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How Did You Discover Fortean Times Magazine?

Fortean Times? .. sorry .. I mis read that as Radio Times ..

My parents plane crashed over a jungle in the Himalayas. It was one of those 1930's one's like in Indiana Jones and Tarzan when I was a new born baby. I was found by some monks who raised me and trained me in the ways of Fort-Fu and dick/ fart jokes. They returned me to Western civilisation armed with this knowledge, a well thumbed copy of issue 12, a bottle of Tizer and my name written on a scrap of parchment.
 
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Fortean Times? .. sorry .. I mis read that as Radio Times ..

My parents plane crashed over a jungle in the Himalayas. It was one of those 1930's one's like in Indiana Jones and Tarzan when I was a new born baby. I was found by some monks who raised me and trained me in the ways of Fort-Fu and dick/ fart jokes. They returned me to Western civilisation armed with this knowledge, a well thumbed copy of issue 12, a bottle of Tizer and my name written on a scrap of parchment.
You're a cunny funt.
 
Fortean Times? .. sorry .. I mis read that as Radio Times ..

My parents plane crashed over a jungle in the Himalayas. It was one of those 1930's one's like in Indiana Jones and Tarzan when I was a new born baby. I was found by some monks who raised me and trained me in the ways of Fort-Fu and dick/ fart jokes. They returned me to Western civilisation armed with this knowledge, a well thumbed copy of issue 12, a bottle of Tizer and my name written on a scrap of parchment.

I reckon you were raised by yaks, you're a bit of a cowboy.
 
Through an eccentric uncle. As it should be.

same here. I got a huge stack of them , ranging from 2000ish to 2015. I had heard of it back in the 90s though, through the TV program on c4.

would love to see the progrAm again actually.....goes to see if it's on YouTube .
 
Summer 1997 - moved into a rented room in a Victorian house, and in my room in the open fireplace I was too scared to use was a copy - with a dinosaur on the cover if I remember rightly? I remember being mildly alarmed at an article on aggressive aliens for some reason... and then I didn't really think about Fortean Times again until summer 2007 (which is weird in itself as I've always been fascinated with all things Fortean since I was a kid). I'd had a trip up to Scotland - revisiting childhood haunted which sparked my interest in weird shit again... and upon returning back to Brighton, I needed a magazine to read while waiting for my clothes in the launderette. I remember it was an IHTM which got me hooked - about someone's childhood encounter with a giant orange slug in the woods behind their home in the summer of 1983... and I thought, why the hell haven't I been getting this magazine every month?
 
Most of my life I've had an interest in Fortean topics so had seen the magazine referred to here and there. Didn't actually see a copy until a shop opened in the central city here (Christchurch, NZ) which sold nothing but a very wide selection of magazines from around the world (mainly the US & UK)..must have been in the early 1990s. I would buy the odd copy now and then..it was always 3 months out of date by the time it reached our shores. Seemed to get a wider distribution here in the late 90s and early 2000s..saw it in a number of big chain bookshops around then. I finally subscribed in 2009. All the magazine shops have since folded and I doubt you can find Fortean Times on any local store shelves now.
 
i first read fortean times about 20 years ago, but i can't remember how or why i first came across it. but i used to like ghost stories when i was a kid, and ufo stuff, and all the stuff that came to the mainstream thanks to the likes of the x-files.

i subscribed for a few years but haven't read the mag in a long time.

by coincidence, just the other week i discovered my local whsmiths does actually stock it. i hadn't seen it there for ages. it is on an unreachable top shelf, next to the gaming mags. i didn't buy it though. sorry.
 
It’s a tradition that W H Smith never put the FT on the same part of the shelf twice. They are so confused by it, you could see the next issue in the caravanning section.

this ^
 
Would have been about 1992, from Odyssey 7 in Manchester. I thiiiiiink the cover story was on the then recent showing of Ghostwatch. I'd forgotten that it only came out every other month in those days! I subscribed a few years later and got a free copy of Fortean Studies. This all seems like forever ago...
 
I got my first copy in summer 1997, found it in WH Smith. Think there was an article about Nessie in it, but can’t recall what else. It’s still here somewhere- I subscribed immediately and have every copy since. I regularly tell my stepson they’ll be his inheritance....
That said, I’ve had an interest in things Fortean since I was about 10, when my Dad bought the Readers Digest book of Strange Stories and Amazing Facts. Still got that, too...
 
I saw my first FT mag on the top shelf of a large newsagent/book shop (not WH Smith) in the early 80's and bought it to show my brother and mates. Strange thing was (and I remember this vividly) I didn't buy it because it was something new, I bought it because we had all heard of FT and were surprised after all those years it was still being published . Couldn't believe the low issue #, always assumed it was a mag of the '60s.
 
I'd read about this legendary magazine in the late seventies, but I had no idea in those pre-Internet days how to find any info about a magazine from Europe. However, at Oklahoma State University, a short, weekly newsletter appeared devoted to the paranormal (a la Nature or New Scientist for forteana). It lasted maybe two issues before it expired -- but it carried an ad in the back for the Fortean Times. I subscribed immediately, and kept subscribing until it actually showed up at Barnes & Noble and Border's.
 
I found the Fortean Times in the local DHSmith shop when I moved to Bury St Edmunds in 2003. When I opened it, I found it was a new and flashy version of The News, which I used to get from Bob Rickard back in the 70s -- the transformation from A5 duplicated format into a full on colour magazine was quite startling.
My local shop keeps putting FT in the science fiction section, and take no notice of my furtive attempts to move it into the science section..
 
I first bumped into a collection of Fortean Times in the 70s, back when it was called The News. I was a kid at the time and a neighbor had some copies. My family were living in London at the time.
 
It’s a tradition that W H Smith never put the FT on the same part of the shelf twice. They are so confused by it, you could see the next issue in the caravanning section.
Hahaha - this is very true. Every month when it comes to Fortean Times day it becomes a bit of a game to find where they've decided to put it this month. It's usually with the comics or music magazines - occasionally with the science section - sometimes with those baffling large array of true crime magazines that only W.H.Smiths seem to stock. The oddest place I've seen it - and this happened for a good month or two - was with the TV listings magazines.
 
The first edition of FT I ever purchased was FT63 after seeing it advertised in Viz. Back in those days (early 90s) both titles were with John Brown Publishing, if memory serves. Oddly I had been aware of Fort and his works for well over ten years by that point, having found a copy of New Lands in the bargain bin in my local Woolworths, and borrowed Book of the Damned from my local library, but had never clocked the existence of the magazine. I have not missed a copy since!
 
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The first edition of FT I ever purchased was FT63 after seeing it advertised in Viz. Back in those days (early 90s) both titles were with John Brown Publishing, if memory serves. Oddly I had been aware of Fort and his works for well over ten years by that point, having found a copy of New Lands in the bargain bin in my local Woolworths, and borrowed Book of the Damned from my local library, but had never clocked the existence of the magazine. I have not missed a copy since!
I think Bizarre magazine was also John Brown Publishing at the same time. I remember Fortean Times once describing it accurately as our delinquent little Sister.
 
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