What's Under Dungeon Rock?

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some believe it's pure folklore a colonial era rumor that spun out of control But others insist that this story is supported by historical records of the day.

Yet many believe the truth lies somewhere in between.

So, much of what you're about to hear is based on an oral legend that has swirled and evolved for three and a half centuries.

But what no one contests is this.

One family was so certain that the treasure was real that they literally bet their lives on it.

The year is 1658.

Night is falling on the New England settlement of Lynn.

A young girl who we'll call Temperance makes her way along the shore of the Saungass River, carrying a small bucket.

As Lynn Harbor comes into view, she halts.

Something is out there.

A small black ship is floating in the harbor, and it's flying no flag.

Temperance retreats into the shadows, her eyes fixed on the vessel.

Her parents raised her to be wary of strange ships, especially ones that fly no colors.

The New England colonies are young, with little in the way of an organized military.

This makes them a favorite destination for pirates.

From her hiding spot, she sees movement aboard the ship.

A longboat is being lowered down the side, crewed by four men.

Once it touches the water, the men untether it from the ship, and they begin rowing silently up the Saugus River, making their way further inland.

Every part of her being tells Temperance that she should run to her parents and report this incident, but to do so now would be to risk losing track of the men in the boat.

So she follows them, all the while keeping her distance.

The boat advances upriver, past homesteads in the Saugus ironworks, with its constantly churning water wheel.

A dog barks, but the mysterious travelers stay the course, keeping their boat far from shore the entire time.

The evening light is now vanishing quickly.

Temperance is no longer following a boat, merely a dim lantern bobbing along the water.

The girl is about to give up when, suddenly, the light on the river stops moving.

She squints into the darkness.

The boat has docked.

She hears a scraping sound of metal on wood and a splash of water.

The lantern has moved off the river and the men are now moving into the woods.

It almost looks to her like the group is carrying something.

Something large, bulky.

By this point, Temperance knows that following the boatmen into Lin Woods is far too risky.

She's a great distance from town, and at this time of night, she runs the risk of encountering wild animals or rogue bandits.

She turns back and returns toward town.

She's convinced that she's seen something significant.

But if it's anything beyond strange men on a boat, she can't be so sure.

At home, she tells her family what she saw.

Word spreads fast in a small settlement like Lin.

And that very night, the heads of the settling families gather to discuss the prospect that pirates have perhaps invaded their town.

They've heard stories of buccaneers in the Spanish Main.

None of them wish for Lin to become a northeastern Torduga, a lawless place for pirates to come and go as they please.

Many of the men are ready to take their hunting muskets and confront the pirates here and now.

But cooler hands prevail.

The town leaders resolve to seek out these mysterious new arrivals in the morning.

They'll try to talk with them before doing anything rash.

The townsfolk head to the shore early, just as the sun rises.

However, when they arrive, there is no black ship in the harbor, no boat on the river.

And so, the townsfolk return to their lives, guarded, but not entirely convinced that such a ship had ever been in their harbor at all.

A local smith goes to begin his day at the ironworks along the banks of the river, but when he reaches the door to it, he freezes in shock.

A note is pinned to the door with a thin dagger.

It seems the pirates are real after all, and they've left a message for the people of Lin

John Vinton is a skilled ironworker.

He's also a cautious man.

The contents of the note worry him deeply and pique his curiosity too.

The note requests an order of various tools.

It doesn't list an address for the items to be delivered.

Instead, it directs the ironworkers to place the ordered items in the midst of the woods in a secluded clearing.

If they leave the items there, the next day they'll find a quantity of silver in their place.

Vinton is no fool.

He knows this could be someone aiming to swindle the town out of valuable goods.

Yet with all the recent talk of the strange boat in the Saugus River and mysterious men in the woods, he can't help but wonder if the rumors might be true.

What if there are pirates hiding out in Lin Woods?

Which would be the riskier play?

Doing business with pirates or refusing to do so?

Especially pirates like these?

Because the items listed in the notes are more than a little concerning.

They're requesting axes, hammers, and tools, items that would be useful for trademen, but they're also asking for shackles and handcuffs.

Try as he might, but Vinton can't think of a reason why anyone would need those items.

At least, not a good reason.

