Bringing Out the Dead

Happy Halloween! Here's a spooky little treat of an episode about seances, Ouija boards, and famous people in history who have believed in them (and were institutionalized because of it).

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:31):
Dark Cast Network. Welcome to the dark side of podcasting. Hey, hey,
welcome back to Autumn's oddities. I'm Autumn. Happy Halloween. I'm
recording Halloween. Patreon members will have access to this episode

(00:51):
on Halloween and to everybody else, my dear gentle listeners,
it will be available the day after November first. Also,
Happy birthday to my sister Tessa. Her birthday is on Halloween.
I know I've said this before, but you know how
jealous I am of your date of birth. I'm seething
with jealousy. Also, today was the first day for early

(01:13):
voting here in Kentucky, and I was there as early
as I could possibly be this morning. And I've got
some horror movies to leave on while I do some
anatomy and physiology today. So let's get into it. It's
a fun, lighthearted episode because I feel like I feel
like we need it well. Belief in the afterlife is
a cornerstone of many ancient and modern religions and cultures worldwide.

(01:37):
The idea that it's possible to communicate with the dead
never reached the same level of acceptance, but for a
period of about a century beginning in the eighteen forties,
sending messages between the human and spirit worlds was popular
not only as a religion but also as a pastime,
and I did do an episode on spiritualism only as

(01:57):
it related to Harry Houdini. Though a few eighteenth century
European thinkers toyed with the concept of a potential connection
between science and the supernatural, the new religious movement known
as modern spiritualism got its start in Upstate New York
in eighteen forty eight. That's when two sisters, Margaret and

(02:19):
Kate Fox, became locally and later internationally famous after claiming
they could get in touch with people beyond the grave.
For some, the work of mediums like the Fox sisters
was purely for entertainment, but for others it became a
religion that is still practiced in a few communities today.

(02:42):
Spiritualism's popularity kind of waxed and waned throughout the remainder
of the nineteenth century and the first few decades of
the twentieth century, predictably surgerying following massive losses of life,
you know, like the Civil War, World War One, and
the nineteen eighteen flu pandemic. And although the spiritualist movement

(03:02):
never completely faded out. It didn't hold the same appeal
after World War Two, but for close to one hundred years,
spiritualism attracted people from every part of society, including celebrities.
So here's a little look at eight famous figures who
at some point in their lives believed it was possible

(03:23):
to communicate with the dead and sidebar here. I believe
that it is, but I'm not sure that it's always
actually like a human being responding. You know, my theory
on ghosts that their energy or potentially travelers or something
like that. The first is Thomas Edison. So when Thomas

(03:44):
Edison invented the phonograph in eighteen seventy seven, the first
record he created was of his own voice reciting the
nursery rhyme Mary had a Little Lamb. Then in nineteen
twenty he announced plans to capture a different type of voice,
one that belonged to those who were no longer living,
specifically a spirit phone capable of talking to the dead.

(04:08):
And this is according to Mark Hartzmann, historian and author
of Chasing Ghosts, a tour of our fascination with spirits
in the supernatural. Aside from the life changing feat of
breaking through the veil. I believe his interest in spiritualism
was simply to demonstrate that science, not mediums and Ouiji boards,

(04:29):
was the way to do it, Hartman said. In fact,
in nineteen twenty, Edison told American magazine that quote the
methods and apparatus commonly used and discussed are just a
lot of unscientific nonsense. And I have to agree with
him on that. So he was trying, it seems, to
legitimize spiritualism. Some believe Edison's supposed belief in communicating with

(04:53):
the dead was a joke or a chance to make
headlines and capitalize on spiritualism's popularity, which is possible. It's possible.
But at the same time, Edison did have an unusual
hypothesis regarding what happens to humans after they die. The
inventor spoke of his belief in the idea of life

(05:14):
units and in a nutshell, one hundred trillion of them
make up a human being and keep us functioning. That's
not scientific, but you know, at the time he didn't
know that, and he believed also that when we die,
the life units move onto someone else. I think he
is talking about electricity, but he called it life units.

