Kevin Burns (2014)

Well, first of all, we never present anything that isn't fact. In other words, if I put a period at the end of a sentence in anything I do, it has been checked and double-checked and it's as factual as we can determine. That's why people who watch for example ANCIENT ALIENS have to understand that a lot of that show is deliberately based on a theory, and theories are by definition speculative. Even Darwin's theory of Evolution is a theory. The Big Bang Theory is a theory, it is not fact, although some places want to try to treat it as fact, but most religions of the world, even though they are often treated as fact, are theories. It doesn't mean they are not true, just means that they have not been proven to be true.

But if we put a period at the end of a sentence - it means that, to the best of OUR research and knowledge, then it is true. For example, the CURSE OF OAK ISLAND is not pseudo-science or pseudo-history - it is history with speculative theory attached to it, because we don't know what's down there, we just know people have been looking for something for 200 years.

Look - no less than Franklin D. Roosevelt, in his 20's, spent a lot of time on Oak Island looking to solve the mystery. And when he was president, he even thought enough of Oak Island to write a letter, which the team up there has, that he wrote during WWII asking how things were progressing and if any progress had been made. For those people who take issues with shows like ANCIENT ALIENS, I would just say that history is being written and re-written and re-discovered and re-proven every day. When I was a kid, growing up, the notion that Leif Erickson and the Vikings came to North America was considered an outrageous theory, which was later proven to be true. Bones in museums of dinosaurs, everyone thought they were arranged one way, until they found out they were wrong for all those years. So in other words, people who watch these shows have to be open to the idea that theory is as much a part of History and Science as fact.

Here's another case in point: one of the early criticisms of ANCIENT ALIENS was that it was "colonialist." And by that, I mean that academics took issue with that the show was suggesting that native people of South America or Egypt could not have built these extraordinary structures or had extraordinary technology, and that it was a kind of White european male prejudice that said "Oh, well they could not have done it, it must have been aliens." Well, my answer to that is: We - meaning the show, or the ancient astronaut theorists - don't say that aliens built the pyramids, or had that technology. It's the people who built the pyramids who say that. Because it's on the tombs and temples, written on the walls, from these same people whom everyone believes are the native people, they claim their technology and culture comes from beings who came from the stars. In other words, all we do on the show say is "What if it were true? What if the people who built the pyramids - who did murals devoted to Isis and Osiris and these ancient Egyptian deities, who were all supposedly coming from the sky - what if they were right? What if Moses is history? What if Jesus is history? What if Buddhism and Islam are history? What if all of these ancient cultures - Native American, hindu, you name it - they are right, and we are wrong, with our Western Science?"

A friend I went to film school with, in Boston, is from India, and he and his crew often help us when we do a shoot in India. And when I first called him, he said "you're finally coming around." I said "What do you mean" and he said "Well, for you, this is theory. For us, in India, this is all history." Because in India, they don't consider this pseudo-history. In India, they consider Ancient Aliens history.

I think the problem with too much of our educational system is that we put too many periods at the end of sentences, when we should still be putting question marks.

I would say that they ARE dealing with History, because Oak Island is history. The network's logo - that History is made every day- is totally correct. Today's news is tomorrow's history. So I take issue with people who don't think they have history on the History channel, and I think Oak Island is a prime example because it's one of the greatest historical mysteries ever told.

I have to say, I am most intrigued by the theories that suggest that the Ark of the Covenant was buried there in an effort to keep it safe and in an effort to establish a "new Jerusalem" in the New World.

Now i have NO Idea if that's true, there are various theories about what is down there, but of all the theories, that's the one that MOST intrigues me.

