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 remember that programme. They recreated what happened and concluded the man had been set on fire by his electric heater.

I was terrified if choking to death on my Wrigglys Juicy Fruit chewing gum if I swallowed it. How that would have happened, I have no idea!

I had one too, I was fascinated by it! There was a whole section in it about epigenetic memory being why lemmings throw themselves off cliffs and that we might have memories of our grandparents or great-grandparents, which is why some people think they remember past lives.

Of course I look back later and realise that the lemmings throwing themselves off cliffs was bollocks so probably most of the book was I wonder if it was the same one? It was probably from the 70s/80s. (I don't have it any more unfortunately)

@Andanotherone01 to be fair currents are a very real and serious problem. Tourists die off of the North Norfolk coast every year.

The public service films 'the don't play on the railway tracks' and 'don't go into the electricity transformer' made sense to me growing up in London, never quite saw the releventness of the 'don't play in the grain silo'. I'm assuming all of these things were actually a problem in the 80/90s as children were playing out unsupervised more.

I wonder if spontaneous human combustion was more frequent due to the types of industrial jobs people did and clothing being contaminated with flammable liquid/dust and more people smoking.

I won’t feed any animal after midnight.

The Aussie programme Round the Twist used to scare me, I can't even remember what it was about now.

I remember a book from the library and something called 'stigmata'. I was obsessed with it and have vague memories of doing a presentation on it at primary school. It's when people bleed the wounds of Jesus on the cross. Holy macaroni - I must have been a very strange child!

'Have you ever? Ever felt like this? Where strange things happen. Are you going round the twist?'
Bloody loved this programme!

Just found myself making a mental note of that 😂

Mine was this one. I read it when I was primary school age and terrified myself

There was - it scared the life out of me!

I also spent time worrying about quicksand; I think Neverending Story started it for me.

The public information films videos of the 70s/early 80s were nightmare things.
I didn't even live close to a railway track, but I was petrified of straying on a track .

And thinking back some were a bit 'eh??'- messing around pylons/railway lines or fireworks - perfectly understandable warnings.

But there was one was actually about the dangers of rugs on polished floor- and it turned into a mantrap. It was terrifying. But seriously- that one is just common sense, surely? To make it worse, the advert featured - iirc- a family bringing a baby home. It was all very dramatic.
(There was a Tales of the Unexpected episode where someone did die, slipping on a rug).

Still, for years I thought mantraps lurked in every hallway cupboard. .

I still check the toilet before I sit down in case of sharks 🦈🤣🤣

I had a book similar, I bought it from the school book fair when I was about 10, I’m not sure wtf they were thinking marketing it to children. It had a section about empty ships still sailing at sea that I found interesting though.

Aliens and UFOs. I had a few books on them which I used to terrify myself with daily during the summer holidays, probably around 1980/1981. Reading these things gave the impression that every glimpse into sky could easily lead to a “sighting” of some large silent disc and if you were foolish enough to get up early or wander round in the countryside you may well bump into various “beings” of which there were three main varieties. (One such was “greys” and I think they also came in larger, more benign, and smaller, more malicious, models.) One particularly traumatising book featured a farm in Wales which effectively had a bunch of them as uninvited guests for a while, conducting various experiments and generally being a nuisance.

The Bleak House account of spontaneous combustion is completely mesmerising and terrifying. Dickens adaptations in the 70s and 80s always seemed to come on at Sunday teatime and be aimed at children, so perhaps there was a TV spontaneous combusion that terrified us all.

But spontaneous human combustion was a big concern - although there was never any real evidence, and pretty much all the books about it would feature the illustration from 'Bleak House' , where Krook supposedly combusts in his armchair

So it's all Dickens fault .

x post- re Dickens .

A colleague of mine (early 60’s) was walking on the beach with her DH and got her feet in quicksand. The lifeguards just happened to be passing and helped her out. Unfortunately she lost one boot in the process and had to walk back to the car like that.
Perhaps that’s where these random single shoes you find on the beach come from !

Lol! I actually did swallow some wrigley chewing gum when I was about 4. My mum had 'hidden' some on a high shelf. Me being the naughty child I was got a chair and climbed up to get some. I remember it tasting delicious but then swallowed it and panicked cos of the warnings my mum had given me about never swallowing chewing gum. I recall her shouting at me when I told her what I'd done. It put me off gum for years...

Re the fridge thing, my dad recounts a story of children dying having locked themselves in one; they were playing hide and seek but no one thought to look in it. I imagine there were a few cases hence the public infomercials at the time.

were any of the ‘mysteries’ ever explained? I don’t know if the burmuda triangle is still a thing…

I used to love the Arthur C Clarke tv show. Scared the shit out of me.

Rabies, spontaneous combustion, Bermuda Triangle, quicksand, alien abduction all seemed to be common occurrences in the 70’s. Not so much anymore!

There's always programmes on History/Discovery channels about the Burmuda Triangle, so it must still be a thing.

Oh god yes, all stray dogs were riddled with it according to my parents!

My dad once swallowed chewing gum as a child, and his Nan was convinced that it would wrap around his heart and he'd die. In her panic, she made him eat a cotton wool sandwich. I can only assume that she thought it would adhere to the gum and prevent it from sticking.