(05:36):
I don't know. I agree and I disagree with him.
I see where where mister Edison was going. I just
don't think scientifically or technologically we were there quite yet.
Onto Miss May West, if You're nasty. After experiencing severe
abdominal pains while performing in Chicago in nineteen twenty nine, writer, activist,

(05:59):
and grand of the vaudeville stage in silver Screen, May West,
who was then aged thirty six, believed that her relief
finally came at the hands of a spiritualist healer named
Shri Deva Ramsuku. A collection of West's papers from nineteen
twenty eight through nineteen eighty four, which is housed in

(06:19):
Harvard University's Schlessinger Library, contains clippings, correspondence hamphlets related to
her involvement with spiritualism, including Thomas John Jack Kelly, a
well known medium who became West's spiritual advisor and friend.
The archive also features papers documenting West's multiple trips to

(06:41):
Lily Dale, which was a spiritualist camp outside of Buffalo,
New York. She would visit Kelly for readings and healing there.
This included a stay in the summer of nineteen fifty
five when West was on hand for the July third
dedication of a new healing temple in the community. And

(07:02):
though modern spiritualism has been around since the eighteen forties,
it did gain substantial traction in the United Kingdom once
Queen Victoria became interested in the practiced. And I touched
on this a little bit in another episode. I think
it was death rituals. Distraught over the eighteen sixty one
death of her husband, Prince Albert, Victoria entered her mourning period,

(07:24):
which lasted until the end of her own life in
nineteen oh one, and it involved wearing all black, as
well as mourning jewelry, which contained photos of Albert and
locks of his hair. It also included attempts to get
in touch with Albert in the afterlife. Not long after
Albert's death, a thirteen year old medium named Robert James

(07:46):
Lees claimed that the Prince had gotten in touch during
one of his seances, saying that he had a message
for the Queen. Upon hearing this, Victoria arranged a seance
with Lees, during which he referred to information that apparently
no one else would know, most notably a pet name
that Albert had for her. The teen performed numerous seances

(08:09):
for the Queen at Buckingham Palace before turning over his
mediumistic duties to another medium. Victoria continued holding seances at
the palace and was known to seek her dead husband's
advice in political matters. And to that, I say, girl,
I'm not saying the thirteen year old was trying to

(08:30):
hustle you, but his parents may have been. And if
you're looking for advice on political matters and just having
somebody come in and be like, yeah, your dead husband
says that you should give every citizen like five grand
is that too much? I don't know, Like, maybe don't
ask spirits for political advice, even if they even if

(08:50):
you think they are your ex husband's or not ex
husband excuse me dead husband's words. Next on the list
is Sir Arthur Doyle, who I did touch on in
the Harry Houdini Spiritualism episode. And although Sir Conan Doyle
is best known today as the creator of Sherlock Holmes,
in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries he was

(09:13):
also one of the best known spiritualist. The Credulous Writer
believed firmly in the powers of many mediums and was
even convinced in the existence of fairies after a couple
of teenage girls faked some photos. And to that, I say,
I think he wanted to believe a little bit too much.
It all started when Doyle joined a seance in eighteen eighty.

(09:36):
Though he was initially a skeptic, he gradually became convinced
that it was possible to communicate with the dead. In
an eighteen eighty seven letter to the weekly spiritualist periodical Light,
Doyle wrote that it was absolutely certain that intelligence could
exist apart from the body, and that after weighing the evidence,

(09:58):
he could no more doubt the existence of the phenomenon
than he could doubt the existence of lions in Africa.
All right, sir. His interest grew much stronger after he
believed he heard a personal message from his son, and
that makes a whole lot of sense. When someone is grieving,
it's very, very easy to take advantage of them. Holmes's son, Kingsley,

(10:21):
died from pneumonia contracted after being seriously wounded in the
nineteen sixteen Battle of the Somme. Doyle ended up touring
Europe and America to preach the wonders of spiritualism and
the afterlife. Doyle's fervent beliefs eventually strained his friendship with
famed escaped artist and illusionist Harry Houdini, who again he

(10:42):
thought spiritualism was a total con and he spent years
debunking the alleged communication that occurred during seances and exposing
mediums as fraud which there were many, many of them
that were frauds. According to Hartzman. The relationship took a
substantial hit after Doyle claimed to have received a long
winded message from Houdini's mother and Houdini refused to believe it.

(11:08):
I can't remember what the message was, but I did
cover it in the Houdini episode. Despite Houdini's efforts to
expose frauds, Doyle's beliefs never wavered. In fact, he even
claimed a spirit named Phineas, who was a thousand years old,
was in regular contact with him and his wife and
advised them on such things as travel and real estate.

