reply to: charlyv

for you the main thing I want you to explain is the wood platforms. so you are raiding a treasure. and you get it to a certain height. Why not keep going? Maybe it's really heavy and you need to do it in levels with your amount of men you have. How do you get down there to put in wood planks? While someone is holding the weight over you?

btw first ATS thread where we can explore angles without anyone being mean..... yet.. LOL

OR your story... Did they carry wood down the first tunnle (angled) and then build up to it? with dirt falling on their heads? Just my picture you can change the picture for me to see better.

I can't make the "main" story make sense either. 2 or more heads are way better than one.

a reply to: Reverbs

but they left evidence as to where the digging was...
Or no one would even know about it.

The point I am trying to make is that there was no original evidence of digging. What McGinnis had found was evidence of the retrieval. Had he got there while the treasure was still under the ground, there would have been zero evidence, because in this possible scenario, no ground was broken on the hill. The treasure was protected from the other end.

This method of hiding treasure is not something I made up. The Celtics (Irish) actually invented the method and pirates actually adopted some of the ideas as well.

Where you break ground has to be something you can conceal very well. You dig a curved tunnel upward to another location and that is where you deposit the treasure, close to the surface for easy retreival. You are going to dig down just a little bit to retreive it, and there is no disturbed area. You have marked the local area with certain marker clues that can help you triangulate where it lies.

You do not have to go through all of your booby traps when you return to retreive it, because they are designed to protect the treasure in case the original entrance is found, and you are never going to go in that way. Water areas, swamps, water falls, they used many methods, and also drain canals to flood the lower tunnel in case it was breached.

A great book for those that like outside the box folklore and fringe history...

Ancient Treasures: (Amazon will let you read part of it) It is currently out of print, but I will try and get another source for you. Ancient Treasures

I see a possibility of confusion in the way I worded the following sentence in my original post:

Is it possible, that this was the egress point, where the treasure was removed, and not a hole that was dug down... but dug upward? In McGinnis's account, 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 and so-on until it flooded.

I wonder if the actual treasure was in the area between the flagstones and the first platform.

When I reference "not a hole that was dug down... but dug upward" , I am talking about how the original treasure pit builders dug the tunnel. I am saying they dug upward but did not breach the surface. The retrieval would have been a dig down here, but only 10 or so feet to rapidly retrieve the treasure. Sorry for any confusion.

a reply to: charlyv

ok I get what you are saying, but how does all the wood get in there? the different levels. I also get leaving evidence behind in your case of what happened wouldn't matter since the treasure would be gone after that point.

I'm still confused about how deep the wooden levels go down if the treasure was not that deep.


EDIT: your last post was before I wrote.



EDIT 2:
ok so they built up to not expose the starting point to dig down. AS in they built up to make it retrievable but not see-able... That would take a LOT of time.

Seems like planting bushes or trees over the spot would cover it perfectly.


Why all the extra work unless it's like the "Holy Grail" or something ?


I want to be clear I am asking questions to learn not to attack or anything like that. I'm just exploring.

a reply to: charlyv

a big problem [ IMHO ] is :

the veracity of historic accounts of finds - hell even contemporary claims and " finds " are still coming out smelling of bull# [ cf the "roman sword " ]

a reply to: charlyv

One came up the other day that is a bit disturbing, as it would mean the the treasure has long been recovered.

---

He came across a curious circular depression in the ground. Standing over this depression was a tree whose branches were cut and reportedly, there was block and tackle hanging over the area from a large oak branch.

Now, think about this for a moment... With all the work, secrecy and planning that must have been involved by those that built this structure… why would you leave such evidence behind?

Right, go through all that trouble to hide the treasure, then leave block and tackle hanging in a tree right over it.

"X" marks the spot? I read the book when I was a kid about the initial finding of this "clue" to "something buried" there.

The reason they left the block and tackle was because the people that went back and dug it up had no reason to hide they did that.

Once they recovered the loot, they left.

I also watch bemused as another TV reality show garners interest in another mystery that has no bottom. The money pit is the TV show, suckers.

originally posted by: ignorant_ape
a reply to: charlyv

a big problem [ IMHO ] is :

the veracity of historic accounts of finds - hell even contemporary claims and " finds " are still coming out smelling of bull# [ cf the "roman sword " ]

Yea, that Roman sword thing is a red herring. It is a theory from those not connected with the HC and the team, and was recently debunked as a fake. The only thing mentioned by the brothers, was the possibility of a sunken vessel off of the south end of the island. They found a possible wreck with a side scan sonar, but it still has not been investigated, and I do not know if they would even attempt it, seeing that the sword thing was a fake, and the same person that was accused of finding the sword is connected with a group that are talking about a sunken ship in the same area. Time will tell on that one.

a reply to: intrptr

That is the premise I was exploring. If they start finding things at the bottom of 10x, it may just be abandoned equipment not needed, and possibly a tunnel leading towards the swamp. In actuality , I hope I am wrong because we all want some treasure to be found, but you have to think that if this was so valuable, enough people who worked on it knew about how it was built well enough to retrieve it, unless they were forever silenced.

The one possibility here would be that they sailed away only to be swept up by a Nor'Easter or Hurricane and thus the secret of how to retrieve it never made it back to whence they came. So many ships met a fate like that in the Atlantic, you have to wonder.

a reply to: charlyv

Very interesting theory first of all.

Secondly I've always been under the impression that once they had flooded the chamber during excavation, that was pretty much it for finding the treasure (if it's still there).

In your theory then the shaft below the treasure would have been left open then with a ten foot cap of un disturbed dirt on top? If I understand right. If so, wasn't it dug down as far as around a hundred feet and found to be dirt, timber, dirt, timber all the way down?

a reply to: charlyv

A house was robbed, they took the TV and DVD player.

They are still looking for the sister ships to the Atocha in the Keyes. There were two others that also disappeared in the Hurricane as heavily laden as she.

They have yet to find them. Real treasures are kept on the low down. The blind holes are the ones they sell us.

originally posted by: threeeyesopen
a reply to: charlyv

Very interesting theory first of all.

Secondly I've always been under the impression that once they had flooded the chamber during excavation, that was pretty much it for finding the treasure (if it's still there).

That is definitely a real possibility. They ran into the booby trap that was supposed to prevent anyone from coming in the other way. The water plugs would certainly not be hit in this retrieval theory but the first ones that tried to go down that way to get at it blew past where it was originally hidden, reached the plugs, and the entire thing must be flooded now right to the swamp.