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The Weirdness Of 1973

Floyd1 said:
I think 'pop culture' certainly was a part of it. The 'wear some flowers in your hair' brigade, while not completely gone, had definitely diminished. Dennis Wheatley's occult novels were doing a roaring trade, the 'Hammer Horror' films were too and 'darker' bands like Black Sabbath had started to pique peoples' interests in the more macabre side of life, or er, death.

'Harder' often adulterated drugs like heroin started to be more prevalent in society, certainly in the cities and amongst the musicians of the day whereas it had previously been mainly marajuana and psychedelics.

The Manson/LaBianca murders and trial were still very fresh in peoples memory and as has been mentioned, three day weeks/strikes/IRA bombings/power cuts etc (in England at least) meant that the country was (literally on occasion) darker than it had been.

The Yom Kippur war, highjackings, the Olympic games in Munich the year before and Vietnam all adding to the general worldwide malaise and therefore a (possible) reason for people to 'look elsewhere' for inspiration and hope.

Oh, and Swifty was hatched born.
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Some great points there, thanks.
 
blessmycottonsocks said:
The so-called "comet of the century" Kohoutek was first sighted on 7 March 1973. It attained perihelion on 28 December 1973.

"Comets have inspired dread, fear, and awe in many different cultures and societies around the world and throughout time. They have been branded with such titles as "the Harbinger of Doom" and "the Menace of the Universe." They have been regarded both as omens of disaster and messengers of the gods."
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Yes i read about that but it seems it wasn't as spectacular as everybody thought it was going to be. Sun spots were at a low as well.
 
Paul_Exeter said:
Perhaps also….

The moon landings had just ended and it must have felt we would soon be living on other planets and in space stations (eg the tv show ‘Space 1999’ and the iconic ‘2001: A Space Oddessey’). We also hadn’t yet had a decent look at the outer planets (not even the Vikings on Mars) and so I imagine there was still a belief aliens might live within our solar system. I feel there was a sense of anticipation fuelled by a then healthy and active UFO scene. One consequence of this was that perhaps a badly burnt war veteran living as best he could in a hut on the IoW was deemed to be an alien by a certain British UFO organisation despite said individual being firmly rooted to the ground and not ever mentioning outer space….
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All good points, thanks.
 
BS3 said:
The autumn 1973 UFO wave in the US was the last great 'flap' and included some still well-known cases: Mansfield, Ohio; Pascagoula, etc. This has sometimes been linked to anxieties over the Middle East and oil prices, though I do think Kohoutek might have contributed too.

There was a wave in France the same year.
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Yes i have included some of the stranger cases n my book.
 
The posts concerning recent changes to U.S. abortion law have been removed.

Many of us have understandably strong views on this matter, but a thread about strangeness in 1973 is not the place for them to be expressed.

Play on.
 
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lordmongrove said:
Yes i read about that but it seems it wasn't as spectacular as everybody thought it was going to be. Sun spots were at a low as well.
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Absolutely.
Think I recall my young self expecting a comet covering half the sky, like those depicted on medieval wood-cuts.
The fact that The Coming of Kohoutek turned out to be nothing more than a barely visible faint smudge, was a crushing disappointment.
 
Lordmongrove

Another factor is that the 60s and 70s saw motorways and dual carriageways being built in the UK through ancient woodland and across fields that had been pretty much untouched since perhaps when there was massive felling of trees in mediaeval times. They would also have no doubt ploughed through prehistoric barrows and even settlements hidden beneath the soil. These were of course new roads and not old routes being improved.

Given all the folklore around roads and bridges, perhaps this rather brutal activity awakened or upset the balance of 'something'. For example, the sightings of the Sandling, Kent 'bat creature' and attendant weirdness (lights and figures) took place very soon after the M20 and ploughed through the area. Then you have the 'Beast of Exmoor' sightings that occurred at the same time (early/mid-80s) as the new North Devon Link Road was being built across Knowstone Moor, a focal point of the big cat activity and an area pretty much untouched since prehistoric times (it is home to Bronze age saucer barrow).

Anyway, just a thought...
 
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lordmongrove said:
I'm currently writing a new book called 'The Highest Strangeness'. During my research i found the 1973 had an abnormal amount of weirdness going down in it including bigfoot / UFO flaps, often in tandem and the case of Sam the Sandown Clown, to name but a few. Ay ideas of why 1973 should be such a high point in strangeness?
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Was my childhood and yes, it even felt like there was a huge sort of dark undercurrent in the zeitgeist, even at the time.

As others have said, the political chaos, the recent unrest of the tail end of the 60s still fresh in people's minds, shortages (sugar was one I remember although that may have been 74?), then also popular culture - "Man Myth & Magic" magazine, Hammer Horrors, "Appointment With Fear" on the telly, the start of some of the more decent Hollywood horror movies as well; the tail end of the 60s' Gerard Gardner types and Alex Sanders on the media (ie: middle class librarians going skyclad in graveyards), still around in many places; people sacrificing blackbirds and crows in churchyards (our's anyway but I suspect that was a current thing, then as it seemed to fade, later in the decade)... Just a general backdrop of weird.
 
