Trench Coat & Nightmare Fuel

How Robert Stack's Unsolved Mysteries Became Gen X's Shared Trauma

If you're a Gen Xer who came of age in the late 80s and 90s, chances are you have a Pavlovian response to that haunting, synthesized theme music of ‘Unsolved Mysteries.’

@that_80s_dude😱 Theme still creeps me out! #unsolvedmysteries

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You know the one…those ominous electronic notes that could transform any suburban living room into a portal of dread. And looming over it all was Robert Stack, the man who somehow made a career out of making an entire generation afraid to go to sleep.

The Unlikely Prophet of Paranoia

Robert Stack was born Charles Langford Modini Stack on January 13, 1919, and died in 2003. Before he became the unofficial spokesperson for things that go bump in the night, Stack was actually a legitimate Hollywood heavyweight. He appeared in over forty feature films and won the 1960 Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Performance by an Actor in a Series for his role in The Untouchables. The man had serious acting chops and was even nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role in Written on the Wind (1956).

But here's where it gets interesting: Stack wasn’t just some pretty face reading cue cards. He was inducted into the National Skeet Shooting Hall of Fame in 1971, and served as a gunnery officer in the United States Navy for more than three years during World War II. The guy was basically a real-life action hero who somehow ended up becoming the face of America's unsolved nightmares.