What’s Beyond? A Chat with Don Wildman about Buried Worlds

Some calls go too quickly. That was the case when I talked with the star of a new series premiering June 8 on Travel Channel, Buried Worlds with Don Wildman. Vampires, snakes, and the site of the largest child sacrifice in history were just some of what we discussed that viewers could expect to see in his new show. But more than once he said this televised quest was about something deeper, something universal, something still not understood: what’s Beyond.

Not what’s beyond your neighborhood, city, or state borders. Not even what’s beyond your country –although that does factor in somewhat.

No, he was talking about what’s Beyond the Veil.

As he put it, even though we’re equipped with great scientific knowledge of the world, it’s interesting what we’re still confused about and don’t know. We’re still left with existential questions of the world for which we as yet have no answers.

Will Buried Worlds solve any of those mysteries and clear up any of the confusion? Perhaps.

Or maybe it will just create more questions.

That’s the beauty of the show. It takes us to new places, faces, and ways of thinking about the world around us and what lays beyond.

Creating Escapist Pleasures

Something else we discussed about his show is that the mission of Buried Worlds is threefold:

• Find interesting places and stories
• Teach something
• Create good television

It just so happened he made his trek to places like Bulgaria, Slovakia, Transylvania, Peru, Haiti, and more before coronavirus hit and international travel and film production came to a screeching halt.

Lucky for us. We’ll get to live vicariously through him as he takes us to new sites via this global adventure series.

Vampire Hunting

The series premieres with a vampire hunt in Bulgaria and even makes a brief jaunt to Transylvania.

I got a chance to watch a screener and was surprised to learn the vampire myth started long before Vlad the Impaler, who I mistakenly thought it originated with.

No, Bram Stoker made that popular, but the idea of vampires as not necessarily humanoid,  but at least spiritual beings, was part of Bulgarian legends and lore long before Vlad’s time.

I was most fascinated by where Wildman’s vampire hunting quest began: in an abandoned 19th-century farming village where “relics populated a hillside.” Wildman said the location was crazy. “Couldn’t invent a better set than that.”

He met up with the Sabotnici,  a secretive vampire hunting group. It’s actually the first time they let anyone film what they do.

And what did they do? Basically, a vampire exorcism in a stable of one of the houses.

Wildman classified it and the candle ceremony they performed as an extraordinary experience. (It was certainly something I’d never seen before.)

Beneath Buda Castle

I noted that besides being part of the first film crew that the Sabotnici allowed to accompany them, Buried Worlds also went somewhere else regular tourists would never get to see: beneath Buda Castle.

Wildman said he doesn’t take it lightly that there’s a lot of competition on TV and his show can’t look like anything else.

However, he also shared another story that wasn’t necessarily related to the show but which he found very cool. The guide who took him on the tour beneath the castle share with him afterward that it was because of watching Wildman on Cities of the Underworld that he became a historian.

I thought that was pretty cool, but clearly not as cool as Wildman found it. He thought it was both a neat coincidence that’s who ended up being his guide. Also that it was quite the compliment and a testament that TV can have good influences.

On the Job Dangers?

In preparation for my interview with Wildman, I asked if anyone else had questions for him. Priscilla Bettis and Debra V. both had a similar question about the danger involved in filming his show and his travels so I worked that into the interview too.

From watching the “Vampire Hunt” episode, I knew one of the roads he drove on looked terrifying and dangerous. Yes. There was that.

But then he told me something even more frightening. About an Indiana Jones moment in a cave in Peru where he felt something on his leg and realized he had a coral snakes in his pants.

What?!

Only black mambas are more venomous.

Luckily he wasn’t bit, and as he said, after he bolted out of there and the shock had passed, the fear was no sooner replaced by, “Oh, that’s good television!”

He also joked that his wife makes sure to keep his life insurance up-to-date.

Peru

The Peru episode –and trip– must’ve been amazing, because again and again he referred to it.

One of the things he brought up –besides the coral snake– was an incredible find that literally created an archaeologist’s career. The man stumbled across bones which, upon further analysis, revealed the site of the largest mass child sacrifice in history.

I thought it sounded horrifying –and Wildman admitted that it was.

But he also deftly explained that it was a cultural thing the people of that land embraced once upon a time.

It shows we’re all human. We live, learn, make mistakes. We also have beliefs, legends, and myths we rely on to try and make sense of and explain our existence –and what happens when we cease to exist.

Above all, that’s what Buried Worlds with Don Wildman will be about: our differences and our similarities in trying to find answers to what’s beyond.

Listen

You can listen to my interview with Don Wildman wherever you get your podcasts from. I’ve also embedded the episode below.

Check-In

What terrifies you more:

• Snakes or spiders?
• Narrow roads or small planes?
• Tight places or dark spaces?