He's heard the rumors already swirling around town, claims that the pirates are keeping enslaved men as their servants and enslaved women as concubines.

He's not one to believe or partake in gossip, and yet, he and his family's safety could very well be at risk if he's too dismissive.

In the end, he decides that these dangerous men really do exist, and he would rather be a friend than a foe.

The craftsmen consider the idea of sending one of the indentured Scotsmen who work at the ironworks to make delivery.

But in the end, Vinton decides to just do it himself.

And several days later, he ventures out into Lynn Woods, bugging a heavy crate, filmed with the items they asked for.

At last, he emerges from the underbrush into the clearing that the note mentioned.

He looks around and listens intently, aware of every leaf rustle, every insect chirp.

He double-checks the notes, and everything is there, just as ordered.

He reminds himself that his job is to deliver the ordered items.

Anything else is not his business.

And so he sets the crate down and backs away slowly into the trees.

The next morning, there's no note on the ironworks door.

Nothing out of the ordinary.

Once the ironworkers have their marching orders for the day, John Vinton enters the forest, retracing his steps towards the clearing where he'd left the tools.

When he arrives, there's the crate lying just where it was.

He goes to pick it up and then stops.

The crate is empty, except for something glittering at the bottom, a small pile of of silver coins.

He picks one of them up.

It's genuine silver.

He shakes his head, baffled.

And so the rumors are true, it seems.

There are new arrivals in their town.

Whether they're pirates or not remains to be seen.

But whoever they are, they've seem to be rich and they want to keep hidden.

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Months after the initial ship sighting, a weathered man walks into the town of Lin.

At first, townspeople are startled to see him.

After all, it's not every day that new faces appear out of the woods.

He approaches the store and introduces himself.

His name is Thomas Veal, and he's living in a nearby discrete glen with some old comrades from his former life at sea.

The residents of Len exchange worried glances.

Though some time has passed, none have forgotten the settlement's recent pirate scare.

Even still, though, they treat him kindly.

The new arrival is gruff but personable, so they don't have a reason not to treat him in good faith.

Veal buys some necessities, mostly food and household items, before returning to the woods.

In the following days and weeks, the villagers see little of the alleged ex-pirates.

Occasionally, one or more of them will come to town for things like meat or tools, but they mostly keep to themselves.

Every now and again, the townsfolk catchsketter reports their new neighbors have built a little hut in the woods and have started a small garden.

If these are indeed the pirates from earlier in the year, it seems that they intend to give up the hard life at sea.

in favor of a quieter existence on land.

On an ordinary fall day, Veal makes his way through the trees, a sack of turnips slung over his shoulder.

He feels a sense of calm wash over him, unlike any he's felt in a long time.

He's so used to living on the run that the feeling of being at ease is strange to him.

Heem smirks to himself, hoping that one day he can get used to it.

Maybe he can even marry a local woman.

and start a family.

He greets some of the ironworkers as he walks past the forge.

Veal heads towards Lynn Harbor, adjusting a bag of turnips on his shoulder, because as winter approaches, he and his companions need to start stocking up on supplies.

He takes a turn towards the market, then suddenly stops in his tracks.

There's a ship sitting in the harbor.

It's not just any ship either.

It's a man of war.

flying a red cross over a field of blue.

The flag of Great Britain.

The sack of turnips falls to the ground, forgotten.

Thomas Veal turns back and runs into the woods as fast as his legs can carry him.

He needs to find his mates right away, before they do.

He's about to run up to a small hill that overlooks their house, but he stops, hearing the sounds of shouting.

The former pirate is too late.

The regulars have already arrived.

Veal flattens himself to the ground and crawls as carefully as he can towards the glen, making sure he stays hidden.

He peeks over the hill and looks towards the place that he and his companions call their home.

He sees his three men, bound and shackled.

He also sees the English soldiers, about a dozen of them, distinctive in their red doublets and plumed hats.

Sounds of rummaging echo from within the pirate's hut.

A tall soldier demands to know where the treasure is and where their captain went.

The bottom drops out of Veal's stomach.

If he was a younger man, he might have taken this small battalion head-on.

But time has blunted his blade and all he can do is watch the soldiers haul his men on their feet and drag them towards the harbor.

They all know what their future holds.

