What was your first experience with Unsolved Mysteries?

[justins5256]

Hello,

Hopefully this will get a decent thread going. How old were you when you first started watching the show, and do you remember the first episode you saw?

Here's my story: I first heard of UM through commercials on NBC. I was very young at the time, and the show came on after my 8:00 bed time so I never could watch it. On one occasion, I pleaded with my mother to let me stay up and watch an episode. The episode I saw (which I think was my first) was the one about alien abductions and missing time. Considering that I watched this episode when it first aired in Nov. 1988, I would have been 7 years old. Excuse my language, but it scared me ****less! I could not sleep that night, and my mom vowed to never let me watch the show again. Some time later, I was at my grandmother's house and I asked her to tape it for me (I don't think she knew what it was). I can't remember which episode it was. I want to say it was the one where people at a shopping mall found graphic hand written notes describing the murder of a woman who had recently disappeared. I was pretty much hooked at that point. Eventually my parents bought me a TV, and I could watch UM whenever I wished. The rest is history. I really loved the show back then, although I think my initial attraction to UM was the fact that it was "forbidden" because mom wouldn't let me watch it.

Justin

[JohnMill]

I've been meaning to share this for awhile - I guess it was 1988 or 1989 when I was six or seven years old and I was watching a believe a baseball game on tv and then I switched the channel to "Unsolved Mysteries" and what I later found out was the "Son Of Sam" episode was on.

All I could remember for years after that was the scene where Dave Berkowitz kills that girl and leaves the message "I am the gun man the son of sam etc etc." - It really scared me. Other memories (pre-lifetime) was watching the "fumbles" episode while in Vermont with my grandparents.

Later.

[Mijada]

I started watching UM when I was about 15. The show only came on occasionally then as a special. The first ep I ever saw was about this psychic lady who had visions of a little boy falling into a river and drowning hours before it happened. She had envisioned exactly what the boy was wearing and where his body would be found.

[dynoguy88]

I started watching the show in 1988 when it was on NBC. I was only 8 years old in 1988, so I scared much easier back then. I had mixed emotions about watching that show back then. Sometimes I couldn't help but watch but other times I would just listen to the theme song for 2 seconds and just run out of the room. There were times I couldn't sleep at night because I couldn't get certain cases out of my head.

The earliest case I can remember freaked me out and it didn't even take place at night.

*A Connecticut woman who was driving to work down a country road and pulled up behind a man in a black pick up truck. The man came to a stop, got out of his car, pulled out a gun and shot her in the face through her window. He drove off and left her to die. The woman was slumped over the passanger side seat so she couldn't signle the other cars for help. A trucker eventually came to a stop and called an ambulance and the woman lived, but the bullet was lodged into the back of her neck and surgery to remove it was going to be very risky.

What kind of an a*shole can you be just to shoot a complete stranger like that for no reason? In broad daylight as well. The road was a two way road and other cars were driving by before and right after the shooting, but no cars drove by DURING the shooting. Talk about awful timing. A day or two after the shooting, several people came forward to say that they recalled seeing a man in a black pick up truck taunting other drivers in the same area on the same day he shot the woman. Over 2,000 people in that area owned the same kind of black pick up truck so police were left at a standstill and as far as I know, a suspect has never been caught.

After I saw this case, I remember freaking out every time I saw a black pick up truck. I was scared but at the same time, I was kind of hooked on the show. Throughout the next couple of years my mom kept advising me to stop watching the show but I kept coming back. To this day, I still watch the repeats with great interest. The case that still makes me angry and sad the most is the Maples kidnapping their grandkids Kristi and Bobby in 1989.

I always wished I could call the telecenter and help solve a mystery. I felt so much for the murder victims family and friends or the people who were searching for a relative. I just wish I could have helped some way.

[Tendervittles]

I mentioned this case on another thread, but it also happens to be the first one I saw and one of the ones I remember.

Back in the days of the specials on NBC, but I believe they also re ran it when UM was shown at 7 pm on Wednesdays before Quantum Leap.

This young girl named Sherry had run away from home. A day or two later, her uncle, who was a trucker I think, saw a girl running barefoot down the grassy median of a highway at dusk. Not knowing Sherry was missing, he commented to himself, "that sure looks a lot like Sherry", but did not stop.

I believe a year later, another trucker who may have been a friend of the uncle, and who knew Sherry also, saw her in a truck stop diner. He said her hair was different, her clothes were too big, and she was dirty, but otherwise seemed ok. She was with two men who also were dirty, but she did not seem uncomfortable with them.

As far as I know, they have never updated this case.