I mean, it could possibly be damaged or destroyed by now. But there are some weird stories. As we have gotten into this theory, what is great about the show (for me, as a filmmaker, as a storyteller) is that it starts out with FAMILY. That to me is the big highlight of the show. But you also are dealing with a place that has an extraordinary history going back over 200 years. so Oak Island would be interesting no matter what was going on. And when we get into the show, as we work with the brothers, document their story, I was not aware of the fact that for example - I mentioned 1897, when this previous treasure company got as far down as 153 feet I think it was - and they found a wooden box that was 7 inches thick and 7 feet tall that they couldn't get to it - but through drilling and core samples, they could find out that there was something down there with 7 inches thick wooden box with a 7 foot deep chamber, they don't know how big or wide it was, covered with an old substance which was definitely man-made, because they had to test it in a laboratory, and it looked like cement covering this box. And when they pulled up the coring bit, there were tiny bits of gold and a tiny, tiny piece of paper, which we actually have, that had the letters "V" and "I" written in ink. Now again, this was all found in 1897, and when they tried to get down to it, it flooded. This is the vault that is also known as the "Chappell Vault' because that's the name of the guy who found it. It was this vault that collapsed with water in 1897. It was this vault that Robert Dunfield was trying to get to in 1965 - so there could be something extraordinary in this box. Now the fact that the box got drilled into and flooded may have compromised or obliterated anything that was inside, but what is also interesting, at the same time that they found this wooden box or vault, about 30 feet deeper, their drill bit hit something made of iron, and they don't know how big that was, but it seemed like an iron plate.

Again, this is 171 feet down and they could not penetrate it. Now this all is amazing stuff and this is documented history. Again, nobody has ever been able to pull it up or get at it or look at it. But there are some incredible things that have gone on up there, that lead you to believe that something of ENORMOUS value must have been buried there to merit how complex and how intricate the means of protecting it are.

This "money pit" was first discovered in 1795, but how old it is or how far back it goes - some people feel it goes back to the 1400s, and one theorist who comes up on the island, thinks it goes back to 500 BC.

I can tell you first of all that it's not true, because things HAVE been found, and no one has heard about them. In other words, first of all, it's not a big island, it's a small island and it's privately owned. And very, very few people have access to the island. So it is possible to find things on the island and keep them a secret.

That would be correct, ha ha ha! That is correct.

That is one of the things that they are looking into. The other thing we have to acknowledge is that there is an enormous amount of environmental regulation, which wasn't the case 100-200 years ago. So anytime these guys do anything that is below 40 feet deep, or anything that involves the ocean, sea or swamp, it is subject to government comment, almost like building firms, and they have to go and make a case, wait for an answer, and sometimes that process takes months, and the window that's given is usually only 1-2 months wide. But the idea of building a concrete wall and going down and down and down - and kind of walling off the area they are digging, is something they are planning to do.

I am open to the idea that we don't know as much as we think we know. In other words, I am kind of an open-minded skeptic. I don't necessarily believe in aliens, so much as i'm open to the POSSIBILITY of them. And that's why in our show ANCIENT ALIENS, I like to think of myself as the voice of the narrator, who asks "Could this be possible? and if this is possible, then could this other thing be possible?" meaning I'm open to it. I was raised Catholic, and when you take a step back, Roman Catholicism is very much deep in the notions of what I would call extraterrestrial events, and the possibility of things coming here from other worlds, bodies rising from the dead, ascension to heaven - you know, miracles basically, spectacular events. And if you look at every world religion, every single one, they are all about miraculous events that happened from another world.

So I don't presume to think that we should claim that these things are NOT possible. I think it's safer to probably say they could be possible.

It's really about the brothers and their partners and their process. The "money pit" itself, and I don't want to give too much away about season 2, but the money pit came closest to being excavated in 1965, when there was a gentleman named Robert Dunfield who basically dug a 100 foot wide, 140 foot deep hole trying to get to whatever was at the bottom of the money pit - in other words, he went at it with a vengeance, and it all collapsed through flooding. And in desperation and frustration, he filled it all in, and the land around the original money pit was so ruined, because the land around it was so - not only was the area 10 feet LOWER than when it was first discovered, but no one could find any landmarks to know where it was. We knew the AREA, but not exactly.

So one of the things that we did this season was locate the original "money pit." That did happen this coming season. Then the question is: how to get down, again, in 1897 the deepest anyone was able to get into the pit was about 153 feet down. The equivalent now because of the 10 foot disparity would be about 143 now, because the land now is 10 feet lower than it originally was.

But even then, it flooded back in 1897. So it is very very challenging to try to get whatever is at the bottom of the money pit. And so the answer to the question about when will they start excavating - it's a combination of locating the appropriate area, and 2, being able to get to that depth, safely and without it caving in from the water, which many believe leads to booby traps that were dug hundreds of years ago.

