Weird LGBTQ+ Paranormal History Uncovered #spiritualism #supernatural #fortean

Joining me is Ken Summers, author of WEIRDLY QUEER to discuss the long history and significant influence of lesbian, gay, transgender, bisexual, and queer sexual minorities on fringe research, new age paganism, and unexplained phenomena. https://moonspenders.com/

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Episode Transcript

(00:03):
You're listening to Mystic Lounge with AlanB. Smith, rebroadcast on the ONEX
Network Thursdays at eleven pm Pacific Fridaysat two a m. Eastern. However

(00:34):
you are and whenever you are,welcome to Mystic Lounge. I'm Alan B.
Smith. Joining me tonight is KenSummers, author of Weirdly Queer,
to discuss the long history and significantinfluence of lesbian, gay, transgender,
bisexual, and queer sexual minorities onfringe research, New age paganism, the

(00:55):
unexplained phenomena that we all have adeep, deep interest in. We're going
to cover the gamut of that history, its implications, influences, and honestly
some tragic stories as well. Kenhas written something. I've been kind of
bugging Ken about it on and offfor a few years since he's last been

(01:18):
on. It was about four yearsago, I think, since it was
just Ken on the show, andevery once in a while I check in,
like Ken has the book going,how's the book going? And it's
been building that anticipation up and Ihave to say it was totally worth it,
totally totally worth it. So hisbook about the history, I don't
know, history of LGBTQ people iscalled Weirdly Queer, and it is a

(01:42):
pretty big book and it's packed alot of information, but it is so
well written that it was like apage turner, almost like a novel,
and it was just one thing afterthe other that was fascinating, extraordinarily informative

(02:05):
and informing of my understanding of theevolution of paranormal research as we know it
today. So I think you're reallyreally enjoy this conversation with Ken. As
a friendly reminder, if you likethis episode, this Channel Coffee, and
UFO's podcast as well, please supportby subscribing, clicking notification bell on future

(02:29):
shows, and of course commenting downbelow. I'd love to hear your thoughts
on this. You know, forsome people this is considered controversial. For
me, it's not controversial at all. It's just reality. It's life for
all people. We're a beautiful,diverse reality. Nature in itself is the
definition of variation, divergence, anddiversity. So all of that is crucial

(03:00):
to our understanding of the power normal, supernatural spiritualism. So instead of me
talking about it, I'm going tobring Ken on right now. Ken,
welcome back. How are you.I'm good. Thanks, thanks for having
me, I think, thanks forbeing on. How do you feel that
you finally finished your your epic book? Relieved? In a lot of ways,

(03:23):
it was a long time coming.I mean, a whole decades worth
of research and then another two orthree years of writing in my spare time
at work basically, so it's beena very very very long road to get

(03:43):
Why is this so important? Youwrote another book called Queer Hauntings. Why
did you have to write this book? Because as much I do love ghosts,
and ghosts are always first and foremostmy big interest, the paranormal encompasses
so much, and to just narrowit down and say that, okay,

(04:08):
let's write a book about gay ghostsis one thing. But to say there's
a lot more things that I haveuncovered along the way that shows that there's
there's some bigger story here to saythan just a bunch of amusing stories of
ghosts that have to be something.Yeah, I mean, I would certainly

(04:30):
add that understanding that ghosts and spiritsand other entities aren't just you know,
all heterosexual people that died, right, and so the work that you did
here, you know, it's talkingmuch more about the living world. That
isn't that researches the paranormal, butthere even that living world back when you

(04:55):
go further in time, you goback, you heard less and less about
these people because you couldn't talk aboutit. It wasn't spoken of openly even
the researchers. Wasn't really until likethe early nineteen hundreds that some people started
to open up about about their youknow, whether it's gender fluidity or you
know, whether they're gay or straight, bisexual, And so that's a reflection

(05:21):
of the spirit world as well.When you're investigating these kind of any any
place, if you have no ideawho that person really was, it probably
makes it more difficult to connect withtheir spirit. I would imagine, oh

