[foreboding music playing]

[Rick] Hey, Paul.
Good morning, guys.
How’s it going?

Oh, we’re hoping for an update.
So, uh, we sent a drill in.
A couple holes.
Good man.

[narrator]
As a new day begins on Oak Island,
for brothers Rick and Marty Lagina,
they arrive in the fabled money pit area
to check on the progress of an operation
that they hope will finally reveal the answers
to a 229-year-old treasure mystery.

[Paul] Getting close.
First hole, uh, kinda seemed like it was deflecting off a wall.

Where are we again?
Sorta— it would be the north side.

[narrator]
One week ago,
after extending the mid-18th century structure
known as the Garden Shaft
down to a depth of 90 feet,
representatives from Dumas Contracting Limited
used a core drill
to penetrate a mysterious tunnel
located at a depth of 95 feet,
which is believed to run due west
toward an area known as the Baby Blob.

It is in this region where water testing,
that was conducted in previously drilled boreholes,
had detected high trace evidence of silver,
gold, and other metals
between 80 and 120 feet underground.

There’s a structure of some sort down there.
A wooden structure of some sort.
And you’re about to enter there, right?

That’s right.
Okay. That’s enough said for me.

[Paul] So, today, we put in the landing.
We’re adding another set.

[narrator]
Now, after unsuccessfully drilling
into the bleak tunnel for a second time,
over the course of the next week,
Dumas will proceed with constructing
the final level, or “set,”
to extend the Garden Shaft
down to a total depth of some 95 feet,
where they hope to intersect
the mysterious passageway
and find out what it may contain.

We’ve invested a lot of time and energy…
delineating this tunnel,
and I think there’s great anticipation
on everyone’s part to try to…
well, not only to put eyes on it,
but to see where it may lead.

[Rick] If the tunnel predates the shaft,
it makes the tunnel far more interesting
than just finding a “previously unknown” tunnel.

• So it’s all good news.

• Yes.
  I’m starting to get eager now.

• [laughing] – Got my toes tickling there!
  So close you can smell it there now.

• Yeah, yeah, yeah.
  All right. Let’s let him get back to work,
  because we’re poised to finally do this.

• Okey-doke. Let’s go, guys.

• Yeah.

• Thanks, Paul.

• Okay. Thank you, Paul.

[narrator]
The following morning…

• Ready?

• Yep.

[narrator]
…while representatives from Dumas Contracting Limited
continue their efforts to deepen the Garden Shaft
in the money pit area…

• Are we gettin’ our core?

• Here it comes right now.

[narrator]
…several feet to the southwest.

God, I hope something good is in this.

[narrator]
Marty Lagina and his son Alex
join other members of the team at borehole H8…
where they hope to find evidence
of the Chapel Vault
somewhere below a depth of 180 feet.

It’s a long one.

[Marty] They’re ready to slice and dice.

We know we had the canister H8 go down
and it hits something big,
that moved around underground and went somewhere.

We’re sure of that.
Yeah, there’s a lot of water in there.

It is possible that H8 is very near the original money pit,
so we’d have to look deeper.

How deep are we in?
We’re at 211.

[Marty] 211?
It’s gonna be a mess.

Let’s get our hands dirty, gentlemen.
Ready?

This is the silt, and the clay,
and there’s a few little clumps of material that might have fallen from above.
There’s a little chunk of wood right there.
Just below all our silt and whatnot.
And this sits just on top of bedrock.

It’s that right there, Charles.

[Charles] Come on, be something.

• [beeping] – We got something.
  [Charles] I got something right here.

[Marty] Excellent.
[beeping]

[Marty] Aaron, will you wash it down?

[foreboding music playing]

Okay, guys.

• What is that?

• Pretty solid chunk of metal.

That could be a piece of the treasure vault.

[mysterious music]

• Oh, my goodness.

• Cool.

And this material to here — that could be part of the plug.
No question.

The plug could have disintegrated and fallen off the one side and all that stuff.

That’s right.
The plug that fell out was nine feet,
or a little over nine feet.

Right.
And they chewed down one side of it,
so we could still get a significant-sized plug
on one side or the other of the vault.

Yeah.

[narrator]
If the team has found a portion of the plug,
or the spoils,
that may have pushed the Chapel Vault deeper underground,
when the H8 case was originally excavated in 2017,
could that mean that they are close to pinpointing
the legendary chest of valuables?

• Hey, Rick.

• Hey.

• Rick, how are you doing?

• Hey.

How deep are we in?
Well, we’re at 211 down there.

[Marty] But here’s the thing — that little bit could’ve been our plug.
Because if there was a plug in there,
it probably didn’t stay intact, it probably broke up.

Well, that, and it probably slid the treasure vault
to one side or the other.

Slid to one side or the other.
Right.

So… we need to move the rig
and come down in another location.

I do believe that material, whatever was contained within it,
has fallen to a far greater depth.

To what side and what cardinal direction,
we don’t know.

I think at this point,
the only way to exploit this possible clue
is to continue to do some drilling.

Okay.
We need to figure out where the next hole is.

Okey-doke.

[Rick] That sounds like a plan.
[Marty] Yep.
Thanks, guys.

[narrator]
Later that afternoon…

[Rick] Hey, Roger. How are you doing?
[Roger] Soggy, but otherwise good.

Come in and sit down, guys.

[narrator]
Rick and Alex Lagina, along with Scott Barlow,
join Roger Fortin inside the Dumas trailer in the money pit area,
where they’re about to receive a carbon dating report
regarding a wood sample
that was obtained one week ago
from the possible treasure tunnel located below the Garden Shaft.

I got to call Craig and my dad and get the info right from Craig, so…

[Rick] These guys from Dumas bought into this process.
This is not a job to them.
They’re excited, they’re interested, they’re invested.

I see that somebody’s been down there a long time.

[Rick] They have a right to know
what the fruits of the labor has been.
So I hope the results are informative.

• [Craig] Hey, Alex.

• [Alex] Hey, Craig, um, I got Rick, Scott, and Roger here,
  and my dad’s on the other line.
  So, we are looking forward to the carbon dating results.

[suspenseful music playing]

[Craig on speaker] That is, yeah. That is something. Yep.

[narrator]
A carbon dating test that was conducted on a wood sample
collected one week ago from the possible treasure tunnel
below the Garden Shaft,
has indicated that the seven-foot-tall structure
could be nearly 400 years old.

[Craig on speaker]
[Marty]
[Alex] So there’s a chance this is connected to the original money pit.
[Marty] Right.

[narrator]
Incredibly…
this is the second wood sample
taken from the mysterious tunnel this year
that has been dated to as early as the 1600s.

This means that it was likely constructed
more than a century before the discovery
of the original money pit.

[Marty] Dates are well, well, well before
any searcher should have been in this area, tunneling.

[worker] I think that’s in everybody’s vision right now.
To deepen that Garden Shaft, and find out what’s down there.

[Rick] You have a tunnel, previously unknown,
heading in the direction where these high metal values are being derived,
so, if this is the original work,
then you’re a small step closer
to the ultimate solution.

We have every reason to continue the process
of trying to understand what this tunnel represents.
We have to get down there.

Oh, absolutely.
And that’s pretty well our next step, where we’re at now,
is just getting to it, exposing it.

I think it’s gonna answer a lot of questions
that we have right now.

• Yep.
  These results tell me you need to work faster.

• Yeah. Yeah.

• [all laugh]

[Marty] Okey-doke.
We’ll let you get to work, Roger.

Okay.
[Roger] Thank you, gentlemen.
[Rick] Great news.