(11:29):
I hate to break it to you, the spirit of
a human is not talking to you. If it is
one thousand years old, that is something else. Don't take
any advice from it. Stop talking to it. Onto Mary
Todd Lincoln, whose home is actually in Lexington, Kentucky, very
close to Rapperina downtown. Though Mary Todd Lincoln famously attempted

(11:51):
to get in touch with her husband, President Abraham Lincoln
following his eighteen sixty five assassination, her involvement with spiritualism
began three years earlier, when their son Willie died from
typhoid fever at the age of eleven. Mary Todd initially
attended seances as a way to cope with her grief,
but found them to be so comforting that she started

(12:13):
hosting her own. I have zero problem with that. Do
what you've got to do, as long as it's not
hurting anybody to deal with your own grief. According to
the White House Historical Association, there is evidence that Mary
Todd held as many as eight seances in the White House,
specifically in the Red Room, following Willy's death, and that

(12:34):
the President attended a few of them. What a time
to be alive, Like really, oh, you know, except for
the fact that women didn't have any rights and people
human beings were enslaved. Otherwise, spirituality like happening in the
White House. Saances happening in the White House. That's super cool.
Everything else not so much. But what may see maud
today was quite common at the time, says Luce Skill Scott,

(12:57):
journalist and author of An American Covenant, A Story of Women,
mysticism and the making of modern America. Mary Todd Lincoln
joined the vast wave of Americans turning to spiritualism during
the Civil War, as the ghosts of fallen soldiers and
both literal and spiritual ruin proliferated across the country. In

(13:19):
the late eighteen fifties, approximately ten percent of the American
free remember that part adult populace allied itself with spiritualism
in some form or fashion, a trend that continued into
the eighteen sixties. However, the movement's popularity and widespread acceptance
wouldn't last, and soon faced backlash, including from the medical establishment.

(13:43):
Doctors coined the term mediomania, linking insanity to spiritualism, and
then redefined insanity symptoms as the most common side effects
of entransmit being rigidity, seizure, and ecstasy. But Mary Todd,
by this time mourning both her son and her husband,

(14:03):
continued to attempt to communicate with the deceased members of
her family, and again, I don't think there's anything wrong
with that. But the medical community was like, oh no, no, no,
we can't have anything taking away from us in our business. Now,
anybody who practices spiritualism, we're gonna go ahead and say
they belong in some sort of an asylum and we

(14:23):
should just lock them away. You know how Mary Todd
Lincoln gets called crazy all the time in modern history.
That's part of the reason. I don't think she was crazy.
I think she was incredibly sad. She lost her husband,
she lost her son, and had to deal with the
fallout after that, Like, who wouldn't be sad, Who wouldn't
be seeking I don't know, some kind of comfort. This,

(14:47):
along with what was deemed improper and unladylike displays of
grief after the president's assassination, made Mary Todd the object
of public ridicule, which you know, we've seen it a
million times. In eighteen seventy two, both the Boston Harold
and the New York Times mocked Mary for attending a

(15:07):
seance to contact her late husband's spirit. Why, I say,
where is empathy? Then in eighteen seventy five, Mary's son Robert,
had her briefly committed to a sanitarium. For what her
spiritualist practices. Yeah, oh she was crazy. She's not crazy.
She practiced spiritualism. She didn't even she didn't even practice anything.

(15:30):
She just had seances to attempt to talk to people
she loved who were killed. They didn't die natural deaths.
They were taken too soon tragically, one in war, and
one assassinated at a fucking theater just trying to see
a play called Our American Cousin. I would go, Okay,
if she's crazy, we're all crazy. Put me in a sanitarium. No, don't.

(15:54):
It's just like she wasn't allowed to grieve without being
called crazy. It's like, Oh, don't show us your grief
by attempting to speak to your dead loved ones. Nobody
wants to hear about your grief. Just suffer in silence.
Get the hell over it, or we'll put you in
a sanitarium where we don't have to look at you anymore.
If you've seen it once, you've seen it a dozen times.

