In 1795 a group of friends discovered a strange depression on Oak Island in Nova Scotia. The friends started digging and two feet below the surface they discovered a layer of flagstones. At 10 feet down they discovered a layer of oak logs. At 20 and 30 feet they found yet more logs. 8 years later they returned and dug to a depth of 90 feet where they uncovered a stone with this inscription:
This a simple subsititution cypher with each symbol representing a letter of the alphabet. When decoded it reads "FORTY FEET BELOW TWO MILLION POUNDS ARE BURIED."
After descending past the 90 foot mark the shaft began to fill with water. Unfortunately the designers had booby trapped the hole by digging a separate shaft to the sea. All the water they pumped out was quickly replaced by water from the sea. A second pit was dug parallel to the original but it too became flooded. A later expedition in 1849 used a drill bit to take core samples. They ended up collecting three small gold chain links off the bit.
To this day no one knows who buried the treasure and it has not been recovered.
