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FT354

Moth_in_relay said:
Haven't read everything yet, but I agree Bob's article is fantastic, great to see it unpack so many aspects of the "strange, melancholy, disquiet". Glad to see Scarfolk prominent, and I liked Jim Jupp's point about VHS having a similar (but different) haunted quality.
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Thanks so much... honestly, I'm so thrilled by the reaction to all of this. Yeah, I'm really fascinated by those examples of later hauntedness. Pye Corner Audio's Sleep Games is a great album for evoking some of that 1980s VHS weirdness.
 
PeteByrdie said:
I saved this month's ish for my long weekend away on my dad's boat, so I've only just finished it. FT 354 is perhaps the most enjoyable I've read for a long time. Bob Fischer's 'Haunted Generation' article feels like vindication for feeling the media of my childhood was always off-kilter, sort of subtly spooky. It's nice to learn that that sense has been noticed by others, and can be recreated, because it's something I miss. I was born in 1974, so really only experienced the tail end of this oddness, yet have often thought back to it. My sister is five years older than I, and is no stranger to the eccentric and weird, yet doesn't have the same sense of those times. It really seems to be something that you had to be tuned to, and I now feel privileged to be so. Excellent article!
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Again... thanks Pete! It's definitely a feeling that not everyone got... I've met people of our generation (I was born in 1972) who are utterly baffled by the whole thing. Let's just say we're special. :)

If you want to recapture the feeling, I'd definitely recommend you checking out some of the music mentioned in the article... Fuzzy Felt Folk is a brilliant compilation of original 1970s recordings that absolutely transports me, but most of the Ghost Box recordings do a superb job of evoking the feeling, too. The Belbury Tales by Belbury Poly is probably a really good starting point.
 
I'd recommend the Fuzzy Felt Folk compilation too, it's tremendously evocative.

BobbyFischface said:
Oh blimey, this one...?


One thing I wanted to discuss in the article (but just ran out of space - something had to give!) was how much of this stuff was actually intentionally unsettling? Those Near and Far titles looks like the beginning of a horror film, but was that accidental? Did the producers just think they were showing a playground scene, with a quirky version of a childrens' tune? And if not, and it was intended to be disquieting, then... why? Like you say, it's just an educational geography programme.
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It's as if there was something in the air (or the water), and I don't think it's a matter of looking back with the benefit of hindsight with all those years in between. There was a definite increase in interest at the time in the stuff we here call Fortean, and the macabre, that popped up in all sorts of unlikely places - schools TV just one of them. Uri Geller, Doctor Who, James Herbert, Chariots of the Gods, The Exorcist and The Omen, all that and more took strangeness to the mainstream. It became part of the landscape, literally in some cases.
 
I have just watched the whole of that Minehead documentary.

I was surprised to discover it was made as late as 1984! It seemed very like the place I remember from the seventies. Haunting in its own way. :)
 
GNC said:
It's as if there was something in the air (or the water), and I don't think it's a matter of looking back with the benefit of hindsight with all those years in between. There was a definite increase in interest at the time in the stuff we here call Fortean, and the macabre, that popped up in all sorts of unlikely places - schools TV just one of them. Uri Geller, Doctor Who, James Herbert, Chariots of the Gods, The Exorcist and The Omen, all that and more took strangeness to the mainstream. It became part of the landscape, literally in some cases.
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There must have been something in the air (or water). The Hexham Heads got their major exposure on BBC1's flagship daily news magazine programme, for heaven's sake. And the Beeb was busy making quite straight-faced but non-sceptical documentaries about Borley Rectory and the woman who claimed to be composing for dead composers.
And even the Public Information Films that weren't supposed to be scary used to terrify me. This one for instance:
 
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ghughesarch said:
And even the Public Information Films that weren't supposed to be scary used to terrify me
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They were very much in the tradition of the British Transport Films. There are lots of canal and waterways-related films on Youtube which evoke a similar dreamscape. The gentle music and calm, authoritive narrator induce a passive and receptive mood. The sound effects evoke unseen events, as if imprinted on the landscape. It was poetical film-making.

