Monsters, aliens, the paranormal inspire series
'Monsters Across America' is available on the Fox Nation streaming service
“Monsters Across America,” a paranormal travel series, is available on the Fox Nation streaming service.
Joe Escalante has always had a fascination with monsters, aliens and the paranormal.
The Orange County native and bassist for punk rock band The Vandals grew up on monster films and the eerie 1970s TV series “In Search Of…” hosted by Leonard Nimoy. He also read books about the Loch Ness Monster and Bigfoot.
Escalante has manifested his love for these types of stories into a new television series, “Monsters Across America,” which he sold to Fox News’ paid streaming service, Fox Nation, last year.
“I don’t like, just, campfire tales,” said Escalante. “These are all real stories with real people who had these experiences.”
A trio of episodes premiered in October focusing on the tall tales surrounding the Sarasota Skunk Ape, the Pensacola Sea Monster and the Provo Bigfoot.
Three more episodes exploring stories of the New Jersey Devil, the Pennsylvania Thunderbird and a monster snake said to lurk in a lake in Charlotte, North Carolina, were uploaded to the service on Jan. 19.
“This is almost more of a travel show where you find the monster, you go to the town and that monster has a story,” he said. “There are monster sightings and then you research it and find out why that monster is there.”
“There’s a broad purpose to the show that’s formulated from things I learned by working on other shows,” he said.
Escalante has a varied resume. On top of being in an iconic Southern California band, he has worked as a lawyer, a volunteer judge and a radio host. He ran Kung Fu Records along with his bandmate Warren Fitzgerald for more than two decades and he’s written for and produced several television programs including History Channel’s “Ancient Aliens” and I.D./ Discovery Channel’s “True Nightmares.”
“There are monster-hunting shows where you’re in the forest all night with an infrared camera, and the next day you’re up listening to audio anomalies that you think might be a monster,” he said. “Those shows are successful, but that’s just not my cup of tea.”
“Monsters Across America” is hosted by Fox News personality and monster enthusiast Kacie McDonnell, who interviews people in each town who claim to have had experiences with or sightings of these monsters or who can shed light on the history behind each story.
Since he was hunkered down at home for most of last year due to the coronavirus pandemic, Escalante researched and wrote six episodes during lockdown, and as things across the country began to slowly reopen, he and a skeleton crew headed out to film for three weeks. Escalante serves as the program’s showrunner, executive producer and director.
So far, he’s been most intrigued by the Pensacola Sea Monster; it seems “the most real,” he said.
That tale’s episode tells the story of five teenagers who embarked on a diving expedition offshore of Pensacola, Florida on March 24, 1962.
“A storm came and only one of them made it back alive,” Escalante said, referencing the survivor, 19-year-old Edward McCleary. “His story is that they were all eaten by a sea monster, and he stuck to that story until his death.
“They only recovered one of the bodies. It’s a terrifying story and it’s the only monster story that I know of in this world where the monster actually killed people. Yeah, you can say a chupacabra came out and killed someone or whatever, but to me, that’s just fantasy and folktales. But this is a real story with four deaths and the only witness said it was a sea monster,” said Escalante.
The possibilities for future episodes are seemingly endless. There are plenty of stories to be explored right here in Southern California, and Escalante said he’ll be looking into a few of those as well.
“I’m still researching the Dog Woman of Watts,” he said, referencing reports in the early 1960s of a doglike creature with a woman’s face seen in the area by multiple people. “I’d need to find some victims and I’d like to see a police report. If there’s a police report on a monster, I like that monster.”