(05:42):
absolutely, And I wouldn't say evenjust in the nineteen hundreds would there have
been a shift. It would havebeen probably not until about the nineteen seventies
or so when things started opening upmore. And really the most biggest shift

(06:02):
would be in the past two decadesor so, because well, yeah,
look at the case of Donald West, who was a former president of the
Society of Psychical Research. At thesame time that he was president of the
organization, he had to keep hispersonal life completely secret, and he even

(06:27):
wrote a book on homosexuality as ifhe were straight because he couldn't come out
of the closet about it when hewas writing a psychological book about homosexuality.
And it wasn't really until he wrotehis autobiography around nineteen ninety nine that he
actually was able to finally admit that, yes, I had to pretend to

(06:47):
be straight to write this book onheterosexuality. And in the meantime, I
was the president of this ghost cluband tried to do all this other stuff.
And he did some amazing work,even did research on esp with a
variation of Zenner cards that used eroticsymbols, and by he discovered him and

(07:10):
another researcher discovered that using erotic symbolsinstead of the typical square wavy lines and
all of that, actually the SIresults were stronger than they were using traditional
symbols. Yeah, you talk aboutthis in the book, and Wilhelm Reich

(07:31):
talks about like the kind of thatimpulse power of yes machine, Can you
tell us about this? This isa very strange well. People nowadays might
associate orgon with fringe eufology and paranoiaabout aliens reading your minds and all this

(07:53):
other stuff like that. But itactually goes back to Reich had this machine
that this quote unquote machine. Itwas kind of like a class that was
supposed to accumulate this energy source knownas orgone, which actually was a sexual
energy, and it became a bitof a fad with a lot of different

(08:15):
people back in the day. Therewere a lot of famous writers and people
at the time who got involved inthe whole process of collecting orgone. But
it was it was one of thosecompletely mad cap ideas. But I actually

(08:37):
in my research files, I actuallyhave plans for the machine from Wilhelm Reich's
archives and all of that and ofother documents. Are there any replications of
the machine out there? I thinkthere have been a few people. There
was some big controversy with his machinesat one point and all of the existing

(08:58):
ones were destroyed, so I don'tknow if anyone has ever rebuilt them.
So to clarify the organ machine,the theory was that we have sexual energy,
like our psychology creates a sort ofsexual energy, and that this like
essentially a box would would capture andharness it and amplify it, and then

(09:24):
that would give you some kind ofimproved psychical effect exactly. Yeah, And
was it, like, was thereany evidence because I didn't really get it
from the book, but did yousee any practical evidence that that there was
anything to it? The only positiveevidence was from his own research. It
was never replicated by anyone else,but it Yeah, it was more I

(09:48):
would see more of a fat amusementamong a lot of people. And yeah,
it was, given the extreme sexualovertones of it, it was not
very well accepted by most of society, right, But I mean, honestly,
it wasn't the most scientific No,clearly, otherwise we'd still be using

(10:11):
it today. So this idea,though, you know, before the organ
machine was even contrived, that sexualimpulses have a certain power to them in
connecting with the other world the otherside. Have you had any experience of

(10:33):
your own, any research that hasshown that to be at all true.
It's it's hard to say. It'sit's one of those things where it depends.
It's hard. I try and beas neutral as possible about a lot
of things, and there's always thatchance of being in a slippery slope of

(11:00):
finding the evidence that validates your ownbeliefs and all of that. I know,
even with the fact that psychics,how there's been a long held belief
that most psychics are gay or lesbianare bisexual, it's hard to verify that

(11:20):
with definitive factual evidence. So Ikind of right the fence with a lot
of things. I don't say necessarilythat sexuality has a proven bearing when it
comes to anything paranormal, but itis definitely a factor in a lot of

(11:45):
cases that people either deliberately or subconsciouslykeep out of their perspective with everything.
It's I know Gibi Ryan deliberately leftsexuality out of his research because he was

