The Curse of Oak Island: The Story of the World’s Longest Treasure Hunt by Randall Sullivan (2018)

It would surprise no one who knows me well that The Curse of Oak Island is one of my favorite television shows. Why? Partly because it’s a real-life treasure hunt, and partly because it’s an immersive, almost never-ending mystery. But mostly, I love the show because it’s made a celebrity out of Metal Detectorist Gary Drayton—and any show that highlights the world’s greatest hobby this way deserves my time.

I’ve watched every Oak Island episode thus far and can’t wait for the new ones to drop. Season 14 premieres on November 10, 2026, on The History Channel, so mark your calendars!

During the lull of the summer months, while the Oak Island team actually worked the Nova Scotia ground (and maybe solved some more of the mystery?!), I decided to go back and get the full history in book form. Although Randall Sullivan’s book is now nearly 8 years old, I absolutely loved it and feel like he’s properly organized all the random bits of history the show offers piecemeal, week to week.

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Brief Summary of The Curse of Oak Island

If you’ve never seen the show, you might figure the book is a waste of your time. I beg to differ. While the show contains all the visuals, suspense, personalities, and disappointments that make treasure hunts worth having, the show also requires a large chunk of your time. We’re talking an average of 20 episodes per season at 40 minutes each (sans commercials), meaning it’d take you about 170 hours of streaming to watch Seasons 1-13!

Sullivan’s book is way shorter than that, provides the historical context for the show as a whole in chronological order, and highlights only what’s needed. And since he wrote the book during Seasons 4-5, you could read the book, skip the first five seasons, and join the hunt when the going gets really good.

Sullivan’s book is a chronological study of the multitudinous legends and hunts that have plagued Oak Island, a tiny plot of land which sits just off the coast of Nova Scotia. He dissects both the hunters and the myths they pursued, and he filters for us the many theories surrounding each. I particularly loved how he handled the Francis Bacon / William Shakespeare thread, though “the curse” explanations of The Curse of Oak Island were perhaps my favorite portions.

A Little about Randall Sullivan

One reason I ran to this book this fall is that another Randall Sullivan book popped up on my radar for our book club this year, Graveyard of the Pacific (2023). I figured, since I was going to read the later publication by the end of the year anyways, I might as well start with the earlier. I’m glad I did, because I actually didn’t like Graveyard of the Pacific, so swapping them might have dampened my enthusiasm a bit.

What’s cool about Sullivan, though, is that he was actually a part of the show in Season 4 (2016), a full thirteen years after he had conducted interviews with prominent searchers (7). In fact, Sullivan shows throughout this book that he’s not merely a nose-in-a-book researcher, but also one willing to visit uncomfortable places to ask unfriendly people unwanted questions and unearth some remarkable gems of information. This book is the result of his efforts.

The Many, Many, Many Theories of Oak Island

I’m not going to rehash all the various theories about the Oak Island treasure. That’s what the book is for, so read it! But I will say that Sullivan leaves no stone unturned in his search for answers to who dug the Money Pit and laid the 90-foot stone, what might actually be buried 150 feet down, where the treasure went if it’s not still there, when each new searcher tunnel was dug, and why completely sane people would waste their money and decades of their lives hunting after an apparent myth.

Of all the theories, it seems that Sullivan sides with the Francis Bacon crowd, that Bacon perhaps wrote the Shakespearean repertoire and later encased the original folios in concrete vats of mercury buried deep beneath Oak Island and protected by flood tunnels and traps. The show doesn’t give much credence to this theory, I’ll admit, but the current searchers’ overfixation on the Templar angle is pretty soundly debunked with Sullivan’s data.

Something tells me Randall Sullivan, Rick and Marty Lagina, and Charles Barkhouse don’t go out for beers too often. But this disparity is what makes the legend so mesmerizing. Sullivan even writes:

This was what Oak Island did to people: gradually, it became impossible to completely dismiss any theory of what the works on the island were about. (Chapter 10)

A Little about “The Curse”

Apart from some early history we get in the first few seasons of the show, the only time we really learn about “the curse” of Oak Island is in the intro, when the narrator (Robert Clotworthy, a legend himself) says each week:

To date, six men have died trying to solve the mystery, and according to legend, one more will have to die before the treasure can be found.

Whether or not there is such a local legend doesn’t really matter, but it’s why my wife calls the show “a soap opera for men.” It’s all about the drama. But (I have to remind her), the original deaths were real! And Sullivan shares the history.

The curse isn’t rooted in History Channel ratings either, I was surprised to read. Maybe this information was on an earlier episode too that I forgot, but I was floored by the account of Jim Kaizer who had worked as a nightwatchman for Robert Dunfield in the 1960s. One night, he was in the Restall cabin, made a small fire and nodded off. When he awoke, he couldn’t breathe, but saw:

Two of the biggest red eyes you would ever want to see looking right into his. And the whole body was covered with hair, tight and curly black hair. … Whatever it was, was holdin’ him down by his arms and had him pinned so tight that he couldn’t move. But then it smiled at him and said, ‘Don’t ever come back.’ …

When it let him go and disappeared the whole building shook. He said it was just unreal. There was no wind, nothin’. And he got in his truck and drove back across the causeway. And he wouldn’t ever go back on the island again after that. (189)

Jim’s grandson, a paramedic on a medevac helicopter, says:

Oak Island scares me … I believe there’s a bad spirit on the island. I believe my grandfather encountered it. (191)

Randall Sullivan had his own working theory, that:

If not cursed, [it’s] at least haunted. I had found Oak Island to be a spooky place almost from the moment I’d seen it. (373)

But by the end of his research into the history of Oak Island, tracing hunter after hunter and team after team of men who’ve thrown their lives and millions of dollars into an endless pit of hopes and dreams, Sullivan concluded:

As the days passed, I began to understand better that when I’d written about the “curse” of Oak Island it wasn’t based mainly on stories of ghost sightings or diabolical possessions. The largest part of the island’s haunted aspect, in my eyes, was the way it swallowed up people’s lives. (382)

The show might swallow you up, too, so be careful. Perhaps you should start with the book instead.

Conclusion

The Curse of Oak Island is a long story of treasure hunters and obsession, but it’s also a story of dreamers. And let me tell you, Rick Lagina is the kind of dreamer that makes you want to believe!

But is it really just “a soap-opera for men”, like my wife says? Well, it’s got drama, sure, but it’s masculine drama. It’s got some melodrama, too, but it’s the type of melodrama that keeps adventure stories tethered to reality. It’s slow and plodding and seemingly endless, but so are all the great TV series!

Soap-opera-esque or not, I still love the show. I look forward to finding out very little in Season 14, so I can anticipate Season 15. And this book has been a great historical review to tide me over while I wait.

©2026 E.T.

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