Unquiet
Things

"We’re all a little weird. And life is weird. And when we find someone whose weirdness is compatible with ours, we join up with them and fall into mutually satisfying weirdness—and call it love—true love."

What a lovely entry! Thanks for sharing these stories with us.
I rarely write blog comments, but this is a story you might like, and it definitely contributed to my fascination with horror and SF:
When I was a little girl, my mother didn't allow anything in the house that she deemed "unhealthy" for little girls - especially films and books that were "low culture" or "pulp", containing all sorts of horrors and of course sex.
One day I was home alone, looking for rum-filled chocolates in my dad's nightstand. I found the chocolates, but I also found a paperback: one of Frank Herbert's Dune books. (I believe it was God Emperor of Dune, but I haven't found the exact same copy with the cover I remember.) Soon my dad was giving me a secret introduction to horror and SF - a series of oral retellings of all the "forbidden books" (and movies) while out hiking or pulling sledges uphill. We'd hang back a little, and he'd tell me stories by Edgar Allan Poe, or recounted versions of pulpy SF serials (like Perry Rhodan). I loved the monsters and the tech - and I guess it was even more thrilling because it was such a transgression! ;)

I don't know if there was any one particular moment - I've always been a little strange and unusual. My dad introduced me to the old Universal monster movies and the Addams Family/Munsters shows when I was a wee thing. I was six or so and, having seen Beetlejuice for the first time, informed my parents that I only wanted to dress in black like Lydia. A short while later, the Addams Family movie(s) came out, and it was "downhill" from there. By my early teens, I'd discovered Anne Rice and once the internet really became a Thing, I got to learn all about this or that subculture. I've never looked back!

Spooky & eerie stuff is my favorite!

What a colorful upbringing you had!
I'm not sure that there was just one moment that factored into me becoming an odd bird. I think perhaps I was born this way.

Like you, my early weirdness was fostered by horror comics, but in my case the comic was The House of Mystery...specifically the ones that ran the "I, Vampire!" story line. I mean, look at this cover: https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Tpr0PavE2gA/Uip_Gn7E7-I/AAAAAAAAOJY/FHoDeL8WREk/s1600/HoM313.jpg

I am all about everything in that illustration.

Getting my first D&D game was also a huge influence because it was just another in a long series of excuses to stay indoors, dream things up, and avoid sunlight.

I believe my 'weirdness' and fascination with oddities began because I was starved of them; we didn't ever celebrate Halloween, my parents were conservative christians, and our church collectively banned trick-or-treating. I couldn't read Harry Potter because of the witch craft, and there was no such thing as a horror movie. Despite this I remained a somewhat morbid child, collecting animal skulls from backyards and reading whatever horror novels I could find at the library. the contents of your giveaway fascinate my inner ghoul <3

My Aunt pulled me into the strange. When I was young she would read my palm, she lent me a book on it. She gave me my first tarot deck (Rider-Waite). The rest I guess I stumbled into on my own. A fascination with graveyards, I would do rubbings as a teen and on into my adult hood. I still do rubbings but now it's because I have to for work! My cemetery job fulfills some of my weirdness and my strange groups of friends fulfill the rest. On the 28th there is a metaphysical day at my favorite downtown store and I'm excited to meet more people that share my strange!!!

I've always been a little odd.
I have PVCs. Or so I've been told. The heart doc had no idea why written we tried to suppress them with meds they almost doubled.
It's always been like an extra sense. When I get them bad, something is up. Someone close to me is going through somethin.. etc. That's when I picked up tarot. I now keep picking them up lol.

I can't pick a moment. Just that my parents never told me something was weird. Never stopped my gothic phase (im still a little goth girl inside). They indulged my quirks.

:)
do you read Thoth now?

my mother dabbled in the occult as a teenager and told me all kinds of stories as a means to try and scare me into staying on the "right path" aka: being a good little Christian.

That coupled with being raised on all kinds of horror media starting from a really young age led to a huge curiosity about witchcraft and the occult which I didn't actually indulge until years later.