(12:07):
afraid that he was already dealing witha subject that no scientist would touch or
take seriously. If he threw sexualityinto the mix, that's when he would
lose all credibility whatsoever. And soit's always been a touchy subject. I
mean, it's a part of everything. As you can tell from the book,

(12:31):
there's interwoven sexuality and so many differentthings that affects so many different things,
just because as humans we are sexualbeings and we have a multitude of
sexualities out there. But I don'tknow, I don't like to read too

(12:52):
much into it. That's sort ofthe reason why the book is the way
that it is is because I'm nothere to try and tell people what they
should or shouldn't think. I'm hereto basically tell the stories and let people
make their own decisions. I verymuch think of myself as a gay version

(13:16):
of childs Fort, So I'm hereto chronicle everything and it's up to the
other people to make up their minds. So do you essentially start with spiritualism,
yes, and work forward from there. Why is spiritualism? Why not
before that? Well, that's basicallywhat started what we mought, but we

(13:39):
think of in the modern times asthe paranormal. Before that, it was
more of a religious experience and itwas not as widespread. There were ghost
stories and such, but it reallywasn't until the spiritualism explosion in the mid
nineteenth century that it basically became partof the lexicon for society and it became

(14:07):
a common theme in a lot ofthings and something people talked about on a
regular basis. Also, it's notjust sexuality LGBTQ people that we're talking about
here. We're talking about just womenin general, and you know, equal
rights for women. Where were certainlybeginning to be recognized and vocalized within spiritualism,

(14:33):
that within that small community, right, And that's a funny thing for
a lot of people to think,because people tend to think of the Victorian
era as being a very strict,regimented society, male dominated completely and h
there was like extreme moral beliefs inall of this, and that was generally

(14:54):
the case with society in general.But in the saund everything was up for
grabs, everything was different and completelychanged. There were no rules in the
seance room. Things happened there thateven today people would be shocked by.
Yeah, Like, for instance,so during a seance a medium might channel

(15:24):
the opposite gender. Oh yeah,that happened a lot, and then and
actually make physical contact, Oh yeah, because that was acceptable. Because if
a male medium is channeling a femalespirit and that female spirit decides to flirt
with one of the men in theroom, and it's the female spirit flirting,
it's not the man flirting. Soyou can get away with things,

(15:48):
especially if you're unscrupulous and closeted.You can get away with murder. You
can go as far as you wantand nobody's going to bad. An eyelash
it's kind of like Halloween and springbreak in one yes, speaking of Halloween,
Happy Halloween, and we're just afew days away. Nice shirt,
I love it, thank you.That's not my plan for Halloween. But

(16:15):
also the respectability that women could gainwithin that world and empowerment too. They
can make profit, they could youknow, gain respect from from peers and
others. And the interesting thing Ilearned from the book too, is is
you know a lot of people whorose up in their ranks within the spiritualist

(16:40):
movement, you know, were entertainedand could walk among the upper echelon of
society when they came from like thelower and society. It was a way
of bypassing this barrier that otherwise existed. Absolutely. And also another way that
women were able to influence things wasif you are a psychic medium and in

(17:04):
general society you are not listened toand not deemed worthy of a vote or
let alone an opinion. If youare channeling a spirit of some a wise
old man, then whatever advice yougive is going to be taken seriously because

(17:26):
it's coming from a male spirit,not from a woman. So women could
easily influence things just by getting theiropinions out through spirit form. Right.
And then in this book eighteen eightyseven's History of Women's Suffrage, there's a

(17:47):
reference to spiritualism and says it's theonly religious sect in the world that has
recognized the equality of women. It'strue. Well, I don't know for
sure. I don't know enough aboutevery single religion, of course, but
from the perspective of the Victorian,oh yeah, absolutely, and it definitely

(18:08):
Spiritualism as a movement definitely paved theway for suffrage movement and a lot of
different equality movements of their time.It definitely opened doors. And when you're
thinking about people as beings with soulsinstead of whether they're male, female,

