Back in my day...

By: taijiya Mood: philosophical Date: 03/27/2008 10:24:29 Music: Serpentine - "Heru-Ra-Ha"

Things were so different when I was growing up back in the 70s.  I have no idea where my fascination with the paranormal came from, but I remember that it was a lot harder to find books and information back then.  I loved it when my parents would take me to yard sales and flea markets, because I could plow through piles of old books and occasionally I would find one on ghosts, or witchcraft, or what-have-you.  My parents didn't censor my reading, so anything that came my way was fair game!

Back in those days, there weren't any paranormal "celebrities."  I don't even think there were many TV shows that dealt with the supernatural until the later 70s, maybe even the early 80s--things like Unsolved Mysteries, for example.  As far as I can tell, things started to change a bit after the Amityville case broke; I can clearly remember finding the story serialised in my grandmother's copy of the National Enquirer, and I ate it up like it had chocolate sauce on top.  I was probably nine or ten years old at the time.  Of course I had to have Jay Anson's book after that, and I still have it to this day.  There are a number of beat up, falling-apart paperbacks lying around my house: Haunted Houses and More Haunted Houses, Haunted Heartland and others of that series, stacks of little dime paperbacks on witchcraft and the supernatural that came out in the late 60s and early 70s...someday when I croak I'll have to leave my occult and paranormal collection to a suitable library or museum. 

Even just a few years ago, back in the 90s, it was different: there weren't seventeen ghost programs on TV every night of the week.  They were typically relegated to the month of October on the History Channel.  Historic areas weren't even offering ghost tours with the frequency that you see them now.  In a way I'm glad that these subjects are more in the open, more almost acceptable in public discourse, but a part of me is a little regretful, as well.  Part of the fun was in the searching, the thrill of hunting down information and feeling as though you had a secret knowledge that not everyone else could access.  Some of the mystery is gone now, you know?