So Mary Legina estimates that the cost of digging to that depth would be well in excess of $1 million dollars. So one of the things they did this season, in addition to locating the original money pit, was basically investigate exactly how they could get down there. There were some extraordinary finds in this season.

Well, it goes back to 1795, this fella Daniel McGinnis, and one, possibly two friends, somehow went to the island - again, there is a LOT of folklore, it can be hard to separate fact from folklore - but according to the reports, they went to the island and found that there was this kind of circular depression in the ground, under an Oak tree, and hanging from a branch of the oak tree was an old wooden pulley. There was evidence of someone raising & lowering something over that circle. Now they thought it could be a depression, like a treasure hole, they knew that pirates had frequented that area in the past, and thought that it could be an old pirate treasure hole that had collapsed and that there could be pirate treasure down in the hole.

Now, one of the reasons why I tend to think it's NOT pirate treasure is because pirates would not necessarily have had the engineering skill or the time or the motivation to bury something on the island so elaborately. Because what happened is, McGinnis and his friends started digging, and apparently every 10 feet, they found evidence of wooden planking, stones, like slate stones, and putty, like clay, as if there were these layers every 10 feet, and when they got down to 90 feet, they found - and this was in 1804, they were digging for almost 10 years, they found a stone slab 90 feet down that had these strange carvings on it that looked like hieroglyphs. And later, around the mid 1800s, the hieroglyphs were decoded, and one of the suggested translations of the stone said that it read: "40 feet below, 2 million pounds are buried." (These are English pounds)

And that was one of the translations of that stone. So from that point on, everyone assumed it was money, treasure, probably pirates, and that if they kept digging, they would find something. And that's why people believe something is on the island. And the more they've looked into it, or dug, the more things they find that make them believe there is something bizarre and elaborate and complex that went on this island hundreds of years ago.

Giorgio is the sweetest guy, the nicest guy, I think I've ever met. He is absolutely sincere, very genuine, and he's absolutely - in fact, it's funny, when I first met him, we had a discussion about ancient astronaut theory, and I said "So you BELIEVE in ancient astronaut theory?" and he said "I don't believe, I know." and i was so tickled by his answer, it led to our friendship, which led to our working together. I mean, Giorgio is an interesting guy, he's had an interesting background, and he absolutely LOVES what he does. I've been able to travel with him a few times, and to see him interact with fans, and he is great with the public and with his fans. He really believes his mission is to let people know that there are conscious entities, intelligent life-forces elsewhere in the universe, and they have been here before. Again, not making a judgment on whether or not that is true, but he is absolutely sincere in his belief.

And I think i'm the person to blame for the hair.

He was an interviewee in an early show that we did, for HISTORY channel, on Indiana Jones. We did a show, we were hired by Lucasfilms actually, to do a show on Indiana Jones, and he was one of the interviewees, and I noticed that he had this big hair - now it wasn't as big as it is now, but I kept referring to him as "The guy with the hair," as in "who's the guy with the hair" since i couldn't say his name. And I said "I'd love to meet the guy with the hair." So he came to my office, and I said to him "You realize I called you 'the guy with the hair,' that's what caught my attention" and ever since then, the hair gets bigger! And the hair keeps getting bigger, and it got to a point where it started to look like he got his finger stuck in an electric socket, and I said to him "Giorgio, please do me a favor - tone down the hair." I said "Giorgio, I love the hair, everyone loves the hair, but when it looks like YOU love the hair, then no one loves the hair. You have to act like you don't notice the hair, so everyone else loves the hair."

So he has toned it down, and now it's just hair. But he used to put stuff in it, he used to put stuff on it, like I said, he used to look like the Bride of Frankenstein and I asked him to tone it down.

Yes.

And he's a still good friend of mine, and he's very upset he's not narrating Oak Island, let me tell you that!

Oh boy! Uh... I know it sounds bizarre, but I'll say The Munsters. Because I was a very visual kid. When I was a little kid, I loved to draw, and I was very attracted to any TV shows that were visual, like The Munsters or LOST IN SPACE, so anything that was visual or fantastic or incredible was something that drew me in, and I can connect that to Oak Island in the sense that the way we approach the show is also with the eye towards it being very visual, and you want to create in the audience the same kind of magic - but i try to bring that element, that kind of visual element, to everything we try to do.