A long, miserable voyage back to London, followed by dancing the hangman's jig on the execution dock.

Veal rises slowly to his feet.

He takes a step and a twig snaps underneath his boot.

The soldiers immediately look away and start shouting at him.

And so, Thomas Veal turns and sprints deeper into the woods.

He hears the crack of musket fire behind him and the leader of the troops shouting orders.

Yet still he runs.

He stumbles over logs, ducks past trees.

He feels the sting of thorns and twigs.

as the forest itself seems to slash and cut at him.

Yet still he runs, his shirt sticks to his body soaked through with sweat, his legs burning from exertion.

At last he reaches a cave and descends.

He's been here before.

They all have.

It's where they stored their treasure after all.

Thomas Veal stays in the cave, clutching a rusty sword to his chest.

He listens intently for any sound, any intrusion.

Night falls, and still the regulars haven't located his hiding place.

Yet Veal doesn't feel any sense of relief.

The calm that he felt earlier is now gone, never to return.

There's no denying it now.

His past has found him, and he will never find peace again.

At least, not in this life.

Temperance stands on the shore, watching the English board their vessel with three captives and set sail.

But there had been four shapes that night.

She was sure of it.

What, she wonders, has become of the fourth pirate.

Sometime after the English military men depart, Temperance gets a possible answer.

She sees a man arrive in town.

He looks quite like the turnip farmer that the regulars had been searching for, Thomas Veal.

Yet this man is wearing a hat over his head, so it's hard for her to to say for certain that he's the one.

He's skittish, twitchy even.

She watches as the man nervously knocks on the door of one of the houses.

A woman answers.

After a brief discussion, she passes him a few pairs of shoes.

He bows respectfully and then carries them off into the woods.

The strange cobbler returns a few times every week.

His behavior is a bit odd, and the suspicions of his pirate past follow him everywhere he goes.

Even still, he's skilled enough as a shoemaker that the townspeople don't mind.

One day, Temperance decides to follow this mysterious cobbler back to the woods.

She picks her way through the winding deer paths for hours, keeping her distance.

She follows him up a hill until, eventually, he reaches a large cave made of stone.

He casts one look behind him.

before disappearing into it.

Temperance knows that entering the cave herself would be too dangerous.

Besides, it seems to be this man's home.

She returns to town and puts the strange man out of her mind.

Until one morning, the house shakes.

Temperance wakes up to a sudden crash.

Part of the home ceiling has fallen in, scattering dust and leaves all over their house.

Her and her family stumble outside, only to behold an awe-inspiring sight.

The earth is rumbling, rippling.

The trees are waving, shaking, as if they'd come to life and were pleading with the heavens.

After a few endless minutes, the earthquake stops.

Other families walk out cautiously to see the aftermath.

Their homes have been damaged, but it seems that there were no serious injuries.

As the townsfolk rebuilt, Temperance can't shake the vision of Thomas Veal disappearing into his cave home.

She wonders if his home's all right, if he is alright after a quake like that.

Finally, she decides to go see herself.

Delving into the woods, she picks through the overturned trees, turned soil, and climbs the hill towards the cave.

When she reaches the summit, her stomach drops in horror.

The cave is no more.

What was once a cavernous opening was now just a tall monument of rock, impenetrable and sealed.

The rock is too heavy to move, and so Temperance shouts to see if anyone underneath the rubble can hear her.

There's no reply.

The collapsed cave is the place of Thomas Veal's final captivity, the space in which he could never, ever escape again.

And as the years go by, the locals begin to name it Dungeon Rock.

Life in Lin moves on from their strange 1658 encounter encounter with pirates.

Lin becomes a city, though her woods remain wild.

For nearly two centuries, there was little said about the buried pirates' treasure in Dungeon Rock.

Only one written record surfaces of it, and it's a brief reference in the book Alonso's History of Lin.

But even so, no one makes a concerted effort to find the treasure.

Well, that is, until decades later.

In 1851, when a new family arrives in town.

Hiram and Arminda Marble with their 20-year-old son, Edwin, and their 16-year-old daughter, Caroline.

Hiram is a businessman, though not a very successful one.

His father had set up a scythe manufacturing facility in Charlton, but Hiram has grander ambitions.