(18:33):
or whatever, you're more in tunesto believe everyone is on an equal playing
field. Sandor Forenzi, a discipleof Freud, spoke of homosexuality and sexually
divergent people as often associated with paranoiapsychosis that can lead to the quote super

(18:55):
substantive reality. I think that's aninteresting phrasing, super stentive right, yeah,
but you know, to me thatsounds like a case of someone who
is recognizing that someone is not heterosexual, uh, and then they see a
sort of you know, anxiousness andnervousness of paranoia if you will. And

(19:18):
as they say, but it's notthey're not feeling that way inherently because they're
gay. They're feeling that way becausethe way society, yes, it feels,
made them feel. And it wasinteresting these really smart psychologists didn't pick
up on that. No, andthey followed a thread to a paranormal relationship.

(19:44):
Yeah, yeah, because they theyhad no point of reference to come
from, no understanding of what itwas like to be in someone else's shoes,
so they tried to rationalize things fromfrom whatever perspective that they had.
And I think it's interesting that alot of people that Freud dealt with ended

(20:08):
up going the opposite direction of him. He was very anti paranormal completely.
He didn't believe in it. Hedidn't he thought it was all just bunk.
But you have Frenzy and Carl Jungas well, who also even delved

(20:30):
into topics of UFOs and everything elseas well. And it seems like something
about Freud seems to turn people offof being a total skeptic. I don't
know what it is. What doyou mean turning him off? Turn turn
people off? It just seems likea lot of people who were involved with

(20:52):
him and broke off or had somekind of association with him in the psychological
world took a different stance on thingscompared to Freud himself. I don't know,
Maybe I'm just projecting, maybe it'snot, but I like I think.
I think in a lot of casesmy own dislike of Freud may be

(21:15):
rubbing through a bit. But butI think maybe turned people more toward the
paranormal than against it. That's that'san interesting take. You know. There's
so many fantastical stories, one ofwhich could you tell us about the Yellow
Boy? Oh? Yes, that'sactually it's a very common ghost type over

(21:41):
in England. It's basically a youngnude male ghost that appears in fireplaces.
That's the basic gist of it.But there's a lot of legends attached with
it, and some people say thatthey only here to game end and that's

(22:03):
where the one story I talked aboutin the book kind of goes into a
very downward spiral very quickly. Butbut no, there's there are quite a
few hauntings of these these phantom nakedyoung male spirits in different places, and

(22:23):
they often get confused with other onesthat are in different places, but it
almost became its own phenomena for awhile. Mostly did all of these these
yellow boy ghosts, whatever their apparitions, did they all predict something dire,

(22:44):
someone's death or something. Was italways a negative interaction? It wasn't a
negative. But there were, likelike most ghosts of the eighteenth century and
such, there was a lot ofbelief that seeing ghosts was some form of
a premonition or an omen of somethingnegative. But not all of them like

(23:08):
predicted anything bad or only showed upto a certain type of person or certain
or males or females. But theyall had the same common thing theme of
appearing at a fireplace. That's theone connection between do you think it?
Do you think it could be?Kind of a like a reverse engineered story,

(23:30):
meaning that it's a way of sortof telling the story of gay men
who were repressing who they really are. It definitely could be, especially considering
that was the era of the MollyHouse, which was an early precursor to

(23:52):
gay burs. They were usually runby a woman who was referred to as
mother, and it was sort ofan undercover gay bar in a time when
gay bars didn't even exist, andthey were often rated by police, and
there were a lot of scandals thattook place associated with them. So there

(24:18):
was definitely a very deep rooted fearwhen it comes to being outed, especially
even back then. Do you thinkthat there's a place for spiritualism today.
I think there's always a place forspiritualism. I think a lot of people

(24:41):
practice spiritualism without even realizing it.It's become so antiquated in concept that I
don't think people think about it asmuch. People don't aren't quite as aware
nowadays of what spiritualists are as theywere, say one hundred years ago or

