Actually, Lifetime still cranks out segments of this thing, but with Stack’s death last year, it is a pale imitation of one of my all-time favorite cheesy shows.
That Goddamn UPDATE MUSIC and Stack screaming “UPDATE!!!” would bring me out of my chair and into near cardiac arrest. And those incredibly creepy composite sketches… Christ, what weirdness.
I hated the Ghosts/UFOs bullshit, could tolerate a few of the “Lost Loves,” but really dug the crime mysteries.
One that sticks in my mind. The case of Tara Leigh Calico, a kidnapped teenager. One day a woman found a Polaroid in a parking lot. The photo showed a girl and a boy bound and gagged in the back of a van. Though there is some doubt, her family insists the girl is Calico. Sadly, no UPDATE!!! on this case.
Another… Joan Gay Croft, aged 4, disappeared out of a hospital after a tornado in 1947. No trace has ever been found of her.
I was always surprised that they never did a segment on Little Miss 1565 (FTR, supposedly she has been identified, BUT, from what I understand, dental records DO NOT match between the girl burned in the Hartford Circus Fire and who they now think she was).
What are some of the ones that stick out in your mind?
I like that show alot.
I remember watching as a kid, and the title screen with ‘Unsolved mysteries’ in that strange handwriting would get my fear going. But alas, I loved it.
I see it on…Prime I think some nights. I love a good mystery.
The only episode that really stuck with me was about a couple that were driving and stopped for some reason (I can’t remember why). Another car pulled up and the husband got out to talk to him, but they weren’t arguing or anything. Then, the driver of the second car shot the husband and drove off. The husband died instantly. It was just bizarre. I wish I could remember the details, because it was really a random thing.
I never heard an update on that one, but it’s always freaked me out a bit.
I don’t know why, but a blue-lit double exposure of actors playing “ghosts” is one of the scariest looking things you can put on film, for me.
As for memories, the ones that stand out for me are—
The family that supposedly encountered a large, diamond-shaped UFO hovering over a country road…and later came down with radiation poisoning.
Another one, with a supposed “UFO crash” in/around some small town. According to the story, the Air Force cordoned off a big section of a park, saying there was some kind of plane crash. One of the witnesses said he saw a bunch of guys in full Hazmat suits carrying “something” in a large covered box out on a litter. Probably nothing, if it even happened, but it sure sounded creepy.
Some young lady who disappeared—possibly kidnapped by bikers, who tried to sell her under the name “mute.”
The ghosts segments always scared the hell out of me. I swear I remember one where a woman died in a horrible car accident when she hit a tree–and later, they cut down the tree and used it to build a set of bunk beds, and the children were terrorized by the ghost of that woman until they destroyed the beds.
The one I remember for some odd reason is that of a female convenience store worker who vanished from her workplace. What made it stand out in my mind is that a customer entered the store during the shift in which the worker vanished, and a young man with long blonde hair was behind the counter. The customer bought cigarettes, and though the young man seemed to have initial trouble finding her brand, she noticed nothing amiss. She paid and left without any suspicions, until she saw media reports afterwards and realized that the “clerk” she saw that night didn’t belong there.
The cops were looking for that man for questioning (after all, he might have been just an opportunist who found the store empty and decided to take advantage of it), but I don’t think they’ve found him (or the vanished woman) yet.
They did do a segment on her. It’s the first thing I thought of after reading your title.
There was another segment involving the remains of an unidentified little girl. This one took place in the early 80’s. The town “adopted” her, and gave her a funeral. There was a sketch of her face on the headstone.
I liked the ghost segments. It was the first show that featured ghosts with an attitude. There was the one that pepperlandgirl mentioned. There was another one where a family moved into a 1970’s era house. The previous owner had been murdered, plus he wasn’t very nice to begin with. The kids in the family (2 boys), were terrorized.
The Tara Leigh Calico story was disturbing. Nobody, ever had a clue about who the little boy (in the pic) was.
I always liked the crime mysteries and the “finding your long lost twin brother” ones. The “twin brother” ones were often of kids who had been separated for decades and decades - “orphan trains” and such. It was always very interesting (and often had a happy ending). I’m sure I would find it unbearably hokey now.
The one that I always wanted an update on and never got was about the Holocaust survivor who was looking for an American G.I. who gave him an American flag and some food after the boy and his brother were liberated from Auschwitz. So far as I know, they never found out who the soldier was.
Hmmm…creepy, creepy. Is there a site that lists all the episodes and the various mysteries? I know there were some that scared the shit out of me, but I can’t think of any off-hand.
I always liked the one about the woman who believed herself to be the reincarnation of a young lady who killed herself in the 19teens. She had all this detail, and found the house where this woman supposedly lived, the grave-stone of this girl’s grandmother, etc. The only record she couldn’t find was of the girl herself, but there was a family photo from 1911, and the ONLY person not identified was the girl from this woman’s dreams. One of the family members later said that the girl had drowned herself in the lake out behind the house.
