Kolchak: The Night Stalker (1974)

Kolchak: The Night Stalker is a TV show that focuses on a journalist, who investigates crimes with unlikely causes, which often involves paranormal or strange entities. While Karl often never gets to release his stories or gets what he wants, the use of horror themes blended with comedy and excellent investigative work is a great inspiration for the genre.

Set in Chicago, this series focuses on Karl Kolchak an investigative reporter who works for the Independent New Service. Often he learns about a strange crime through his contacts and investigates it – leading to paranormal encounters and him seeking expert advice from scientists, cultural/occult experts and even conspiracy theorists to uncover the truth. And as the audience, you follow him on that journey and learn more about the weird things that are happening!

But there is a consequence to this. Since he’s vocal of his findings and bumps heads with other journalists, police and government officials things often don’t go well. They attempt different things to keep him quiet, even when concrete proof of the unnatural exists. Added to this, his allies are often impacted and he never gets to release a story… unless it talks about an incident in a more realistic way.

While this show was released almost 50 years ago, it’s focus on an investigator who wants to learn about the truth no matter the cost, with consequences that matter is intriguing. Adding to that, it’s use of paranormal entities and horror is iconic and inspired lot of media, including the X-Files and games like Call of Cthulhu. And as deep cuts go, this is one you need to check out!