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?

This has been a great thread, a classic perhaps. Have just ordered a copy of Mysteries of the Unexplained for my 9yo who will LOVE it.

This thread has reminded me how much Readers Digest I read as a kid. I'm sure the only books we had were RD and I read all if them. I'm determined to broaden our bookshelves a bit for the kids, one will read anything.

The Folklore book looks beautiful, would love to read it. It's hard to get and expensive so dig it out if your garages and pop it on your bookshelves if you have it!

I loved Arthur C Clarke’s Mysterious World; we had the book and I was glued to the telly programme. I had a proper fear of pylons from the public information film, and an equal terror that there was going to be another ice age. I was frightened that I might not make it back to the house from school before the ice came flowing down the hill.

It was a more dangerous time though. Kids were always having nasty accidents and getting run over, I seem to remember. The freedom we had was glorious, but it did have consequences. Lots of farms where I grew up and so lots of nasty machinery deaths and injuries, and a local child drowned in a slurry pit. That haunted me for a long time.

I've just remembered 'gravel pits' in our local area as being a source of the most intense danger. Essentially they were just very deep lakes, created I suppose by quarrying for gravel. By the eighties they had been landscaped (Thorpe Park is on the site of some gravel pits in my memory?). But before that they were just places where children might trespass and die.
I suppose the real danger was the steepness of the increase in depth? I don't know, but they were spoken of with such sternness that they seemed to have an almost mystic peril. Perhaps I thought the gravel would act like quicksand and suck me in.

Yes I remember the fear about acid rain and a coming ice age. Now global warming is the new bogey man.

Having watched/read too many things about Medieval England, I remember I convinced myself the scab on my knee was definitely a sign I had leprosy.
I thought I’d seek the advice of experts - two friends at primary school - and they agreed, it definitely was! I came home bawling to to dad, convinced the next stop was banishment to a colony.
He was actually so kind, he could have laughed and dismissed my fears as nonsense, but he reassured me the chances of me having it were pretty remote!

Seeing a face at the window. I still hate looking out of my kitchen window with it's dark outside!

And there was a thing about seeing a face other than yours in your bathroom mirror. I can't remember the specifics, but it terrified me for years.

Flashbacks* *to the Children of Green Knowe! I remember the tree and the St Christopher coming to life, that scared me.

Gurning couldn’t kill you and it seems to be harmless older folk who took part in it, but SHC was so terrifying.

Does anyone remember the cards you used to get in the PG Tips tea packs? There was a series of unexplained ones - ghosts and suchlike. Used to scare me silly.

I got a real flashback from this @CrawlingFromShitshowToAfterglow - I can smell the tea! That's where my Mary Celeste obsession came from, reading & rereading that little card with an eerie picture of the empty cabin... Ah those were the days.

Was it one of these? Mum had the Reader's Digest book with these in...and one of a man's walking stick 'dancing' on the bed and a photo of a ghost in the back of the car going to his ow funeral. As a child I couldn't contemplate ANY way these photos could be fake - they were sold, absolute proof.

There was a phot of bats sharing a bowl of blood too and I think a rat king.

I used to spend hours fascinated by these ghost photos too along with a very dodgy looking picture of Nessie taken in the 1930s.

What was it with Readers Digest, and do they even publish these sort of books nowadays? My grandparents always had those condensed RD books in their shelf too. Not sure if they were ever read, but they were beautifully bound.

Another great scarefest was a magazine series about the supernatural from, I think, the early 1970s. It was called Man, Myth and Magic. My uncle had the whole set bound in files that were part of the collection. When the adults were all chatting, I used to sneak away and frighten myself stupid looking through them.

Not quite sure why that’s come up as a sensitive image? I must have pressed something.

I haven’t RTFT but this has brought back memories from the late 1980s

https://www.brookebondcollectables.co.uk/sets/unexplainedmysteriesoftheworld.htm

Quicksand of course.
Being wedged in a small crevice in a cave miles underground.
Swallowing chewing gum because chewing gum will tick to your appendix > peritonitis > DEATH. (Ditto cherry stones)
My bladder bursting while I was asleep (my aunt told me this would happen if I didn't go to the loo before bed) this led to many tiring nights constantly getting up to go to the loo just in case.
Vampire bats.
Wasps going up the leg of my shorts.

Thought of another thing I remember from 80s tv that I never see now - bog snorkelling. I didn’t live anywhere near anywhere it these weird and wonderful traditions.

Talking at work today, lots were worried about vanpires. I was scared of vampires for a while, but I think the book the Little Vampire and Count Duckula cured my fear.

We were very aware of gurning in the 70s, although we were totally Londoners. I wonder if it was on Indoor League, Wheeltappers & Shunters or even Tiswas?

Oh I'd love to find the one we had from the 90s too. I think it had a big fireball on the front.

I remember this one!

Plus another one which had a 'real' photo of a ghost on a stairway on the cover!

Actually it was one of the images upthread!

I remember being scared of all that stuff upthread and then the x files came along which I bloody loved but it confirmed all my worst fears ( especially the one where the guy wakes up in a bath of ice minus some of his organs)!

I collected the monthly magazine 'The Unexplained' as a teenager. I was fascinated.

I was terrified of Big Foot, having accidentally watched The Legend of Boggy Creek.

The Children of Green Knowe didn't frighten me (except the fumbling fingers of Green Noah) - St Christopher was good and safe. I still love Linnet's Story, when he walks through the river. Adore that book.

When I was a child someone told me that if you die in your dream, you die for real. Even now I'm not convinced that's not true.

Also, Bloody Mary. Still can't look in a mirror at night.

Oh and banshees. You never hear of people being scared of banshees these days.

Quicksand is a huge thing in Morecambe area. Nearly came to grief as a teenager on the beach at Grange Over Sands.

I well remember the Bermuda triangle fascination. I even recall a book where someone claimed the BT was haunted by slaves who were thrown overboard during the transatlantic slave trade.

I recall PIFs about the dangers of climbing electricity pylons or into railway tracks. And Roald Dahl even writing a booklet on the latter (early 1990s) which was distributed to school kids. I developed a fear of pylons. The humming noise they make didn't help. Nasty things.

Didn't some cocklers meet with tragedy in quicksand at Morecombe some years back?

I remember being both fascinated and scared shitless in equal measure by Arthur C. Clarke's Mysterious World.

I can still recall the horrible picture in the book of someone's lower leg and foot after a supposed spontaneous human combustion. The tv series had a really creepy theme tune as well.