It just doesn’t seem right to do a blog series on Eerie Shows and not include Eerie, Indiana. This series ran on NBC for two seasons but only produced 19 episodes. It was later shown on both The Disney Channel and Fox Kids Network. A version of the show, Eerie, Indiana: The Other Dimension, lasted one season on Fox Kids in 1998.

The show was created by Jose Rivera and Karl Schaefer. Joe Dante, who directed Gremlins and Gremlins 2, served as creative consultant.

Marshall Teller (Omri Katz) is a teen who moves to the small town of Eerie, Indiana with this family. There are not a lot of normal people in Eerie, but Simon Holmes (Justin Shenkarow) is one of them. Marshall and Simon become friends, and they are faced with a variety of bizarre situations that they investigate, including intelligent dogs taking over the world; a tornado hunter; Bigfoot; and of course, Elvis Presley, whom we all knew was alive somewhere in the world–we just didn’t know he was in Eerie, Indiana. Marshall and Simon learn something about themselves, or their town, every time they solve a mystery. Every piece of evidence accumulated was stored in a locker and noted in a diary.

Marshall’s parents are Edgar (Francis Guinan) and Marilyn (Mary-Margaret Humes) and his sister is Syndi Marie Priscilla (Julie Condra). There were also a variety of recurring community characters.

Pop culture references are a big part of the writing, especially horror films. The first episode was titled “Foreverware.” Betty Wilson and her twin sons come to welcome the family to the neighborhood. Betty and the boys look like they came from a 1960s sitcom. And there’s a reason for that. Betty sells a Tupperware type of product that her husband invented before he passed away. It supposedly preserves food for a decade. However, one of the twins passes a note to Marshall that Betty uses the containers to keep herself and her children preserved from what they looked like in 1964. The boys are tired of middle school and want to move forward in their lives.

The critics liked the show. Entertainment Weekly’s Ken Tucker noted that “you watch Eerie for the small-screen spectacle of it all—to see the way . . . feature-film directors . . . oversaw episodes that summoned up an atmosphere of absurdist suburban dread.” Ray Richmond of the Orange County Register said, “it’s the kind of knowingly hip series with equally strong appeal for both kids and adults, the kind that preteens will watch and discuss.” USA Today described it as “Stephen King by way of The Simpsons.”

So, with all this positive press, why did it only last for 19 episodes? It was at the cusp of time when shows for tweens would become very popular. When the show aired, the 9-12-year-old audience was not catered to. It was also more expensive to produce because the directors wanted it on film rather than video.

The DVD was released in 2004, and it can be streamed on Amazon. In 1997, a series of books came out with seventeen volumes. The series has held up very well and was considered ahead of its time. It paved the way for similar shows that would do much better in the ratings in the mid-nineties. If it had debuted half a decade later, it probably would have been a huge hit. It was such a unique concept for a show—something that we need a bit more of in television now thirty years later.