There's a special place in our hearts as those born between 1946-1964 The baby boomers were the profits of a post-war economic growth, but also entered into times of great social turbulence and yet another war. We had television and the ability to learn about many things we were never exposed to. As well, those of us who recall the 70s remember a lot of disillusionment between the Nixon debaucle, military coming home from Vietnam, and the abysmal economics of the Carter administration. Serial killers were at their height and a bit of paranoia caught hold, giving fertilizer for turning our gaze away from the crumbling world around us to something bigger than us, something affecting the chaos. I like to call this "scapeghost," the practice of blaming issues on something unknown.
In a time when we were opening our minds to new social concepts and freeing ourselves from past concepts, we were ripe and ready to include the spooky spectrum of unknown to the daily discussion. Finally, it was okay to get your palm read or report a UFO sighting.
Here's just some of the influences -
Bewitched, Bigfoot, In Search of, Kolchak: The Night Stalker, Casper, Scooby Doo, The Amityville Horror, Dark Shadows, The Munsters, The Addams Family, The Exorcist, The Omen, The Creature From the Black Lagoon, Ouija, The House on Haunted Hill, Unsolved Mysteries, The Legend of Boggy Creek, ET, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Elvira, The Twilight Zone, Night Gallery, Outer Limits, Ghost Story, My Favorite Martian, Lost in Space, Tales From the Darkside, Salem's Lot....
Serial killers in the news were another unexplained fear, as many cases were wide open and not solved yet, sometimes not for year, and in some cases - never. DB Cooper became a cult hero, escaping a plane by parachute after a mass robbery. Real-life accounts like the Amityville Horror caught our attention, as did "Close Encounters of the Third Kind," and "The Patterson Film" of Bigfoot. There were no subjects that weren't up for discussion.
Serial Killers: Ted Bundy, David Berkowitz "Son of Sam," Zodiac Killer, The Hillside Stranglers, Manson Family, John Wayne Gacy, Jim Jones, Ed Gein, Samuel Little, Gary Ridgway, Boston Strangler, Coral Eugene Watts, Edmond Kemper, Rodney Alcala....
We lived with "The Bomb" hanging over us from air-raid sirens to practice drills diving under our desks. Our parents played the Vietnam News on the TV continuously. We reached the moon, but we had a Cold War. We were technologically growing like wildfire, but still carrying the suppression of women and Blacks from the past.
These were crazy times and it made sense that we saw threat coming at us from every angle, but we also were opening our minds as if arising from a deep
amenesic sleep. We were ready to look at all the cold hard truths, including the ones that plagued us for centuries without anyone wishing to bring it to the forefront.
And, so, the subject of the unexplained became commonplace and no longer frightened, but now fascinated.
After all, our generation had seen it all. Our parents were World War II vets and we ourselves had seen the dark underbelly of war and unrest.
Each of became a member of the Scooby Doo gang, the seeker of truth that was Kolchak: The Night Stalker. We birthed the horror film industry and fed off its possibilities as if we were soldiers in boot camp, toughening up.
Bless the Baby Boomer generation and their dear fellows, Gen-X'ers. We are fearless!
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