You can use the ouja board to ask the dead fish what he thinks is his best side.

Ashens needs to make a series called "Reading with Ashens" where he reads bizarre books and comments on them

Fun fact : 10 out of 12 water companies in the UK were found to be using divining rods for maintenance and troubleshooting as recently as last year. I wish I was joking

I'm almost 40 years old and at my elementary school in South Carolina we absolutely did the fish printing thing more than once. It's never seemed that weird to me, but maybe that's because I was forced to slather paint on dead fish at the age 7.

Funny how this book manages to play dumb when it comes to growing plants and "what causes a wort" but is smart enough to know the science behind why planchette chips move beneath your fingers.

Re: sun sneezing -- I learned from my roommate that some people have their olfactory and optical nerves closer to each other, and staring at a bright light jumps the circuit and causes sneezing.

The strangest thing about this book is how it is worded. It's like an alien found out about the English language.

I love how the book cuts the BS regarding the Ouija board and just says it's because your hand makes subtle unnoticeable movements, no ghosts here, just your subconscious and involuntary kinaesthetics. Meanwhile, mind reading is absolutely real and there are plenty who can do it.

Escalators don't break, they become stairs temporarily

15:28 How did you miss that part about using the pyramid as a tomb for a small animal??

Find a silver dish and wait for a clear night with a full moon. Balance the dish so it reflects the moonlight, and gently rub your warts in the moonlight's reflection on your skin. This causes the moonbeams to take your warts and carry them up to the Moon. ahhh, so _that's_ how it works!

Stones with holes in them are magical things unless you live in Arizona and a snake comes out the hole and bites you.

They were almost right with the warts and dandelion thing. Dandelion root extract actually has antiviral properties and might actually do something for a wart...but the cryotreatment will still be better.

Wow! I had this book in the 1970s, it gave me a life long interest in shouting at plants and wierd shit. This is why I like ashens.

The great thing about ashens is that his quality and style never really changes so watching an old video ive never watched before is like watching a new one

Speaking as a person who is from the 70s, you kids just don't get it. We had 3 tv channels with nothing good on, no internet, no video games, libraries too far away to go to very often, neglectful parents, poor quality food, and lots of time on our hands - plus dead fish. Plenty of dead fish (1970s polluted lakes and streams.) We did what we had to.

That fish looks angry.. I would be too if I'd been used as a paint print.

I also did dead fish scale paintings in elementary school. We also took a field trip to a cemetary to make tombstone rubbings.

I caught this video when it had just been uploaded. I then checked amazon... The book was selling for under £3. Three days later and it's now selling for between £55 and £340. Inflation, thy name is Stuart Ashens!

6:02 "My grandmother believed that you could buy a wart off someone and it would disappear." 13:37 "So my dad and grandad both believed in water divining and both believed they could do it." What the hell Ashens, did you descend from Shire Folk? Don't worry, I just remembered Ashens is from Norwich.

Fun fact: the Ouija board originally had nothing to do with the occult, it was marketed just as this book explains it, the connection with the occult came decades later and made infamous due to religious groups and movies like The Exorcist vilifying it.

IIRC the "fish printing" is a thing from japanese art. I also seem to remember that the fish is supposed to be dried but I can't be completely sure I remember it correctly. Edit: Nope, I misremembered the dried part. It wouldn't be impossible though.

How to strengthen your kids immune system: Let play them with dead fish. Keep them near rotting meat...

In my middle school library I found an entire book of witchcraft in the lowest corner, ready to check out and everything. I distinctly remember seeing a spell for getting rid of someone you wanted out of your life. What the hell was it doing there?

The "Fish Prints" of Bel-Air

Oh my!!!!! I read this as a child of the late 80s and 90s. A wave of nostalgia. I remember the water thing. Never did any of them because I had my Game Boy or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Toys.

Here in Portugal, we sell liquor in bottles with the fruit inside them. Pear liquor in a bottle with a pear. Plum liquor in a bottle with a plum. Etc.

So when I was in elementary/primary school we actually did the fish painting. They sell rubber versions of fish for that use. Its a Japanese style of painting I believe. I kinda forget about it till I saw this video. We just made an underwater scene. Basically a big rubber stamp shaped like a real fish. This is really an odd memory to bring back up.