In fact, he causes quite a stir when he buys up five acres in the Lent Woods.

Five acres.

that include Dungeon Rock.

As Hiram and his family are settling in, a neighbor asks him why the son of a businessman from Charlton came all the way to Len to buy some land in the woods.

Hiram laughs good-naturedly and gives the neighbor a simple reply, because Captain Thomas Veal told him to, of course.

Hiram and his wife, Arminda, are spiritualists and have been so ever since tragically losing their youngest son, George, the year prior.

They believe that it's possible to communicate with the beyond, with those who have shuffled off this mortal coil.

In fact, shortly before their move to Len, Hiram had seen a medium.

Through the medium, he communicated with the ghost of the long-dead pirate captain, Thomas Veal.

According to Hiram, the pirate captain confirmed the legend.

There was indeed treasure buried in Dungeon Rock, and Hiram would be the one to find it.

There are two tasks that need attending to upon the marbles' arrival to Lin.

The first is to build their family a home, and the second is to find the hidden treasure.

And so, Hiram and his son Edwin build a house on the property for their family to live in and begin their true work, digging for pirate treasure.

They start with pickaxes, chipping away at the hardened stone and cutting through the rock gradually.

It takes hours to wear away at the stone, and some days they barely make a few inches of progress.

Occasionally, the pair use gunpowder to blast holes in the rock, but they can't do that every time.

After all, they don't want to risk destroying the treasure while digging it up.

Hiram urges patience to his son.

People had tried before to dig for the treasure, but they failed because they didn't have what Hiram and Edwin did.

Perseverance.

and help from beyond.

Edwin listens intently, nodding as his father explains how their hands will be guided by the very ghosts who buried this treasure in the first place they bring mediums up to help them dig in the right directions they perform seances first in the house and later in the cave itself as the hole deepens over time through these rituals hiram and edwin believe that they're contacting the beyond reaching to the unknown and talking with the pirate who's been dead for over 200 years

Well, that is, if he ever limped at all.

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Days pass, months pass, years pass.

Hiram and Edwin Marble work day in and day out, chiseling, digging, scratching at the impassable rock.

It's slow going, but progress is undeniable.

Guided by the advice of the mediums, they advance about a foot a month.

A large pile of debris builds up next to the new cave entrance.

Evidence of the labor that the father and son had put into searching for the pirate treasure.

As years go by, it becomes clear that they can't rely on ancient silver to fund this venture.

And so, Hiram and Edwin construct a set of stairs and invite visitors to come see the cave at Dungeon Rock.

What was once the search for a great find is now essentially a tourist attraction.

The rock now has a door built into the facing with an inscription at the top.

Ye who enter here, leave 20 cents behind.

The marble family lives in a cottage on on the property, and it's partially converted into a museum which showcases the oddities that Hiram and Edwin have found inside the cave.

Such items include a dirk, which is a long dagger made for thrusting, the broken off hilt of a sword, and an old pair of scissors.

Visitors find themselves intrigued by these items.

Could they have been the tools made by Saugus Ironworks that were paid for in stolen silver?

But Hiram Marble wants more than tourist money and buried coins.

The real reason he wants to find the treasure, he claims, is to prove his religion correct, to show that he really did communicate with the ghost of Captain Veal.

Other spiritualists attempt to help him in this quest, including a woman named Nanette Snow Emerson, who conducts seances and uses them to write a book about Veal and the story of the treasure.

Then, in 1866, tragedy strikes.

At the age of 62, Hiram's wife, Erminda Marble, dies.

The family takes her back to Charlton, where they bury her in the family plot.

At the funeral, Edwin finds himself noticing how frail his father looks.

The years of digging have not been kind to him.

He's only a year older than Erminda was, and this loss wears on him.

The youngest Marble, Caroline, had gotten married and moved out to California a few years prior.

So when they return to their house in Len, it's only the two of them, Edwin and Hiram, the treasure hunters.

Edwin looks at his father in concern.

Is this the end of their journey?

Is 14 years of searching simply going to end?

But his father grabs a shovel and beckons Edwin to come along.

They're behind in digging, he says.

They'll head back to work now.

and meet with the medium later so they can report their progress to Arminda.

