Monster Rambles 18: The Mysterious World of Arthur C Clarke
The second look into a childhood filled with paranormal fun!!
Hi everybody,
Funnily, this is a sort of follow-up to the Peter Underwood podcast. I could call the this the mysterious worlds of Dansmonsters childhood. I’m just doing some research on the Unexplained magazine. I have unintentionally created a trilogy of tales! I’ve been so busy, I just have not had the time to record this, so I hope you enjoy this brief little bit of Dansmonsters history!
Arthur C. Clarke's Mysterious World was a British TV series, produced by Yorkshire TV for the ITV network. It looked at unexplained phenomena from around the world. It ran for 13 episodes, each one packed with some glorious stuff, especially considering they were only half an hour each. But then, pretty much all TV was just 30 minutes back then.
I remember it being advertised during the normal ad breaks and all the chatter about it at school. As I've said in previous podcasts, my small group of like-minded friends and I loved stuff like this.
I'd sit with my parents every Tuesday evening, and it was the last thing I could watch before bed since it was a school night! It was very rare that there was anything of interest on TV for a kid after 5 o'clock during the week. This wasn't a program made with a young audience in mind. However, my parents loved stuff like this as well, so they allowed me to watch it. No streaming back then, and lord knows when it would ever be repeated.
From the wonderful opening titles with the rotating glass skull and the amazing synthwave intro music (I even managed to record this on an audio tape at one point by pointing a microphone at the TV!), I was transfixed.
I have to admit that even though I had seen 2001 at this point (in my head, not as good as Star Wars at the time!), I had no idea who Arthur C. Clarke was. When he first appeared walking on a beach in Sri Lanka, I just thought he was some random paranormal expert they'd gotten hold of to introduce the show. He also looked a bit like my grandad! It was like watching him talking to a camera while on holiday! The fact he was a very important and highly regarded author and scientist I only discovered some years later. He introduced each section of the series, letting the audience know what we were about to see and the mysteries investigated. The episodes were narrated by Gordon Honeycombe, a news presenter in the UK. This added an extra level of gravitas since he was a well-known, serious newscaster.
All of these investigations were introduced as being from the files of Arthur C. Clarke, which I'm fairly sure was nonsense. However, in my head, Arthur sat in an office surrounded by books and filing cabinets, stuffed with newspaper cuttings, photos, artifacts, and reams of notebooks from his investigations.
Since we didn't have the power of the internet, Google, or ChatGPT, this was the only way we could find out about this stuff, apart from The Unexplained magazines and the occasional library book. Once watched and consumed, the next day at school the dissection of the episode would begin.
Each episode was vaguely themed, with titles like "The Missing Ape Man," investigating Bigfoot and the Yeti; "Riddles of the Stones," about megalithic structures; and "Out of the Blue," covering ice falls and animal rain, for example.
There was a sequel as well, "The World of Strange Powers." This was based on paranormal investigations. Most of my pals had moved on at this point, but I was a strange kid, so I just lapped this stuff up!
All 13 episodes transfixed me. As an avid reader of 2000 AD, a fan of Doctor Who, Sapphire & Steel, and Star Wars, etc., this ticked all my boxes. My imagination went wild, and I wanted the job of investigating all these wonderful mysteries. You can pretty much catch them all on YouTube.I’ll add a couple of links . Have a look—great and fascinating TV of the time. All the stuff they discuss has probably been debunked by now, or a billion theories have been thrown about online. These were more innocent times, and I just wanted to see Bigfoot, but I wanted to keep the mystery a mystery.
So, there you go! Next I will be writing about the Unexplained Magazine. Keep your eyes peeled!!
Anyway, there you go. Enjoy!
Thanks again! Any support is greatly appreciated!
All of the links!!!
Dansmonsters Library of Doom - Pulp reviews from my stupid collection
You Tube- Join the Monster Bomb Club
Kofi - Buy stuff so i can buy more pens or just a brew! Thanks!
My website! I need to update to be honest!
Instagram ( a necessary evil i suppose )
Here are a couple of links to buy some actual books:
Come on , you know these rules by now!
1. They are not real, so draw them any damn way you want.
2. Forget stuff like anatomy. Who cares.
3. Use any tool and as many as you like as long as it makes an unholy mess.
4. Most importantly, have some bloody great fun!
Great essay. I remember seeing them as a kid too and fascinated by it. Than Clarke would say in his own words basically he thought it was all shit and walk off away from the camera and back along the beach, presumably going back to his massive beach house.