INTERVIEW: Cliff Simon goes ‘Into the Unknown’ looking for the supernatural
Photo: Cliff Simon is a survivalist and explorer featured on Into the Unknown. Photo courtesy of Travel Channel / Provided by press site with permission.
There’s a word that Cliff Simon, explorer on the new Travel Channel series Into the Unknown, kept using when describing his six adventures on the reality series: exciting. For years, he has been waiting for the opportunity to share his skills with a TV audience and go explore the supernatural in the natural world. Into the Unknown, which premieres Monday, July 27 at 11 p.m., is exactly the vehicle he was looking for.
“I was always interested in it,” Simon said of his fascination with the supernatural. “Not only are we dealing with paranormal activity or the supernatural, there’s a whole adventure side to it as well.”
Simon’s fascination goes back to when he was a child growing up in South Africa. He said he had a “few instances” when he was young where he heard strange things in his bedroom. He remembers being afraid of the dark, so it could have simply been those fears materializing. But he was quick to admit that he has seen ghosts and what he believes are UFOs.
“So I’m going out there to look for these things,” he said. “I’m trying to document them. That’s my goal. … I’m going in totally in the middle. I know what I’ve seen in my life. I believe — a personal belief of mine — there are things out there. We just can’t explain what they are now. That’s why they’re paranormal. Paranormal is just things that can’t be explained.”
Simon said in 50 years or 100 years some of these so-called paranormal phenomena will likely be explained, entering into the textbooks and out of the fantasy realm. Until then it’s up to adventurers and eyewitnesses to find them and document their supposed reality.
“I go in with a completely clear head and no bias at all,” Simon said. “I’m not out to debunk any kind of myths or legends or any of these things. I just want to find the answer, and if I can’t find the answer physically by seeing something, I want to find an answer scientifically by recording something with some of the equipment I do carry. I’m going in totally unbiased, not out to debunk anything, and I’m most definitely not a skeptic. I do believe there’s a lot out there. We haven’t actually seen it, and we haven’t documented it properly.”
The TV host kept some of the secrets of the first season to himself, but he did offer a few tasty bits to entice the viewers. In the Louisiana bayou, for example, he hunted for the legendary Rougarou, a werewolf-like beast that reportedly feeds on human flesh. Simon called the monster terrifying.
“I did find the nest,” he said. “We found hair. We found bones underneath the nest. What I did is I climbed a huge, 50-foot tree, and on the top, through speaking with witnesses, they guided me kind of to the area. And I did find a nest up there and found bones and found hair, so we are actually getting the hair DNA tested. And we’ll see what happens, but definitely finding a lot of things, a lot of evidence.”
Throughout these adventures Simon felt and heard odd things in nature, things he couldn’t quite explain. He remembers another instance in the deep woods of North Carolina, and what he found will be presented to the viewers without any fancy edits. And for skeptics of reality TV, he said simply: “Nothing was fabricated,” not even the episode on the world-famous Jersey Devil from New Jersey.
“Look, certain things happened to me in the Pine Barrens,” he admitted. “We set up bait traps. I’m allowed to tell you that. We set up bait traps. There were some very strange phenomena happening with that, which the viewers will get to see, but I’m not calling it a myth because I don’t think it’s a myth. It’s definitely a legend. The Jersey Devil is a legend, and it’s definitely very much alive and kicking down in the Pine Barrens. Everybody I’ve spoken to down there are terrified of it. We managed to get one day to a hotel, and we walked in. And the staff at the hotel said, ‘Are you guys a film crew?’ I kind of said, ‘Yes, we’re investigating the Jersey Devil.’ They kind of screamed and said, ‘Oh my God, we’re so scared of it.’ … So the legend is very much alive, and people are still very, very scared of the Jersey Devil for sure.”
When Simon began filming each episode, he would meet with local residents and check out their stories and community contacts. He needed to make sure they were credible people, so he visited with their families and talked with people they knew.
“So in my mind they were very credible, and their stories are very credible,” he said. “Also what makes it more real for me is that none of the people that I’ve spoken to in the whole first season has ever gone out to try and make any kind of money from any of these things that they’ve seen or try to get any kind of publicity. In actual fact, they went the other way and tried to hide it from people.”
Now those secrets will be revealed on the first season of Into the Unknown.
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
Into the Unknown with Cliff Simon will premiere Monday, July 27 at 11 p.m. on Travel Channel. Click here for more information.
Cliff and I worked on his memoir, Paris Nights: My Year at the Moulin Rouge,” which was named on of the best new titles from an independent press by Kirkus Reviews. He spent a year at the iconic Paris cabaret getting into all kinds of fun and trouble on the streets of Paris. Book is available through Amazon and other online retail book stores. A great ride. A chapter from the book, “White Bubble of South Africa,” which retells boyhood adventures with his father, was nominated for a Pushcart Prize as one of the best American short stories.