Skeptical Resources Book of Mormon

There is an island off the east coast of Nova Scotia, Canada, in Mahone Bay, called Oak Island.  On this island there was discovered some very strange diggings or, rather, bury-ings and has been a mystery for over 200 years that is yet to be solved.

Oak Island Forum

Photo of Oak Island flagstone

Keith Ranville has come up with a differing translation for the Oak Island flagstone from the generally accepted one.  He is of  native Canadian descent and has used his native background to find a message on the stone.  The message concerns an island two islands to the east of Oak Island (Birch Island) which has a distinctive triangle carved into the north side of the island.

More about Oak Island

A young man named  Daniel McGinnis, 16,  was exploring the island in 1795 and stumbled upon a strange depression in the sod beneath some oak trees.  He began digging and, with the help of a couple other friends (John Smith, age 19 and Anthony Vaughan, age 16,) the three boys began using picks and shovels and having grand visions of pirate treasure. Four feet down they found a layer of flagstones not native to the area. Then ten feet further down they found a platform of oak logs closely set together, embedded in the walls of the shaft. Now being certain that they had stumbled upon a long-lost pirate's treasure trove they dug furiously. However, below the oak platform they found only more earth.  At a depth of 20 feet they came across yet another oak platform, and then again, another at 30 feet. By this time the pit was so deep that the boys could not easily remove the logs. Discouraged by weeks of fruitless digging, the young treasure hunters abandoned the project. But they did not forget.

The boys never found anything of worth except more and more mysterious circumstances.  They involved more people and investors and over the centuries many other individuals and companies have drilled to depths of hundreds of feet and found nothing except more materials that do not belong hundreds of feet below the earth in Nova Scotia, Canada (like a flagstone with foreign letters carved into the top, oak, coconut fiber, putty, iron, even a torn piece of parchment with the letters "v" and "i" written on it.)  Certainly a world class mystery.  It is very interesting and I have found much  more about it here.

Now that you have some background on it, I want to bring up something new.  For many years, the flagstone (stone tablet found 90 feet down in the pit) was thought to be translated into something like: "40 feet below 2 million pounds (GBP) are buried."

More about the new translation for the
Money Pit's Flagstone. Click here.

The accepted translation of the flagstone is this:

click for larger version of cross section

Image from Ed. Blundell, N. & Hall, A.
'Marvels and Mysteries of the Unexplained' (1989) St. Michael P.36

But now, there are other ideas about this translation.  Read below:

In an email to us, Ranville says: "the forty symbols explain about a Island two Islands east of Oak Island called Birch Island, on the north end of birch Island the impression of a triangle is there.  It takes more than half of the Island.  You can see the triangle