Hiram and Edwin continue on their search, diligently chipping away at the rock.

And meanwhile, Edwin watches his father's health decline.

He supports him as best he can, but it seems that ever since Orminda died, Hiram has only become more obsessed with finding the treasure.

For another two years, the father and son spend their days digging until 1868, when Hiram Marble dies at the age of 64.

Like his mother before him, Edwin takes his father's body to Charlton.

There, in the family plot, his father is interred alongside his mother.

Now, Edwin Marble stands at the gravesite, alone, the sole keeper of Dungeon Rock.

His father and mother are dead.

His sister lives thousands of miles away.

He's at a crossroads, and he knows it.

He's only 36, still young.

He can go somewhere else, start a new chapter of his life.

He considers moving to Boston or to New York, or perhaps venture out west to his sister's new home in Oakland, California.

Or he could do what his father never could.

He could finish the work.

He could find Thomas Veal's treasure.

Edwin makes his choice.

He returns to the tunnel and keeps digging.

His father's work is his work now, and nothing will stop him.

For the next 12 years, Edwin Marble toils away, digging in heat and cold alike, delving deeper and deeper into dungeon rock.

He falls ill in the winter of 1880 and dies.

He was only 48 years old.

Per his request, Edwin's body is buried at the mouth of Dungeon Rock's cave.

In 28 years of blasting and digging, Hiram and Edwin Marble had carved a tunnel through dungeon rock, which extends over 180 feet.

They never found any treasure.

The secrets of Captain Veal, it appears, weren't for the marbles to find.

Today, the tunnel sits as a tourist attraction, owned and operated by the city of Lin.

It's a forlorn monument that remains, an iron door in the side of the rock.

Once a visitor enters, they find themselves descending into a deep tunnel with a helpful wooden stairway to guide them.

Down and down it goes into pitch blackness.

The ceiling is low, and after 150 feet, the cave becomes impassable.

The floor is slick, difficult to stand in, and even in the heat of summer, the cavern remains cold, as if in a world of its own.

It would be simple to write off the story of Captain Field as a myth.

A tall tale, especially since the first appearance of the story is in Alonso's History of Lynn, written 171 years after the fact.

But the ferocity of Hiram and Edwin Marble's belief cannot be easily dismissed.

Their primary goal wasn't to become rich.

They wanted to discover that their spiritualist tendencies could be proven.

That mortal men and women can commune with the dead.

And digging a little deeper, it's easy to see why they wanted to.

According to records, Hiram Marble was an avowed atheist until 1850.

This was the year that Erminda had lost their youngest child, George Henry Marble.

The boy was was barely 13.

If their tragic loss had anything to do with their conversion, they never said.

But it's important to note that one of the most notable rises in spiritualism occurred in the wake of the First World War, when families were reeling from losing their children to a war on a scale that no one had ever experienced in human history.

The death of young George and the desperation of a family in the clutches of grief paints a very different picture of these treasure hunters.

These were not greedy men in search of money.

They were a family searching for meaning in a seemingly meaningless world.

Regardless of its starting point, the marbles never found the treasure.

Instead, they became part of the legend itself.

No matter what else lies under the Lynn Woods, we know for certain that there's at least one man entombed in Dungeon Rock.

His name was Edwin Marble.

He lies under a pink stone near the mouth of the cave he and his father dug.

Now as much part of the legend as Captain Thomas Veal and the treasure that neither of them ever got their hands on.

Late Nights with Nexpo is created and hosted by me, Nexpo.

Executive produced by me, Mr.

Bollin, Nick Witters, and Zach Lovitt.

Our head of writing is Evan Allen.

This episode was written by Matt Tiemstra.

Copy editing by Luke Baratz.

Audio editing and sound design by Alistair Sherman.

Mixed and mastered by Schultz Media.

Research by Abigail Shumway, Camille Callahan, Evan Beamer, and Stacey Wood.

Fact-checking by Abigail Shumway.

Production supervision by Jeremy Bone and Cole Locasio.

Production coordination by Samantha Collins and Avery Siegel.

Artwork by Jessica Kloxton Kiner and Robin Vane.

Theme song by Ross Bugdin.

Thank you all so much for listening to Late Nights with Nexpo.

I love you all, and good night.

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