It was a childhood dream coming true. The two brothers had waited their entire lives for this moment. A hush fell across the island, and for a second they couldn’t believe what was in their hands. The rumors and stories had all been true. Against all odds, they had found the impossible. They had proven everyone wrong and followed their hearts.

What these two brothers didn’t realize is that once the treasure was found, they were instantly in danger. Who would come forward to claim their gold and steal the spotlight from the Lagina brothers?

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The rumors of treasure on Oak Island have been around for centuries. History has given many opportunities and chances for hungry explorers to strike it rich, but no one has come close to these two brothers. With one shared goal and motivation, and with fierce determination, the treasure was so close they could taste it. It had been a long, challenging road, but everything had been worth it.

Oak Island is located off the southern shore of Lunenburg County, Nova Scotia. For years, several teams have landed on the space in hopes of discovering The Money Pit. Explorers from across the world have come hoping to make their fortune. Two brothers from Michigan were about to find everything the island had hidden from everyone else. As their expedition continued, they found treasures greater than anticipated.

The island wasn’t going to let them take it without a price. The cost of discovering the riches hidden beneath the surface was too sinister for most to stomach.

Rick and Martin Lagina loved spending their childhood playing make-believe. The brothers were only four years apart and grew up as best friends. They loved to create treasure hunts for each other in their backyard but had no idea of the real treasure available in the world.

One day, Rick found a copy of his parents’ Reader’s Digest magazine. The publication always had interesting articles, but one stood out specifically: it was an article written about the rumored buried treasure on Oak Island. From that day on, the brothers’ lives were never the same.

The boys loved to create treasure hunts in their backyards, and their eyes grew wide imagining the possibility of finding real treasure. As the boys grew older, they never stopped talking about going to Oak Island.

In 1779, three teenage best friends went exploring on the southern shore of Nova Scotia. The boys’ names were John Smith, Anthony Vaughn, and Daniel McGinness. They loved exploring the coast of their beautiful Canadian province and found an island they had never seen before.

The boys docked their small boat and began to explore the small island. They found something unexplainable that left them with a big choice. When John, Anthony, and Daniel docked on the unknown island, they found a huge depression in the ground that was circular in shape. It was located beside the beach where they had docked their boat. The boys were curious and began to dig into the soft dirt.

After a short amount of time, they found something that made them drop their shovels and run back to their boat. As they sailed away, they swore never to reveal what they had found. When they got back to town, they began the rumors of Oak Island. The three young men had brought back no proof of their discovery, but the fear on their faces was enough to spread a fantastic tale.

For years, it was spread by word of mouth until one company decided to investigate the cold, hard facts. The Onslow Company set out on an expedition to Oak Island in the early 1800s. They had started the company to track down the site the boys found and then find their fortunes.

Most elite explorers landed on the beach and couldn’t believe one detail the three men had left out of their original adventure. While the Onslow Company began to set up the area for their extraction, they uncovered a surprising detail: they found the space the boys had previously dug up and noticed that there was a separate dig site.

The Onslow Company found a separate hole that led to man-made shafts underground. The shafts were 10 ft tall. But who was the mysterious first digger?

Between 30 to 40 ft below the ground, the Onslow Company discovered a slab of stone that had an inscription. The inscription on the stone was in characters no one recognized. They quickly took a picture and sent it back to their company office. A local newspaper shared the mysterious details, igniting even more curiosity from local residents.

The stone slab was recorded in the local paper as 2 ft long and about a foot thick, with several characters cut on it. The Onslow Company continued to explore the island, but the message on the stone remained untranslated for a century.

When the Lagina brothers began their mission, they brought with them an exciting clue to unlocking the 100-year-old secret. Historian and author Edward Rose Snow focused specifically on cracking the stone message. Finally, just before his death, he realized what the message was.

This discovery was remarkable but also created more questions. While Edward Rose Snow had deciphered the code — meant “40 ft below, a million pounds are buried” — he still didn’t know who was responsible for writing the message. What ancient civilization revealed itself through Snow’s diligence?

The Onslow Company never stopped exploring the land, and in 1931 the adventure was taken over by William Chappell. When Chappell took over the project, he was at the height of his own research on early explorers. One of Chappell’s first discoveries was an axe. It was the first manual labor object found on the site and caused quite a stir among the local community.

The axe discovery was the first of many objects that made people’s jaws drop in shock. After Chappell found the axe, his team went deeper and were amazed at what else they brought to the surface. The axe was traced back at least 250 years. The team also discovered an oil lamp and a miner’s pick. These items originated from Great Britain.

The Onslow Company, led by researcher William Chappell, tried to find different theories for who the items could belong to. One theory suggested Marie Antoinette had managed to store her jewels on the island during her flight from France and the French Revolution. Another theory pointed toward a famous pirate.

While the team constantly disagreed, there was one theory that stood out. From 1675 to his death in 1701, pirate Captain Kidd ruled the Scottish seas. He was feared along several coasts and was traced back to the Seven Years’ War and the French and Indian War. The island was the perfect location for Kidd to hide his buried treasure and remain inconspicuous to his enemies.

After discovering the axe and the other items, it seems the trail went dry. Eventually, the Onslow Company packed up and was replaced by the Triton Alliance Company. When the company first purchased the rights to the island in 1980, they had high hopes and instead found themselves a laughingstock. After holding the rights and controlling access to the island for 25 years, the Triton Alliance Company filed for bankruptcy. Their digs had been unsuccessful, and the company had squandered their resources on a dream.

