Best Episodes Of The Curse Of Oak Island Ranked

What lies hidden on Oak Island, the tiny landmass off the coast of Nova Scotia? After eight seasons and counting of The History Channel’s “The Curse of Oak Island,” any number of theories have been put forward, expecting everything including gold from a wrecked Spanish galleon, to Marie Antoinette’s lost jewels, to a stolen Knights Templar fortune, to even the Ark of the Covenant.

The search for fortune on Oak Island has consumed treasure hunters for over 200 years, and despite the best efforts of the show’s ace team of excavators and historians, led by brothers Rick and Marty Lagina, most of its secrets remain in the dark. But what the show lacks in concrete evidence of Templars or Vikings or anything else, it makes up for with a fascinating look at the nitty-gritty of modern day treasure hunting and the men and women who have dedicated their lives to it.

From money pits to metal crosses, Spanish coins to Roman swords, here is a list of the top 14 episodes of “The Curse of Oak Island.”

5. Of Sticks and Stones (Season 4 Episode 14)

The episode’s titular stones are the five granite boulders on the property of longtime Oak Island resident Fred Nolan, which when viewed from above appear to make the shape of a cross. Two stonemasons brought in to examine the boulders have made a discovery on what would be considered the “base” of the cross, an artificially smooth surface on its underside suggesting the boulder was dragged into position from somewhere else.

There’s a goofy fun to the scene of five grown men staring intently at a large moss-covered rock. In many ways, this is the tone of the show whittled down to its essence. The willingness of “Oak Island” and its stars to risk looking ridiculous, fawning over a rock, taking it as gospel that this rock must have been manipulated by hand, is the base of its infectious appeal. Charles Barkhouse and Rick Lagina congratulate the stonemasons on their find with the line of the episode, if not the entire series: “Oak Island is a one-thousand piece puzzle, with five hundred pieces missing,” says Charles. “And you just added one,” Rick finishes.

4. The Lot Thickens (Season 5 Episode 7)

One of the maddening parts of any conspiracy theory when viewed from the outside is how the believer will use the absence of evidence as proof that the theory is correct. Take local researcher Paul Speed, who enters this episode with a doozy for the Lagina brothers: That the construction of the money pit and the island’s flood tunnels is reminiscent of Cornish mining techniques, and British privateer Sir Francis Drake must have been responsible for them, choosing Oak Island to hide a cache of Incan gold stolen from Spain. The fact that there is no record of Drake sailing to the New World simply proves that this secret mission must have really happened.

There’s an appeal to that line of thinking, and its self-justifying logic can be found across many of the other Oak Island theories. Paul Speed, to date, has not returned to the show, and the Drake theory would of course turn out to be something of a red herring — especially considering the real evidence of the episode: the bone fragments found in borehole H-8 are of European and Middle Eastern origin.

3. Seeing Red (Season 5 Episode 16)

As much as the show presents the Lagina brothers and their team as pioneers in the field of Oak Island treasure hunting, every so often it takes the long view and reminds us that holes have been dug across the island for over 200 years. Rick and Marty aren’t the first men to excavate Oak Island, and likely won’t be the last. Such fatalism, bordering on futility, is the unintended subtext of this episode’s visit to the descendants of Harold Bishop, who worked on the island as a crane operator in the 1960s.

Bishop’s family provides the Laginas with a piece of wood that he claims to have pulled from the money pit. When the wood is tested, it is estimated to be from the mid-17th century, older than the earliest stories of the money pit by nearly 150 years. History keeps its secrets on Oak Island and is in no hurry to reveal them — not even with a camera crew present.

2. The Big Reveal (Season 2 Episode 10)

Season 2 goes out with a bang, as the finale sees the Lagina brothers bring in a pair of deep sea divers to help explore borehole 10-X, the hole dug by Dan Blankenship in the early 1970s. Dan believed that there was a chamber at the end of the borehole with man-made objects inside. Though the diving team’s efforts are ultimately futile due to low visibility, underground radar detects what certainly appears to be a rectangular open space some 235 feet below. Not only is Dan vindicated, but the nonagenarian treasure hunter is on hand to view the results himself, along with his treasure hunting son Dave. It’s a big discovery, both in size and importance, rare for a show that so often contents itself with very small wins.

Also on hand to witness this “big reveal” is part-time treasure hunter and full-time internet scam artist J. Hutton Pulitzer, who arrives touting the theory that the island is the final resting place of the Ark of the Covenant. Though the Ark theory has made a few more appearances on the show over the years, Pulitzer has not; this is his one episode, and it is a fascinating look at the even more wild, unsubstantiated show that could have been.

1. Voices from Below (Season 3 Episode 12)

The dead speak on “The Curse of Oak Island,” not just in the artifacts they leave behind to be dug up centuries later, but in the descendants who continue on after they are gone. The so-called curse of the show’s title refers to the six men who died in the 19th and 20th centuries while attempting to find the treasure. In 1995, Dan Blankenship erected a memorial stone for those men; among the names is Maynard Kaiser, who fell to his death while working a pump in 1897.

The episode features two of Kaiser’s elderly descendants visiting the island memorial, as Rick promises them he will do whatever he can to make sure their forebear did not die in vain, to make the “Oak Island quest” into the “Oak Island solution.” The two women are very polite, but notably uninterested in this man who is making this memorial to their ancestor all about himself.

Rick’s sentiment is lovely, if self-involved, but the truth is that the treasure of Oak Island, if it even exists, has little bearing on these women’s lives, nor on the lives of most people in the world. For a handful of men and women, this is a lifelong obsession — for the rest of us, it is a weekly show on The History Channel. Perhaps that is the true curse of Oak Island.