Nostalgia isn't what it used to be, and it never was.
Certainly as an individual, I have become more sceptical, but mainly because I am 40 years older and at least 7 years wiser than when I first started reading books about UFOs, the Highgate Vampire, ancient astronauts, the Loch Ness Monster, sharpening razor blades in cardboard pyramids, and of course the fascinating but [spoiler alert] entirely fictional memoirs of T Lobsang Rampa.
It was definitely more fun when I could read about such things almost uncritically.
There are very few Fortean subjects left where people have not already made their decisions. Many of the "canonical cases" have been debunked, or explained. Detailed histories of proven hoaxes are there for anyone to read in Wikipedia. If you are inclined to look only one step behind the sensational or comical headlines in the tabloids, it quickly becomes clear that in most cases there is little or no remaining mystery.
Discussions in this forum tend to be more about human stupidity, gullibility, and suggestibility. It has gone from "Isn't the world a strange and wonderful place?" to "Don't we see the world in a strange way?" or even just to "Aren't people stupid?" (This last is decidedly un-Fortean, because stupidity is not only a phenomenon known to science, but one of the strongest natural forces and one of the most abundant elements in the universe.)
I had been thinking of writing a post on this very subject, and as part of that, I was wondering which truly "Fortean" phenomena are still a proper unresolved mystery.
In this context, by "Fortean" I mean something like, any phenomenon supported by numerous apparently sincere reports, but which cannot adequately be explained by, and appear to contradict, scientific orthodoxy.
The only one that keeps coming to me is "fish falls". I feel that I have a fairly established and stable position on what I believe about most of the big Fortean subjects. However, I find myself unable to accept the supposed scientific rationalisation of fish falls as "a shoal of fish lifted by a tornado or waterspout, transported inland, and then dropped." This feels like science "explaining away" rather than "explaining" the phenomenon. Put another way: it sounds like a load of cod.
Unfortunately, fish falls do not have the glamour and excitement of a relict colony of plesiosaurs in a Scottish loch, or a carving on an ancient pyramid being clear evidence that our ancestors were visited by astronauts. Fish falls do not keep me awake at night like the thought of the Highgate Vampire did when I was teenager.
However, to be fair, if I was camping, a prolonged fish fall might keep me awake.