Lost Tapes

***Lost Tapes*** is an American television series produced by Go Go Luckey Entertainment and narrated by Rick Robies. The program presents fictional found footage accounts depicting traumatic encounters with creatures cryptozoological, supernatural, mythological or extraterrestrial. Creatures include Bigfoot, the Chupacabra, vampires, werewolves, and reptilians. The series aired for three seasons on Animal Planet from 2008 to 2010.

## Overview

The series, shot in a mockumentary style, depicts traumatic scenarios where people are attacked and or/killed by mysterious, dangerous, deadly, wild, and ferocious paranormal cryptids. Most episodes begin with a quick introduction of facts, which include interviews with experts explaining scientific theories or facts and folklore behind the episode's titular creature. Episodes in the second season begin with footage of a person being attacked and often killed by the episode's creature, an introduction meant to set up the events of each episode. The third season had every episode include an introduction, though the events of every episode in all three seasons are accompanied by videos of scientists, cryptozoologists, and folklorists giving their very thoughts and opinions of the creatures, which are called *Lost Tapes: Revelations*.

A common formula involves the human characters, usually either a single person or a small group, ending up in a remote part of the world or otherwise in a place with few options of escape, such as enclosed areas like buildings or tunnels. They soon encounter the episode's creature in a series of stressful events, which sometimes result in the deaths of some or all of the featured characters. Many episodes end in cliffhangers which state that the creature which appeared in the episode was never found and may "live among us". With the exception of a brief injury in "Thunderbird", no children have been physically harmed onscreen, though sometimes they become traumatized after the events of the episode, as in "Chupacabra" and "Death Raptor".

In most episodes, the creatures are often partially revealed to the audience, and in brief glimpses or otherwise only as silhouettes, shadows, or obscured by darkness; sometimes they are never seen at all, but their presence is made obvious by sounds and the characters' reactions to them. To give the show a mysterious atmosphere, techniques are used similar to *Jaws* and the creatures are almost never fully seen. The final episode of season one, "Hellhound", marked the first time that a creature was shown on camera, and the second season revealed more creatures than the first. The third season showed even more creatures, and many of them in full view of the camera.

While most episodes feature the titular cryptid as an antagonist, in some, they benefit the people that the story follows. In "Bigfoot", the titular creature seems to be watching over and protecting the main character, even killing a poacher that was trying to attack her; "Mothman" implies that the featured cryptid was trying to warn people about the imminent collapse of a bridge.

The third season also introduces the group known as the Enigma Corporation, "a private security system that specializes in the unexplained", though it is not exactly clear what order their appearances are supposed to be chronologically or if the characters remember their experiences from each episode, as there is no connection made between each time besides the third (and, in "Strigoi Vampire", fourth) agent being killed.

## Episodes

Main article: *List of Lost Tapes episodes*

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## Reception

*Lost Tapes* has received mixed reviews from critics. A negative criticism among fans came with the creatures in the third season, which they described as less convincing with animatronics and computer-generated imagery or even simply people in costumes.