Everything Rumored To Be Buried On Oak Island

It's easy for cynics to say that there's absolutely nothing to Oak Island, except for a lot of hype around mysterious buried treasure and a curse that supposedly says that seven people need to die on the island before anyone finds that treasure. Sure, it sounds unlikely, but here's the thing: It has claimed lives, and six people have already died there.

First, here's a refresher, with help from Popular Mechanics. Most of the mystery revolves around the so-called Oak Island Money Pit, which dates back to 1795. That's when a Nova Scotia teen claimed to have seen some suspicious activity in the area, and he and some friends first started digging out what would become the Money Pit. Then, the Onslow Company took up the torch in the early 1800s. (Supposedly, as actual records are sketchy.) They found some things that even cynics have to admit are pretty weird, like coconuts (which definitely aren't native to Canada), and a stone etched with some mysterious runes. It wasn't until the 1860s that a Dalhousie University professor translated them to say "Forty Feet Below Two Million Pounds Are Buried."

Others have translated the runes in very different ways, but people never really looked back after the promise of treasure. But ... what treasure are we talking about here? It turns out that there's a ton of theories with varying degrees of believability, so let's take a look at them all — and, how likely they might be.

When it comes to history's most fascinating missing objects, the Ark of the Covenant is on everyone's list... even though everyone also knows it's really stashed in a warehouse being guarded by "top men." National Geographic says that the Ark is not only said to contain the Ten Commandments, but it's also associated with a few miracles, too.

There are a few different theories about what happened to it, and some are more plausible than others. In the "others" category is the idea that it's buried on Oak Island, and when Gizmodo did a deep dive into the theory, they found that getting the Ark to Nova Scotia took some mental gymnastics.

The theory, says Ancient Origins, starts with the Knight Templar. Documents long hidden by the Vatican claim that the Templars returned from the Holy Land with some relics, with one of those relics often said to be the Ark of the Covenant. There's a ton of theories about what happened to it next, and here's where things get pretty hopeful. Oak Island has an association with the Templars entirely thanks to a set of boulders that sort of makes the shape of a cross. The 6 stones — which weigh about 10 tons each — are scattered across the island, and make the shape of a cross if they're connected by lines. Does X mark the spot where the Ark of the Covenant has been sitting all these years?

When Dan Blankenship spoke to the National Post in 2010, he'd already been searching for treasure on Oak Island for 40 years. He hadn't found much, but he did explain what he hoped to find: "It has been my hope, over the years, that some of the Spanish captains took a detour on their way back to Spain. I am hoping that they wanted to start their own country and they built up a big treasury, because there are certain years when the fleets sailed [back to Spain] and had very little goodies on them."

The Wall Street Journal says that there are other theories that suggest a Spanish galleon may have gotten caught in a storm and ultimately left a cargo hold's worth of treasure there. Is there anything to it?

An article published in The Dalhousie Review says "maybe," and points to the rune-carved stone once recovered from the Money Pit (which has since gone missing). They say there's a possibility it was mistranslated, and some of the symbols weren't referring to an English alphabet, but a Spanish or Italian one. They also suggest that using a Spanish cipher called the Porta Cipher Disk translates the stone in a way that hints at how to disarm the flood traps of the Money Pit, and still further suggests that Spain is the only nation that would have had need of such a treasure vault.

Listen to all the theories, and it's clear that Oak Island is reported to be some sort of pirate's dream come true as far as leaving buried treasure behind. Maybe there's a What's App group for that? Whatever messaging system they're using, rumor has it that Blackbeard got on board, too.

And weirdly, that's kind of what Oak Island Treasure suggests. Even as they admit that the only connection between Blackbeard and Oak Island's Money Pit is that he was fond of saying that he buried his treasure "where none but Satan and myself can find it," they also describe the potential for Oak Island to be "a communal bank for pirates." Each pirate, they suggest, had a tunnel dug out from the main Money Pit that's been so determined not to give up whatever secrets it might be holding.

How likely is this one? Not super likely. When Mental Floss assembled a list of all the possible places Blackbeard may have actually buried his treasure, there were plenty of places in North Carolina and the Caribbean that have been the subject of speculation... but Oak Island didn't get a serious second glance.

There are a few different ways that believers think ancient Incan, Aztec, or Mayan treasure may have made it to Oak Island, and the most plausible is also the most straightforward. Oak Island Mystery suggests that Spanish conquistadors were forced off-course near Nova Scotia, landed on Oak Island to seek shelter from storms, or landed there in order to stash some valuables for themselves. Even the biggest Oak Island skeptic has to admit that it makes sense some enterprising conquistadors would want to keep some of their booty, instead of handing it all over when they got back to Spain.

