History Series / BeyondBeliefFactOrFiction

* ExactWords: From "The Girl Next Door", Curtis meets Florence, who tells him that she lives across the street. The two enter a relationship that, once his womanizing ways is revealed, ends in heartbreak. He goes to what he thought was her house, only to find it unused. He sees running towards a church next to said house and follows. [[spoiler:He finds a gravestone with her name on it.]] While Curtis himself isn't the narrator, Frakes points out that Florence herself said she lives across the street.

** The mysterious casket salesman from "The Warning", who made Rob fear from his behavior that he was going to cause his death. However, it if weren't for Rob's terrified reaction to the man that apparently only he could see, he and wife would have died when the elevator crashed.

* KnowWhenToFoldEm: In "The Greedy Investor," a man forces his wife to go into real estate speculation as a way to retire within ten years, and he cold heartedly evicts an old lady who used her mortgage payments to pay for her late husband's medical bills, and the old lady responds that: "mark my words: This house will never be yours." Whenever the husband tries to sell the house something happens that makes the potential buyer back out, and after spending thousands on a new furnace, upgrading the plumbing, new carpeting and now having to deal with paranormal occurrences the wife threatens to leave him if he doesn't forget about the house. Just then, a young couple arrives to look at the house, and everything goes fine, and the wife sells them the house for $1. When the husbands tries to question why he sold at such a low price, she said that it was much cheaper than a divorce, the husbands wryly chuckles, and accompanies his wife to get the paperwork, and it turns out that [[spoiler:the old lady's passed away soon after she was evicted, and the young woman was her granddaughter, who assumed the house would be willed to her after her grandmother's death]].

* BadBoss: In "The Cake" the bakery owner is a total {{Jerkass}} who is corrupt and assassinated a crime boss. The ghost of the crime boss returns and takes a [[
[[{{Pun}} deliciously]] ironic revenge by baking him into a cake that he was baking for the hitman that assassinated the crime boss.

* BadBoss: In "The Cake" the bakery owner is a total {{Jerkass}} who is corrupt and assassinated a crime boss. The ghost of the crime boss returns and takes a [[IncrediblyLamePun deliciously]] ironic revenge by baking him into a cake that he was baking for the hitman that assassinated the crime boss.

* AbusiveParents: The deceased stepdaughter in "Secret of the Family Tomb" was revealed to have run away because her biological mother was horribly abusive to her, which led to her running away and dying. After the mother passed away, both put into her stepfather's family tomb, where strange activity causes destruction that leads to graffiti reading "Not Here". [[spoiler:The pastor from the burial reveals the information of the abuse to the policeman involved and believes the destruction is the daughter being unable to rest in peace with her mother by her side. After removing the mother from her husband's family tomb, all activity ends.]]

* BeneathSuspicion: [[spoiler: The nanny]] in "Red-Eyed Creature".
* BlessedWithSuck: There was one story about a guy who could kill people by painting their portrait. He tried to make it at least somewhat useful by only painting portraits of patrons who were either in great suffering or very near death. [[spoiler: Until he learned his last subject was a perfectly healthy young woman who was depressed after her boyfriend left her, which he did not know. He then paints his own portrait and kills himself.]]
* BoulderBludgeon: One short story involves a murderer who killed a man by smashing his head in with a chunk of asphalt. He gladly recounts this story to his cellmate... [[spoiler: who turns out to be the victim's father, who isn't too happy to hear it.]]

* ConcealingCanvas: In "Mail Oder Degree," a scam artist is cursed by one of his victims. Making a fortune, the conman hollows out the wall behind a bookcase to hide the money from his victims and the government. Bad move, [[spoiler: he stripped away the lead shielding that protected his office from the x-ray lab next door, and he died from radiation sickness.]]

