The World Beyond was a pilot for an occult detective television series in the vein of The Night Stalker (TV, 1972) and The Norliss Tapes (TV, 1973). As explained in the pre-credit sequence, sports writer Paul Taylor (Granville Van Dusen) died while undergoing a surgical procedure but was retrieved from the brink of death. His brush with the "world beyond" allowed him to communicate with the dead--or, more correctly, for the dead to communicate with him. Had the pilot gone to series, each week would have seen Taylor dispatched by a spirit guide to protect innocents confronted by supernatural peril. In this, the second of two like-named pilots (the first being The World of Darkness) Taylor found himself on a remote Canadian island whose inhabitants were being menaced and killed by a golem made of mud and sticks. Because of the monster's unique nature, this program was sometimes aired under the alternate broadcast title, The Mud Monster.