Now of course I'm a practicing witch, pagan and tarot reader.

My mother was into tarot, and astrology, and I grew up pouring over her books hoping to divine my future...however, I think the combination of the Time Life Mysteries of the Unknown ("Hauntings" was repeatedly checked out from the library, and the story about a breathing teddy bear caused me to be more wary of my stuffed animals), "In Search Of.." tv series, and a deep desire to control my surroundings contributed to my fascination with magic and witchcraft. This fascination had petered out around since I lost my belief in ghosts, God (this had been on it's way out since high school, it just needed a nudge) and the afterlife at the death of my father nine years ago. But, thanks to a certain crowd of people (nudge nudge) I'm learning to embrace the fun of the dark arts and occult again. ;-)

Ooh, what an interesting story! I just stumbled upon this blog and is so up my alley, I love it!

i think my father was determined from the moment i was born to make me into a weirdo, just like him. he loved to attend as many different weird religious practices as possible (after subjecting me to being a jehovah's witness until i was about 11 - yeesh, cultish, weird people) -- and the more strange the better, always with me in tow.

but, i think what really defined me as a weirdo, or at least, set me on that path was hanging out in a satanic book store in dallas when i was WAY too young for it -- reading the bondage fairies, renting movies like the pillow book and pi, being fascinated by picture books of real life cannibals. gosh, i can't even remember the name of it now. but for me, it was a safe haven. and the proprietor was really nice to me! i'll always have a soft spot for satanists as a result.

My childhood seems so boring now..! My dad was trying to be a hypnotherapist and he made cd's with graphics of him holding a locket with blue swirls behind him. Sometimes the CDs would be blank so I'd burn music on them to give to my friends.

My upbringing sounds pain vanilla by contrast. I grew up in an upper middle class suburb. It was populated by preppies, golfers wearing LaCoste shirts and khaki pants. I was kind of a misfit. We lived in a ranch style house from the 50s that included an kind and sometimes frightening ghost named Mr Smiley. My grandmother was downright "neo-witchy" but I didn't realize it. I thought healing via laying of hands, speaking to spirits, seeing spirits & reading auras was what everyone did.
Thanks for sharing your ookie and kookie upbringing.

I think I've always taken the offbeat path. I always loved Are You Afraid of the Dark? and the Goosebumps novels, and my favorite holiday has always been Halloween. I have a vivid memory from my childhood of my dad "floating" down the stairs, wearing a sheet over his body, using a glowing, cackling pumpkin as his head. He was trying to scare me and my brother, but we just shrieked in delight instead.

My dad and my uncle were always trying to scare us kids. In the summers, we'd go to my uncle's house in the countryside and have bonfires. They'd pass on tales of terror to us as we munched on s'mores. On one of these nights, my dad told us a story about a werewolf. At the end, my uncle appeared from the shadows wearing a werewolf mask and growling. That DID scare us; we hadn't even noticed him sneak away from the flames. That's now one of my favorite childhood memories.

PS: I'm seeing Weird Al for the first time this summer!

I can't think of an exact moment. I was raised by a Jungian and a librarian. First deck of tarot cards at maybe 8 or 9; classic unedited German fairytales; access and open permission to read anything I wanted. My first novel was a Stephen King book. When I had nightmares, my father told me that nightmares were exercise for dealing with scary things in real life. He taught my brother and I the basic principles of lucid dreaming and encouraged us to fight back in our nightmares and to stay in them as long as we could instead of waking up. Not knowing this, my grandmother came for a visit once and when she saw me go into the fridge for a pickle, she told me that eating pickles before bed would probably give me bad dreams. Encouraged by this, I started pounding pickles before bed every night in hopes that it would work, like some nutty teenager eating morning glory seeds because they heard it was LSD lite. When I was in first grade a meeting of the Brownies (baby Girl Scouts) was at my house. My father had these crazy 1970s sculptures of a knight and a boogly monster. While we were unsupervised (my mom probably told us to do whatever and went to read a book) I told the other children that the sculptures were enchanted, and that I knew the spells that would bring the monster back to life. They were not impressed. I stood up and started chanting "magical words" of gibberish, the kind of things that like Baba Yaga and the Wicked Witch of Oz said (yes, I had memorized the incantation to summon flying monkeys with the golden cap) in the fairytales I read, face thunderous - and I was so convincing that they all became totally freaked out and ran screaming out of the room. That didn't exactly help my childhood reputation.

