NARRATOR: Over the past 230 years, hundreds of people have undertaken extensive dig operations on Oak Island in the hopes of reaching the bottom of a deep, ingeniously designed shaft known as the Money Pit.

But unfortunately, every attempt has been thwarted by sudden and extensive underground flooding.

This has led many to believe that whatever lies buried more than 100 feet down is guarded by an elaborate network of booby traps.

NARRATOR: What is now known as the world’s longest-running treasure hunt dates back to 1795, when a young man named Daniel McGinnis discovered a strange 13-foot-diameter depression in the ground near the eastern end of Oak Island.

However, after digging down some ten feet, instead of uncovering a chest of gold and jewels, they found a platform of oak logs.

They approach a local businessman called Simeon Lynds to invest in something they call the Onslow Company to do this dig properly.

Then, the following year, they’re able to dig down to an unprecedented depth, and every ten feet they’re hitting these platforms of rotting oak logs.

They get down to 90 feet, but then they find something very different.

CORJAN: When they reached the level of 90 feet, they found a stone inscribed with some weird symbols that they couldn’t translate or interpret, but they were convinced this was a sign that there was a treasure right below it.

NARRATOR: The workers removed the stone, believing that it was covering the entrance to a massive cache of treasure.

But unfortunately, they would soon realize that it served a much different purpose.

CORJAN: It was the evening, so they left for the night. But to their surprise, when they came back the next morning, there was 60 feet of water in the Money Pit.

McMAHON: It seems that when they remove the stone, that triggers a booby trap and the whole thing floods.

Really, one has to think this has been built with a high level of sophistication to keep people out. The people who created this pit created something that wasn’t supposed to be disturbed.

In 1849, a new search group called the Truro Company also fell victim to deep underground flooding during their excavations in and around the Money Pit.

However, they did succeed in making a crucial observation.

RANDALL: The Truro Company realized that the water pouring into the Money Pit was salt water, so they realized it was being fed by the sea.

CORJAN: The Truro Company discovered that the beach in Smith’s Cove—it was actually an artificial beach. It was a man-made beach in which they found strange box drains made of some light cobblestone as part of a booby trap system, and it looks like a hand—five finger drains converging into one single tunnel.

NARRATOR: In the hopes of shutting off the flood trap, the Truro Company partially dismantled the five fingerlike box drains, but unfortunately they—along with future treasure hunters—would still find all of their deep digs in the Money Pit hindered by the endless flow of salt water.

During that time, there was a massive collapse, catastrophic collapse, in the Money Pit, probably due to flooding and pumping. And the bottom of the shaft basically disappeared.

That collapse was calamitous for the search on Oak Island because everything sunk, but also everything mixed, and so it became a jumbled mess.

And if there was a treasure at some elevation within the Money Pit, when the Money Pit collapsed, it went way down and maybe way to the side. I mean, no one knows.

NARRATOR: Over the past two centuries, harrowing tales of Oak Island’s intricate system of booby-trapped flood tunnels have forced Rick and Marty Lagina and their team to develop a much more strategic process…

CHARLES: What do you got?

TERRY: 24.

CHARLES: 24.

NARRATOR: …that would allow them to pinpoint a believed vast and potentially sacred buried treasure ranging from 100 to 200 feet deep underground.

And in 2020…

NARRATOR: …geoscientist Dr. Ian Spooner conducted an innovative method to test the groundwater from those boreholes for evidence of precious metals.

The results were astonishing.

WORKER: We’ve got wood.

ANOTHER: Got the wood?

WORKER: Yep.

NARRATOR: …they were stunned when they penetrated a mysterious seven-foot-high tunnel heading on an east-to-west line directly below a deep structure known simply as the Garden Shaft.

First uncovered by the Laginas and their team in 2017, the Garden Shaft is positioned several yards from the believed location of the original Money Pit and was thought to be nothing more than an abandoned, unknown searcher tunnel.

But after these amazing developments, they hired a mining company named Dumas Contracting Limited to rebuild the shaft, allowing them to further investigate the tunnel below.

NARRATOR: But at a depth of 106 feet, as representatives from Dumas began a lateral drilling operation into the mysterious tunnel…

SCOTT: That’s a lot of water.

ROGER: For sure.

NARRATOR: …like many before them had reported, seawater began rushing into the shaft, halting the operation and causing the workers to evacuate.

MARTY: Everything seems to be coalescing here. We’re probe-drilling. We’ve got metals in the water. So, it does seem like we’re coming together here, on one hand.

On the other hand, we can’t get to it. And I mean, what we’re experiencing now is so like what people experienced 220 years ago that it’s downright chilling.

McMAHON: It’s certainly very telling that, as the Laginas have got closer and closer to the treasure, the more jeopardy, the more danger, the more booby traps.

So, it’s almost as if the Money Pit knows what the Laginas are up to.

If a great treasure was deposited here and a great booby trap system was put in place, everybody wants to get at it. Everybody’s invested in this.

I do think we’re near the endgame. I really think we can figure this thing out.

If we find it, it proves that some endeavor was undertaken on Oak Island that will perhaps change history as we know it.