* CookedToDeath: In the segment "The Cake" a mobster named Marty Jr. owns the bakery where Dom works as the baker, and orders him to make a cake for a celebration he's going to attend. When Dom gets to work, he sees an eerie face screaming in pain inside the oven, and tells Marty Jr. that he won't bake the cake because of what he just saw, and Marty Jr. fires him and says he'll bake the cake himself. Back home, Dom tells his wife what happened and he spots the face of the man he saw in the oven on a newspaper reporting that Jake Phillips, a local mob boss, was recently killed in a car bombing and they receive a call from a neighboring business owner saying that there's smoke coming from the bakery. After Dom tells his wife to call the fire department he rushes to the bakery where he discovers [[spoiler: Marty Jr.'s charred corpse baked into the cake he was preparing, and the closing narration heavily implies that Marty Jr. was killed by Jake Phillip's vengeful ghost]].

* DeathByMaterialism: One segment revolves around a crooked accountant who had a Voodoo curse placed upon him by an angry (former) client. To hide some of the money he's not reporting to his clients (or the government) he installs a [[ConcealingCanvas wall safe]] to keep it hidden from view, but would keep it open when he was alone, because of [[SicklyGreenGlow the money's mysterious green aura.]] Suddenly he starts losing his hair in clumps, and even teeth, because [[spoiler: by installing his wall safe, he stripped the wall's lead shielding that protected him from the X-ray lab next door, and he died from radiation poisoning.]]

* DiedOnTheirBirthday: The segment "Bad Dreams" from Season 4, Episode 9 is about a woman who keeps dreaming about dying on her 30th birthday. She believes this is a premonition, and she spends her birthday alone with her husband in sheer terror, as events from her premonition come true, but when she survives, she's relieved, and she stops having the dreams. However, one year later, when a proper birthday party is being held in her honor, a relative explains to her husband that her grandmother (Who helped raise her after her parents died when she was a small child) actually got her age wrong and reveals that she is one year younger than she thought she was, meaning this second party is actually her 30th birthday. Once again, events from the woman's original premonition start happening, and moments later she is found stone dead. At the end of the episode, Creator/JonathanFrakes reveals this story to be [[spoiler: a work of fiction]].

* EveryEpisodeEnding: Creator/JonathanFrakes always delivered a pun at the end of every story with a grin, which always related to the story's theme or subject matter. The only time he ''didn't'' do this was in the case of a woman and her daughter being reunited with the woman's [[spoiler: long-lost mother, a Holocaust survivor.]]

%% * GettingCrapPastThe Radar: Due to overwhelming and persistent misuse, GCPTR is on-page examples only until 01 June 2021. If you are reading this in the future, please check the trope page to make sure your example fits the current definition.

** “The Woods” features one taking the form of a quadriplegic doctor who saves a boy from a rattlesnake bite.
** “Firestation 32” has a tragic one where the young boy who often hung around the fire station [[spoiler: died trying to save a family from a house fire, but his spirit still came by to warn the firefighter he was close with to come help the people trapped in the house.]]

* KnowWhenToFoldEm: In "The Greedy Investor," a man forces his wife to go into real estate speculation as a way to retire within ten years, and he cold heartedly evicts an old lady who used her mortgage payments to pay for her late husband's medical bills, and the old lady responds that: "mark my words: This house will never be yours." Whenever the husband tries to sell the house something happens that makes the potential buyer back out, and after spending thousands on a new furnace, upgrading the plumbing, new carpeting and now having to deal with paranormal occurrences the wife threatens to leave him if he doesn't forget about the house. Just then, a young couple arrives to look at the house, and everything goes fine, and the wife sells them the house for $1. When the husbands tries to question why he sold at such a low price, she said that it was much cheaper than a divorce, the husbands wryly chuckles, and accompanies his wife to get the paperwork, and it turns out that [[spoiler: the old lady's passed away soon after she was evicted, and the young woman was her granddaughter, who assumed the house would be willed to her after her grandmother's death]].

* MuggingTheMonster: There was one story called "The Gathering" where a guy tries to rob a bunch of little old ladies playing cards...[[spoiler: who turn out to be a coven of evil witches]].