(16:17):
Next is Victoria Woodhull, perhaps best known for her eighteen
seventy two run for the presidency of the United States.
She was the first woman to run for president. I
did not know about her before I researched this episode,
but Victoria Woodhull's first for lifetime blazing trails across multiple
disciplines from an early age. It's thought that she believed

(16:40):
and received special guidance and protection from the spirits of
the deceased, which empowered her to take actions unusual for
a woman at the time go off vic Tory up.
In addition to her candidacy for president, Woodhull was also
the first woman to own a Wall Street in investment firm,

(17:01):
found her own newspaper, and speak before Congress demanding that
women be granted the right to vote. This is somebody
I would like to contact. If spiritualism and seance is
actually due work, I would like to contact this woman.
I feel like we need her spirit back. And while
her run for a political office didn't end with her

(17:22):
moving into the White House, as we well know, Woodhull
was elected president of the American Association of Spiritualists in
eighteen seventy one, calling it the chief honor of her life. Incredible.
I love this woman's story. Why has it not been
made into a movie and why the hell have I
never heard of her? Why have we not seen a

(17:44):
movie about her? Are there books about her. I don't know.
Apparently someone wrote a book about her that I just
quoted from. Cut all of that out. Next is Dannakroyd, who,
in addition to being a member of the original cast
of Saturday Night Live when it premiered in nineteen seventy five,

(18:05):
he's also closely associated with his starring role in the
Ghostbusters movie franchise, which are just top tier. In fact,
not only did he co write the script, but the
idea for the nineteen eighty four film was his own.
An Akroyd didn't have to look far for inspiration. His
great grandfather, Sam Ackroyd, was part of a spiritualist community

(18:28):
in Canada, where he regularly hosted seances in the family's
farmhouse through the nineteen twenties and thirties. In two thousand
and nine, Peter Ackroyd, Dan's father, and Sam's grandson, respectively
published a book called A History of ghost which documents
the general history of spiritualism as well as the Akroyd

(18:49):
family's role in the community. Discussing spiritualism in a May
twenty twenty interview with the Canadian Broadcasting Company, we believe
and I guess it's my religion, that you you can
speak to people on the other side, and that the
consciousness survives, and I tend to agree with him. Lastly,

(19:10):
is another spiritualist that I had not heard of, Hilma
af Climpt. Although early twentieth century artists like you know
Vasily Kandinski and Pierre Montreal are, a Swedish painter named
Hilma af Climpt began creating similar, bold, colorful and geometric
pieces even earlier. Other than art, af Climt had other

(19:35):
major interests in life, chiefly spiritualism. She first she first

(19:56):
showed spiritualist inclinations in eighteen seventy nine, at the young
age of seventeen, which was shortly before embarking on a
career as an artist. In eighteen ninety six, Hilma began
to hold regular seances with four other women who called
themselves the Five and sidebar. Why have four women not

(20:18):
come to me and asked to be part of a
coven with me and to hold seances? Why? Why? It's
not a rhetorical question, answer me? Someone answered me, four
women come to me if you'd like to be part
of my covein, let's start like a side Patreon and
get that going. As part of their communications with the

(20:40):
other side, the women began to produce automatic drawings channeled
from the spirits, which, if you don't know what that is,
like automatic drawing and automatic writing. During a seance, a
medium or person that's gonna channel the spirits literally takes
a pen, pencil, what have you, charcoal? Who cares some
sort of a writing instrument? Hold on, I'm gonna yell
at my cat. Serious, Okay, sorry, he's clawing the carpet upstairs.

(21:03):
We only have carpet in like one place in our house,
and he thinks it's a scratching post. Don't you you
evil little bastard. He's so cute. He's solid black, and
I think he might be in a league with the devil.
Do you want to talk? You want to talk? Okay,

(21:28):
I give up on you anyway. So they take a
writing at utensil and let the spirit guide their hand
and whatever comes out is like the message. And sometimes
some mediums that I've seen, what's that kid's name, Oh
my god, he's on Netflix. He was on e before,

(21:49):
Tyler something or other. Blonde boy who's a medium? I say, boy,
he's an adult. He just looks very young Tyler something
or other, and I cannot remember his last name, but
if there is a real medium, I think he is one.
But he does the automatic writing thing and you see
his page like when he's drawing, when he's channeling spirit,