Supposing there was a budget to promote footpaths today, it would be blown on demographic research and merchandising opportunities. :rolleyes:
 
BobbyFischface said:
Oh blimey, this one...?.
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It couldn't be more unsettling could it! We should track down the composer and ask them what on earth they were thinking of. You just can't imagine such a theme tune passing muster for a children's programme now. It'd have to be wildly jolly or at least attempting to be Cool and down with the kids.

I can only suggest 'Picture Box' in return (doubtless this has been discussed before)
It's no wonder we're all so messed up.
 
It's the 'things that surely weren't meant to be unsettling, but are' that interest me - and evoke the feeling - the most, I think. Surely nobody intended the opening titles to Picture Box to be disquieting? It was a gentle daytime programme for schools. And yet the combination of the discordant waltz and the antique ornament just reek of creepy Victoriana.

I suspect there was a kind of 'background oddness' in the 1970s which meant that this stuff just didn't ring the alarm bells that it would in 2017; if everything is a bit creepy and unsettling, then it's less likely that someone is going to pipe up and say 'Hang on... is this appropriate?'

But then, obviously, we as children did at least have an inkling that this material had a vague wrongness about it, otherwise it wouldn't have made such a profound impression on us.
 
Do you think, maybe, that there are more people from that era, that are interested in the supernatural etc, perhaps because of this?
 
Yeah, definitely. It was a brief era when the supernatural was part of the mainstream media, and included (in at least a semi-serious fashion) on primetime news and in national newspapers. I think it was a very credulous era, when the public in general were much more open to stories of strange phenomena. I don't think you would have to travel far in the 1970s to find someone who was open to believing in, say, the Loch Ness Monster. Something that's virtually unthinkable now.
 
Probably most of us on here are from that era, maybe that's why we have a skeptical nature being born in the 60s/70s where it was a given, and more than half into the age of the internet where it is mostly ridiculed,I would like to think that it gave us all, eventually, a quite rounded view of the weird and wonderful.

Except for the creepy ass music with the spooky kids voices
 
BobbyFischface said:
I think it was a very credulous era, when the public in general were much more open to stories of strange phenomena. I don't think you would have to travel far in the 1970s to find someone who was open to believing in, say, the Loch Ness Monster. Something that's virtually unthinkable now.
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I'm not sure if I'd concur that you have to look further for people that are happy to admit they believe in weird stuff? Maybe the type of weird stuff has changed though. Fashions of weird stuff. Not just belief in Things (like loch ness monsters and bigfoots) but also concepts like homeopathy and westernised feng shui and (hmmm tries to think of the latest woo-ish fad) many types of "healthy eating" diets, detox diets, whathaveyou, the belief that the tories care about the concerns of ordinary people... people believe all sorts of odd and irrational things . I think those sorts of things are also under the umbrella of weird societal things, they're just not as obviously fortean as unicorns and ufos.

Maybe a lot of the trippy stuff we saw on the tv as kids can be put down to the fact it was being made by people who'd done a lot of drugs in the 1960s :)
 
ghughesarch said:
And even the Public Information Films that weren't supposed to be scary used to terrify me.[/MEDIA]
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That's great, ghughesarch. It's exactly in the vein of the rural eerie Englishness thing, with the idea that the past is there somewhere tangible, just beyond the hedgerow or springing up at you from a round barrow or something... shudder.
 
ghughesarch said:
There must have been something in the air (or water). The Hexham Heads got their major exposure on BBC1's flagship daily news magazine programme, for heaven's sake. And the Beeb was busy making quite straight-faced but non-sceptical documentaries about Borley Rectory and the woman who claimed to be composing for dead composers.
And even the Public Information Films that weren't supposed to be scary used to terrify me. This one for instance:
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Yes, it makes it worse when disquieting material comes in the sober and authoritative/paternalistic voice of the Beeb. If even they have been infected with wrongness, what hope is there? (It certainly wasn't cancelled out by the rationalism of say Scooby Doo).
 
