Every now and then, when I pause to reflect on our ever-changing world, I wonder whatever happened to Bigfoot. Weren’t we supposed to have found him by now? A television series from the late 1970s claimed that man’s continual expansion into the wilderness would eventually bring us face to face with the one and only Sasquatch. It was only a matter of time.
Until recently, I had forgotten most of the details, but thanks to the wonders of YouTube, I’ve been watching episodes of the most riveting show ever produced, in Search of . . . . From 1976 to 1982, this pseudo-documentary examined the most pressing issues of the day: extraterrestrials, magic and witchcraft, myths and monsters, lost civilizations, and other strange phenomena. So maybe they weren’t the most vital topics for a grownup. But for a nine-year-old, these issues were of utmost importance. Coming home from school, I would fit in 30 minutes of in Search of . . . before doing my homework. And long after each episode concluded, I would still be thinking about it: Did aliens really visit Peru thousands of years ago? If not, how else to explain those ancient Nazca drawings visible only from the air? When will the real Anastasia reclaim the Russian throne? How will I sleep tonight after learning about the witches of Salem?
The unsettling sound effects, the haunting music, the reenactments that never used the word “dramatization,” and the deadly serious tone of the narrator, Mr. Leonard Nimoy, all made for compelling television. I was both obsessed and terrified. (I finally had enough after one segment in which a clairvoyant began scrawling the name of a dead person, calling out each letter of the name, her eyes flickering. I switched to Tom and Jerry until my heart rate calmed down. Then I went back.)
One particularly creepy episode examined the Amityville Horror, a string of supernatural occurrences that beset the Lutz family after they moved into a house on Long Island where a mass murder had taken place. After blessing the house, a priest was said to have suffered the stigmata. The Lutzes recounted how they attempted their own house blessing, which only made matters worse, strongly suggesting to me that these spirits did not like Catholics. (A movie of the Amityville Horror was actually filmed in my hometown of Toms River, New Jersey. Whenever my family drove past the set, I would stare at the house, thinking it was the real one. It didn’t help that my older sister would yell, “Close your eyes, it’s the Amityville Horror!”)
But not every episode of in Search of involved the paranormal. I remember one enlightening episode that dealt with cult leader Jim Jones and the Jonestown massacre. Another show speculated on the whereabouts of the “Angel of Death,” Dr. Josef Mengele (the camera crew traveled to South America and was chased off private property), not to mention John the Baptist, Jack the Ripper, and the Abominable Snowman.
Watching some of the episodes now, you can’t help but laugh: “Many people do not believe in Bigfoot, but a lot of people do,” says Nimoy in his introduction. “Some of them feel they must kill it to prove it exists.” Meanwhile, actors are seen firing their rifles at dark, hairy beasts in the woods. Cue the opening credits, during which the catchy and keyboard-heavy theme song plays. Then this voiceover: “This series presents information based in part on theory and conjecture. The producer’s purpose is to suggest some possible explanations, but not necessarily the only ones, to the mysteries we will examine.”
Which to me, at the time, basically meant: “Everything you see on this program is real.”
Later shows such as That’s Incredible!, Ripley’s Believe It or Not, and Unsolved Mysteries would tap into elements of in Search of . . . , such as the casting of quirky hosts like Jack Palance and Robert Stack, the use of vivid dramatizations, and the tackling of strange phenomena. But none had the campy charm of the original, even if it did rely on “theory and conjecture.” Watching in Search of . . . now, 25 years later, on a computer, it is indeed hard to take most episodes seriously–with the obvious exception of the one about Bigfoot.
My friend Pete, now a married lawyer with three kids, still remembers being gripped by the chilling words of Leonard Nimoy as he closed that segment: “If we assume Bigfoot is real and that men are closing in on this seemingly gentle monster, then we must prepare for that first meeting. To have eluded us for so long, Bigfoot must understand men very well. The burden will be on us to understand him. Bigfoot may well be waiting for some sign that we’re ready.”
Bigfoot is clearly waiting for in Search of . . . to come out on DVD.
VICTORINO MATUS