(25:04):
so. It was back then everyoneknew what a spiritualist was practically. But
now, if you think about theway the paranormal is portrayed and the way
people act into paranormal investigations and research, there is very much a lot of
spiritualism being practiced where it's basically communicatingwith spirits has almost become its own religion

(25:30):
once again. Right earlier, you'retalking about what the statistics might be medium
psychics, et cetera, that are, you know, not heterosexual. Wouldn't
then wouldn't we be able to kindof make a study of that now,
because I feel like so many morepeople are are out and open, could

(25:53):
we not do some kind of,you know, formal survey at least get
some idea like is it true,is it true that you know being trans
or fluid or gay or lesbian somehowthere's something you've heard in the shamanistic world

(26:15):
like two spirit people. Is thereis there something there that makes make that
gives them an extra ability? Ithink, person I think it definitely is
something that could be analyzed nowadays alot better. And I think there's definitely
something to it, given the factthat so many people in Native cultures and

(26:42):
other cultures around the world where therewas this concept that anyone who was gay,
lesbian, bisexual, transgender did havea closer tie to the spiritual realm.
They were very often shaman and mysticsand all of this because and they
were thought it's like like you said, with Native American cultures, a lot

(27:06):
of times it was the concept oftwo spirit they're special because they possess both
male and female spirits. Therefore theyare more in tune than anyone else to
connect with all the other realms ofthe universe basically, right, So there's
that's a psychological aspect of it.So if you're in tuned with the masculine

(27:26):
and the feminine in a way thatperhaps I'm not right, then you have
that sort of advantage of perspective andinsight. But that's not necessarily the same
as an nobility and a skill,you know. And so I wonder if
there's almost like a genetic or physicalcomponent somewhere within the brainscape now that that

(27:48):
helps someone kind of like you knowin Star Wars, everyone has medical Oorians,
but but some some have higher medicalorean account and it's like the symbiotic
like what came first chicken or theegg medicalorians or the forcibility. And I
wonder if there's kind of something therelike that. Well, I think and
one respect that could be something,but in the same sense of nature or

(28:11):
nurture the age old debate. Itcould also have something to do with the
way the way we are in societywhen we realize that we are dealing with

(28:32):
some sort of stigmatization based on whowe are and having to navigate a world
where you have to be more awareof your interactions with people or possibly face
dangerous consequences with it. So youhave a different perspective growing up of society.

(28:55):
You're not just like everyone else justgoing through the daily lives like everything
is normal. You have to beextra aware of your surroundings and you have
to be almost removed from society ina way as an observer to understand what
places are safe, to be moreopen with yourself and all of that.

(29:19):
So I think a lot of itcould also be when you develop over the
years a sense of hyper awareness ofyour surroundings. Maybe that has something to
do with the phenomena as well.Yeah, it reminds me of people who
grow up in dysfunctional households or haveyou know, traumatic experiences, and maybe

(29:44):
they can't trust the world around them, and so it really shapes they're sharp
eurned so many areas of life,planning, preparing, thinking through scenarios,
and that's you know, unfortunately,it's something that's developed and sharpened because of
their unfortunate experience. And I suppose, yeah, if you are not accepted

(30:08):
for for who you are, youknow that that's a that's a trauma that
you're living kind of every day andthat you have to adapt to the world
around you and think differently. That'sinteresting. So from spiritualism. Where did
it go? Where did it gofrom there? Are you talking about the

(30:29):
book or yeah, the book rarelyqueer and everyone listening. Ken Summer's website
is Moonspenders dot com moonspenders dot com. From there it went into psychical research
and sort of the long history ofunexpected people who were involved in early paranormal

(30:56):
research who were LGBTQ, which therewere a lot, And from there I
didn't want to get too close intomodern day because there was so much to
cover, and at that point whenI started writing, there really wasn't.

