I found out when I was visiting my family for the holidays that they have all gotten very into "The Curse of Oak Island", a TV show on the History Channel about looking for potential treasure on Oak Island. They caught me up on the story, and I will admit that I started to get into it too!

Watching the episodes, it's I'm pretty sure that they spice things up in order to get more views. The narrator is constantly suggesting that there might be treasures ranging from old Incan gold to the Arc of the Covenant. And every so often a new piece of "evidence" will show up that sets up a potential link to the Knights Templar, or to 17th century pirates. These seem like pretty grand claims to me!

My question is -- how accurate is any of this? Do "mainstream" historians think there's something there, or do they think that the guys digging are just a couple of cranks who are grasping at nothing? The impression that I get is that there isn't nothing, that is, they didn't just find a random spot to dig and then made up a whole lore around it. But I'm still not convinced that they will actually find anything there other than proof that some pirates landed there once.

Maybe part of my reluctance to completely jump on board with the show is the following: If there was actually credible evidence that suggested that very important historical treasures might be buried there, then the Canadian government would be involved, there would be huge teams of archaeologists there, and this would be a much bigger deal than a couple of rich guys playing with bulldozers. Or maybe I don't understand how this kind of stuff works.

I've read the Wikipedia page, and basically the summary is "Some people think there is something here. Here is how some of them have tried to find it. Here is what some of them think it might be." Can anyone here provide a little more information about how credible any of this stuff actually is? And even if you haven't seen the show, maybe you still have some information about the "Oak Island mystery"?