I once showed a girl in school a penrose triangle explaining it was an impossible object. She told me it was not impossible and she could make it easily. I sat there a good 5 minutes having an aneurysm.

" This Jen..is the space box"

This seems like a hippie cult child recruitment book

The putting someone's hand in warm water to make them piss themselves while they're sleeping is true. When I was a kid, me and my cousins did that to each other.

Playing music to plants in 1976, yea, Rush 2112 came out that year, we played it while rolling up a certain plant to smoke, that's as close as we got. Ahhh, the '70's. A Passage To Bangkok is the song to listen to from that album while smoking said plant, quite fitting, it is.

Mr. Ashens, you're delightful; you're like a slightly-ruder modernised form of Tim Rowett from Grand Illusions :)

I wonder if my plants listened to Death Grips maybe they would actually grow.

The 'Sleeping person's hand in bucket of water = Pissed bed' does work. On a school trip to France in 1978, it was tried out on a very annoying kid in our party. Very successful experiment. I saw the 'Body Tricks' book. It had 'Printing With Corpses'. Get a fresh stiff, cover it in paint, and print with it. You could also store your corpse under a fucking great pyramid the book showed you how to make. Instead of chicks, there were instructions on how to make your own Homunculus, or if you had plenty of clay to hand, a Golem. Great little book. The 'Bottles and Cans' book was 30 pages of pictures of Fosters and Castlemaine Four X containers. Quite dull, actually.

Can't wait for RiffTrax to do "At Your Fingertips: Dead Fish"

Practical Puffin's Body Tricks, 4.1: Make a death mask of your dead relative 4.2: How to get a dead relative

'stones with holes in them are magical things' I actually spat my drink out hahahaha

I NEED THIS BOOK! I run an boys and girls club here in Canada. I just wanna put it on my shelves one day and see what happens!! My kids are weird as me and will LOVE IT!

12:30 Interesting note - those cards are actually useful when training a real life skill of silent communication. Silent communication is what happens between two familiar people when they get each other's ideas just by looking at one another; it is a form of subconscious "cold reading" based on previous experience of each other thought processes and corresponding micro-movements. Actors are often taught or develop this skill to better understand fellow actors on stage during unforeseen improvisations.

Bad luck looks like a tiny Piers Morgan

"a few hours before pipping a chicken prepares itself" God What!?!?!?!

I also feel like I would have been really intrigued by a book like this as a kid.

Get the Living Wild and Body Tricks books lol! You know it's from the 70s when the baby picture has genitals lol

I...... I still have that book..... I stole it from our library when I was 8..... it's been in my wooden chest for 2 decades

I remember in elementary school here in the US, we did fish prints in science class, as I’m from a part of the country where there is a lot of fishing, so literally every science class, every year of school, involved fish. Raising fish, printing fish, dissecting fish, fish populations, fish migration patterns... There was a lot of stuff about fish.

Lol, I’m from cape cod, and we did the fish prints every year in school 😂

Oh, I have a water divining anecdote too! In my college film program, some friends produced a documentary about a family that claimed to be psychic. The mother claimed that her son could divine water. As a test for the documentary, the crew hid a bottle of water somewhere in the living room. After an awkward while, the kid gave up on the divining rods and just started turning over the pillows and couch cushions until he found it the normal non-psychic way. The footage was pretty hilarious.

oh man ashens this totally reminded me, when my dad gave me his vinyl singles collection in the box was a book about the same sort of size called 'Puppets' their are such horrors in there that will break the mind of even the most hardened Johnsons timber decking paint drinker. If you're interested in doing a video on it give us a shout :D

I had a book as a kid that had full on potion recipes and rituals. I still have it, it's called "The Golden Book of the Mysterious" from 1976. It has wonderful illustrations.

Omg I'm from Canada, born in 1981, and I had this book! No idea where my parents got it.... but I can remember even as a kid questioning the quackery in it!

Ah the weird shit from the 70's way before I was born. Something that my great grandmother used to say was hiccups meant you was growing. Which you know isn't the case you gotta love stuff like these. We have came so far in knowledge of the function of our bodies. Great video Stuart like always

Ashens needs to do a strange things extravaganza where he does the things from the book!

