There are two key elements in my own experience of becoming drawn to Fortean subjects - general orientation to the world and exposure to documented Forteana. Here's how I've previously described each of these elements on the forum ...
The background to my longstanding interest in Forteana was described in this thread:
Motivations For Our Fortean Interests
https://forums.forteana.org/index.php?threads/motivations-for-our-fortean-interests.65434/
The most concise response I can offer comes from J. B. S. Haldane:
[M]y own suspicion is that the Universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose.
(Possible Worlds and Other Papers (1927), p. 286)
By the time I entered elementary school, I was already convinced things were stranger than the adults had led me to believe. It wouldn't be until I finished my first pass through university that I finally concluded the strangeness exceeded any human ability to encompass or encapsulate it (at least for the time being ... ).
I was eagerly reading Fortean and Fortean-related materials as soon as I could read (the late 1950's). I absorbed reports of the weird with a combination of wistful incredulity and an attentiveness to assessing how credible such tales could reasonably be taken to be. ...
As to the readings mentioned, here's what I posted in 2016 within this thread:
How Old Are You?
https://forums.forteana.org/index.php?threads/how-old-are-you.61395/
... in which a number of us explained how our interest in Forteana originated.
My entry point into Forteana was early enough to be overwhelmingly in print form ...
From the age of 9 (1960) onward I was a voracious reader. Some of the Forteana-related publications I gobbled up included:
- Strange phenomenon and cryptozoology articles in
True,
Argosy, and other (typically mens) magazines, whose undeliverable / un-returnable issues my postman father was allowed to bring home.
- All the Frank Edwards books (
Stranger than Science, etc.) and similar collections, obtained originally from the public and school libraries and later purchased new through Scholastic Book Service at school.
- Any other 'strange stuff' books I would run across in libraries, yard sales, etc.
- There was a period during which my father (a wizard at poker) would use our 'father / son' time to participate in serious games in the back room of a storefront whose front / cover section was a faux used bookstore, where I'd sit reading for hours. The collection of odd tomes used for the storefront props included a lot of UFO books, all of which I read over multiple visits (and some of which they let me take home). Dad was happy; I was happy; Mom was none the wiser.