The UnXplained Special Presentation

A buried treasure belonging to

one of the most feared pirates to ever roam the seas.

A lost cache of gold protected by a deadly curse.

And a confounding cipher

that could reveal a vast fortune.

The fascinating tales of lost treasures,

missing fortunes,

and elusive riches have sparked the human imagination for ages.

And the prospect of actually finding

precious valuables has motivated

an uncountable number of brave souls to hunt

for where X marks the spot.

But these grand adventures to follow the clues

to vast riches often come with great risks,

and sometimes, deadly curses.

How likely is it that there really is

treasure hidden all around us, just out of our reach?

Well, that is what we'll try and find out.

Every year, thousands of people gather

at the Ocracoke Pirate jamboree

to experience a taste

of swashbuckling life on the high seas.

The fair commemorates the defeat

of the most famous and feared pirate

in colonial history, known by the name of...

Blackbeard.

Edward Teach, also known as Blackbeard,

is a legendary pirate.

Now, not much is known about him in his early years.

But it's believed that he grew up in Bristol,

which is a town in England,

and from there, he moved on to Jamaica,

where he worked as a privateer

in the War of Spanish Succession,

and that was where his career as a pirate really began.

During the War of Spanish Succession

from 1701 to 1713,

the English government gave captains

of private merchant ships permission

to attack and plunder vessels

that were owned by Spain and France.

Blackbeard was one of those captains,

who were referred to as "privateers."

After 1713,

when the war ended,

if you continued to be a privateer,

you were no longer a privateer. You were a pirate.

Blackbeard and a lot of them became pirates

because there was no other way of making a living.

In 1717, Blackbeard got his own ship and became

one of the most infamous pirate captains who ever lived.

He made himself look as terrifying as possible.

He had a very long black beard, he had very long black hair.

And during battle,

he would put fuses or even candles

into his beard and hair,

so smoke would kind of rise up

and it looked like he was coming out of hell.

Imagine this huge, towering figure

with this big, burly, black beard...

...and slow-burning fuses coming out

from underneath his hat just sparkling.

That really created his reputation

as the legendary pirate Blackbeard.

Blackbeard and his fellow pirates were

plundering and stealing loot from ships all the time.

In fact, so many,

we don't even know the exact number...

...of ships that Blackbeard was able to loot.

But they're able to take a lot of loot.

In 1718, after spending years

capturing and plundering ships on the high seas,

Blackbeard's notorious career came to an abrupt end

when he was attacked

off the southern tip of Ocracoke Island.

The governor of Virginia told his Coast Guard

to capture Blackbeard at all costs.

And so the job went to Lieutenant Robert Maynard.

And on November 22 of 1718,

Maynard came upon Blackbeard's ship

and immediately engaged him into battle.

And Blackbeard engaged in a fight

with one of the men who ended up

stabbing Blackbeard in the thigh,

and supposedly, Blackbeard shouted,

"Well done, lad!"

And then Lieutenant Robert Maynard ends up

beheading Blackbeard on the ship,

And Blackbeard's head was placed

on the bowsprit of a ship and sailed up and down

the eastern seaboard so everyone would know

that Blackbeard had been killed in battle.

In the centuries since Blackbeard's death,

the mystery of his lost fortune has captivated generations

of treasure hunters.

If someone went out

to find Blackbeard's treasure,

they would find approximately 12 and a half million dollars

in today's currency.

And so, all kinds of rumors and legends

about his treasure are definitely still out there,

and people are looking for it.

And reportedly, what Blackbeard said was,

"Only the Devil and I know the whereabouts of my treasure,

and the one of us who lives the longest should take it all."

With little information to go on as to where on Earth

Blackbeard's treasure may be hidden,

fortune seekers began searching the waters of Onslow Bay

for the legendary pirate ship the Queen Anne's Revenge.

Just four months before his death,

Blackbeard ran his frigate aground

near the Outer Banks of North Carolina.

Some speculate that the pirate wrecked his ship on purpose,

as a way to cheat his crew from receiving their share

of the latest plunder.

The sunken vessel eluded discovery until 1996,

when Mike Daniel and a team of divers

used their treasure hunting skills

to pinpoint exactly where X marked the spot.

Over the years, I've found a lot of treasure--

a lot of gold, a lot of emeralds, a lot of silver.

For instance, I found a shipwreck called the Maravilla.

1656 Spanish galleon.

One of the richest ever to sink.

The whole process of finding a shipwreck

is first you get the documentation.

It gives you a pretty good idea of where you should be looking.

And so, in order to go search for the Queen Anne's Revenge,

you know, we started looking through

the various historical documents.

And it was said that the Queen Anne's Revenge

supposedly ran aground trying to enter Topsail Inlet,

up in North Carolina.

Even though it's "Beaufort Inlet" today,

it was "Topsail Inlet" at the time.

And once you've got that pinned down,

now what you do is you set up a grid system

and then travel down that line towing a magnetometer,

a electronic piece of equipment

that measures very minute magnetism.

If there is an anomaly in the water,

it would tell you something's there.

And we had a pretty major hit.

I go down, take a look

and I spot the three cannons right away.

They're sitting in-- off to the side of this big mound.

And that's when we actually said, "Yeah, we've got it."

Today, over 400,000 items

have actually been excavated off of the Queen Anne's Revenge.

And these include things like 24 huge cannons came out of it.

They've also found other goods such as personal effects,

and they've found weapons, as well.

But despite the vast number of artifacts

archaeologists have salvaged from the Queen Anne's Revenge,

they found no sign of Blackbeard's treasure.

Which begs the question,

where could it be?

It's a mystery

that still fascinates treasure hunters to this day.

The big question is, what happened to the gold

on the Queen Anne's Revenge?

It's possible that some of it

has just been kind of dispersed into the sea.

It could be, perhaps, that Blackbeard offloaded much of it

before actually abandoning the Queen Anne's Revenge.

It's one of the big mysteries about Blackbeard

that we just don't really know.

While the discovery of the Queen Anne's Revenge

was a massive accomplishment,

the fact remains that Blackbeard's treasure

is still missing.

And the notorious pirate's gold

isn't the only riches

treasure hunters have yearned to discover.

In fact, deep in the Arizona mountains,

many unlucky adventurers have tried

to find a fortune guarded by a deadly curse.

In Southern Arizona,

50 miles east of Phoenix,

lie the Superstition Mountains.

These jagged peaks rise approximately 1,800 feet

into the sky

and dominate the surrounding landscape.

According to the folklore of the native Apache people,

the Superstition Mountains are a sacred place

that is guarded by a supernatural entity

-known as... -(thunder rumbling)

...the Thunder God.

To the native Apache, the Superstition Mountains

are the home of the Thunder God

and, as such, they should be respected.

Most Apache will not enter the Superstition Mountains,

because they believe that to do so

could anger the Thunder God,

causing him to lash out

and probably kill the person who has violated his space.

The Apache, they did not live too much in the Superstitions.

Because that's where the Thunder God lived,

was in the Superstitions.

And many times, actually, I've heard