"Normal is an illusion. What is normal for the spider is chaos for the fly.”

I don't really know what has contributed in making me the person I am today, still trying to figure it out.

But we're all a bit weird, aren't we?

So much weirdness in my childhood, but at the time it all seemed normal. I was still scared and traumatized, but I didn't know any better. Some of my earliest memories involve the neighbor keeping a coffin in the upstairs hallway, I never went over again to play at that kid's house! Seeing my grandfather bleed a chicken in the backyard for dinner. My aunts keeping us locked and trapped in the metal swings in the park, while they smoked pot under the shade of a tree with some boy they were crushing on. Hearing stories about vain babysitters, who were too distracted by their looks, the babies in their care all died. The list goes on, but I wouldn't change any of it.

Hoorah! I love that we had that blog...it did fill a niche for me and I treasure working on it with you! Then I suppose I moved and got bogged down with life...but thank you for remembering it.

As for being a "weirdo", I cannot put my finger on any pivotal moment. You know about my rural gothic grandparents' houses, and of course I always thought cemeteries were interesting places. I used to be afraid of the twilight zone theme music, even. When I was in fourth grade I started reading Nancy Drew mysteries, some of which have a "ghost" or some other phenomenon that usually ended up being Ned Nickerson in the bushes, but from there I graduated to other strange books, and finally the summer between 4th and 5th grade, there exists a library card where I took out all kinds of strange things. My favorite book was "The Weirdest People in the World", all purported to be true stories (mostly legends, and unsubstantiated ones at that!) It was mid-sixth grade that I found the book about Mothman in the back of the classroom. And thus it began.

I had a slightly feral upbringing & had (still have) a wild imagination that was fed by many age-inappropriate books...weird to the core.

I love 'origin' stories, thank you for sharing yours :D

I think my "weirdening" came from all sides like a wee perfect storm. The 80's was a great time to grow up surrounded by an abundance of sci-fi/fantasy to fuel the imagination. Large chunks of my childhood were spent in the North of England 'out on the wiley, windy moors', visiting graveyards and castles - even playing on the beach with Whitby Abbey as backdrop long before the Whitby Gothic Weekend existed. Both parents had a love for history and the classics, Dad encouraged my reading with Stoker, Shelly and the Brontes, and my Mom had an interest in all things haunted and spooky. Old Addams Family & Munsters played on rerun in our house all the time, (Mom's favourite shows). And being dark haired and pretty pasty, I found myself naturally aligning with the Lydia Deetz's of the world, my Mom still calls me her 'raven haired little girl'.

(Slightly OT - if you want to see a *totally* awkward 16 year old me hanging out with Weird Al, yay interwebs and yes...proudness: https://youtu.be/KiWp43NkLbg?t=4m17s)

My parents did their best to make sure I stayed normal. Their first mistake was my weird name, and I've been living up to it's oddness since being a wee girl who loved math and science, to fully embracing my inner geek and dark side as a young lady. I'm the oddball mom now and I look forward to being a peculiar old lady.

I was a melancholy child with little freedom; I escaped in books, oil paints, papers and pens. My mother was always kind and reassuring when I told her about my nighttime "sights" and dreams. Her best friend was a tarot reader – much to the ire of my father –, and I would often tag along with her when she visited her in secrecy. Watching my mother drink tea with her best friend in that big house of veils and drapes, I felt safe... and free.