I'm liking the new and strange direction this channel is heading in...more of this weirdness please Ashens!!!!

70's kid here. Childhood was pretty great back then.

"It looks like a tiny Piers Morgan." Now that's the sort of insanity I'm here for!

Mythbusters proved music affects plant growth, the type of music matters👍

This is surely making *Things Stranger*

I'll have you know fish printing is a traditional japanese craft. And I'm not ever kidding about that.

1:30 am... Time to sleep. *Notification pings* Nevermind... Ashens video.

Dude I remember Puffin books, and I'm not that old. It's great to see the art-style, and some of their books were dark material. Thank you for the nostalgia!

I accidentally stumbled across this video and it's literally the funniest review of a book I've heard in a long time!

i sure do love pear in a bottle, who could ever forget

"EVEN A GIANT SALAMI"

Yes! new video! perfect timing! exclamation points!

That "fish printing" is the art of Gyotaku. Was pretty popular in the old days both for art and to record great catches.

Damn. I was born in the right generation.

Too bad it wasn't an Usborne book! Those books were real crazy and they used to had those at my library!

I honestly find it difficult to walk on broken escalators. My brain is expecting them to be moving and I somehow manage to become seasick

Today I learned that this book's author apparently has photic sneeze reflex, while Ashens apparently doesn't since he was so confused. Also, I wonder how many children without it got permanantly blinded by the sun, desperatley trying to make themselves sneeze without pepper... ah, the good old days!

17:43 will it work to communicate with neutral acquaintances from Laos also?

Yes, Uncle Joe who came to Thanksgiving once and then never came back loves the strange things kids do and make.

hahahahaha 6:42 "that's what i want on my tombstone.... not even my name, just that" cracked me up

I had this book as a kid in the '70s. Glad I could share that exciting story with you.

bedtime stories with stuart ashens

Awesome Ashens! 🤣👍💖

First thing that instantly caught my eye were the cards with simple designs behind the central character on the front image. Those were the exact symbols used by Venkman in his dodgy electric shock 'experiment' at the beginning of Ghostbusters. Weird indeed.

Ah, the classic tale of the evil lover in Botswana

wow I read this book at my grandparents house^^

I definitely did the painted fish prints as a class art project in primary school, I didn't think that was too crazy of a thing until now.

For hiccups, I could see the peanut butter working since it would help control your breathing and reset the diaphragm. The sun one assumes you have the genetic predisposition of sneezing when you look into bright lights. Also the lying flat one isn't too bad either.

Practicaaaal Puffinnn

I had that book, and I have made fish prints. They are not that hard to do and they are fun! Next time I go to the fish Market I'll buy a fish and make you one.

warts and hiccup my favorite comedy duo. lmao

Wow....just wow!

You deserve tons of more views

I tried water divining as a kid too, after seeing Donald Duck do it. Never found any water.

I've got a lot of books like this that were published in the '90s. I loved them :)

Now Ashens need to do a challenge where he does every task in this book.

WAIT. STUART SITS WHILE MAKING THESE VIDEOS!?! I just thought he was a very tiny human or that was a very large brown sofa, maybe both, i will still choose to believe this

Is the front the same as the back, or is the back the same as the front?

9:33 Love seeing stuff with little Ouija gems hiding in them. Cheers Stuart!

This book reminds me of another book I had as a child in the early 90s. A reprint of The Usborne Book of Ghosts. I used to read to my sister and made her scared. She would not sleep without a light for fear of a ghost because ghosts don't like electric. It was re-released in a compilation Usborne Mysteries Of The Unknown: Ghosts, Monsters, UFOs that I read from my local library.

So its definitely confirmed that Ashens has a secret evil side chick in Botswana?

Will you be doing the advent calendar this year

Aaah Puffin Books, that takes me back. . . Now I feel old, thanks Ashens. -_-

I found this book at a second hand shop a few years ago! Passed up on buying it because someone tried the fish print on the first couple pages...

We want, no, demand, an advent calendar, with Dan....

I was born in '72 and remember just enough of the decade to confirm that it was, indeed, weird. Nice book. About 3/4 full of BS for your children to "learn" about.