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What Was Your First Interest In Fortean Topics?

Bad Bungle said:
At the end of a bumpy first year at my local Grammar School (aged 12), I was awarded a School Prize for Most Improvement which consisted of a 75p book token. This was spent on three Pan book of Horror Stories (25p each) and it all went downhill after that.
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Oh, a sound investment! :cool:

Do we have a thread on them? We should. There is a Wiki page on them.

All hail Herbert van Thal! :salute:
He must've got more teenagers into reading than Sof' Mick. :wink2:
 
I was an early and precocious reader., ran out of suitable reading material quite early so would grab anything lying around the house. Mother was a subscriber to "Man, Myth and Magic" as well as a big Dennis Wheatly fan, so I guess the seeds were sown early. when we got a telly I was enthralled by the Tomorrow People and Dr WHO and eventually Star Trek!

I discovered Eric Von Daniken at secondary school and rumbled him before I left, this left a bit of a gap in my belief system partly filled by Arthur C Clark and eventually FT!
 
Eyespy said:
I was an early and precocious reader., ran out of suitable reading material quite early so would grab anything lying around the house
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I was also an early and fanatical reader buy my thing was ghosts. Started with Lord Halifax, Borley Rectory and, like you, Dennis Wheatley. I then moved on to the not-so-Fortean Pan Books of Horror Stories. I joined one of those book clubs that used to be advertised in the Sunday Supplements that was all paranormal based, so I got into Colin Wilson, Lyall Watson, Ley Lines, witchcraft, OOBE. Later one of my friends had a brother who introduced me into the world of ritual magic, Golden Dawn and Ophiel and he also took me on my first trip to the famous Atlantis Bookshop near the British Museum.
I was a massive Tomorrow People and Ace of Wand viewer, watched Dr Who but without the same enthusiasm and loved Arthur C Clark
 
I don't recall my first fortean interest, apart from having had a general interest. I do remember that we all sat and watched Arther C Clarke's Mysterious World when I was young. And I remember my parents deciding to go on a boating holiday on the Caledonian Canal, which included going across Loch Ness. I was about eleven and I freaked out about going because, I don't know whether you've heard, Loch Ness has a monster in it! Anyway, I warmed to the idea, and during that holiday spent much time in my cabin reading Tim Dinsdale's The Story of the Loch Ness Monster. It had a huge impact on me. As did the Caledonian Canal, one of my favourite places in what few travels I've had.
 
GerdaWordyer said:
Don't all little girls tell scary urban legends at sleepovers? ...
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Yes, and the same goes for little boys.

Many of the ULs and ghost stories I first heard in childhood were heard around a campfire. On some Boy Scout camp-outs and at summer camp there'd be spooky stories and ULs told by the adults for an evening's entertainment.

I was maybe 8 or 9 when my elementary school staged an elaborate pageant production. Dozens of us kids were drafted for the cast, and all of us appeared in costume. The whole show lasted at least an hour, staged as a long series of scenes involving readings, recitations, and / or singing. The large cast rotated on and off the auditorium stage as needed, and when off-stage we were sequestered in a large classroom near the auditorium. Throughout the evening a teacher kept order in the off-stage waiting area by reading us an endless series of UL and ghost stories from a couple of books whose identities I never knew. The pageant was presented on two consecutive nights, and the teacher never repeated any of the spooky / weird stories from one night to the next. This may have been the single largest "injection" of ULs and ghost stories I ever received.
 
GNC said:
Don't forget Peter Haining, who could tell a rattling good yarn quite apart from how true it might have been.
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That's true - I tend to put Haining on the same axis as Harry Price and John Keel (the flavour is as important as mere facts.)
 
GNC said:
Don't forget Peter Haining, who could tell a rattling good yarn quite apart from how true it might have been.
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Peter Haining wrote several books on the history of Dr Who. They suffered from the same problems his ghost books did…
 
catseye said:
A fair few are on Audible too, and I find listening easier now, as I can listen and do something else at the same time.
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Underwood was bloody good at it as well as prodigious. Paul Bestall and I had a long chat about his work on the Mysteries & Monsters podcast last year, and how it was a shame he fell out with the Ghost Club as who knows how much more could have come of their continued collaboration.
 
I guess I was interested in Fortean subjects from a VERY young age. I remember - or dreamed of leaving my body during the night and jumping down the stairs in slow motion and walking around while it was all dark.
Anyway. As a child of the sixties, I was born into a golden age of rich, cult TV shows. I think I actually had a Dalek outfit at some point. When not making go karts and hanging around the sweetshop, I’d usually be reading comics. Smash was my favourite and featured some rather strange characters and storylines like Janus Stark - a Victorian escapologist who used his skills to fight crime. No crevice was too narrow for him to squeeze through and no lock could beat him. Holidays consisted of long drives with me reading the summer specials. Batman seemed to be endlessly fighting crime at the World’s Fair, jumping around on giant typewriters.

