"ALIENS ARE TOTALLY REAL"
Oh yeah, totally. Even today if I start thinking about abductions in a dark room I start feeling incredibly uncomfortable - but I'm going to chalk that one up to "being normal".
And I also once told someone to "have an open mind" about how the moon landings were faked, and asked a lot of questions about whether the WTC was demolished by explosives because steel doesn't melt until well over 1000 degrees, yet the fire was clearly colder than that.
I used to watch Unsolved Mysteries (hat-tip to Robert Stack), Sightings and other such shows. Of course it was real.....why would anyone make it up?
It's a "documentary" too, with a narrator. The kids today have much flashier versions to look up to.
Fuck Ghost Hunters, where we had Stack they have Giorgio.
Hey now, you've got to give Giorgio credit: his hair is more than enough to warrant an "Aliens Did it!" story.
"The only way the ancient astronaut theory can be disproved is when the extraterrestrials turn up and say they were never here in the past" - because that's totally how it works, Giorgio! I'm not entirely convinced I was properly taken in by it all, but then again I wonder what it feels like when you are.
I used to be afraid of aliens until quite late - mid-teens or so, due to some poor book choices of my parents' and other circumstances. The fear usually manifested itself when there were no people around: late at night, when I was in a forest or something like that. It seems to have disappeared completely when I got into skepticism after I had killed my hundredth Sectoid in X-COM: Enemy Unknown. :)
I also used to read von Däniken's books as a kid, thought I can't really remember if I believed in them or not. I thought they were interesting and creepy and that was it.
See, I always wanted some piece of "smoking gun" evidence, even though I loved the aliens, ghosts, etc. stuff. Blurry photos and everything are nice, but show me a working piece of the alien technology! Scary stories are fun, but show me a bag full of ectoplasm!