I think the most bizarre aspect to me is that people haven't been able to get to whatever it is that's down there by now. I mean, you would think with all of the available technology, certainly in the last 40-50 years, that we haven't been able to get 150 feet down on an island that's not that far off the coast. And that something as simple as ocean water would be so effective at frustrating the efforts of people to get to it. That to me is bizarre. And I think it is a combination of money - meaning the money that people have who tackle it- and I think determination, and technology, and i would honestly say that Rick & Marty Lagina, and their partners, are probably the best-qualified, best-equipped people in the history of the island to tackle this. But it is surprising to me that nobody has done it before now.

I'm not so sure about believing in a curse. I think the idea of a curse became more prevalent when 4 friends died on one day - It was Robert Restall and his son Robert Jr. and 2 other people that were working with them. Robert had a lease to look for treasure on Oak Island, and he brought his wife and 2 sons to look with him, and he was there for 5-6 years, and they felt they were getting very very close to finding whatever it was, and then Robert was near a shaft that had basically H2S gas, I think it's hydrogen disulfide or something, basically gas, it's naturally occurring on the island, there are pockets of lethal gas, which I guess is not that uncommon in any kind of drilling or excavation, and you can't smell it - in other words, it's not apparent, you just get lightheaded and apparently Robert fainted into a shaft that was half-filled with water and everyone who went in to rescue him became overcome and died.

And there were 2 previous deaths on the island, but the death of Robert Restall and his son led to this idea of a curse. I would say the Curse of Oak Island is not necessarily a curse of mortality - in other words, I don't think it's a curse of killing people - the way I define it in terms of the title is Obsession. I do believe the mystery of the island does draw people in, and the people who have gone up there looking for treasure, they don't leave voluntarily. They either die, or go broke, but i call it the equivalent of pulling the handle on a slot machine in Vegas - everyone feels the next pull will give them a jackpot, and they just don't quit. They are terrified that they will leave, and someone will find the mystery or solve the treasure. People go up there, they just want to dig or drill, and they just don't stop.

We've made plenty of progress. I don't want to give too much of it away, but we have located the original money pit. They found evidence of more than one treasure site on the island - in other words, there might be more than one place where something extraordinary is buried. And one of the findings leads the brothers to go to Europe, where they go to Rennes Le Chateau in France, and Rosslyn Chapel in Scotland.

Haha - weather! Hahaha. The weather up there is formidable. And there's only so many months where you can dig or drill, and they tend to be between mid-May and mid-September. After which, it just becomes difficult in terms of weather, so we are kind of limited as to when they can get up there, so that the season for getting work done, it's a narrow window of about 12-18 weeks.

I think... You know, that's a great question because I don't know that anyone will ever be satisfied, even if they find it. In other words, even if they find something, people will always think there is more to find, or that there will be a debate as to how it got there, who put it there, how legitimate it is. Let's say there is nothing there. Well, how do you prove a negative? Meaning, how do you know you looked everywhere? You dig down a hole and didn't find anything, does that mean you dug down the right hole? So it's almost like a conspiracy theory - I think once something has an air of mystery attached to it, it kind of feeds on itself. So do I think there is something there? The short answer to that is: yes.

Now it could have been placed there, it could have been part of a hoax, it could have been put there 200-300 years ago, and it could also be hundreds of years old, and very much what other people think it could be. But do I think there is an answer? Yes. I think there's an answer to every question in the universe. But do I think we'll be satisfied with what that answer is if we even get it? Probably not, because there will always be somebody who thinks there is something more to it.

I tend to find the pirate treasure theories to be... less interesting. But here's what I do think: I believe Oak Island & the islands of that area were known a LONG time earlier than we think. In fact, the coin that was found at the end of Season 1, we have it tested and dated on the very first episode that airs tonight, and they found that it dates to 1652.

Now, could somebody have planted that coin up there? Sure, but it's not likely. Especially considering how we found that coin. Somebody would have to plant thousands of them if they wanted the chance that one would be found. But this coin does suggest there was man-made activity on the island, at least as far back as the 1600s, and it was Spanish activity. That would support the pirate treasure theory.