** The recently deceased hero of the segment, "Where Have All The Heroes Gone" is a western actor named Lash Connors. However, several details about his life, IE a death by gunshot ruled suicide but believed by many to be murder, the fact that he died right before he was slated to make a comeback in a new TV show, and that he played a beloved character that stood for justice, seem to indicate that he was actually based on [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Reeves George Reeves,]] who reportedly does still [[http://www.phantomsandmonsters.com/2010/11/tv-superman-george-reeves-still-haunts.html haunt the house where he died.]] Not unlike Lash, his spirit has also been seen in full costume. [[spoiler: Since the segment was labeled true, it would indicate that the real story was about Reeves and the writers tweaked the details to avoid any legal issues.]] His name is also likely a reference to real Western actors, Alfred "Lash" [=LaRue=] and Chuck Connors.

* PenName: The story "The Writer's Agent" features a dark variant. Mary Jane Layden, an author, gets into a pay dispute with Stan Trask, her agent, because he hasn't gotten anything of hers published. When she fires him he accidentally kills her and hides the body in a compost heap, and releases her recently written manuscript under the name Lucille Carns, and the book is a critical and financial hit. As people ask Trask to interview Lucille, since he "represents" her, he keeps telling people she doesn't do interviews. However, when Lucille shows up for a book signing, Trask goes to event and sees a Mary Jane. As Trask digs through the compost heap, he finds that Mary Jane's body is still there, juts as [[spoiler: two cops who got an anonymous tip find him, and Frakes states that months into his prison sentence, [[DrivenToSuicide Trask hung himself]]]].

* WifeBasherBasher: In "Second Story Murder," a detective is investigating the death of a wealthy business man whom witnesses insist that he was choked by man that was almost twenty feet tall. As the detective looks at the businessman's apartment for clues, [[MrExposition he mentally states]] that he remembers police units answering calls of DomesticAbuse at the residence, and despite the woman dying under suspicious circumstances, the businessman was found not guilty of any wrong doing. As he walks through the apartment, the detective remembers that the woman was an Italian [[spoiler: circus acrobat, whose act consisted of being at the very top of the human tower made up her brothers]]. The detective concludes that the woman's [[spoiler: brothers used their circus training to reach the second story balcony where their ex-brother in law was]], killed him and fled the country. [[AssholeVictim With a wry smile, the detective states, "Italy is out my jurisdiction]]."

->''"Did TropeyTheWonderDog really save CaptainSpaceDefenderOfEarth when he was TrappedByMountainLions? [[spoiler: We got you. It's fiction. We made it up. Not possible. No way. Not a chance. It's false. A total fabrication made up by a writer."'']]

* WifeBasherBasher: In "Second Story Murder," a detective is investigating the death of a wealthy business man whom witnesses insist that he was choked by man that was almost twenty feet tall. As the detective looks at the businessman's apartment for clues, he states that units had to answer calls of DomesticAbuse at the residence, and despite the woman dying under suspicious circumstances, the businessman was found not guilty of any wrong doing. As he cases the apartment, the detective remembers that the woman was an Italian [[spoiler: circus acrobat, whose act consisted of being at the very top of the human tower made up her brothers]]. The detective concludes that the woman's [[spoiler: brothers used their circus training to reach the second story balcony where their ex-brother in law was]], killed him and fled the country. [[AssholeVictim With a wry smile, the detective states, "Italy is out my jurisdiction]]."

* GoldDigger: "The Wealthy Widow" (Season 4, Episode 9A) featured Dirk Sidwell, who seduced and married a woman named Cassie Youngston, whose husband, Milo, was killed in a thresher accident two years prior, and despite leaving her lonely, he left her completely wealthy with a thriving dairy farm. Dirk married Cassie for the reason of finding a strongbox full of cash hidden somewhere on the property since Milo didn't believe in banks. The farm foreman, Jake Rudolph, didn't like Dirk and saw him for who and what he really was in the beginning, and it was either him or Milo's ghost that gave him the scare of his life. [[spoiler:However, unlike Milo, [[CrazyPrepared Cassie did believe in banks, having put all the money into her mutual fund account after he died]] to keep anyone from stealing it, since the strongbox turned up empty after it dropped from the barn and killed Dirk with a blow to the head.]]