(31:21):
There weren't shows like Living for theDead and things like that that are now
coming out, and I think evenAdam Barry had just recently come out at
that point as well when I startedworking on the book. So, but
there's there's a lot of people who'vebeen involved in research, and a lot

(31:44):
of people involved in the society ofpsychical research, especially who definitely were not
completely heterosexual, and some of ithad some tragic consequences and a lot of
controversies around some people as well.There were some That's the one thing that

(32:05):
I'm glad that a few people I'vetalked to noticed about It is one thing
about my books, and I don'tlike to sugarcoat things. Oh and you
do that really well, you're notYou're not painting heroic figures. Yes,
if somebody, if somebody did somethingfascinating, but they also did something horrible,
I'm not going to gloss over thehorribleness. Right. Well, even

(32:30):
even when you were telling the storyof the the Yellow Yellow Boy. You
know, it's like, you knowhow people in our society conflate We'll say,
interactions with younger people. Yes,we're on you, we're on youtubes.
So I have to be really carefulwhat I say, interact interactions with
younger people and adults and adults andadults. Yeah. And then and when

(32:52):
I think of the yellow Boy thing, it's kind of like, is that
is it? Is it a slight? Is it meant to be like a
demonization? You know? Oh yeah, definitely. Yeah. There was this
always been a thing, and itwas quite a literal thing if you go

(33:17):
back a few centuries, especially withlike Witchcraft and all of that, which
I touched on in one of thelast chapters. There was the whole idea
of a heretic was it wasn't justsomebody who was against the church or spoke
in non holy terms. It wasanyone who was an outcast from society,

(33:44):
whether you were gay, whether youwere a witch, or just somebody who
didn't conform to society's normals. Soyeah, there's a lot of that.
Go ahead, just okay, yougo ahead. Well, no, you

(34:07):
made me think about to think inthe in the eighties, there was that
whole Satanism scare, right, Butwhat I was reading in your earlier history,
up until that point, I didn'tget a sense that there was a
societal panic about spiritualism. There wascritique, but not there's you know,
but I didn't get like that thatthat that oh my gosh, this is

(34:30):
the end of days. We haveto stop these terrible people. No,
because sensationalism in the media wasn't reallythat big of a thing. Well,
there was yellow journalism and all ofthat. There was different slinging of mud
and such, but it really wasn't. There was some time during like the

(34:51):
first Second World War, where therewere some controversies because people really got heavily
into it trying to contact dead lovedones, and some people did take a
little bit too far with psychotic breakdownsand Luigi board affecting their decision making to
a bad end, but generally no, it wasn't really until the Satanic panic

(35:19):
hit, which I find extremely interestingbecause there were absolutely no grounds for it,
and even closely attached with it wasthe whole poisoned candy for Halloween,
that whole thing that became a bigcraze, and finding out that the truth

(35:43):
of the matter was the first andonly real documented case that arose at that
time was a father who poisoned hisown child. It wasn't a stranger at
all. It was a father whokilled his own kid. And so yeah,
it was a lot of that.It's very easy for people to get

(36:06):
worked up into a frenzy. TheOuigi boards never were thought of as being
anything other than a toy until thehorror movies came out and the seventies and
eighties, when all of a suddenyou have Linda Blair spinning around because she
messed with the Ouiji board and allthat, And now you still have that
idea that Ouiji boards are the worstthing in the world and they will create

(36:30):
a portal to Hell, and whoknows what can happen, And it hasn't
changed. It's just the way welook at things have changed. Well.
Yeah, but it does seem tome that there are some stories in your
book about people who use the Ouigiboard and it predicts their tragic demise.

