Shark Bytes

I don't think every episode was based on fact, but I have heard of similar stories like the one portrayed in "The Image of Death". That episode scared the daylights out of me when I was a kid! Juest like one of the posters to this site I would get tripped out on a stain on the wall when little. It is best if you watch this show on dvd not to allow any small kids to see it with you, or have access. Aside from that I found that episode nowadays to be one of the best, I finished watching it last night and being that I am a fan of Agatha Christie's Poirot (David Suchet is the best Poirot) I found it satisfying that the murderous Marquis got his. The image materialising of his murdered wife is one of her final moment of agony when she was poisoned which causes him to confess to the gendarmrie.

All right, stranger, let's see if we can put you out of your misery. You mention a cave & workers & mud. I can recall 2 episodes which would fit that bill. The 1st 1 was re a recovering alcoholic whose son & ex-wife were meeting him for the 1st time in years in an hotel (in Las Vegas, I think). The former husband wants to re-unite, but the wife, understandably, has moved on. She & the son visit an abandoned mine, & there's a cave-in. The ex-wife screams to the ex at the hotel that the child is buried. They dash to the scene, & the man & some workers, hearing a woman's scream, un-earth the boy ; however, they also un-earth the dead ex-wife : she had been killed in the original cave-in! According to imdb, this is 'Epilogue', Season 1, Episode 6, originally aired on the 24th February 1959. This is probably the 1 you were thinking about. Another possibility is a history of an impoverished couple (they had failed at farming, I think). They have just enough money for 1 night at an hotel. There's an abandoned copy of a gold-mining handbook for beginners with the former owner's name. That night, the man, in a 'trance', types a story (the man had once been a reporter in Montreal in his younger days, & he still had his typewriter) re 2 brothers travelling to the Yukon to prospect. In the story, 1 of the brothers goes stark, raving mad as a hatter. In the morn, the wife finds the story, which the husband has no memory of, &, unbeknownst to him, completes it & sends it to the man's old newspaper & receives payment. She is desperate for money, because she is pregnant. The 'widow' of the man in the story (the wife threw in a murder to complete the story,) shows up to see the man, understandably horrified & grief-stricken & confused. The husband, out of a sense of shame, & out of a sense of duty, travels to the Yukon & finds the innocent man in time to save his life (he had been tied up & left in their cabin). The man then visits the mine & finds the mad brother dead in the cave, frozen to death, with his gun still standing in paranoid hands. According to imdb, this is 'Dead Man's Tale', Season 3, Episode 17, originally aired on the 17th January 1961. To everyone reading this, you can watch for free several of the episodes at video dot google dot com & at tesla dot liketelevision dot com. This is perfectly legal stuff : the programme fell into the public domain, by neglect, when the former copy-right owner, Worldvision, which had somehow inherited it, forgot to renew the copy-right (this was an era in which copyrights were allowed to expire, unlike the unfortunate present) : that is how completely this programme was forgotten! Additionally, it was carried on ABC, which was a very small network at that time (only CBS & NBC were major networks till the 1970s). Obviously, I vote for 'NEVER jumped the shark', but I imagine that you've figured that out by now, ay?

Does anyone remember an episode about a cave and workers and mud or something? I remember seeing it on "One Step Beyond" but I was 5 years old and all I can remember about it was it scared the daylights out of me.

Only 3 shows have ever scared me : One Step Beyond, Nikita (aka, La Femme Nikita), & The Prisoner (UK). Black & White was the perfect format for One Step Beyond. The intro music always unnerves me -- even after all these years!

After ALL of these years, One Step Beyond STILL can't jump! It remains the scariest of scary- and I've watched them all! The two most frightening episodes were "Death Waltz" and "Image of Death". I have been searching for these on VHS or DVD. Death Waltz starred Elizabeth Montgomery. I can't look at a dressmaker's form without thinking of this OSB story. Image of Death was about a stain on the wall that gradually looks like something sinister... That episode made it almost impossible for me to stay in my room as a child: every leak and stain on the wall scared me. And let’s not forget the music. The sound of the main theme "Fear" and the climactic "Weird" can still make you jump out of your skin! What a show!

Definitely one of the creepiest shows on TV. Weird and scary, much more so than Twilight Zone. One episode with a necklace that had a life of its own and strangled those who wore it has haunted me ever since I saw it as a 10 year old. I bought some on DVD. Hope to run across that episode again. A weird, haunting show.

This series NEVER jumped. I remember being frightened out of my mind at some of the stories presented, particularly the episode where the man went to sleep and dreamed of being stranded in a desert and the next day (I think) the doctor pronounces him dead, "Strangest thing," says the doctor, "he died of thirst with a pitcher of water right beside him on his nightstand." One Step Beyond was scary in a way that Twillight Zone or Outer Limits couldn't touch. Twillight Zone was good, thought-provoking, even. But OSB was FRIGHTENING!

