As we get older, we often lose some of that wonder we had when we were children.
With the release of Mike Browne’s second book, Strange, Spooky and Supernatural, he revisits the sense of wonder from his youth, this time examining the stories that once captivated him through older eyes.
During a phone call with the Vancouver native, he reminisces about the books that drew him in. From the world of Mysteries of the Unknown from Time-Life Books to the book Sasquatch, which had a still from the Patterson-Gimlin video on its cover.
“I’m reminiscing a little bit with this book in particular, going back to my childhood and that idea of possibilities,” Browne said. “When we grow into adulthood we lose a bit of wonder. And that’s what I wanted to recapture for myself, at least, was a bit of that wonder.”
It’s a departure from his usual fare of true crime. Browne is the co-host of the podcast Dark Poutine, which he does with Matthew Stockton. But he’s not a stranger to high strangeness, as he also co-hosts Supernatural Circumstances with paranormal researcher Morgan Knudsen, who wrote the foreword for Strange, Spooky and Supernatural.
“It’s refreshing for me, to tell you the truth,” he said, of the different topics. “A pallet cleanses and one direction that I think I will continue to pursue because it’s really opened my mind to a lot of things.”
Browne is the product of a 1980s and ‘90s upbringing where shows like “Unsolved Mysteries”, “In Search Of …”, “That’s Incredible”, “Real People” and “Sightings”.
“I’ve been writing exclusively true crime for a long time, but I have a real passion for these kinds of stories,” he said, during a September phone call. “I’ve been collecting books of these kinds of stories and I wanted to put some of my favourite things into a book because I love things strange, spooky and supernatural.”
He pointed to books about Harry Houdini that he read as a kid; Scholastic had sold books to students in classrooms across Canada and still does today.
The opening chapter focuses on the famous escape artist who also doubled as a skeptic.
“He really wanted to dig in and find out what something was,” Browne said. “He was a great debunker, but he was the epitome of what a skeptic should be: somebody willing to ask questions to find out what’s going on, rather than discount everything like James Randi.”
Outside of people, which also includes Kaspar Hauser, Jerome the Legless Man of Sandy Cove and Granger Taylor, Browne touches on places like Borley Rectory and Aokigahara, as well as things, like the Monster of Van Meter, Iowa and Toronto’s own Philip Experiment.
The whole process happened over the year after he presented his pitch to Harper Collins, at their behest, with his idea for a second book. He’s also coming down from the high of “The Traitors Canada”. It premiered September 23 and Browne is one of the competitors on the show. The show has also provided him the opportunity to promote his book.
“They left my mention of (my book) in one of the opening scenes,” he recalled. “I mentioned that, ‘My second book is coming out’ and I named it, so they left it in the episode, which was great.”
Strange, Spooky and Supernatural will be on stands on October 1 at bookstores or online. You can also catch Browne on The Traitors Canada on Monday nights.