Strange Stories, Amazing Facts, Kooky Tales
An Old Book and a New Podcast
This week my wife and I (re)launched a podcast called Kooky Tales, but I don’t want to talk about that just yet. Instead, I want to talk about a book that at a very young age contributed to who I am today.
I was really young when I became interested in “weird stuff.” My grade school librarian used to tease me by saying for me that Dewey Decimal System was pointless as I never made it past the 000 section, where books about n Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster can be found. Our school’s small library may have only had one or two books about UFOs but that didn’t stop me from checking them out over and over again.
Like other kids like me, I soon discovered In Search Of, hosted by Leonard Nimoy. I was pretty young when the series first began to air, but once I discovered it I could not get enough of it. There were episodes about ghosts, and the Mummy’s Curse, and psychic powers. The episode about the Bermuda Triangle made such an impact on me that when my wife and I got married I could barely contain my excitement when I learned the cruise we were taking for our honeymoon to the Bahamas would take us right through the Bermuda Triangle.
The other thing that fascinated me as a kid were unusual facts. Each year when our school had a book fair I would beg my mom to buy me the latest edition of Ripley’s Believe it or Not, even though ew of the facts changed from year to year. I loved the Guinness Book of World Records, too. Some of this was a gateway into the world of true crume, as well. I’m pretty sure I was the only kid in grade school who had done book reports on both The Amityville Horror and Helter Skelter.
All of these interests culminated in a single book by Reader’s Digest: Strange Stories, Amazing Facts. The book is a large, 600+ page compilation of stories covering every topic I’ve mentioned and more. So much more. The story of the world’s most haunted house was in there next to an article about spontaneous combusion and another about whether or nor Anastasia was still alive. It had the stories of Jack Ruby and Jack the Ripper. That book was like a never-ending buffet of weird stories. I’m not sure where my parents got the book but I remember spending hours upon hours laying sprawled out on the floor with the book open in front of me.
As a teen I would go on to obtain all those Time-Lie books and collections, but Strange Stories, Amazing Facts was pretty much where it all began for me.
I don’t know what happened to our original copy of that book — it may have literally fell apart from how many times we had flipped through its pages, but the good thing is they probably printed millions of copies. Many years ago I was able to pick up my own copies, and I’ve since acquired electronic copies too for scrolling through when stick in a waiting room or traffic.
My wife is one of the most normal, well-adjusted adults on the planet. She’s kind, she’s smart, she’s funny, she’s generous, and you would never know by looking at her that she owned the same Random House book on UFOs that I had as a kid. She loved and loves all the same things I did and do. On road trips she’s the one constantly finding fun detours for us, like the time she discovered we were only a few miles from the resting place of Robert Wadlow, the talled man to have lived in modern history. Robert Wadlow was Ripley’s and Guinness royalty.
'My wife has been with me to the Bermuda Triangle (twice), to Mt. Rainer (the site of the first modern UFO sigting and the source of the name “flying saucer”), to Area 51 (they wouldn’t let us in), Roswell, and hundreds of other adventures.
One of the things we love more than anything is discovering “strange stories and amazing facts” and sharing them with one another. There’s nothing I love more than finding some bizarre “kooky tale” and sharing it with my wife. And that is how Kooky Tales Podcast started.
On Kooky Tales Podcast, I find stories similar to things I’ve mentioned and share them with my wife just to get her raction. To keep things interesting, my wife — whose drawing skills are notoriously bad — attempts to illustrate the stores with questionable results.
If any of this sounds like fun to you, come join us. After a two-year hiatus we just kicked off the second season of Kooky Tales Podcast. Episodes are available on YouTube (https://YouTube.com/@KookyTalesPodcast) as well as Apple podcasts if you just want the audio feed.
Oh, and you can bet I’ll be thumbing back through Strange Stories, Amazing Facts for more show ideas.