There's another version that makes less sense, and that's the one that stars a double-crossing Francisco Pizarro. Pizarro, says National Geographic, captured the Inca king Atahualpa. He demanded a massive ransom in exchange for the man's life, but before the final part of the ransom was delivered, he perhaps predictably killed Atahualpa. The treasure had already been collected and it was very, very real, but it was never found.

Explorers have been looking for the lost Inca gold since at least the mid-19th century, and even though Barth Blake reportedly found it in South America in 1886 (before mysteriously disappearing himself), bizarrely, that's where some think Oak Island comes in. There's a theory that says the king's general absconded with the treasure and headed all the way up to Oak Island — more than 3,500 miles away — to bury it. Why? Because ... reasons.

Nova Scotia's official site describes the Fortress of Louisbourg as it exists today as "the largest historical reconstruction in North America." The 18th-century fort was built over the course of 20 years — beginning in 1720 — and it goes without saying that a project like that isn't cheap.

And that, says Oak Island Mystery, is where the treasure comes in. There's a theory that suggests a pay-ship carrying a cargo hold full of cash destined for paying the men working on the fort could have been either caught in a storm, wrecked on Oak Island, or gotten the attention of pirates, who ended up burying the treasure on the island. It's actually not as far-fetched a theory as it might seem: a 1966 article in Maclean's says that a French pay-ship called the Le Chameau was exactly what was shipwrecked off a Cape Breton reef in 1725.

The ship sat there for a while before salvage operations were able to take place, and is it possible that there's another ship just like it, that left a fortune in cargo on Oak Island?

The Navy Records Society calls the British campaign to first lay siege to and then capture Havana from the Spanish the "forgotten campaign of the Seven Years' War." That's weird, because it was a huge deal — Havana was, at the time, a jumping-off point for ships heading back to Spain with treasures looted from the New World, and here's where Oak Island comes in.

When Havana fell to the British, they found a ton of treasure in the city. But, according to "The Mystery of the Oak Island Treasure: Two Hundred Years of Hope and Despair," the British reported looting about £737,000 worth of goods. It sounds like a lot, sure, but at the time, the Spanish were supposedly sitting on millions more.

The theory says that rather than returning the lion's share of the treasure to England, some of it was diverted to Oak Island. At the time, it was a newly founded outpost, and it's theorized that British soldiers stashed much of the loot there. Legends from the young Oak Island settlement say that men in distinctive red coats were seen around various surveyed-but-unsettled lots, giving rise to the theory that some of Spain's looted treasures made it to the island via Havana.

In 1997, researchers from The DeVere Foundation prepared a fascinating paper for the Nova Scotia Museum. In it, they argued that there was something buried on Oak Island: Edward DeVere, the 17th Earl of Oxford.

The theory, they said, started with Captain Martin Frobisher. Frobisher (says The Canadian Encyclopedia), was one of the 16th-century explorers who was determined to find the Northwest Passage. He was heavily financed by Edward DeVere, who was incidentally one of the candidates for being the author of Shakespeare's works (via the Shakespeare Oxford Fellowship).

Frobisher, the story goes, discovered what he believed to be gold on Oak Island. Oak Island Mystery says that what he was actually mining was pyrite — fool's gold — which was discovered during smelting operations on Oak Island. The mines were ultimately abandoned, but the second part of the theory suggests that in the 17th century, the mine was then converted into a tomb. The booby traps along the so-called Money Pit were designed to keep would-be grave robbers from getting into the mausoleum, which was then thought to be the final resting place of not only Edward DeVere, but proof that he was also the original author of Shakespeare's manuscripts. Confused yet? You bet!

For the sake of completionism, let's take a look at this completely wild theory. Oak Island Treasure says that some of the imagery reportedly found on Oak Island has connections not just to the Freemasons, but also to ancient Egypt. So far, so good. The cipher stone that supposedly had these symbols on it is long gone, but that hasn't stopped some people from suggesting that what's actually on Oak Island are the Great Pyramids of Khufu.

"But wait," skeptics might say. "Aren't those in Egypt?" Clearly, those skeptics are unfamiliar with how conspiracy theories work.

Erik Orion puts forward a completely epic theory that says long-time Oak Island treasure hunter Dan Blankenship had actually discovered the pyramid long ago and built his house on the entrance. Then, the governments of the U.S., Canada, and Russia teamed up with the Vatican and the Freemasons, and the end result was that those in the know spent hundreds of years excavating all the gold from the ancient Egyptian pyramids. Of Oak Island. Orion claims that those who died on Oak Island had actually gotten too close to the truth, and were silenced to keep this massive secret quiet. It's certainly ... well, it's a theory!