(22:09):
and it looks like absolute nonsense. It's like a bunch
of squiggles, but he's able to see something in those
and like his information is way too accurate, and he
like sweats a lot of the time when he's doing it.
It's it's very convincing to me. Also, I think the
Long Island medium Teresa Caputo, if you've never seen that show,

(22:29):
you just got to get past how like crazy she looks.
And oh boy, she does look crazy. She's got like
a like a big ass helmet of rounded, teased bleach
blonde hair and like massively long nails, and like, yes,
you got to get past that. When she starts talking

(22:51):
to clients, they come to her house, they'll like bring
things and hide them, or they'll you know, she'll go
to their house. They'll do the same thing. She'll tell
them exactly what the thing is and where it's hidden,
because you know, sometimes people try to test her. But
the stuff that she says to people, and she'll be
like out at the grocery store, the deli wherever, and
have spirit talking to her. And then she relays the

(23:12):
message and she's so accurate that like every single time
she makes people cry, like not in a bad way,
but you know, she gives them messages and they're so
so accurate that they begin to cry. And I'm like,
stay the hell away from me. I don't want any
of those messages because I know something good would not

(23:33):
come through for me. That was a really long sidebar
to talk about automatic writing and automatic drawing. But while
Hilma more formally aligned herself with other spiritualist movements, she
did continue to paint her spiritually delivered subjects until her

(23:54):
death are spirit She did continue to paint her spiritually
derived subjects until her death in nineteen forty four. Some
of afclmp's best known works are part of the series
called the Paintings for the Temple, sought to represent the

(24:14):
transcendent pulsing. Some of afclemp's best known works are part
of a series called the Paintings of the Temple, which
apparently were sought to represent the transcendent pulsing realms that
we cannot observe with our senses. She began painting the

(24:36):
series in nineteen oh six after Spirits got in touch
with her and the rest of the five, because you
need five of them, there need to be five women
channeling our power, urging her to take on the project
and complete it. In nineteen fifteen, the Spirits told her
that the paintings would one day be housed in a temple,

(24:57):
which Hilma envisioned as consisting of multiple levels connected by
a spiral path. And guess what, just over one hundred
years after she finished the series, her work was featured
in New York's Guggenheim Museum, a temple to the arts
with just such a design and a spiral spooky stuff.

(25:19):
It's like she predicted her own artistic success. This cat
is driving me insane. He's like, yeah, Spirits, I see
them all the time, I eat them. I am a
guide to the underworld. We do that, don't you? You
protect us from wald. This is how I have four
cats and two dogs, and this is how I talk
to all of them all day every day. They love it.

(25:39):
They are the biggest babies you've ever seen in your life.
And anyway that's another sidebar about my animals. I could
talk about them quite literally all day. As for spiritualism,
which I talked a little bit about in the Houdini episode,
you know, my own personal beliefs and views. You hear
me owing now he's talking, you don't perform on come in,

(26:00):
do you? He's like, I'm nobody's a bitch. It's like, sir,
you are because guess what uh if you go outside,
you're horrified and you cry to get back in. He
clawed through a screen door once he got out when
we lived in Florida. He's an inside cat. He got
out once, I guess slipped out when the screen door
was opened to the patio. We didn't know he'd gotten out.
Shut the glass door, shut the screen door. Next thing

(26:22):
we know, we hear him clawing on the glass. He
had chewed, slash, clawed through a screen which he knows
like thin metal to get back in the house. And
I'm like, yes, you're a tough boy. Look how tough
you are. You get out of the house and you're
so fraid out there that you got a claw through
a fucking screen door. You ain't shit, But I love you.

(26:42):
I'll protect you. Don't you worry. You're not tough. You're
not a tough boy. You get your ass kicked all
day by three girl cats. They just beat on you.
It's really funny. Yeah, but he is the biggest baby anyway.
That's a little look into my life at home and kids.
Of course I talk to them kind of like that too,
but try not to infantilize them quite so much. Back

(27:05):
to spiritualism. I have participated in seances as a kid,
of course, like as one does if you were a
girl and went to sleepovers. I don't know if like
I can only speak to my own experience. I obviously
was not having sleepovers with boys when I was a child. That's,
you know, good just good parenting. Don't let your kids

