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These Things Don't Happen Much Anymore

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maximus otter
 
Floyd1 said:
Back in the 70s/80s there always seemed to be a report on a (usually) Indian chap who had either

a) stood on one leg for 50 years
b) could climb barefoot up a ladder made of swords
c) could give out electric shocks from his body
d) had held his arm up in the air for years, and
d) claimed to have not slept for years.
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They're not reported as often these days but a notable exception is Lotan Baba, Indian "rolling saint" who claims to have clocked up around 30,000 km by rolling around the world. Where others walk or cycle this is (literally) how he rolls! He rolled around London in 1994 :)

 
AnonyJ said:
They're not reported as often these days but a notable exception is Lotan Baba, Indian "rolling saint" who claims to have clocked up around 30,000 km by rolling around the world. Where others walk or cycle this is (literally) how he rolls! He rolled around London in 1994 :)

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Brilliant!
I'd manage about two rolls before I threw up, I reckon.
 
Tunn11 said:
Tatzlwyrm, or other cryptids? Of course if real they may have become extinct. There are a few others Waitoreke, Nandi Bear, Unicorns.

Are Banshees still a thing or still heard?
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I went to a Folklore Society meeting in I guess 2019 where an American speaker was talking about the cry of the Banshee being alive and well in certain areas of the States.
 
AnonyJ said:
Oooh, one doesn't hear of 'screaming skulls' kept in cupboards or similar so much now - probably the 1970s was the last wave of documented spookydom around human head-bones.

Tschhhh! It's all 'Slenderman this' and 'Shadowpeople that' nowadays....
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A local pub (Edinburgh) has one. The last tiem I walked past the pub it looked suspisciously permanently closed.
 
I wonder if some of these good old spine-tinglers; the screaming skull, the phantom coach, the headless horseman, were most popular in times before TV and social media. Great stories - anything with a bit of background that could be built up into a proper tale for telling around the fireside on dark winter evenings when there was no other entertainment. Tales with a proper narrative.

Nowadays all the ghosts and scary stories are either derived from TV or social media (like Slenderman) or seem very 'thin'. A 'something' seen on a dark lane, a 'presence' in a house or a poltergeist throwing things - nothing that can be given a narrative, nothing more than anecdotes. Perhaps we no longer need the long, drawn-out tale of 'what happened to Old Mr Watson who lived across the green', told with anticipatory relish and much rolling of eyes and dramatic voices.
 
catseye said:
I wonder if some of these good old spine-tinglers; the screaming skull, the phantom coach, the headless horseman, were most popular in times before TV and social media. Great stories - anything with a bit of background that could be built up into a proper tale for telling around the fireside on dark winter evenings when there was no other entertainment. Tales with a proper narrative.

Nowadays all the ghosts and scary stories are either derived from TV or social media (like Slenderman) or seem very 'thin'. A 'something' seen on a dark lane, a 'presence' in a house or a poltergeist throwing things - nothing that can be given a narrative, nothing more than anecdotes. Perhaps we no longer need the long, drawn-out tale of 'what happened to Old Mr Watson who lived across the green', told with anticipatory relish and much rolling of eyes and dramatic voices.
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That just made me think of the On a Storyteller's Night track by Magnum, a song I haven't thought about in decades. You are probably right, now our narratives come via TV series and films, novels etc. Back in less literate, pre-electricity times, the local stories would have held people in spellbound horror with the dark pressing insistently at the windows...
 
SimonBurchell said:
That just made me think of the On a Storyteller's Night track by Magnum, a song I haven't thought about in decades. You are probably right, now our narratives come via TV series and films, novels etc. Back in less literate, pre-electricity times, the local stories would have held people in spellbound horror with the dark pressing insistently at the windows...
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And they had to be stories, that's the thing. That's what I think is missing now. The story of the screaming skull, whose it was, why it was detached and the 'last words' that had it hidden in a cupboard... the tale of the dissipated Earl for whom the phantom coach comes at midnight on the same day every year and to see it means death...

Proper, drawn out narratives of the kind that we don't seem to need in the same story-telling fashion any more. Aliens don't come with a backstory, neither (generally) do poltergeists. It's as though we want 'there and gone' peripheral type scares now, maybe our reduced attention spans can't cope with anything else.
 
gordonrutter said:
I went to a Folklore Society meeting in I guess 2019 where an American speaker was talking about the cry of the Banshee being alive and well in certain areas of the States.
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Interesting; I wonder whether it has become conflated with La Llorona in Hispanic areas. The legend is different though although I believe hearing either is not a good sign.
 
Tunn11 said:
Interesting; I wonder whether it has become conflated with La Llorona in Hispanic areas. The legend is different though although I believe hearing either is not a good sign.
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Or maybe it's an Irish-American desire to still feel close to their roots.
 
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