I really don't know where my weird came from, because I had a pretty normal suburban upbringing. I read a lot. Like, a lot. And I had a very overactive imagination, so I guess that helped contribute to who I am today. I just really loved imagining the big and the weird and the crazy. But I guess the biggest turning point for me was in 10th grade, when I decided to join the cast of a nearby haunted house. From then on, I was hooked, and I have been actively exploring and embracing the weird in this world.

I was an only child and very frequently alone. I also became literate at a fairly young age and I read everything I could get my hands on. Somehow I stumbled on to some books about witchcraft in a used book store when I was around 8 or 9. Needless to say, I started exploring and experimenting, and despite taking an extended break due to realizing I had no idea what I was getting into, my interest in the weird and occult has persisted.

Fantastic entry! Until reading it, I thought my friend Shannon and I were the only ones that found Manly P. Hall to be one crazy handsome fellow! Between reading this and your other entries, you clearly have fantastic and evolved esoteric tastes. (The best kind, really!)

Heather

I love hearing stories about others' weird childhoods. I can relate. My mother, no shit, used to read my The Tell-tale Heart every night as a bedtime story. We also used to watch Cocteau's Beauty and the Beast instead of Disney. I hated it at the time & just wanted to be normal. Now, I really appreciate that she was so off kilter & am glad I am as well :)
My aunt gave me my first tarot deck when I was 11. I guess that's the age?! Ha! I would have died to have an occulty step-father though.

Whee! A giveaway! I'd type more but I'm on my phone at work. Hooray for High Weirdness!

I think the defining factor in being such a weird kid was that my parents pretty much gave me unsupervised access to their book collection. Once I'd run through all the Ramona books, I had to start foraging in their shelves of science fiction paperbacks, leftover books from my mother's college lit classes, that old school copy of The Joy of Sex where the ladies had pubic hair, and other oddities. So I read a lot of stuff like Heinlein, those Clan of the Cave Bear books, Asimov, Kurt Vonnegut, and other random things. I mean, I'm not sure why anyone let ten year old me read both Watership Down and Animal Farm in the same week. An especial favorite was Edgar Rice Burroughs and the John Carter of Mars series in especially lurid pulp paperback form. I'm going to blame all my sexual habits on the fact I read so much about people banging aliens as a kid.

(In 6th grade, I staged a dramatic reading during lunch period of one of those epic ten page sex scenes from Jean Auel's books. I got in a LOT of trouble. It remains one of the most hilarious memories of my middle school years.)

That sounds like such a fun childhood to have a mom that was into all of that and to have adults around who were so cool lol you're lucky! My great grandmother was reaaaaally superstitious and believed in hexes and curses, on New Years she'd do rituals and sage the house then open all the windows "letting all the bad spirits out" to start the year fresh she was so cool and mysterious! Her daughters and my mom hate stuff like that so now that I'm into ouija boards and tarot cards and things like that they can't stand it XD I'm all alone in my interest!

One of my favorite moments from childhood involving the supernatural was when I was about 7 years old. I was sleeping in my step-grandmother's house with my step-cousin, Katy. I should mention that my step-grandfather had committed suicide several years beforehand. We were both in bed telling each other random ghost stories. I was in the middle of a ghost story about a person who died chattering there teeth as they hid in a fireplace. As I began telling her the part of the story where all the lights go out in the character's house, the light on our table stand flickered once or twice and then turned off completely.. We rushed to turn the light back on. We both just sat there silently for a moment, and then we had this back and forth of telling each other how uncool that was to try and scare the other one and to never do that again. But it didn't take long for us to realize it wasn't a prank. The light just did that ... by itself? We decide to turn the light off again and go to sleep since we were both terrified. But remember in my story someone was chattering there teeth? As we were lying in the dark, trying to sleep, we heard a strange clicking noise outside of our window. We both just said it was a squirrel. I guess it's easier to rationalize than a light turning itself off. Needless to say, I have never even questioned the existence of ghosts. I know they are there like I know the sun will rise every morning. And to be honest, I like that.