Swifty said:
I'll tell you what I was told about that day by my parents Floyd ..

I was born 2:30 pm, May the 17th, 1973 (my Mum wrote that on the back of my birth certificate, my Dad said the pubs had closed for lunch back then so he couldn't celebrate with his mates and he told me I've been a pain in the arse ever since) .. I was born in Good Hope Hospital, Sutton Coldfield that locals had nicknamed 'No Hope Hospital' ..

My Mum had at first refused any gas and air but suddenly changed her mind through the pain and so got high as a kite then got the giggles .. when I was coming out, a nurse spotted I had my umbilical cord wrapped around my neck so told my Mum to stop pushing but she couldn't because she was wasted and I was coming out no matter what so the nurse cut the cord and: " .. and the blood went right up the front of the nurse's skirt and top, through the middle of her glasses and hit the ceiling and you were born! :) ..
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I knew someone at uni whose first job was as a junior houseman at that hospital (1980s). He said he was amazed any patients survived. He'd be given responsibilities far beyond his experience etc - not sure how he managed it hygienewise but I recall one anecdote about him having to do an emergency operation that he'd never done before, with a book propped open instructing about the procedure... Went to be a GP first chance he got.
 
catseye said:
I was twelve. I wonder if some of the 'atmosphere' of the time (not to say the origin of some of the stories and sightings) was that 'robots' were starting to become more ubiquitous. I'm sure this is about the time that Tomorrow's World were showing us robot servers and at school we were always being shown TV programmes of robots being used in car construction and being told that they would be the future.
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We're the same age. Yes, it was a strange mix of nostalgia - esp for WW2 as I guess our parents' generation were watching TV/films so it reflected that generation's nostalgia and interests - and simultaneously, we had as you say, all that "future shock" stuff. Just checked as I have a vivid memory of seeing my first ever insight into death camps in 'World At War' and it was indeed, 1973. Even though I was a kid, was "allowed" to watch it and it raised all sorts of grim questions that I sort of already half knew about, as my grandad had been one of the troops who first arrived at Belsen so I'd heard my parents discussing it in sort of hushed tones - but had never really understood what that was, til I saw the images on TV of bodies being bulldozed into mass graves. (Now I think some more, I think I was one of the few kids at my school who saw it - most wouldn't have been allowed).

So maybe the weirdery of 73 was that blend of nostalgia, some grim, some "light entertainment" (World At War, Dad's Army, etc) of the recent-ish past, and also that "When you're adults you will move about glass cities on monorails and wear tinfoil suits!" which was also really prevalent on kids' TV - the future was as creepy as the past but in a different way..?

Also of course, the ever present threat of nuclear war which is impossible for people who didn't live through the Cold War, to understand. The thought that some lunatic could press a button and wipe out millions of people in a horrific way - that really messes with your head when you first find it out and you're, say 12..? Must have been unsettling for adults too.
 
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Paul_Exeter said:
Lordmongrove

Another factor is that the 60s and 70s saw motorways and dual carriageways being built in the UK through ancient woodland and across fields that had been pretty much untouched since perhaps when there was massive felling of trees in mediaeval times. They would also have no doubt ploughed through prehistoric barrows and even settlements hidden beneath the soil. These were of course new roads and not old routes being improved.

Given all the folklore around roads and bridges, perhaps this rather brutal activity awakened or upset the balance of 'something'. For example, the sightings of the Sandling, Kent 'bat creature' and attendant weirdness (lights and figures) took place very soon after the M20 and ploughed through the area. Then you have the 'Beast of Exmoor' sightings that occurred at the same time (early/mid-80s) as the new North Devon Link Road was being built across Knowstone Moor, a focal point of the big cat activity and an area pretty much untouched since prehistoric times (it is home to Bronze age saucer barrow).

Anyway, just a thought...
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Curiously, the two main outbreaks of the 'Beast of Bodmin' activity - late-70s and mid-90s - also coincided with major work taking place on the A30 on and around Bodmin Moor, with the latter date being the dualling of the road as far as Bolventor, hmm....
 
Paul_Exeter said:
Lordmongrove

Another factor is that the 60s and 70s saw motorways and dual carriageways being built in the UK through ancient woodland and across fields that had been pretty much untouched since perhaps when there was massive felling of trees in mediaeval times. They would also have no doubt ploughed through prehistoric barrows and even settlements hidden beneath the soil. These were of course new roads and not old routes being improved.