Of course there was also my favourite show of all - Stingray but I was pretty nuts about Thunderbirds and Irwin Allen stuff too.
We owned a good set of encyclopedias so on rainy days I’d open them at random and learn something new. At school, it was mostly that damned and heinous work of The Secret Seven that caught my interest but it wasn’t until I picked up a copy of a Penguin screenplay of Quatermass 2 and then Quatermass and the Pit that I realised that here were other things needing my attention.
There were plenty of articles on UFOs back then. The Warminster Triangle was going strong and I read all the trippy stuff about Ley Lines, Druids, Bigfoot, Yetis and The Loch Ness Monster. I remember us going to Stonehenge when you could just park up on the side of the road and walk among the monoliths. I remember a caravan holiday at Loch Ness and a visit to the centre there.
Inevitably, I stumbled across a copy of The News in Mugwump at Durham. Mugwump was one of those places that sold odd stuff like Gandalf posters, odd magazines, paisley cloth frogs and roughly made kitchen crockery with odd faces that judged you from the shelf.

That’s how I got into it all. Great times. Wish I could go back there. Life was way better back then.
 
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Analogue Boy said:
I guess I was interested in Fortean subjects from a VERY young age. I remember - or dreamed of leaving my body during the night and jumping down the stairs in slow motion and walking around while it was all dark.
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I think there’s been a thread (or it at least came up) about this way back, as I did this as well, and have memories of being able to float downstairs as a child (if I concentrated). I‘m pretty sure other people on the forum had the same dreams.
 
I thought I remembered a previous thread about floating downstairs.
I am one who had that dream although we never lived in a house with stairs.
 
Witches were the first thing that scared me as a little kid. I'd watched a couple of films like The Wizard Of Oz and something with Tommy Steele in it so that was probably the seed of my fears ...

My parents moved us into a house in Streetly, Birmingham. I learned later in life that they got it cheaply because an old woman had died there .. and then I learned my bedroom had been the room she'd died in .....

She'd mess with me ... she pretended to be my Mum once (all of this above and below, I didn't know about this information at the time) to try and pull me out of bed by my legs once ... this woman stumbled into my bedroom when I was about 5 one night who I thought was my Mum and then I noticed my Mr Potato Head toy was all wrong .. all of the pegs that were supposed to be slotted into ears, nose, lips etc were instead sticking outwards which wouldn't work and then she turned around to look at me and it was some angry old woman instead. Then she tried to pull me out of her bed. Another time, she came in and I couldn't move and started floating towards my (open) bedroom window but I didn't want that either so I woke myself up. I didn't have anymore problems after that but I think that's why I got into The Evil Dead (witch in the cellar) films and pursued paranormal investigations afterward).
 
I was another of the 'taken on a day trip to Stonehenge and left to run around the stones willy-nilly'. I don't think I was aware that it was supposed to be anything mysterious and, I'm afraid, treated it rather like a giant Adventure Playground, jumping on and off stones with no due reverence.

But everyone else was doing it too, so it was all right.
 
Being born in the early 1970s, I was probably in the right place and time to absorb all the weird stuff on TV when I was a kid - Doctor Who, Space 1999, Star Trek - which is, of course, more sci-fi - but when you're 2 - 3 years old, I guess all you see are weird stuff and monsters... (I had the Doctor Who and Star Trek annual for Christmas when I was 3 years old, so something must have clicked with me). Really though it was a nightmare I had when I was 5 that really - well, if not triggered it, then certainly accelerated it. Waking up from a nightmare about Sesame Street (of all things) - I opened my eyes to discover that stood at the end of my bed was what appeared to be a figure dressed in a monk's cowl with the hood up looking out of the window. Inside the hood was no face, just a total, total blackness. I closed my eyes, drew the quilt up over my head and promised to never open my eyes at night again. Tempted as I am to ascribe some supernatural provenance to this figure, I'm pretty sure that the Donald Pleasance dubbed 'Ghost of Dark And Lonely Water' public information film was on around this time (1977) and may have been responsible for this nightmare that to me - and in my memory - seems compeltely real. Shortly after this there was a documentary on about... ghost hunters, broadcast over Christmas 1977 - Peter Underwood, vigils in a haunted church, recordings of ghostly voices etc etc etc - and I guess the nightmare and the documentary just clicked together in my mind...
 
escargot said:
Ooooh, made me think of the Muppet Dream!
A bloke describes how, as a little kid, he was terrorised by TV Muppets that wanted to interact with him:

The Muppet Dream
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Oh god I remember reading that on in the decade before last. Always something slightly terrifying about Muppets and Sesame Street and Emu. I remember the late 2000s reading stories like this deep into the small hours. I remember someane as a child being terrified by a penguin emerging from a TV set late at night trying to get him to eat his sandwiches. I miss this days of the utterly deranged IHTM stories!
 