One of the most bizarre and traumatic sequences that probably defined my relationship with my dad started with a dream I had: my dad and I were at the carnival, just us, and he left me alone with the promise of going to get some cotton candy. He turned the corner. I didn't see anything happen but I was immediately filled with dread. He came back, with the cotton candy, but I was terrified because it wasn't my dad. he looked exactly like my dad, but I knew he wasn't. I knew that he was someone, or something else, disguised as my dad, or wearing my dad's skin. In any and all cases, I woke up.
But around the same age, I was playing outside. I looked out to the street and saw my dad's truck, a lil' white Toyota, parked along the side with my dad in the passenger's side. But sort of folded over, lopsided. I couldn't see the driver. The truck pulled away. I was startled to the point of running inside and telling my mom, who didn't seem to react.

That was around the point where the strain in my parents' relationship really forced a schism in the household. And while I had enjoyed a close relationship with my dad as a kid, doing outdoorsy dad-child things, that just all seemed to come to an end in the years that followed. I don't know is the dream carried this over naturally or if the dream traumatized me into this processing, but to date I still doubt and fail to recognize even the most familiar faces to me.

I'm not exactly sure if it has a beginning (or an end, really). I've always been a little weird. Mainly because my parents rarely restricted media. I grew up watching my Dad play videogames like Oddworld and Legacy of Kain. Silent Hill was what really got me into creature design and psychological horror type things. Those are really the only outstanding childhood examples I can think of. It really only came to the fore when I started getting interested in supernatural, metaphysical, and occult things.

I found out all these weird things that happen around my family. We apparently had several 'friendly' ghosts, and there was also a powerful witch in the family (they had a really weird name). My dad can't get any readings from fortune tellers, because they look like they've seen something frightening once they begin, and they ask him to leave. I still don't know what that's about. My maternal grandmother also practiced a little magic (simple sympathetic magic, like writing someone's name on a slip of paper and sticking it in the freezer to 'put them on ice'). Also her ghost apparently visited me once, to give me a message, but I was asleep, and I don't remember anything. Everyone else says the room was freezing and she was visible, standing over me. I really wish I knew what that message was. Is it possible to sleep through a visitation?

I know my mom used to be interested in witchcraft because I found all of the unreturned library books about it when I inherited my parents' book hoard (they're from the 80s, so the late fees must be incredible). I myself mostly study, sometimes I'll do small things with varying degrees of success. I don't know what it's like to not be interested in weird things (has anyone else heard of atrocityland and Strangers? So good.)

Do you know how long it's been since I mislaid a book? Well, let's just say the continents weren't in their current shapes, not that that means anything to you.
Lucien in Sandman #38: "The Hunt"

I always thought it was being a pisces that did it, lol. Had enough psychic ability (and dreams that came true) that I was constantly scaring people with knowledge of things. It drew me to the magical and mystical- constantly looking for answers, explanations, how to hone it, how to subdue it. Finally I just embraced it ^_^

Giving things away.
I've been giving a lot away. It's curious how sometimes people sell things or give them away. I reckon we all do a bit of both, but what besides effort aligns us with the giving versus selling, at a soul level?
Many things have left my life over the past 2 years and I have thus thoroughly stretched my abilities to grieve, feel sunlight again and walk on. The final throwdown was bedbugs, a virtually unmissable friend in the Tenderlion, SF. But ah ho, do they bring mental anxiety, physical anxiety and deep mistrust of place.
Now as I steadily, with love and intention rebuild myself and allow so much to give way, I enter to inherit your things. As they are beautiful but moreover energetically interested in why you chose to give in this particular way....
I assure you, if I win, they will all end up exactly where they need to be.
I don't seem to be able to function any other way with material objects, at this stage in time.

By the bye bye, I love your music mixes.
Many thanx....
xoxo
Madeline

I dunno if anything from my childhood contributed to my wierdness... if anything, I guess it would actually be how straightlaced and religious my mom was. Good ol' teenage rebellion. Now that I'm in my twenties I've mellowed out a little and I still love my mom very much but yeah. heh.

I found a cassette tape of Ozzy's Bark at The Moon in the middle of the road when I was in 7th grade.