(36:51):
Oh yeah, and so do youthink that that's true those stories are true
and that they did get some kindof message from the other side predicting the
demis or it's hard to say didthey did they manifest that? There's there's
a third possibility too, that theywere somehow subconsciously aware of it and they

(37:15):
manifested those thoughts through them. Itcould have been their own somehow having some
form of uh recognition in themselves,and that manifested subconsciously through them to give
the answers that they knew without evenknowing. So there's a mystery forces in

(37:40):
our universe and gravity which we can'tactually see. Yeah, we measure its
effects, but we don't measure itexactly right. It's like a shadow that
we knowing someone's there just because it'sa shadow. So I had wonder if

(38:01):
there's something like that that we justhaven't picked up on yet, kind of
an energy source. What what doyou have any theories on what that might
be? I really like Young's ideaof a collective subconscious or a collective consciousness
that sort of floats around where sortof everyone's minds are somehow connected in some

(38:30):
form of a network. And becausehe had the idea that that's how artists
work is and when they especially artistswho worked at night when it's quieter,
we're able to tap into this streamof consciousness it's spinning through the world at
all times, and that gave themtheir creativity. Basically, I think there's

(38:51):
definitely it's an interesting subject. I'mI try to be rational with a lot
of things, so I'm not sayingthat it definitely exists, but I definitely
liked the idea of it, andbeing someone who has had creative verse that

(39:15):
don't necessarily seem like they're coming frommyself, I would subscribe to that belief
a bit. Well, you knowthe large Hadron collider in cern in Switzerland.
Right quantum. One of the manytheories hypothetical right scenarios of quantum theoretical

(39:37):
physics is that if you know twoI don't know if it's photon or boson,
but particles collide, that there's mathematicalprediction that there could be a scenario
where the measurement of the two particlesthemselves is higher energy than the actual explosion

(40:01):
when they hit, because some traceamount of energy would leak into another dimension.
Mm hmm. And I'm thinking ifif theoretical physicists are kind of okay

(40:21):
with this idea on paper, like, how do we know that it's even
far more complex than than they imagine, and that a ghost or some kind
of spirit energy, whether it's inthe it's an acoustical apparition, a a
you know, visual manifestation, isjust energy coming through into our dimension from

(40:45):
from another side. Yeah, thatis different dimensions. Is definitely an interesting
avenue to follow with a lot ofthings because actually, given the fact that
there's more and more evidence that theuniverse is a lot more complicated than we

(41:08):
can ever possibly wrap our brains around, and what our one dimension that we
are living in are, the dimensionsthat we exist in are definitely not the
limit to everything. And it makesme think of an interesting idea I've had

(41:30):
for some hauntings for the longest time, the same concept but with time,
that time isn't we always think oftime as linear, and any scientist will
tell you it's not. Linear.But I always thought, what if you
look at time as a ball ofyarn that's round around in a big,

(41:52):
tight circle, and it's constantly flowingaround. And what if, say,
there is a story of a ghostthat appears on this day and it's documented,
and then ghost hunters a century laterare going out there trying to find

(42:15):
that ghost, And what if thereality is what's happening is it's sort of
a time loop where the people inthe past are seeing the ghost hunters and
interpreting them as ghosts, and thereforeit's sort of like a loop that forms
because two things coincide in the perfectalignment where it happens at the same time,

(42:40):
and it basically creates its own reality. Yeah, but is there any
evidence to suggest that there are figureswearing clothing from a time period that never
existed so they look so different thatthey would be from the future looking back.

(43:00):
That'd be something interesting to look moreinto. I know it's hard because
a lot of apparitions are not likecrystal clear, where you can identify exactly
what they're wearing or even what theyare beyond a humanoid shape. So it's

(43:21):
one of those interesting things. Butlike I always point out to people when
they ask me what a ghost is, and I tell them it's the most
complicated answer you could possibly think of, because it's not just things like that.
It's not just apparitions. It's notshadows and stuff like that. You're
talking about. You have ghost ships, ghost trains, ghost cars. There

(43:45):
are inanimate objects that should not beghosts because they're not supposed to possess soul.
So there's a lot of things thathappen. It's a very broad term
to use the word ghost. Haveyou seen the movie Frequency? I don't
think so. No. Oh,that's a good one. That's a good

(44:06):
one. Yeah. So that's aboutmessaging through time, and I think I
think you'll really appreciate that. Jimcavisl and Dennis not Dennis Quaid. Yeah,
I think that Dennis quad a reallyreally good movie. Uh So the
speed, there's limits to time.I mean, my understanding is that the