But I also think that this island may have been known as a repository for valuables at that time - that pirates could have been drawn to the island because they heard that something of value was buried there.

First of all, there's no such thing as a bad question. I take full responsibility for the dinosaur theory. And given what we are doing right now, meaning we are growing noses and ears on the backs of rodents, we are creating organs with 3D printers, we are using genetics and DNA to do extraordinary things - so if you assume there could be other intelligent life in the universe, and that life could be farther-evolved than our own, then we should not put a limit on anything that we think is possible.

So one thing we know is that there were dinosaurs on this planet. and the other thing that we know is that they are presumably gone now. So in trying to figure out how and why, i think it's important to investigate various theories and I might agree with people who think that theory is far-fetched, but it's interesting to have to listen to it and confront it and make your own judgement.

What I love about ANCIENT ALIENS and I say this in - in a one hour show, and this is just kind of an example - in a 1 hour show, there might be 7 theories or ideas proposed. And even I may feel that 4 or 5 of them are outrageous, or bizarre. But there are always 2 or 3 that I cannot dismiss. And I say this just as myself, as a viewer, and I'm like "I can't dismiss that. I can't say that's ridiculous" and that's what keeps me hooked. There are people who believe the moon is hollow & there's a civilization living within it. There are other people who believe there's a civilization living deep within our own earth. And I would have said that was ridiculous, until I found out recently that scientists have found an ocean deep, deep within the earth - absolutely true. And then when you get into that, you say I give up. It isn't about what i believe, it's just what I don't know yet.

He is not in this current season. But I have to say Petter is one of several people who have equally intriguing theories, and we get to meet others this season.

Well, first of all, you are probably thinking of Ten X (a hole that does exist on the island, it is about 230 feet deep) as the Money pit. That is a hole that was dug in the 1980s by Dan Blankenship, and Dan dug this hole, and it was adjacent to where they felt the money pit was. Now again, in this season, we find out WHERE the money pit was, but there is no hole YET to dive into. We do, however, you will want to know - send divers down Ten X this season, and what we ultimately found at the bottom of Ten X is quite extraordinary.

I'm not as familiar with the Truro Company's excavation, but I did tell you about the one from 1897, which is the Chappell, which Frederick Blair and William Chappell did - and again, yes, part of the problem is that when you are sending drill bits down to get core samples, you don't know what you are going to find, from an extraordinary distance - 140 feet down is like a 10-12 story building. So these are pretty significant depths. You can't see what is down there, just pull a sample. It's always a danger you will ruin or contaminate the object when you put the core sample down, but until you do that, you don't know there is anything down there. Nowadays, we do employ sidescan sonar this season - you will be happy to know!

Ha ha ha! It's up to many more people than myself. It's up to the viewer, the network, the people who own the island, but if it merits being done, I would love to do it. Are you kidding? I have to say, I'm just as hooked on wanting to find out - it could very well be that - I don't know how far this is going to go! Even TITANIC is not done yet, it's not like when we found it we were done with it. Even if we found the Ark of the Covenant on Oak Island, I don't know if that would be the end of the story...

Oh boy! I'd say scotch.

That it goes back to 500 BC, ha ha ha ha!

I have to say, even that theory is very interesting, because it's based off the fact that the Phoenicians - which were known to be a big, big seafaring merchant class, with big ships sailing around the Mediterranean, one of their cities was Carthage, and Carthaginian coins have been documented as being found in Northern Canada within the last 20 years. And these Carthaginian coins are from about 500 BC, and these coins lend credibility to the idea that the ancient Phoenicians may have been able to cross the Atlantic, so it's possible that theory might be credible. But as far as crazy theories...

There's one that there's an upside-down pyramid on the island. I think people think Aliens built it? That's probably the craziest theory.

Yes, that is one of the big challenges that they are dealing with. And it's also one of the things that leads them to Europe in this season. And there are various theories about how it could be accomplished.

No. Not that we've ever seen.

Chicago.

I don't watch anime tv. I'm not that familiar with it.

No.

Well, we are doing a 4 part series for HISTORY on the Civil War, for the 150th Anniversary. So I would have to say the one at the moment the one i"m most into is the Civil War. But I'd like to think I don't have a "favorite" war. I'm not a big war fan.