In Season 6, Episode 4 of 'The Curse of Oak Island', Choice Drilling continues the
exploration drilling operation in the Money Pit area, which commenced in the
previous episode. The hole that is being bored, called DE6, passes through the
center of the 10-foot-tall anomaly at the 160-foot level, the presence of which
was indicated by the results of the seismic survey conducted back in Episode
1. Unfortunately , DE6 fails to yield
anything of interest. Later on, Choice Drilling punches another hole closer to
Borehole H8. This second hole, called H7.5, yields a strand of what appears to
be coconut fibre, along with a fragment of axe-cut wood at a depth of 170 feet.
Prior to the drilling of H7.5, Rick Lagina mournfully announces the passing
of Zena Halpern, the New York-based researcher whose work played a prominent
role in Seasons 4 and 5. We learn that Zena bequeathed Rick all of her
research notes, which Rick and Peter Fornetti subsequently set out to
retrieve. At Zena's home in Long Island, New York, Rick and Peter are greeted by
Zena's son, Davin, and by Davin's son, Jason. The Halperns welcome the treasure
hunters into the home and show them Zena's research, which includes mountains
of books, sticky notes, and folders. While Peter boxes up Zena's files, Rick points
out a particular book from a shelf which he calls the "Cremona Document". The
Cremona Document was first introduced to the general public in Zena Halpern's
2017 book 'The Templar Mission to Oak Island and Beyond'. The first half of
Zena's book chronicles the adventures of a mysterious character named Dr.
William D. Jackson, an American researcher with purported connections to a covert
U.S. intelligence agency. Jackson's 1969 discovery of a strange device entombed
within an ornament from a Victorian castle leads him down a trail of clues.
His subsequent adventures read like a Dan Brown novel, featuring secret
societies, cryptic warnings, and coded messages written in invisible ink.
Jackson ultimately winds up in Cremona, Italy, just in time to purchase a
collection of manuscripts destined for the Vatican Library. Together, these
manuscripts make up the Cremona Document. Zena tells us that, for 500 years, the
Cremona Document collected dust in the archives of a Cremonese church called San
Sigismondo. Prior to that, the Document was stored in the library of a
Cistercian abbey in northwestern Italy, called the Castrum Sepulchri.
According to Zena Halpern, the entirety of the Cremona Document is written in
the Latin language using the Theban alphabet, Theban being a writing system
favored by certain Renaissance alchemists. When translated to English,
the first few manuscripts appear to be journals written by the founders of the
Knights Templar. These manuscripts describe a 12th Century exploration of
Jewish catacombs located beneath the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. The
exploration becomes an excavation once the knights discover a vast hidden
chamber beneath the floor. Inside this chamber, the Templars discover a lost
Gnostic gospel, the bones of John the Baptist, and the lost treasure of King
Solomon. Also in the chamber are scrolls describing a 1st Century voyage across
the Atlantic to a mysterious land on the far side of the world. In addition to
these manuscripts, the Cremona document contains what appears to be the journal
of Ralph de Sudeley, a 12th century English knight. The
contents of this journal are too lengthy to adequately detail in this video. In
essence, they describe a voyage to the New World,
which Ralph de Sudeley undertook with members of the Knights Templar in the
year 1178. In what is now this State of New York, Ralph and his companions
supposedly discovered a tribe of goddess-worshipping Welshman who had been living
there for centuries, guarding ancient scrolls from the Holy
Land. Viewers may recall Zena Halpern's bizarre assertion back in Season 5,
Episode 13, that the lead cross found on Smith's Cove was actually a 14,000-year-old representation of the Phoenician goddess Tanit.
Perhaps this assertion is more understandable in the light of de Sudeley's
supposed discovery. The Cremona Document, or at least the English
translation of it which appears in Zena Halpern's book, is riddled with historic
and linguistic anachronisms which seriously diminish its credibility.
These inaccuracies, coupled with the strange discoveries
described in de Sudeley's journal, seem to suggest that the Cremona Document is
likely a hoax. At the end of this episode, a California-based antiques expert named
Gabriel Vandervoort declared that the supposed crossbow bolt discovered on Lot
26 the previous episode is actually the tip of a Roman pilum- a javelin once used
by the legionaries of Ancient Rome. Vandervoort's far-fetched diagnosis seems
to echo the theory that some ancient Roman army is behind the Oak Island
mystery, a theory which was introduced in Season 3, Episode 10 by alternative
historian J. Hutton Pulitzer. Viewers may recall that Pulitzer's theory hinged
upon a sword said to have been fished out of Mahone Bay in the 1940s. Pulitzer
claimed that this sword was a genuine ceremonial gladius, or Roman short sword,
forged in the 3rd Century A.D. on the orders of the Roman Emperor Commodus.
Unfortunately for Pulitzer and his Roman theory, the sword ultimately proved to be
a modern brass souvenir from Italy. Considering the saga of Pulitzers Roman
sword, one cannot help but wonder whether the pilum from Lot 26 will suffer a fate
similar to that of its gladial predecessor. Thanks for watching! If you
enjoyed this video and would like to read a more in-depth analysis of Season
6. Episode 4 of 'The Curse of Oak Island', please check out the link in the
description.