Given all the folklore around roads and bridges, perhaps this rather brutal activity awakened or upset the balance of 'something'. For example, the sightings of the Sandling, Kent 'bat creature' and attendant weirdness (lights and figures) took place very soon after the M20 and ploughed through the area. Then you have the 'Beast of Exmoor' sightings that occurred at the same time (early/mid-80s) as the new North Devon Link Road was being built across Knowstone Moor, a focal point of the big cat activity and an area pretty much untouched since prehistoric times (it is home to Bronze age saucer barrow).

Anyway, just a thought...
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Interesting thought. By way of comparison the building of the Stocksbridge Bypass in the 1980s is also supposed to have unleashed a lot of anomalous stuff, including during its construction.
 
Ghost In The Machine said:
Was my childhood and yes, it even felt like there was a huge sort of dark undercurrent in the zeitgeist, even at the time.

As others have said, the political chaos, the recent unrest of the tail end of the 60s still fresh in people's minds, shortages (sugar was one I remember although that may have been 74?), then also popular culture - "Man Myth & Magic" magazine, Hammer Horrors, "Appointment With Fear" on the telly, the start of some of the more decent Hollywood horror movies as well; the tail end of the 60s' Gerard Gardner types and Alex Sanders on the media (ie: middle class librarians going skyclad in graveyards), still around in many places; people sacrificing blackbirds and crows in churchyards (our's anyway but I suspect that was a current thing, then as it seemed to fade, later in the decade)... Just a general backdrop of weird.
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See also:
https://forums.forteana.org/index.php?threads/1970s-why-so-dark.9051/page-6#post-2167802
 
Ghost In The Machine said:
We're the same age. Yes, it was a strange mix of nostalgia - esp for WW2 as I guess our parents' generation were watching TV/films so it reflected that generation's nostalgia and interests - and simultaneously, we had as you say, all that "future shock" stuff. Just checked as I have a vivid memory of seeing my first ever insight into death camps in 'World At War' and it was indeed, 1973. Even though I was a kid, was "allowed" to watch it and it raised all sorts of grim questions that I sort of already half knew about, as my grandad had been one of the troops who first arrived at Belsen so I'd heard my parents discussing it in sort of hushed tones - but had never really understood what that was, til I saw the images on TV of bodies being bulldozed into mass graves. (Now I think some more, I think I was one of the few kids at my school who saw it - most wouldn't have been allowed).

So maybe the weirdery of 73 was that blend of nostalgia, some grim, some "light entertainment" (World At War, Dad's Army, etc) of the recent-ish past, and also that "When you're adults you will move about glass cities on monorails and wear tinfoil suits!" which was also really prevalent on kids' TV - the future was as creepy as the past but in a different way..?

Also of course, the ever present threat of nuclear war which is impossible for people who didn't live through the Cold War, to understand. The thought that some lunatic could press a button and wipe out millions of people in a horrific way - that really messes with your head when you first find it out and you're, say 12..? Must have been unsettling for adults too.
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I also remember seeing bits of 'The World At War'. My parents were addicted to it - I can only assume making sense of what they lived through as teenagers. My dad had to explain the whole concept of 'Dad's Army' to us, probably in the way that we will have to explain 'Lockdown' and 'Furlough' to children just being born now.
 
catseye said:
I also remember seeing bits of 'The World At War'. My parents were addicted to it - I can only assume making sense of what they lived through as teenagers. My dad had to explain the whole concept of 'Dad's Army' to us, probably in the way that we will have to explain 'Lockdown' and 'Furlough' to children just being born now.
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My kids explain to younger kids that there was a fabled time when Freddos were 10p.
 
BS3 said:
This is a good one: Oct 22-23 1973, Hartford City, IN. Three separate observations, over several hours, of two strange, 4-foot bright silver entities with a hose coming out of their faces and "box-like" feet, crossing the road, bouncing up and down in a field, and eventually flying off vertically like a helicopter. Madness.

View attachment 57008

Edited to add Peter Rogerson's description of the case on INTCAT, which includes a few additional details:
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The hose thing reminds me of a picture from Marilyn Manson's Antichrist superstar era album insert....He and twiggy have weird hoses connected to their groin etc......
 
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The way that sightings of the weird and wonderful seem so closely to reflect what is uppermost in the current consciousness makes me wonder again if some are particularly vivid dreams. In the same way that children often report things that are obviously a dream that they were unable to distinguish from reality, perhaps this ubiquity of 'it was on posters everywhere outside cinemas and then people started seeing it in real life' is part of the same phenomenon?
 
catseye said:
The way that sightings of the weird and wonderful seem so closely to reflect what is uppermost in the current consciousness makes me wonder again if some are particularly vivid dreams. In the same way that children often report things that are obviously a dream that they were unable to distinguish from reality, perhaps this ubiquity of 'it was on posters everywhere outside cinemas and then people started seeing it in real life' is part of the same phenomenon?
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Indeed, and like dreams they're also a rich store of archetypes straight from the collective unconscious!
 
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