A truly underrated gem.One of the best and most memorable episode was called "The Captain's Guests",was written by the late Charles Beaumont,and starred the late Robert Webber as Andrew,who,with his wife,buys,against all odds,a house in New England,which is(unaware to Andrew and his wife)haunted by the ghost of the late owner, a tyrannical sea captain,whose picture is hanging in the house.Well,anyway,Andrew becomes possessed by the sea captain's ghost,acting tyrannical like the captain was,instead of his easygoing self.Soon after,the house catches fire,Andrew and his wife get out alive,and the captain's picture burns,and his spirit,having burned with the picture,leaves Andrew's body,and he returns to his eastgoing self again.Creepy.

I'm with the guy who is 48 years old and was scared by the spooky music of One Step Beyond, as well as John Newland's "look." His eyes always looked creepy, as if he were a ghost himself. The theme song was titled...."Fear." Quite an appropriate name for a song that sounded so strange. My 13 son and I just picked up the Best of One Step Beyond, and it's funny to watch him get creeped out. Heck, I think we all like a little mystery and spookiness once in a while.

This show never jumped and remains (after more than 40 years) one of the creepiest shows in the history of television. It blows away anything shown nowadays as most of the new shows are crap. The scariest episode IMO was the one where this guy on the run (in Mexico) holes up in a convent haunted by an angry ghost. The scene where the policeman is choked to death by this unseen apparition remains indelibly etched in my memory as the creepiest scene I've ever seen on ANY show.

Hey, this was one show that never jumped the shark. It's creepiness factor was due to the fact that the stories came from real events. One episode, Tidal wave, even has an interview with the real person at the end. Another reason this show never jumped is that host John Newland always played it straight. He looks you in the eye and asks you "is it true? Science can't prove it... yet." And because of that the show never gives way to hyperbole. Great series.

This is the show that traumatized me as a kid. One of the creepiest shows I've ever seen, especially since all of the stories were purportedly true. I was 5 or 6 when I first saw it and the music alone, especially in climactic scenes, was the stuff nightmares are made of. Truly a classic show of it's time! This show has now been released on DVD and can be found on Amazon.

A woman, married to a man who no longer loves her, has a terrifying vision of someone trapped in the elevator of building she’s never seen. Returning to their hotel room, the woman discovers brochures for a resort/vacation spot. Suspecting her cheating husband is there with his new lover, she takes a cab to the resort. She arrives to find that the resort is the same building she’d seen in her vision, and it has an old-style cage elevator. The caretaker gives her a quick tour of the resort, explaining that it will soon be closing for the season. He then leads her to the elevator and tells her that it breaks down now and then, but it has been working fine lately. She hesitates for a moment before getting in with him and continuing to the second floor. They exit the elevator, and after looking around, the woman (still upset and now assuming that her husband has left her for good) decides to leave. But she decides to take the stairs down, rather than the elevator. So they both walk downstairs and leave the building. During this time, the husband arrives back at their hotel looking for his wife to tell her that he is, in fact, leaving her to be with his mistress. He sees the brochures and realizes that his wife has gone to the resort to look for him. He drives to the resort but finds no one about. He pushes the button to summon the elevator (still on the upper floor from when his wife & the caretaker left earlier that day), but it doesn’t respond because its gate is still open. He takes the stairs to the upper level. Finding no one, he then gets into the elevator, closes the gate, and pushes the ‘down’ button. The elevator descends a few feet………..and then stalls. The man frantically pushes the buttons and shakes the cage in an effort to get out. But it’s useless…..and the resort is closed for the season. The episode ends with a shot of the dark, abandoned building, with the sounds of man shaking the elevator cage and screaming for his life. That episode scared the life out of me as a kid.

The entire concept of this show was off. Now of course it's impossible not to lob this show together w/anthologies like Twilight Zone or Outer Limits, but the show's insistence that we were getting the real deal meant that we were warned ahead of time not to expect irony, dark humor or weird characters that were hallmarks of those other shows. I don't remember the stories being that eerie to begin with (Hollywood always has to play up the "based on a true story" angle when the story itself seems too slight (A man and a woman both have premonitions of doom - will their nightmares come true?). Claiming to be a true story has got to be the worst way to make things sound believable (hasn't John Newland ever seen people tell ghost stories by campfire?) On an interesting note, I believe that this show was briefly remade for syndication about 20 some off years ago. Two episodes include the one about the total strangers linked by a common premonition of doom (involving murder in a botched bank robbery) and another involving a man enjoying a vacation at an idyllic sea-side bed&breakfast that happens to be run by ghosts (or vampires, or demons, or whatever other kinds of monsters have apparently human faces, glowing eyes and big cheerful smiles). That episode scared the crap out of me. Too bad nobody took the idea any farther than that.

IMO this show never jumped. This was probably the scariest show on the air. I used to watch it late at night and would have nightmares. My favorite episode was one where a husband and wife were having problems and she wanted to split up. She said something to him and then went into the house. After she closed the door he came in right behind her but she was nowhere in the house. He searched from top to bottom and never found her. I was a kid then (like most of the others here I'm around 50 now) and I was terrified because they never said what happened to her. I was afraid to go into my room. Another episode I liked was one where this guy had this invention that turned water into gasoline and then he disappeared from the waiting room. I found a VHS copy of One Step Beyond and I'm sure that you can find copies somewhere on the Net