The Lagina brothers, Rick and Martin, had been closely following the Triton Alliance Company and their Oak Island activity. When they saw the island was available, they pooled their resources and made a purchase they had dreamed about since they were little boys. The brothers teamed up with a Blakeney clan and paid a cool $7 million to own the land they had dreamed about during their childhood.

Instead of just focusing on digging for treasure, they decided to open the Oak Island Tour Company. Rick and Martin’s childhood dreams were all coming true. They now held in their hands the deed to the infamous Oak Island. The brothers didn’t realize this deed was also the ticket to changing their lives forever.

When the brothers moved onto the island to run their tour company and find the buried treasure, they had no idea of the local reputation. Oak Island had claimed the lives of six explorers over the past 300 years, and residents began to feel the island was cursed.

The brothers’ purchase of the island attracted local news stations and cable corporations. They were surprised when the History Channel reached out with a lucrative offer. The History Channel knew the brothers had paid a steep price to own the island. The channel would help finance their treasure hunting if the brothers agreed to film a reality television show.

In 2014, the reality series The Curse of Oak Island debuted on the History Channel. One of the first massive finds was a Spanish coin found underwater. The Spanish coin was traced back over 3,000 years, and its journey to Oak Island fueled the mystery and excitement to keep uncovering the island’s secrets.

The next item the brothers discovered could also be their last. Due to the reality show budget, the brothers were not digging on the island alone. They welcomed aboard archaeologist Miriam Emeral and earth scientist Craig Tester.

When Tester joined the brothers’ team, he already had something in common with them. In previous years, old dig sites had become death traps, filled with water, debris, and mud. It was extremely difficult to even enter the sites.

As the brothers started the tough task of making the space safe, they realized it wasn’t just nature they had to worry about. The team had uncovered booby traps that they couldn’t trace back to a previous explorer. Whatever was beneath these traps was going to change the brothers’ lives, but it might also cut them short.

The brothers continued to drain water and figure out the booby traps. When they discovered something truly remarkable, their team found a sword dated back to the Roman Empire. Finding this sword meant that treasure had been buried on Oak Island even longer than people suspected.

With the success of the History Channel reality show, Rick was receiving more attention than anticipated. They received a phone call from author Zena Halper, who found something in her research that the brothers might find useful. Halper had been doing research for her upcoming novel when she discovered a map from 1340. The map detailed Oak Island but, even more interesting, it gave clues on who had been on the island.

The map from Zena Halper linked the Knights Templar and the French government to Oak Island. It gave the brothers an exact timeframe when people would have started burying treasure beneath the surface. At the bottom of the map was an interesting note. It was written in French and translated to: “with the Indians from the south.”

With the donation of the map, the brothers were hungry for more physical proof of who had been on the island. The first thing they found was a piece of parchment. It was made from animal skin and looked like it had been used to take notes. It didn’t have any words on it, but historians were able to trace it back to the same period as the map.

What else could link the Knights Templar to the island’s buried secrets? After a particularly tough period, the brothers’ team found an artifact they wished they had never seen. The implications of this one item could shut down the rest of their operation.

It was a human bone that had managed to stay preserved. Instantly, all digging ceased, and the brothers called in the authorities. With the authorities, they also had the bone studied by archaeologists. The scientists confirmed this bone belonged to a human being of Middle Eastern origin.

Now the brothers were truly stumped. How had someone from the other side of the world been buried on Oak Island? When the authorities gave the all-clear, the Lagina team was even more anxious to see what else they would find.

It was only a matter of days before their team member Gary Drayton discovered a groundbreaking piece of metal. Everything that was happening was a dream come true for Rick and Martin, but would they ever make back their initial deposit of $7 million?

Gary Drayton was an expert in identifying metal objects. This discovery was the oldest artifact the team had uncovered and blew aside their preconceived notions of Oak Island heritage. When Drayton correctly identified the metal cross, he was in disbelief.

After the discovery of the cross, the brothers were eager to see if they would find anything else from that time period. They didn’t have to wait long. Along the team dug up a particular piece of jewelry. It was purple in color. Martin Lagina also told the audience what he had learned: the ring was dated back over 400 years and was popular with African cultures.

With the evidence of the bone, cross, and the latest ring, it was confirmed by historians that the Knights Templar had been using the island for their treasure.

The Knights Templar are famously credited in movies like The Da Vinci Code and National Treasure. The knights are an organization started by an unknown Pope in the 1100s. The organization traces its roots back to 1118. The knights had stolen treasures across the world, but there was still one thing the brothers couldn’t figure out.

In 2017, the brothers found proof that there was a secret tunnel connecting the island to a location only known as Smith’s Cove. A member of their team, Doug Crow, discovered a ship’s log that detailed a treacherous underground walk.

Was this the final piece of the Oak Island treasure hunt? While Rick and Martin had gone further than any previous explorer, they still do not have all the answers. The island has been used by many different people across history, and each one found a different way to leave a little treasure behind.

The brothers did find one piece of gold in 2018, but to them, every day is priceless. They can’t believe they started as children planning treasure hunts and now live every day searching to uncover more about this mysterious and beautiful island.