Eponastill said:
I'm not sure if I'd concur that you have to look further for people that are happy to admit they believe in weird stuff? Maybe the type of weird stuff has changed though. Fashions of weird stuff. Not just belief in Things (like loch ness monsters and bigfoots) but also concepts like homeopathy and westernised feng shui and (hmmm tries to think of the latest woo-ish fad) many types of "healthy eating" diets, detox diets, whathaveyou, the belief that the tories care about the concerns of ordinary people... people believe all sorts of odd and irrational things . I think those sorts of things are also under the umbrella of weird societal things, they're just not as obviously fortean as unicorns and ufos.

Maybe a lot of the trippy stuff we saw on the tv as kids can be put down to the fact it was being made by people who'd done a lot of drugs in the 1960s :)
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Sure, but I was definitely thinking more of otherworldy beliefs rather than just the latest diet or misleading political policy. People have always placed their faith in all kinds of things - both mundane and supernatural - but I think in the 1970s you'd have found far more believers in the latter then you would in 2017, and it was that that contributed to a kind of 'background noise' of weirdness that formed a context in which the creepy TV and popular culture of the era seems to have thrived.

But yeah, I think 1970s TV definitely took on board some of the ethos of the late 60s counter-culture. Even gentle things like Rainbow and Hickory House have a kind of low-level psychedelic strangeness running through them.
 
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BobbyFischface said:
Sure, but I was definitely thinking more of otherworldy beliefs rather than just the latest diet or misleading political policy. People have always placed their faith in all kinds of things - both mundane and supernatural - but I think in the 1970s you'd have found far more believers in the latter then you would in 2017, and it was that that contributed to a kind of 'background noise' of weirdness that formed a context in which the creepy TV and popular culture of the era seems to have thrived.

But yeah, I think 1970s TV definitely took on board some of the ethos of the late 60s counter-culture. Even gentle things like Rainbow and Hickory House have a kind of low-level psychedelic strangeness running through them.
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Was all of that weirdness unique to British TV, or was it worldwide?
 
I think the psychedelic elements are definitely there in some US kids TV of the early 70s, too... things like The Banana Splits and Scooby Doo have them. But it's a brasher, more colourful type of psychedelia, so the TV follows suit. They had Scott McKenzie and the Mystery Machine, we had Pink Floyd and Humphrey Cushion. ;)
 
BobbyFischface said:
I think the psychedelic elements are definitely there in some US kids TV of the early 70s, too... things like The Banana Splits and Scooby Doo have them. But it's a brasher, more colourful type of psychedelia, so the TV follows suit. They had Scott McKenzie and the Mystery Machine, we had Pink Floyd and Humphrey Cushion. ;)
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Yes - HR Pufnstuf and even Seasame Street were pretty out there.
 
Humphrey Cushion, never heard of him *goes to google*

Edit: WTF, I do not remember that, probably put up some kinda screen memory to wipe out that horror
 
Youtube has the horrible truth about Humphrey Cushion!

I have now constructed a false history of having been traumatized by this as a child. I must have been a student at the very least.

The clip lures us in with the titles, which have a flutey Mozartean mood, suggesting that all is right with the world. We may notice the evil grinning letter-box but the opening dialogue about legless cardboard children seems 'armless enough, though it does not, by today's standards, make allowance enough for kids with one eye and two noses.

This discussion of what is normal is placed into a completely new and distressing context as the camera pulls back to reveal . . . Humphrey Cushion! :eek::eek::eek:
 
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I remember Hickory House, but its just that title, no recall at all about Humphrey Cushion, is that a bloody mop head on the table at the end
 
For those of you still traumatised by Picture Box, it may disturb you further to note that Alan Rothwell and Humphrey Cushion frequently TEAMED UP.

They're coming to get you.

While you sleep.

hickoryhouse.jpg
 
Given the blackness of the past day or so, receiving the current issue brought a ray of sunlight into my world. Shall read it tonight, before I go to bed...
 
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