I have always been into this kind of stuff. The first regular show i watched that dealt with it was back in the early 80s, 'Arthur C Clarke's World of Strange Powers', a weekly show that dealt in all of the above.
Whenever I saw a book about ghosts or whatever, i would always take a look at it, being into superhero comics so much, i wanted to believe there was a supernatural element to the world so badly.
In the 90s I got into it big style after watching the X-Files, the first Fortean times I ever read had the X-Files on the cover. i only bought it occasionally, but one of my best friends bought it every month and I would devour it, I loved all the little crazy stories that ran in the news section in the bars up the sides of the pages. All the coincidences and just flat out weird stuff that was happening around the world all the time. That was my fav part of the mag.
There was a good show called 'For the Love of...' that ran late night on channel 4, hosted by Jon Ronson, they did a few fantastic round table discussions on ufos, ghosts, general conspiracies, and the alleged moon landing conspiracy.
I have looked for it on youtube, and i think my tape of it it unwatchable, but the final story that this guy tells on the ghost episode is probably the best anecdotal story I have ever heard in a documentary in my life.
He was a guy who was trained in 'soul rescue', as he called it, he and his wife where into it, they would find ghosts who wandered the Earth, and sent them on their way into the afterlife.
So they found this little hunchback kid from centuries ago, he had been burned at the stake for being a witch. When some cattle had went sick, he got the blame for it cause he was a hunchback, and was also deformed in the face, he had a face like a 'little bulldog', haha, as described by the guy on the show.
So, for a couple of days this little ghost hunchback kid is hanging out with the guy and his wife, the guy is from the North of England, so has this thick Yorkshire accent, and he tells the tale about how first they had to explain to him he was a ghost, and they basically explain that he is invisible, and the kid loves that idea, as if he has superpowers. They also took him on a bus, and the hunchback is loving it, haha, and go to this local social club where they all drink. Whoever put the seats out for them put one out for the hunchback as well, even though they couldn't see him, as if they could sense his presence there...whoooaaa!
So, later on they end up performing some ritual, and the hunchback's dad comes back through some portal from the other side, and the hunchback is scared of him as he used to beat him up all the time, his wife died in childbirth when she delivered the hunchback, so he blamed him for that.
But, this time the dad was crying, and it was because he was sorry for everything he did to the kid, so the little kid goes away hand in hand with his dad into the afterlife, and the soul rescue guy says him and his wife had tears streaming down their faces as there was this sense of overwhelming love emanting from the scene going down.
I don't know where you could track this show down, but it is one helluva story, and you need to hear this guy tell it, my friend and i used to watch it a lot, the guy wasn't trying to be funny, but he is really funny to watch, they way he tells it, so matter of factly.
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Ufo-wise, I think i might've seen one once, I was standing with a friend on his 11(?)th floor balcony on a tower block at about 3am during a party, we saw some craft flying about, and it made no noise, had light saround it, fly forward then back, moved about a bit, flew towards us, then flew back again and disapeared.
Maybe it was just some normal plane or whatever , and was too far away to be heard, but it defo had weird flight patterns, and a helicopter it was not, we would have heard it, man, i wisj i could go back and see that memory again, it was genuinely weird.
Sure, we were both drunk, but we were not crazy drunk, and i do recall it quite well.
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They also ran a tv show spin off of the Fortean Tiem mag, called 'Fortean Tv', you will probably find it on youtube, it had some good stories from the mag, one good one on the Men in Black i recall, i think i still have that one on tape, where a security guard who spots a ufo got a weird vist from a couple of mib's afterwards.
I still have a pretty good book on the mib phenomena by the respected ufoligist Jenny Randles. She was on the ep of the tv show too.
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there was also this great 3 part ufo tv series called 'Riddle of the Skies' that ran on channel 4 back in the 90s, well worth tracking down, the first ep was particularly good i recall, still have those on tape i think. One guy had a very impressive video collection of these ufos that flew and hovered regularly over his house, like, pretty good close up ones, not just lights in the sky.
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Also, I just remembered this 'real life' story, it was told in this X-Files ep, ep1 of season2, where the scientist who got a grant to build this huge telescope for searching for et life, said he got the idea from an elf who climbed in his window one night when he was playing billiards. haha, i looked this up a while back, and the guy claimed it really happened, that was how he got the idea, i can't recall his name offhand.
But, i will say, i forgot all about the crazy chills you could get thinking about supernatural stuff, and giving you feeling of how freaked out you would be if anything like that really happedned to you, i mean, i am sitting here at 1.13 am and when i was typing that stuff up about an elf climbing in your window, i felt a bit freaked out, haha, imagining how scary that would be if it really happened, haha.
That kind of thing happened to me when i first got into watching the X-Files, i pretty much missed the first season when it was broadcast, but i rented a couple out the video shop before s2 started to see what the fuss was about, and was pretty blown away, so i managed to borrow the whole of s1 off a friend's sister, and watched them all in one weekend, and i am telling you, by the end of it, i was convinced that ufos were out there and i was probably being watched , haha, as of course, i was so important they must be, right? haha, just my imagination of course carrying me away, haha.
i could talk about this kind of crap all day, in case you have not noticed.
