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.