(27:27):
have co ed sleepovers. That was just good parenting, you know,
at the time. But I did have a couple of seances,
played with the Ouigi board, which I'll never do again,
and played light as a feather, stiff as a board,
and it did work. She didn't like levitate without us
keeping our fingers on her, you know, like in the

(27:47):
movie The Craft, or they do light as a feather,
stiff as a board, and she freaking is like levitating
on her own, they move their hands and when she
sees that she's up in the air, she freaks out
and falls to the ground. That didn't happen, but we
did get somebody off the ground the Ouiji board thing.
I will never do that again. We were I don't
know how old, maybe between eight and ten. I had

(28:11):
a set of friends who were twins. And then a
girl down the street whose dad was a Schwan's man
if you remember the Schwan's frozen food trucks like peak
peak nineties, and her dad had literal freezers, like deep
freezers all over the house, just like full of Schwan's
ice cream and all that stuff. So we were at

(28:32):
Brandy's house quite a bit. So she also had this
little like shed in the backyard, and we decided we're
gonna go out there at night pitch black. There's no
lights in this shed. We like took like a lantern
or something and played with the Wigi board and I
shit you not, like there were little slits. I don't

(28:53):
really know how to describe this. So the foundation of
the little shed was concrete. Her dad had poured a
concrete foundation and then built like a wood frame around
it and there was like a little gap between the
foundation and the bottom of the wall, just a little
gap where you could see, you know, light, if there
were any, and we're sitting in there playing with the board.

(29:15):
I don't even know what question we asked, and we
start seeing like movement of It was dark outside, but
you know, we could see like a shadow of some
sort moving around the crack between the foundation and the wall.
And then something started beating on the outside of the wall,
and again we could see out there, so we, you know,

(29:37):
we put our little eyes to the ground. If it
was a person, we should have been able to see feet, legs, pants,
you know, something. There's absolutely nothing, but it was beating
on like all sides of the shed and the roof,
and we were just horrified and we sat there just
in dead silence. I don't think any of us. But

(29:57):
instead of like fight or flight, we just froze, because
that is actually a third option with your nervous system.
We just froze because what are you gonna do? There's nothing,
We don't see anything out there, but something is making
all this noise. And finally when it stopped, you know,
we just decided to make a break for the house.
We did, and that was it, and I said then
and there never ever again, Like I know better now,

(30:21):
because I don't think that spirit boards are typically contacting
the souls of human beings or the energy of human beings.
I think they're contacting something else, be it something unpleasant,
something evil, whatever, what have you, something from another dimension.

(30:45):
And I'm not saying this board is like all powerful
or anything like that. I think that if if such
beings do exist, that they like kind of wait for
people to use something like that as an invitation to
come into our world, our reality, our dimension. Does that
make sense? I think that makes the most sense of anything. Like,
if we're gonna have these outlandish, unprovable theories, let's, like,

(31:09):
you know, let's make them decent at least. Don't just
be like, it's the ghost of a human being. Why
would the ghost of a human being first of all
respond to us in a shed and second of all
terrorize a bunch of little girls, unless it's like the
soul of a serial killer or something like that. And
in that case, why would they be sticking around? Wouldn't

(31:30):
they be going for judgment? You would think that they
don't get to decide if they stay or if they go,
you would think one would think I think about these
things all the fucking time. I don't know why. Maybe it's,
you know, the neurodivergence. I just need to know why
about quite literally everything. But that's the only time I

(31:50):
ever did a seance or ouigi board. We did a
say on a couple of times when I was a kid.
I think with my cousins, like, if you've ever seen
the movie Now and Then, it's a wonderful coming of
age movie that came out in the pretty early nineties,
maybe mid or mid nineties. It has me more rosy
O'Donnell playing a straight woman, Rita Wilson and Melanie Griffith

(32:16):
as the adult versions of their kid selves. And I
can't remember all the actresses names, but it's like thora
birch and that's all I'm remembering. Oh, Christina Ricci and
two other girls and I cannot remember their names right now,
and I apologize. And Devin Sawa, of course, we all
had a massive crush on him in the nineties. But
that movie, they have a seance in a cemetery over

(32:39):
the summer, and like some weird shit happens while they're
there that they think is confirmation that they made contact
with a ghost, that they pissed something off, and they
think they're being like tormented by it when it turns
out none of that actually happened. There were totally totally
plausible and reasonable and explainable explanations for lack of a