I don't remember a time when I wasn't interested in this stuff. I remember my mum saying to me when I was 6 or 7 "Why can't you just like normal things like the other kids"? I can't pinpoint a big bang moment. It's just always fascinated me. Like a few have already said, TV when I was a kid was weird anyway - Dr Who, Tomorrow People, Children of the Stones, the Irwin Allen stuff. I remember being terrified when Richard Basehart turned into a werewolf in Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea. I loved the Three Investigator books which were often quite spooky. Then the Charles Berlitz books were read and re-read, Bermuda Triangle, The Philadelphia Experiment, UFO's, a ghost book for kids which featured a story about number 50 Berkley Square freaked me out. It all just led from one point to another. The 70's seemed to be a time when this sort of stuff was working into the mainstream (I remember Sasquatch in the 6 Million Dollar Man for example).

Thinking back I reckon it's probably all down to a love of Scooby Doo.
 
Spring Heeled Spud said:
I don't remember a time when I wasn't interested in this stuff. I remember my mum saying to me when I was 6 or 7 "Why can't you just like normal things like the other kids"? I can't pinpoint a big bang moment. It's just always fascinated me. Like a few have already said, TV when I was a kid was weird anyway - Dr Who, Tomorrow People, Children of the Stones, the Irwin Allen stuff. I remember being terrified when Richard Basehart turned into a werewolf in Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea. I loved the Three Investigator books which were often quite spooky. Then the Charles Berlitz books were read and re-read, Bermuda Triangle, The Philadelphia Experiment, UFO's, a ghost book for kids which featured a story about number 50 Berkley Square freaked me out. It all just led from one point to another. The 70's seemed to be a time when this sort of stuff was working into the mainstream (I remember Sasquatch in the 6 Million Dollar Man for example).

Thinking back I reckon it's probably all down to a love of Scooby Doo.
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A few years ago I picked up an adult-sized Scooby Doo suit which was great fun to wear to my little relatives' birthday parties.
Never had so many hugs in my life! :D

Eventually I gave it to a nephew who'd hankered for it. He works in event electricals and does DJing.

He'd sometimes change into it halfway through a DJing gig and punters would look hard, then shrug and carry on throwing shapes.

Like 'Is that Scooby Doo? Yup, it's Scooby Doo. Or this is GOOD shit.'
 
escargot said:
A few years ago I picked up an adult-sized Scooby Doo suit which was great fun to wear to my little relatives' birthday parties.
Never had so many hugs in my life! :D

Eventually I gave it to a nephew who'd hankered for it. He works in event electricals and does DJing.

He'd sometimes change into it halfway through a DJing gig and punters would look hard, then shrug and carry on throwing shapes.

Like 'Is that Scooby Doo? Yup, it's Scooby Doo. Or this is GOOD shit.'
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I saw this recently. Nick Cave is possibly my favourite artist and also probably the last one I’d imagine going to a party as Scoobs

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i had a cheesy book of the world's greatest mysteries or some bollocks, aged about 10 in the 1970s - the chapter on SHC fascinated me, I can still remember the photos. I also got Chariots of the Gods at a charity shop not long afterwards, and a book of practical witchcraft that I got at a jumble sale at my catcholic primary school around that time. Enquiring minds want to know! My older brother saw it and made me destroy it before I had the chance to try seeing into the future. I got The Amityville Horror when it came out.
I hate Nick Cave, whatever. Was a big fan of Scooby Doo though, and also enjoyed the three investigators, and ghost story anthologies.
 
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As a tiny kid we used to go for walks around Beamish and The Forges. We walked for miles but often picnicked in summer by the stream by a little bridge next to Beamish Hall. I was told by mum and dad that the hall was haunted by The Grey Lady and I would always try and see peep through the gates to see her. Then I’d get distracted by hares running around the next field and then we’d go and have a look at the pigs in the farm up the road.

I later figured out that talk of Grey Ladies around these places are probably an early form of property security designed to put off superstitious ne’er do wells.
 
The Newby Spectre.

Saw a picture of it in a book I borrowed from the library at about 7 years of age. Was so horrified I buried the book at the very bottom of a bedroom drawer and struggled to sleep for about a month.

I’ve been hooked ever since.
 
My best pal at primary school would regale us with tales of ghosties in his attic -- creepy but great! Think I was about seven at the time

This got me in the mood tolook out for books about the supernatural at the library, of which there wasn't many. I did find a book called 'Witchcraft and magic' by pat Hodgson. Which I loved and was terrified by in equal measure! So much in fact that I snapped it up at a library sale and despite numerous clear outs of my books, I've held onto that one!
 
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