I was always a bit out there as a kid. Fantasy always really appealed to me, especially fantasy magic. And thus I sort of wound up being a huge mythology geek and falling into paganism. I always wanted to be goth, but never quite could get the courage up to wear the look until very recently. I am currently a practicing Norse Pagan, so something very much stuck.

Oh what a wonderful blog! I loved reading how everyone has embraced their beautiful oddness

i can't exactly remember when i started my descent into weirdness, but i'm told up until a certain point i lived an incredibly normal childhood (i don't remember it).

for as long as i can remember i was obsessed with witches as magic. i didn't get to properly start studying it though until i was about 12, and i've continued my research ever since then.

around age 8, i believe, is when i first started seeing things, ghosts, spirits, whatever they were. i still see them but not as often anymore, and it's still mostly only when i'm around certain other people with strong spiritual connections. i guess we sort of resonate, and then weird things start happening and spirits make themselves known.

i've never really had anyone to teach me these things, at least not in this lifetime. my close family were all very skeptical minded. i certainly wish i'd had a mentor or two like it appears you have. i think it would've been helpful, but i also sort of enjoy my wandering path through the strangeness.

I am the only child and I remember my dad saying often "I wish you were a boy". So I wuld tag along with him to events. Baseball,comic book and horror conventions. I remember watching horror movies at a very young age. The Creature from the Black Lagoon coming to mind as one of the first I remember and one of my favorites HELLRAISER 2. My dad always told me not to be scared, instead try and figure out how these monsters were made. I was intrigued ever since. Probably a little jaded but intrigued none the less. It takes A Lot to shock or scare me. But I must admit my week spot is anything having to do with possession. The Excorsist scares the crap out of me. I remember watching it as a child with a pillow in front of my face. I don't know what's worse the sight or sound from that movie.
Halloween was also a big thing in our house. That was the time my dad took advantage of my mom coming home after him and torture time ensued. He would dress up in a scary costume, turn off all the lights in the house, and chase me into a corner until I was crying hysterically. Oh this would begin with him throwing a plastic skull down the stairs at me where it stopped perfectly at my feet. Game on. Time to run!
Now that I think about it, I should hate Halloween and everything horror based on these child hood experiences. But I guess my mind is warped and like putty in his hands have been molded into something so far from "normal" that the opposite happened.

I'm not sure if there was one specific moment; I've always been a little (or a lot...) weird! I think there were three things that got me obsessed with mysteries and ghost stories and all things spooky and weird, though. Reading every single Nancy Drew book my library had to offer, getting a subscription in the mail that allowed me to solve mysteries, and coming home every day after school and immediately watching Scariest Places on Earth. I also have a very strong memory of laying on my grandfather's couch in his very haunted farmhouse and watching the X-Files movie. I also barely got any sleep when we stayed there because it was so creepy in that house. I have always loved Halloween and weird tales and cryptozoology, though. I think another thing that contributes to that was when, in kindergarten, the school librarian read us all the story of the tailypo. It still scares me! But also fascinates me. I've always been weird. ;)

I should comment on your blog more, because I always enjoy it (as I have told you)... but who can resist such an awesome giveaway? You post some of the most intriguing stuff and I appreciate that because it's a breath of fresh air in comparison to the mundane nonsense I often come across. The stories of your youth are absolutely fascinating. My family wasn't really into all of that, but I have always had a deep interest in much of what you expressed in your blog... even at a young age. I have yet to pinpoint where that interest spawned from but I don't think it'll ever fade (thankfully).

Anyways, thank you for sharing such precious pieces of your life with us here... and for sharing so many treasures to explore via music, movies, etc. ^_^

Sincerely,
Luna

Like some others, I don't know that I could point to any specifics in my childhood that lead to my love for the dark and weird today, but I think being an early reader helped in some respect. I can remember reading The Hobbit in second grade. My favorite part? The sojourn in Mirkwood. I read lots of folklore and mythology and fairy tales as well, which undoubtedly led me further into the woods.