Maybe I’m wrong, but I swear they never profiled Little Miss 1565.
The other little girl who was profiled was called something like, Little Miss Panosopkee (sp)
I remember most of the ones mentioned. The girl kidnapped by the bikers was most likely killed that very day, I hear.
The Jewish man searching for the soldiers touched me as well, as well as the German man searching for the black soldier who befriended him (they even had a photo of the soldier and his first name, but still not UPDATE!!!).
I also remember the German man whose mother made the Americans and Germans put away their weapons on Christmas Eve. He died soon after he found one of the Americans in a rest home.
Others I remember: Female bones found in a shed on an island off CA owned by Dr. Carey Stanton.
Audrey Moat and her maried lover Thomas Houtard disappearing in a swamp in LA (nasty redneck couple probably offed the trysters).
Gordon Page, Jr., Asperger sufferer wonders off from his nurses one day… never seen again.
Man races out, jumps on, holds onto airplane wing, falls to his death. He was identified later, but not why he tried to fly for free like that.
The murder of musician Mia Zapata (SOLVED a couple years ago).
There’s a small UM site located on the SITCOMS ONLINE BOARD.
No, doesn’t sound the same, but that link is to a more heart-warming story.
IIRC, the black GI in the UM segment was an enlisted man, and became a big brother figure to a very little (like 8, 9, 10, maybe) boy during the occupation of Berlin following the German surrender. I think the soldier was just someone kind to the boy, who gave him candy, etc.
I give you the Unsolved Mysteries homepage. I’ve no idea if it’s official or not, but it has case synopses, as well as the airdates on Lifetime. It’s far from complete, though.
I used to watch Unsolved Mysteries and Cops with my mom every night. That was when I was about 8, so that was at least 12 years ago, which for some reason makes me feel old.
The case that sticks out in my mind is one of the “ghost” cases. I seem to remember it being about a girl near the turn of the century who found herself pregnant outside of wedlock. The father of the baby took her out in a rowboat one night, and pushed her into the lake and drowned her. Supposedly, her ghost now haunts the lakeshore and the house she lived in near the lake. (I actually have no idea if this was on Unsolved Mysteries, or if I’m piecing fragments of memories together to make a whole one.)
I just remembered-there was one episode that featured a kid at my high school-as a child his finger was severely injured, (he was a piano prodigy), and by some miracle, he was healed or something like that.
I remember watching the episode and hearing the name and saying, “Gee, that sounds familiar-oh wait, isn’t he the president of Student Council?” I saw him in the cafeteria one day and wanted to say something, but I was too chicken.
I remember one that freaked me out a lot as a child. It was about these UFOs that had three bright lights in a triangle pattern. I later realized that a lot of planes have that set-up. but it used to send shivers down my spine whenever I saw one. :smack:
The one about Resurrection Mary scared the bejeezus out of me. When they did the scene where the woman saw her walking down the road at night-but where her face was, there was just a black hole? Totally creepy!
My grandparents loved to watch this show. There was one when I was. . .I dunno. . .six or seven. . .about a hostage situation/robbery/murder at a bowling alley in California.
Why was I at my grandparents? Because my mom was on a business trip. In California. It took a lot of effort to convince me that, no, Mom wasn’t going to be murdered while she was on the trip. But she brought me back a conch shell as a present, so I was happy.
I was going to post that one! As I recall, the drowned girl’s name was Sarah Jenkins.
I also remember the segment about the woman who was convinced she was a daughter of one of the brothers (John or Horace) who started the Dodge automobile company. The sitcomsonline.com page mentions the case – I remembered that the woman believed she was illegitimate, but the linked site says her story was that she had been separated at birth from her Siamese twin and subsequently adopted. She had a memory of having visited her “real” father’s mansion just once, when she had been a small child, and somehow overhearing or otherwise learning of her true identity. Sounded kind of like a variation on the “Anastasia, lost daughter of Tsar Nicholas II” theme, but I always wondered if her claim was ever refuted convincingly enough for her to admit the truth.
That is the Ghost story that creeped me out the most too.
There was a Missing persons story where a boy was kidnapped, I am 99% sure they were Canadians. The boy was walking with 2 chums and disappeared on the way to school. You couldn’t tell if it was a “custody kidnapping” or if the boy was snatched by a psycho. His estranged Dad had been trying to grab him (this was like the 50’s-60’s) and was investigated but never found with the boy – BUT in the Dad’s possessions when he died years latter was a pic of the boy that the Mom (now old) believed was the boy older than when he disappeared. That one stuck really with me. I wonder what happened to that kid.
