In 2019, Netflix rebooted one of the original true crime shows to ever grace our American air waves: Unsolved Mysteries.
Unsolved Mysteries began in 1987 as a documentary series about true crime cases that have grown cold after years of going unsolved. It also delves into paranormal phenomenon and other more “out there” concepts, and it remained on television in some capacity for decades. Netflix has produced four volumes of the series so far, each containing six episodes. A fifth season is expected to premiere in October 2024.
The show is a must-see for true crime fans, but it’s entertaining enough for even the most violence-averse fans to enjoy. If you’ve only got time for a few episodes, here are ten from the reboot that will get your mind spinning with ideas, theories, and what-ifs.
10. Mystery on the Rooftop (volume 1, episode 1)
Right out of the gate, the story of a Baltimore man who died under very mysterious circumstances signaled a return to form for the Unsolved Mysteries brand. Rey Rivera was a loving family man and husband who always had a smile on his face until he suddenly started acting strangely. While at work one day in 2006, Rivera received a phone call and rushed out. He was never seen again alive.
Police later found his mangled body in the hole of a hotel roof, his glasses and cell phone placed neatly to the side. A “suicide note” that didn’t make sense to anyone was found nearby. Investigators later discovered a possible link to a Freemason organization, but nothing in the story added up. To this day, Rivera’s family has no idea how he ended up dead on that rooftop.
9. The Mothman Revisited (volume 4, episode 5)
The original Unsolved Mysteries first tackled the subject of the Mothman, a winged humanoid cryptid with glowing red eyes that was first reported in Point Pleasant, West Virginia in 1966, in an episode in 2002. Since then, tales of these mysterious half-human, half-avian “omens of doom” have continued to spread across the world.
For “The Mothman Revisited” episode, paranormal investigators Tobias Wayland and Lon Strickler teamed up to explore more than 161 sightings across the Chicago area in recent years. Witnesses recall seeing flying black cryptids with 15-foot wingspans that stand between 6 and 8 feet tall. These bat creatures are spotted day and night, particularly by employees at Chicago O’Hare airport, many of whom have Mothman stories to tell.
8. Paranormal Rangers (volume 3, episode 5)
Stanley Milford Jr. and Jonathan Redbird Dover are Navajo Rangers who became a sort of “real-life X-Files” back in 2000. That’s when, more often than not, the rangers started getting called upon to investigate paranormal claims like Bigfoot and UFO sightings across the 27,000-square-mile reservation they protect in Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah. For more than twenty years, Milford and Dover have explored terrifying reports of skinwalkers, aliens, and more otherworldly phenomena, and they’ve got the eyewitness testimonies to prove it.
7. Death in Oslo (volume 2, episode 2)
In May 1995, police were sent to a hotel room in Oslo, Norway because a woman had checked in and hung a “do not disturb” sign on the door, but never provided the front desk with a credit card or passport. When they knocked on the door, a gunshot rang out inside. Police went downstairs to call for backup, returning 15 minutes to find the door double-bolted from the inside. Once they got in, they found Jennifer Fairgate dead but she had no identification, the tags had been cut from all of her clothing, and there were no fingerprints anywhere in the room or the gun.
At first, police called the death a suicide, but as they began to investigate it was clear something didn’t add up. Was Fairgate actually some sort of spy or government agent who’d been executed? Was there someone else in the room with her? What happened during that 15-minute window when the police went downstairs?
6. Berkshires UFO (volume 1, episode 5)
This episode explores one of the wildest UFO incidents ever reported in the United States. On Labor Day 1969, more than 250 people witnessed a massive glowing disc-shaped object roughly the size of a football field in Berkshire County, Massachusetts. The show interviews actual survivors who recall snippets of levitating into the UFO and returning hours later with only the foggiest memories of the past several hours. Journalists, detectives, and family members tell their stories, and it’s a fascinating yet bewildering experience to relive through their eyes.
5. Body in the Basement (volume 4, episode 2)
The death of Amanda Antoni is the ultimate unsolved mystery. She was on the phone with her husband when her dog barked sharply, and the call was abruptly cut off. A day and a half later, Lee returned home to find his wife dead on the floor of the basement. The walls and floor were covered in blood from a head wound she had suffered, but her bloody footsteps stopped at the bottom of the basement stairs. It appears that she never attempted to climb the stairs for help, instead wandering around the basement for hours while bleeding profusely. Stranger still, her dog and cat never came downstairs either, even though the door was wide open. What caused Amanda to go into the basement at all? How did she cut open her head, and why didn’t she seek help?
4. House of Terror (volume 1, episode 3)
In April 2011, Xavier Dupont de Ligonnes walked out of his family home in Nantes, France, and disappeared forever. Over the next days and weeks, friends and neighbors were shocked to discover the bodies of his five family members: wife Agnes and their four children, Arthur, Thomas, Anne, and Benoit, as well as their two dogs, wrapped in duvet shrouds and buried in the garden. Each victim had been executed with two bullets to the head.
Later, police found that Xavier seemed to be planning the murders for quite some time, but the scene was still odd. There was no trace of DNA or fingerprints anywhere in the house, nor was there a speck of blood even though he’d allegedly murdered seven souls there.
3. Tsunami Spirits (volume 2, episode 4)
The Tohoku region of Japan was devastated by one of the most powerful tsunamis in human history on March 11, 2011. As people coped with the massive loss of life, resources, and even basic necessities, many locals began reporting incidents of ghostly encounters with victims who didn’t know they hadn’t survived the floods. Journalist Shuji Okuno coaxes these stories from the traumatized residents for this episode.
A mother recalls how her deceased son’s toys would turn on and move by themselves after his death. A psychic medium describes telling a group of teenagers that they had died to help them cross over. All of these tales give the viewer goosebumps and leave us with a strong appreciation for higher ground.
2. Lady in the Lake (volume 2, episode 5)
On a freezing January night, JoAnn Romain parked her car near a church in northern Michigan, got out, and disappeared without a trace. Police found footsteps leading to a nearby lake and immediately suspected that JoAnn had walked into the icy water to kill herself, but her family insisted she was not suicidal. They searched the lake, but no body could be found, and there was no suicide note or indication of depression.
This episode takes the investigation further, gleaning data from private investigators and the FBI and ultimately wondering where the system managed to fall apart and fail JoAnn. Her body turned up seventy days after she disappeared, yet it offered few clues about what happened to her.
1. The Ghost in Apartment 14 (volume 3, episode 8)
Who doesn’t love a good ghost story? A woman named Jodi Foster (purely a coincidence) and her 3-year-old daughter Hannah moved into apartment 14 at the Walnut Garden Apartments in Chico, California on January 21, 2000. She instantly noticed something amiss in the apartment. There was a weird smell that lingered, objects would move around on their own, and one of Hannah’s toys kept making noise even after the batteries were removed. Worse yet, Hannah met an “invisible friend” she called Myliz, and Jodi started having dreams about being abducted.
Within a few months, things went from bad to worse in the apartment, culminating in a freaky scene like something out of Poltergeist. They moved out, and it was only afterward that Jodi learned about a young woman named Marie Spannhake, or “Marliz,” as she was nicknamed, who used to live in apartment 14 in the 70s. Marliz went missing, and her disappearance was later linked to a local couple who admitted to murdering her.
All four volumes of the rebooted Unsolved Mysteries are currently streaming on Netflix.
Published: Aug 26, 2024 02:21 pm