Gurning & Spontaneous Human Combustion

[Underminer]

Not connected to each other, but when I was little, circa mid 80s, gurning used to be a regular thing on telly, along with spontaneous human combustion being a thing we were all scared of happening to us.
Anyone else remember this? Maybe the gurning was on Record Breakers? I remember watching it on more that on occasion, my brother has a memory of old men with no teeth pulling faces through horse collars, and he thinks it was a toothpaste advert and that’s why we don’t really hear about it now? We don’t live in an area with contests.

What other random things do you remember that seem to have spontaneously combusted in history?

I was fascinated by spontaneous human combustion! That picture of just the woman's feet...
And the Marie Celeste was definitely a thing & the Bermuda triangle.

Mysteries don't seem to be a thing anymore. Maybe everything can be explained.

I was fascinated by spontaneous human combustion. And the Bermuda Triangle
And terrified of quick sand.

I had a book all about unexplained mysteries. I've bought about eleventy billion Unexplained Mystery books in the last few years, but none of them are 'mine' :(

Quicksand.

I was terrified of it and thought it would feature quite frequently in my adult life. We even had safety videos about it in school.

Never been a problem once in my life.

Tossing the road and then that giant green man from a tin of sweetcorn would come and tell me off.

https://www.egremontcrabfair.com/
Gurning still very much alive!
Usually pops up on the news once a year.

Rabies.

Yes @Underminer ! Late 70s/early 80s here and remember both very well.

Hauntings were huge. Borley Rectory and the Enfield Haunting kept me awake at night in the 80s.

Fascinating Gurning Fact: the horse collar the gurners gurn through is called a 'braffin'.

Also available for entertainment at the Crab Fair is/were the chance to scramble up a greased pole to grab a leg of lamb, and competitive pipe smoking.

Was the book called 'worlds greatest mysteries'? Did it also feature jumping Jack flash because that book scared the crap out of me it was in our school library.

Quick sand and sinking mud. Terrified of both, and yes, like a previous poster, I thought they would be a frequent threat on my life.
And whirlpools. Also expected to come across them regularly.

Also was worried there were sharks in the deep end corners of the swimming pool.

I was an anxious child.

I accidentally rode my pony into quicksand riding with a friend when we were about 12/13. Only little ponies, they sank nearly to their bellies. It was terrifying but luckily the ponies instinct was to keep moving and we got out ok. For months after I felt like the ground was too soft when I was on anything remotely sandy.

My friend and I were obsessed with unexplained mysteries when we’re primary age. We took all the books out if the library.
I think it started with collectors cards in packs of cigarettes our parents had.

No idea. I just remember it had spontaneous human combustion. And the Cottingley fairies.
Plus loads of things I was too scared to look at

I was like that about getting accidentally trapped while playing inside a discarded fridge, and slowly suffocating while experiencing intense regret and terror. I was fully braced for the whole experience and it’s just never come up 🤷‍♀️

I never even saw a discarded fridge but I can still conjure the horror of the idea. Was there a public information film about this?

Yes there was. I think it was 2 kids playing hide and seek and one getting into the fridge.

I've never seen a random fridge in the middle of the street, let alone had the urge to try and squeeze into one either

Same as the ones about jumping into the electricity things to retrieve a rogue football. They frightened the life out of me to the point I would cross the street to avoid walking past one in case an electric bolt jumped out and struck me down.

I wouldn’t go in the sea for years as a child because of those images of crabs attached to peoples big toes!

Those horrific public education films; “Lonely Water” with the Grim Reaper standing watching children fooling about near a lake, ‘ready to bring death to ‘the show off’, the ‘fool’ and those ignoring no swimming signs’

There was another one about what to do in a nuclear attack. My DC found it for me on YouTube and some of the advice was actually hilarious in hindsight but it made me so anxious as a child. If an atomic bomb is dropped, lie on the ground - like that is really going to help? Or unscrew a door, prop it up against a wall and hide behind it.

I also used to be concerned about spontaneous human combustion too. At 20 years old, I actually thought if I regularly drank water, the fire wouldn’t be able to get a hold!

Nooo, I wasn’t 20, I was 10! 😂

pastypirate was it a Reader's Digest book? There was a book in my house when I was a child that scared me to death, it had a story about spring heeled Jack (I think) who could apparently jump over 10 foot walls leaving footprints on either side. Think there was a crystal skull on the front?

Actually, I think it was this one !
https://www.wob.com/en-gb/books/simon-welfare/arthur-c-clarke-s-mysterious-world/9780002165365

It WAS Readers Digest! Funnily enough, when I was clearing out my late uncle’s house, he had a copy which I had to keep for posterity. It’s now on my bookshelf. Because of this thread I’ll have to revisit it and the fearsome stories within.
I’d forgotten about Spring Heeled Jack! He also fascinated and scared me too.

Oh wow yes to quicksand!

Those that mentioned the book - yes! My brother had a hard backed book of mysteries that scared the crap out of us, for fun I would sneak it into his bedroom and put it on his bed, and when I went up to bed it had been left outside his door 🤣 he didn’t even want to touch it long enough to put it in my room. That had the photo of the woman’s feet, and Bermuda Triangle. Must be where we got the spontaneous human combustion from.

@JohnPrescottsPyjamas I bet this was the same book! My Grandad always got anything to do with the Reader’s Digest, so he must’ve given it to us.

I need to get one off EBay and leave it on my brother’s bookshelf next time I visit his house 🤣

Quicksand, was this some kind of weird thing to scare the heebie jeebies out of us in the 1970s as it certainly seemed to work?
Plus it's always stayed with me that if I was to fall in a random patch of quicksand in the High Street that to survive I need to lay flat on my front like a starfish & slowly inch to the other side to get out, something to do with the distribution of the weight of your body on the sand to stop you from sinking.

Well you never know one day you might accidentally fall in a surprise patch of quicksand.

Bonkers the stuff that stays in your mind.

I was also terrified of quicksand and bogs, I blame The Neverending Story.

was also scared of shark attacks at the beach, probably because I watched Jaws rather young.

I remember watching a programme about spontaneous human combustion when I was quite young, too, really believed it was a thing.