James McQuiston and John Hamels have teamed up to start a video podcast, “Oak Island Plus,” focusing on the mystery surrounding Oak Island in Nova Scotia, Canada. Submitted photo

Two area men have teamed up to start a video podcast focused on the mystery surrounding Oak Island in Nova Scotia, Canada.

The island has been a subject for treasure hunters since the 1700s, with different theories and ideas surrounding it appearing since then. There are rumors of buried treasure from Scottish privateer Captain Kidd, along with theories that extend to religious artifacts and manuscripts, even Marie Atoinette’s jewels.

A multi-season reality television series, “The Curse of Oak Island” focuses on the mystery and theories surrounding it. It premiered in 2014 and since then has featured North East, Pa., resident James McQuiston 13 times. In the most recent season his theory — which is that the mystery is a conspiracy of elites — was featured as the number two theory.

McQuiston has teamed up with John “Doc” Hamels, a Ripley resident and Chautauqua Sunrise host/producer, for a video podcast.

“I’ve been working on this since 2016,” McQuiston said. “I’ve written 10 books on the topic, and about halfway through that I began appearing on Doc’s show. He was instrumental in helping with book seven and by book 10 we were meeting up to create storyboards and discovering some missing information.”

McQuiston said he got burned out by writing the books, but was not burned out on his theory. Because “The Curse of Oak Island” show does not always use all of the information, and is more focused on excitement and cliffhangers, the two men decided to go out on their own and focus their video podcast on the historical research aspect, one element at a time.

The duo plans to delve deeper into a variety of historical elements associated with Oak Island, including the connection of the Knights Templar-Knights Baronet and Freemasons.

“We want to do something monthly to stay current with our findings and TV,” McQuiston said. “We want to focus on specifics, just two researchers saying what they found. There is a hunger for that.”

The video podcast, called “Oak Island Plus,” is filmed at Innovation Studio at the Lakeshore Center in Westfield. Additionally, McQuiston said it is one of the biggest projects the studio has ever done and he expects a lot of people will be knocking on their door after the podcast to ask the studio to help them tell their own stories and ideas.

“What separates us from Hollywood is that we take the artifacts or family lines from hundreds of years ago and link the characters together to tell the whole story,” Hamels said. “(McQuiston) goes one way and I will go another and the ideas will blend and we will find that it is all connected. This is the stuff that doesn’t come out in the shows because it is the backstory.”

McQuiston said with the internet and Hollywood, people can look things up and get a quick answer, while for his research he used books scanned in from libraries that date back to the 1600s. Some of the information comes from museums and archives in places like Scotland and Nova Scotia.

McQuiston said there are many assets available and the treasure was just the “tip of the iceberg” when it comes to Oak Island.

“I’m amazed at the things we find,” McQuiston said. “There are comparison letters, family histories, war records. We can’t 100% prove all the aspects that we find, but we go with the answer that seems most logical based on our findings. There is a wealth of ways to get information.”

Hamels said a lot of people are glued to the story and have their own theories, which helps with the podcast already being popular. Nova Scotia, Europe and New York all have connections to the story.

Additionally, the pair also hopes to eventually move on to local legends as well, such as bigfoot or artifacts believed to have come from giants, or popular shipwrecks.

“We probably have at least a year’s worth of topics already,” Hamels said. “We want our podcast to be an example for people that if you have a story, you can go to this studio and they will help you produce and tell that story.”

McQuiston added that as long as interest remains, they will be continuing the podcast.

“It will probably ebb and flow, and some will portal in as the show continues,” McQuiston said. “Shows that are produced now will still be able to be seen a year from now.”

The pair had originally thought about doing a weekly podcast, but soon discovered that editing takes a long time.

“We thought about doing it weekly, but with piecing together the photos and after show edits, which we didn’t know how to do, we are learning like crazy,” McQuiston said. “We’re telling the rest of the story that can’t be told on TV.”

The Oak Island Plus video podcast can be found on YouTube. For more information and release dates for upcoming episodes, they can be found on Facebook or at oakislandplus.com.