Sunday, July 8, 2012

Best of Paranormal TV: One Step Beyond

I will be doing a short  history on  a sort of reality television, if you can call it that, featuring the best paranormal shows. Narratives are included, but not exclusively fiction. They claim based on true accounts and exploring the unknown or strange.

Unless pointed out differently, the first major television show that explored the paranormal was "One Step Beyond," featuring a half hour docudrama. Each of them had an introduction by John Newland who told the back story similar to "The Twilight Zone" fictional series. A few eventually famous actors such as Elizabeth Montgomery, Charles Bronson, Robert Blake, Christopher Lee, and Warren Beatty appeared as people involved in the mysterious events.

Most of the topics are based off psychic events or ghost stories. The first episode, "The Bride Possessed," is about what the title hints at. The newlywed bride begins to recognize features of a place she has never been and then has a personality change, denying ever knowing the man she married. Another well known episode is the rather cool name of "The Dead Part of the House," where a young woman becomes friends with ghosts, possibly in connection with some dolls. These represent the bulk of the story lines, where someone isn't who they appear to be or have premonition of things they never before had contact with. There isn't really any investigations. The show mostly tells stories in a dramatic recreation.

There are a few notable episodes that are different enough from the rest. One of them is "The Burning Girl," about a young woman who might possess pyrotechnic abilities. Nothing indicates it inspired  Stephen King to write the "Firestarter" novel, but its not an impossibility probability.  Another out of ordinary, even for the series, is "Ordeal on Locust Street," about a boy who has a fish like deformity and the hypnotist who claims he can help him. Probably pure monster escapism. "The Day the World Wept-The Lincoln Story," at least has some actual historical documents behind it, controversial as they might be. It tells of the dream he had about his death, and others who had similar premonitions. The one and only UFO episode, "Encounter," is about a search party swapping stories about strange sightings as they look for a missing pilot who claimed to have seen a mountain coming out of the sky.

Among all three seasons, "The Sacred Mushroom,"  is the most famous and controversial episode that came out of the show. Unlike the rest, it was an actual investigation into the psychic powers of a mushroom in South America.  A few scenes were dramatizations, but the bulk of it had Newland talking with investigators and locals about the mysterious properties. The most famous scene was his actual ingestion of the mushroom. His psychic abilities did appear to increase, but he also had hallucinations.

 The series ran from 1959 to 1961 and was sponsored  by Alcoa, an aluminum company.

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