* VeryLooselyBasedOnATrueStory: The show's premise. When a story is revealed to be "true", we are often not told anything more than something like "according to our research, yes, a similar event did happen," so frankly, ''any'' of the stories could be true given how liberal of a definition of "similar" they used. The host would sometimes provide some vague information as to the location or time period in which the event supposedly occurred, but not always.

** "The Curse of Hampton Manor" is inspired by [[https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2014/07/leona-helmsley-connecticut-mansion Dunnellen Hall]], a mansion in Greenwich, Connecticut which also has a history of its owners meeting bad ends, including bankruptcy, imprisonment and even suicide. Its most notorious resident was hotelier and real estate developer Leona Helmsley, who purchased the property soon before her conviction for financial crimes in the late 1980s, and on whom the Bev Conklin character is loosely based.[note]Helmsley also died at Dunnellen Hall in 2007, albeit (needless to say) from mundane, natural causes rather than an improbable bathtub electrocution. [/note]

** "The Curse of Hampton Manor" is inspired by [[https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2014/07/leona-helmsley-connecticut-mansion Dunnellen Hall]], a mansion in Greenwich, Connecticut which also has a history of its owners meeting bad ends, including bankruptcy, imprisonment and even suicide. Its most notorious resident was hotelier and real estate developer Leona Helmsley, who purchased the property soon before her conviction for financial crimes in the late 1980s, and on whom the Bev Conklin character is loosely based.[footnote]Helmsley also died at Dunnellen Hall in 2007, albeit (needless to say) from mundane, natural causes rather than an improbable bathtub electrocution. [/footnote]

** "The Curse of Hampton Manor" is inspired by [[https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2014/07/leona-helmsley-connecticut-mansion Dunnellen Hall]], a mansion in Greenwich, Connecticut which also has a history of its owners meeting bad ends, including bankruptcy, imprisonment and even suicide. Its most notorious resident was hotelier and real estate developer Leona Helmsley, who purchased the property soon before her conviction for financial crimes in the late 1980s, and on whom the Bev Conklin character is loosely based.

** "Secret of the Family Tomb" is based on the famous [[https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/the-chase-vault-oistins-barbados Chase Vault]] in Barbados, where it was alleged that coffins moved within a sealed mausoleum over the course of several years in the early 19th Century. The story is relocated to the United States but otherwise follows the true story's lore very closely.

** "The Curse of Hampton Manor" is inspired by Dunnellen Hall, a mansion in Greenwich, Connecticut which also has a history of its owners meeting bad ends, including bankruptcy, imprisonment and even suicide. Its most notorious resident was hotelier and real estate developer Leona Helmsley, who purchased the property soon before her conviction for financial crimes in the late 1980s, and on whom the Bev Conklin character is loosely based.

** "The Curse of Hampton Manor" is inspired by Dunnellen Hall, a mansion in Greenwich, Connecticut which also has a history of its owners meeting bad ends, including bankruptcy, imprisonment and even suicide. Its most notorious resident was hotelier and real estate developer Leona Helmsley, who resided there soon before her conviction for financial crimes in the late 1980s, and on whom the Bev Conklin character is loosely based.

* NoCelebritiesWereHarmed:

* EveryEpisodeEnding: Creator/JonathanFrakes always delivered a pun at the end of every story with a grin, which always related to the story's theme or subject matter. The only time he ''didn't'' do this was in the case of a woman and her daughter being reunited with the woman's [[spoiler: long-lost mother, [[UnacceptableTarget a Holocaust survivor.]]]]