KYLE MURPHYStaff Writer

Those tuning in to the History Channel to catch the latest episode of “The UnXplained” on Friday, July 11 saw a familiar local face on their screens.

“The UnXplained” is a television series on the History Channel, hosted by William Shatner, that “explores subjects that have mystified mankind for centuries” where each episode focuses on a topic that consists of exploring several mysteries, moments and events in history that may or may not be explained by science.

According to its description, the episode titled “Secrets of the Civil War” aired on July 11 focused on the “rumors of lost treasure and haunted battlefields, to mysterious premonitions and secret societies, could these intriguing tales shed new light on America’s darkest days?”

One of the main topics is haunted Civil War battlefields, like the Battle of Chickamauga, which is something Russell is familiar with. According to Russell, he was attending a Parks and Rec conference when producers from “The UnXplained” invited him to be on the show.

“When I first got it, I thought it was somebody spoofing me, pulling my leg,” Russell said. “I thought ‘why would the History Channel wanna talk to me?’”

After some research and confirming the email was legitimate, Russell responded back and was sent an agreement to come over to Long Beach, Calif., which the show covered the expenses of the travel and accommodations. During their correspondence was when Russell learned that the producers reached out as they discovered his podcast, “Tennessee Ghosts and Legends”, and the episode where he talked about Chickamauga and the apparition “Old Green Eyes” that allegedly haunts the battlefield, which he was told that the story was not well known.

“[The producer] said there’s also not a lot of information out there on it,” Russell said as recalled the conversation. “He said, ‘when we listened to your podcast, we thought out of all the things we found, you actually had the most information in one spot. We didn’t have to go searching for everything.’”

Russell said he laughed when the production team referred to him as an expert, as he, like the show’s research team, just looked up all the information about the topic and compiled it to tell the story for his podcast.

“All I did was just put it together and what I hoped would be entertaining in a 15 minute podcast episode,” he said. “Apparently they found it pretty entertaining because they flew me to California to talk about it on an international television show.”

And before anyone attempts to ask him: no, Russell did not meet Shatner. According to Russell, the team explained that the legendary actor comes in to film his parts during post production, and film all of his segments for the season. While he did not meet Shatner, it didn’t deter his experience working with the crew, highlighting they let him have notes on hand to be accurate and how good their sound equipment was.

“The sound guy was kind of sitting off to the side and in the middle of me talking about one of the parts, he holds his hand up and everybody stops,” Russell recalled. “I didn’t really know what was going on, but the guy who was asking me questions, he’s like, ‘hold on.’”

The interviewer told Russell that they would need to reshoot the segment, and when he asked if he messed, the producer said that wasn’t the case.

“He said ‘there’s an airplane flying over and we can hear it.’ I’m sitting there, ‘my hearing’s not great, but I think I could hear an airplane.’”

Russell said as soon as the sound guy put his down, they got back into filming. Russell said that moment stuck out as he thought it was neat that the team was that focused on the quality of the production that they would stop it for just the sound of a plane.

“It’s so finite to the point where they can’t even have an airplane sound in the background,” he said. “We were filming just in a building, so it’s not like it was a big sound stage or anything like that.”

Overall, Russell said it was an extraordinary experience to be a part of the show, and felt fortunate that he was selected.

“If anyone ever got the offer, I would say definitely take it because to go do it and say you’ve been able to do that is a pretty neat thing,” Russell said.

He also encouraged others who create any form of content like podcasts and videos to continue put content out there.

“You just never know who’s gonna see it and what it could turn into,” Russell said. “So don’t be afraid to put stuff out there because you know, you never know. You could end up on the History Channel.”

Those who missed the episode can watch it on demand with their cable provider.