Years ago, I wrote about my initiation into the…fandom?…of Cryptozoology and other stories of unexplained phenomenon through books and TV programs like Animal X, which focused entirely on cryptids and other weird animal anecdotes. In the grand scheme of things, a show like Animal X was niche, a foreign import that found its way into circulation during the strange expansion days of cable TV—even a broader-minded program in a similar vein like the Leonard Nimoy-hosted In Search Of… (a recurring topic on my other website) was mostly a minor staple of syndication. These series have snuck their way into the nostalgic memories of lifelong channel surfers, and likely introduced more people to the many mystery monsters of the world…but I imagine that even more people were introduced to Cryptozoology through the most mainstream mysterious phenomenon TV show, Unsolved Mysteries.
Its credentials as an actual hit are pretty evident: the initial run, which like In Search Of… started out as a series of specials, ran for fourteen straight years on three channels, including two of the big networks (NBC from 1987 to 1997, and CBS from 1997 to 1999) and one cable network (Lifetime, from 2000-2002); it almost certainly became another staple of syndication in that timeframe as well, and was recently revived in a revised form on Netflix. A series like that doesn’t go on for that long and end up with hundreds of episodes without being seen by a few people, and the trick to getting this type of show in front of so many eyeballs is ingenious: it’s a Trojan Horse, of sorts. From its inception, Unsolved Mysteries was a true crime docu-series, focusing on murders, robberies, disappearances, separated families and other down-to-earth cases—it’s a good example of what the genre was like before the more recent trends in True Crime “entertainment.” This makes it cheap to produce for networks, and it even includes an audience participation angle, with a telephone line open to hear from people who may have information that will crack those cold cases, with subsequent episodes providing updates on previous stories that showed that this hotline actually worked.
When it became a full weekly series in 1988, the show expanded its range of topics to include different sorts of mysteries, including supposed supernatural phenomena: UFOs, hauntings, and starting in a first season episode from 1989, monster legends. One could question the taste of putting stories with genuine pleas to help reunite families and solve violent crimes to give people closure next to sensationalism about crop circles and Bigfoot, but it’s the exact sort of gleefully tone-ignorant juxtaposition you expect to see on television. These things are all “mysteries”, and so they are jumbled together regardless of their actual content (I do wonder how many phone calls they got with “information” about the weirdo stuff.) In any case, this means that the sorts of people who would initially watch a series about real crimes were, more often than not, also exposed to some of the most well-known cryptids, and maybe even came away convinced that they’re real—and believer or not, other people came away from the show with the memories of these creatures burned into their memory thanks to the dark and menacing atmosphere the show imbued in their portrayal.
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