Oak Island Mystery: Solved

The Final Chapter

De: Joy A. Steele, Gordon Fader

Narrado por: Genevieve Jones

Duración: 9 h y 43 m

Resumen del Editor

Legends, questions and theories abound about Oak Island, Nova Scotia, and tales of buried treasure there. For more than two centuries, the island has been studied, searched, probed and cursed all the while failing to give up its secrets. Joy Steele’s ground-breaking book The Oak Island Mystery, Solved (CBU Press 2015) was born of her own curiosity about “Oak Island gold”, and her application of historical research to the mystery caused quite a stir among treasure hunters, historians, archaeologists and folks just plain interested in what was and is going on there. Her version of events and her take on the now mythical treasure attracted the attention of a great many Island-watchers, drawing the interest of some and the ire of others. Among the people “interested” are many who in the past studied, explored and wrote about Oak Island. One of those people is professional geologist Gordon Fader, whose expertise has been sought out over the years by numerous explorers, treasure hunters, consultants and researchers whose names appear frequently throughout Joy’s enquiries and books and many others'. In her first book, Joy made the very convincing argument that Oak Island’s true treasure is its multi-layered history - its role in 18th-century world affairs. Not only have the bold and sometimes foolhardy physical efforts of the treasure hunters over the past two-and-a-half centuries likely been in vain but have almost certainly destroyed much of the evidence of what actually took place there. Over the past couple of years, Joy Steele and Gordon Fader have been working together to solidify Joy’s theories on the tantalizing evidence of human activity on Oak Island. In the process, their collaboration has not only strengthened Joy’s earlier revelatory conclusions that there was manufacturing activity on the island in the early 1700s but, remarkably, uncovered still more evidence unexplored until now.

©2018 Joy A. Steele (P)2020 Joy A. Steele

Sensationally unsensational

Let's get the quibbles out of the way first. I have read/listened to many books on Oak Island, and this one is probably the driest. It's written like an undergrad essay. It doesn't help that the text references diagrams in the printed book, but there is no accompanying PDF. There are some longish sections (notably a rambling chapter about the South Sea Company) that can be safely skipped. If your only previous exposure to Oak Island has been the TV series, then this is not the book you want to start with.

But here's the thing. Of all the books I have read on the Oak Island, this one, by far, offers the most plausible explanation of what went on there. Virtually all of the mainstream theories about the island assume that someone buried treasure there. Of course, there are a million theories about what that treasure might be, and who buried it. But they all seem to have that same premise: the island was used to to hide something valuable, and one day this might be recovered. An enormous amount of the speculations is silliness, and after listening to this book you might come away thinking it's all complete nonsense.

This book offers a far more mundane explanation of what Oak Island was used for. The authors' theory fits the evidence very well and requires no conspiracies, no supernatural curses, and no pirates nor Knights Templar. It also helps explain why the Lagina brothers have essentially torn the island apart and still have never found anything of value. It seems likely there never has been anything of value buried there.

This isn't the most entertaining book on Oak Island, but it could be the most important.