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Motivations For Our Fortean Interests

Sharon Hill said:
I expect that's one reason; it's a great comfort to "know".

I admit I do not understand those who cling to a comforting fantasy.
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Might we perhaps...

...'I do understand those who cling to a comforting fantasy'..

Difference being... it helps immensely if you religiously believe it's all true...?
 
AnonyJoolz said:
Nope, you are in fact...
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Your shirt's an absolute belter,..

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Sharon Hill said:
A sidenote: I've been kicked off several "Fortean" websites - Mysterious Universe, the Bigfoot Forum, and more than one Facebook page - for being critical (not rude, just pointing out logical flaws or uncritical points). Funny, that. Some of these circles are for ardent believers only.
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Don't worry, we like to question things here. We even question the questions.
 
I like that 'we' (in the loosest possible term) are a broad church (with a small 'c'). We run from the likes of sci-fi-writing ordained priests to people who classify poltergeists via Pastafarians through to zombie afficionados. Questioning is good, accepting each other in infinitely better.
 
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AnonyJoolz said:
I like that 'we' (in the loosest possible term) are a broad church (with a small 'c'). We run from the likes of sci-fi writing ordained priests to people who classify poltergeists via Pastafarians through to zombie afficionados. Questioning is good, accepting each other in infinitely better.
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So... if some of us haven't a Scooby what you just said there and agree with every word, why does that still make sense here...! :loopy:
 
AnonyJoolz said:
I love this, this is the quintessence of Fortean people :)
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See.. there you go...

Was about to reply, 'Elementary, my dear Watson'!

Thankfully, took time to check out the exact quotation and...

"Elementary," said he. Sherlock Holmes never said "Elementary, my dear Watson" in any of the stories by Conan Doyle. However, that phrase has been used frequently in the movies and was even mistakenly cited in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations for 1937 and 1948.
[End]

Guess, in hindsight, that's precisely the kind of thing that happens here. :cooll:
 
Bad Bungle said:
A return to childhood said Yithian.
This is Venus Hill, I was barely 4 years old when I first aware of passing it on the small twisty lanes in my parent's van. I knew it didn't lead to Venus, but I thought that on a still night you could get a really good view of the planet from the top of the hill. I remember a couple of vivid dreams of reaching out and getting caught in its gravitational pull.
Time and time again I passed Venus Hill, but I couldn't go up the lane - it was far too far to walk from home, I had no bicycle, there were no buses, the roads were so dangerous (more so now as cars got bigger), I was reliant on my parents for transport and they had no reason to go there.
Eventually 15 years on I got a motorbike and went exploring. There was nothing up Venus hill except a farm and a lot of high hedgerow. I'd left it too late and the moment and the magic had gone (and I missed it).
Nearly 40 years later I went back again (a pull like in The Ocean at the End of the Lane), the Farm was now a private house, the hedgerows had been cut down, the lane was just a link-road, it had been greatly widened at the junction - even the road sign had been replaced by a new one (bearing the name of the Borough Council). It was just a road.
I am a rational adult and yet deep down *I know* that the view of Venus would have been glorious if only I could have got to the Hill 50 years ago. Nonsense maybe, just trying to recapture the wonderment of childhood - but I am a damn sight quicker these days in fulfilling plans and getting things done, rather than leaving them for later. And if some-one says a place has an 'atmosphere' or even 'a magic' I give a mental nod, yeah I know what you mean, anything else you've found odd or intriguing you want to talk about ?

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This reminds me very much of a great, and rather deep short story by H.G Wells. I think it's called `The Door in the Wall`. It is about a man who develops a lifelong obsession with what really lies behind a mysterious looking door in a wall If I have remembered rightly this obsession follows a questionable childhood memory of having once peaked in there.

One day he finds the time and courage to just go to the door and enter it and...well, read the story!

It's one of Wells's finest and usually appears in collections of his short tales so should be easy to find.
 
I find, to my surprise, that I didn't respond to this thread when it was first put up. I'll correct that now.

I am of the generation who had a seventies childhood. This meant we were growing up in a time when `the Space Age` was much talked about and the general assumption was that interplanetary travel could well be a part of common experience within our lifetimes. One top of all that the countercultural influence of the hippy tendency was still hanging about - with all it's talk of eco-consciousness and openness to new possibilities. It was also a great time for British television with a whole batch of mindbending shows on the screen like The Tomorrow People and Sapphire and Steel and...well, take your pick.

That's a heady environment to be at your tender years in - particularly if you're a bookish loner. So I was reading science fiction (a novelisation of The Tomorrow People is the first full length novel I recall reading) and then along came the unprecedented boom in paperbacks concerning alternative histories and the paranormal and so on. Like many others here I was reading Daniken and UFO books from the age of about nine or earlier.

In theory, I understood the distinction between fiction and non-fiction but, looking back with a bit of self-honesty, I think the lines became mightily blurred.

When I `grew up` I tried, tried so hard, to put away childish things but the gravitation towards the core of some of that stuff - UFOs and science fiction/horror has never left me.

Nowadays I find I have very few beliefs - just a hopeful curiosity. Also, unlike some others on here I have had no key `Fortean ` (I dislike this term, btw) experiences which have given me any sense that any of this stuff is for real. (Well except for some ESP type stuff of the kind that Sheldrake often discusses - knowing stuff without any material means of doing so and so on).

So ,like some of the rest of you, I suppose I'm harking back to childhood dreams, but with an adults sense of disillusion.
 
Zeke Newbold said:
This reminds me very much of a great, and rather deep short story by H.G Wells. I think it's called `The Door in the Wall`. It is about a man who develops a lifelong obsession with what really lies behind a mysterious looking door in a wall If I have remembered rightly this obsession follows a questionable childhood memory of having once peaked in there.
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Thank you for the suggestion, I'm putting it on my Kindle. Interesting that you should comment on a two and a half year old post I'd forgotten about - yet I chose Venus Hill for my banner 2 days ago. Will try to get it in focus.
 
Zeke Newbold.

Yes I think thats it; bornin a time in which anything could happen and frequently did.

Nowadays we have so many miraculous things that they are...just...stale
 
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