[Mystery-Lover]

These are the first few cases I ever saw. I'm not sure if they were all packed into one episode or spread out over two or three of the first episodes I ever saw? Anyways, here they are:

1.) Jesslyn Rich was a woman who disappeared in a resteraunt where she was seen with a man following her towards the bathroom, and then never seen again. In a prison, a female prisoner tells a security guard that she knows what happened to Jesslyn. Then she was mysteriously dead in her prison cell the next day before she could tell anyone the whereabouts of Jesslyn. This case really freaked me out!!!

2.) An old man is in a wooded area in Virginia. I believe he was hunting. Then he spots an UFO hovering over the ground and bending trees. Then the old man got close enough to actually touch it! Then the UFO began to spin rapidly and burned the old man and gave him weird marks. The UFO shot up into the sky and disappeared into the distance.

3.) A park ranger has a psychic vision of an old lady who is lost in the woods. She was using socks on her hands as mittens for the cold night that she had to spend there. With the park ranger describing the location of where the woman was, police and search teams were able to find her.

4.) A farmer in West Virginia is kept prisoner in a basement. He has to do chores for a black farmer that just sits around, gives orders, and makes money. The farmer was then found dead in the basement, and the black farmer and his family ever moved out of the house or abandoned it. But later the black guy was caught!

If you can, please give me more info on these cases since I saw them a really long time ago. Thanx!

[magellan333]

The first time I watched UM it was still a "special." Robert Stack didn't even host the first one I saw. It was a man who used to do American Express Card Commercials. The first case I remember was of a little girl who was kidnapped. There was a man working the case who was on the brink of tracking her down when he too went missing. So sad.

I also recall that UM was were I first learned of the Unabomber.

[Composite Sketch]

The first episode I saw was the Halloween 1988 special. The Horicon, WI bunkbed hauntings got me interested, and several cases from following episodes, mostly Wanted and Unexplained Death ones, got me hooked.

[unsolved_on_film]

Ditto to the above post, that bunk bed episode was awesome.

But, as a matter of fact, the story went way deeper than bunk beds. You can read the whole story in a compilation book called "Haunted America". You can find it at a library.

The bunk beds were only a tip of the iceberg. The segment in the book goes into great detail. I believe the bunk beds were primarily a selling-point for the UM segment, but I think they were pretty significant, nonetheless. The book version WILL give you nightmares, I can almost guarantee it!

BTW, I've been past the house a few times when passing through the area. It is so unassuming, but that's the real payoff. It shows it can happen anywhere, anytime.

Gotta love Cosgrove and Meurer for nabbing this story. It was a goodie. I can't wait to see it on the Ghosts DVD. PLEEEEAAASE have commentary on that segment!!!

I think the unexplained deaths and unknown assailant cases are my favorites. Composite sketches are friggin' narly. And the staged dead bodies are chilling.

But, IMO, Malkins music is what makes Unsolved Mysteries feel so ethereal and organic. To me, that's really what UM is alll about. That's what ultimately separates it from AMW.

I just didn't like when they started shooting in video, exclusively. That's where the show kind of lost me a bit...it lost it's grittiness and it's creepy atmosphere.

[crystaldawn]

Like most of you, I was very young when UM first aired but one story I've always remembered is the boys on the train tracks. I remember sitting in the living room pitch dark watching the dark tracks and it was very creepy and I guessed was burned in my memory.

Incidentally, I am now reading "The Boys On The Tracks" about this case. I highly recommend it, its a very good book!

[Beetlejuice69]

The bunk beds episode gave me nightmares for years. What are the details the book goes into? How was the bed just the tip of the iceberg?

[Leia]

CrystalDawn thanks for the recommendation about The Boys on the Tracks. I remember seeing this case on UM years ago (before all the connections were made) and it was a haunting case.

Will definitely pick the book up.

Thanks!!

[unsolved_on_film]

Basically, like I said, the beds seemed to be a selling point for the segment. A couple months before the beds were even in the house, dogs would bark at the house when they were walked past. The family bought a cat and they couldn't keep it because it clawed the doors and curtains trying to get out. A window in the basement was mysteriously removed and placed against the basement wall, unbroken. Even more stuff that I cant remember. Oh, BTW, they describe, in detail, what the old lady glowing like fire looked like, YIKES!

Other things are described in detail. Even the fact that an old cemetary is only a couple blocks away from the house was not in the UM segment. Like I said, read "Haunted America". As a matter of fact, there is a long chapter on the Queen Mary as well.

The UM segment was really good, and obviously grabbed my interest, but reading the "whole story" in Haunted America gave me a whole new perspective on the haunting. A whole hell of a lot scarier perspective. I had nightmares after reading the book version. I was really that scary. I highly recommend checking it out at the library.

[Beetlejuice69]

When did the UM segment take place? Was it more than one family?

[TRBB]

I remember it was 1995 and they brought the 1993 series to Australia, I was eight. I watched it and it scared me unlike anything else but I still loved the shows and kept watching. I even have a couple of those 1993 episodes taped. They are still good entertainment.