(33:01):
better word, for all of the things that happened to them.
But they were just kind of in a vulnerable period
of their life and they just believed it without question,
and it kind of gave them a purpose. And you know,
when they found out none of it was real, it
really really killed the vibe. But I didn't see, talk
to hear anything when we did our sounds, and you

(33:21):
know what we also, I'm sure didn't do it right
because like, what did I know, what did any of
us know in our early teens, probably trying to contact
and speak with the dead. I've never messed with that
in my adult life, because you know, once you have
people that you know die, and some of them die
unnatural and violent death, You're like, I don't really want

(33:44):
to talk to them so much. I don't really want
to open the gate to what might come through. I'll
just mind my own business over here. Overall, I think
the spiritualist movement and all these different famous people gaining
notoriety from their you know, spiritualist practices and seances and whatnot.

(34:06):
I just think they were grieving. That's what it seemed
was the case with all of them. There was a
common theme. They were grieving. They wanted to talk to
their loved ones who were taken too soon, and they
tried any avenue they could. And again, if you've ever
had someone you loved die naturally or unnaturally, uh, you

(34:29):
you want to know? You want to know, like are
you still here? Are you gone? Is there anything after
our lives? Like? What is there? And do I really
think that people's family members are talking to them through
spirit boards and things like that. I have a very
hard time believing that. I think if you're you know,

(34:49):
someone you love wants to speak to you after they die,
I think they're going to come directly to you. Because
if they have the power to reach out through a
seance or through a weedi board, why wouldn't they just
be able to do that, like if you're at home.
Because you know, grief is a is very different for everyone.
It's a very funny thing. It's not funny haha. But
you know, it's a weird thing. And you do, at

(35:17):
least I did, anyway, like talk out loud to people
that aren't there anymore. And that's not crazy, that's just
grieving and trying to process it. And you know they're
not there physically for you to speak to anymore, and
you just hope maybe that you get an answer from them.
And that's what I think these people were doing. And
can we talk about Mary Todd Lincoln and what the

(35:38):
hell happened to her? That is horseshit. She was upset
because her husband and her son were both killed very tragically,
and she was just trying to find some comfort and
her son put her in an insane asylum. The fuck,
that's my closing note. The fuck little mister Lincoln, Sir

(36:01):
Lincoln boy, whatever you are, put your mother in an asylum,
Get out that asylum and beat your ass Marry Todd
Lincoln style. All right, I'm done. I'm gonna go do
some really fucking hard work now on Halloween of all days.
Don't they know? Don't they know that this is my day,
my blessed day? How dare they? My cat and I

(36:21):
are going to plot and scheme once I've done, aren't
we sir? He says yes. He says yes, Mother, I
don't eat the souls those who have wronged you. He
says that to me every night. Isn't he sweet? All right?
If you like what you hear, you can hear more episodes.
I'm cruising for for a Baker act real quick, aren't
I My cat doesn't really talk to me. This is

(36:43):
all hypothetical, theoretical and made up. Okay, please don't report
me like Mary Todd Lincoln. I'm not gonna be another
woman from Lexington that goes down like that. If you
like what you hear, you can hear more episodes on
Tuesdays and Fridays at least on all podcast platforms. I'm
on all the social media the US, And of course
I appreciate you listening. I hope you have a fabulous Halloween. Really, like,

(37:08):
if you're a kid listening to this, I know there's
some high schoolers that go to school with my son
who listen. Sorry for all the f bombs, kids, but uh,
if you are still in school, please, if you want
a trick or treat, go trick or treat, like He's
gonna go trick or treat even though he's like six
foot two, I don't care. He's a child. He's a
freshman in high school. He's allowed to go trick or treat. Like,

(37:32):
what would I rather him do? You know, go out
drinking and partying like I was doing in his age. No,
he's doing the right thing and just going to get
some candy because guess what, he's a child. So if
a kid comes to your door and looks like they're
a teenager, who cares, Please just give them some candy
and be grateful that they're not out like trashing, throwing

(37:55):
pumpkins and doing shit like that. Okay, that's my PSA.
I don't think any of my sweet gentle listeners would
be that kind of you know, hateful, but just in case, there,
just in case some slip through the cracks. All right,
I appreciate you listening, and remember, if it's creepy and weird,
you'll find it here.