The Curse of Oak Island Season 13, Episode 14 — The Shining: A Rapid, Slightly Unhinged Recap
If you’re watching The Curse of Oak Island at speed and wondering what on earth just happened in Season 13, Episode 14 (The Shining), don’t worry — you didn’t miss clarity. It simply wasn’t there.
Let’s break it down.
A Return to the Boulder — Featuring Dr Ian Spooner
The episode opens with yet another pilgrimage to the now-legendary boulder on Lot 8, joined by the increasingly controversial Ian Spooner. His mission: collect core samples and, with admirable confidence, present a theory that somehow raises more questions than answers.
Back in the war room, Spooner reveals the soil contains 140 parts per million of lead. According to him, this could only be explained by ancient fires used to ventilate a treasure shaft. No other explanation will do.
In one of the episode’s most unintentionally comedic moments, Marty Lagina, with a perfectly straight face, declares this lead discovery “just as exciting as finding gold.” It’s a heroic effort to sell the moment — and possibly a sign of collective exhaustion.
Cameras, Voids, and Selective Memory
Next, the team once again jams a camera into the void beneath the boulder. Apparently, the previously claimed “pearl” find has been quietly forgotten, replaced entirely by brand-new veins of gold-coloured material that, we are told, no human eyes have ever seen before.
Curiously, this intense focus excludes a visibly crushed metal pipe sitting in the same camera frame. The pipe exists. It is seen. It is ignored.
Metal Detecting: Everything Is Something
Around the boulder, Gary Drayton gets to work. The finds include:
- A metal object Gary confidently calls a “multi-tool”
- An iron item identified as a “gate pendle” (a term nobody questions)
Over in the swamp, the hits keep coming:
- A random pile of rocks declared to be a road
- Wood fragments
- Barrel pieces that could only have stored Spanish treasure coins
- A square-shaped iron object
- Another iron object whose shape defies polite description
Each discovery is treated with equal weight, regardless of scale, context, or coherence.
The Swamp Never Misses a Chance
The swamp, once again, refuses to stay out of the narrative. Every find is loosely tied back to treasure, often with impressive leaps of logic. The implication is clear: if it’s old, metal, wooden, or vaguely shaped, it must be important.
Vanessa Returns — With a Drill
As if the episode needed more tonal shifts, we get a bonus war room meeting and the season debut of Vanessa Lucido.
In a stunning reversal, the same team that insists the boulder cannot be lifted due to risk decides instead to drill straight to the bottom of the solution channel using an auger that looks custom-built to shred anything historically valuable.
Consistency, as ever, remains optional.
Serendipity Saves the Show
At this point, it would be reasonable to dismiss the entire episode — perhaps even the entire series — as a beautifully produced spiral of nonsense.
And then Rick Lagina taps his fingers thoughtfully and uses the word “serendipitous.”
Suddenly, everything feels meaningful again.
When you’re wrong, you’re wrong.
Coming Up Next…
Tune in next time, when:
- Swamp debris will almost certainly be identified as parts of an ancient three-barrelled rifle
- Another random object will “change everything”
- And nothing will actually change at all
How dare they call this episode The Shining.
Thanks for watching. Like, subscribe, comment below, revisit the old episodes — and join us next week.
Unless, of course, we get lost in the hedge maze at the Overlook Hotel.
Red rock.