(44:29):
speed of when you reach the speedof light, according to relativity, time
actually doesn't exist, stops, itceases to exist. So from the perspective
of a light particle mm hmm,once it comes into existence, there is

(44:49):
no time for it. So Isaw this video with Neil deGrasse Tyson talking
about this. So basically, ifa photon comes from the Sun from the
moment of its birth, from ourperspective, it takes eight minutes to travel
to Earth. Yeah, but fromits perspective, it's already born and reached

(45:14):
to Earth at the same time.And this is this is fact, right,
this is this isn't like theory.This is as we understand, at
least as we understand physics. Yes, this is this is This is to
me almost more weird. It's moredifficult to comprehend than say, a spirit

(45:38):
coming through or a residual energy ofsome sort. Oh. Yeah, And
the idea, the concept of aparticle being into places at the same time,
right, shouldn't And they call itspooky, right, isn't that funny?
Yeah, and they're calling us crazy. We have a comment from Barry

(46:01):
Shanley Junior. He says, ourspirits before and after our material life transcend
things like gender and sexual identity.When we die, we shed those things
that merely relate to corporeal life.Whatever vestiges of such fragments of who we
were that may appear in encounters wouldsimply be for the sake of those still

(46:24):
incarnated who knew them in those specificephemeral forms. The only thing I would
disagree with is who knew them becauseif people who don't know ghosts see them.
Yeah, but it's the same conceptof why ghosts wear clothes because technically
they shouldn't have to, but butthey do rarely. I won't see you

(46:50):
never because there are stories, butyou rarely see a naked ghost, even
though there are some out there.But yeah, Actually he echoes a lot
of Ian Stevenson's research into reincarnation.He wrote quite a few books on He

(47:12):
did studies throughout several different countries onreincarnation and there were he did a lot
of work into gender changes between incarnationsand a lot of looking into that because
he was really fascinated by that ideaand that definitely it can be a controversial

(47:38):
subject, but to me, Ifind it extremely fascinating that if you do
believe in reincarnation and all of thatin past lives, the idea that you
can come back as a completely differentgender compared to your previous life and have

(48:00):
all the memories of being a differentgender, and it's it definitely leans toward
the idea of gender and sexuality beingsomething that the grand scheme of things can
get very complicated, And it's becausethere's a lot of factors, not just

(48:24):
not just nature or nurture that youhave to take into account. It can
be past lives and things like thatas well, and different life lessons if
if that's what you believe, Butyeah, it's it's but when you think
of the concept of a soul inthe first place, you're talking about a

(48:45):
genderless idea of a just an energybasically. Can you tell us a little
bit about Joe Meek's Oh, yeah, he was. He was very influential
in the music industry back in theday. Ah didn't actually end very well.

(49:14):
He's not well known nowadays. ButI want to say the song is
Telestar. I'm trying to remember forsure, and I actually have the book
right here because this is like myresearch library. So yeah, very Joe
Meek, but yeah, he let'ssee if it has it on the back.

(49:37):
But he got involved in music production. He was also a musician,
but he also was fascinated with theghost hutting Mm hmm. Was he the
one that was related to American piesong or No? I don't think he
was, But no, he alsoliked to pick up men in parks,

(50:00):
but that's a different story altogether.But he did go ghost hunting as a
hobby. He went out and wentto different places in the middle of the
night, either alone or with afriend, recordings and all of that,
and he actually did what we wouldtoday consider ghost hunting with a camera and

(50:22):
audio recorder and all of that.He did end up comitian murder before committing
suicide, so that's more of whathe's well known for in the end.
But well, there is a reallyinteresting story about a cat. Oh yeah,
yeah, a ghost cat that Iwas at one of these. It

(50:45):
was a flaunted farmhouse that he does, and he was convinced that this cat
was actually a manifestation of a humanghost because he believed that the sounds the
cat was making were actually human wordsand it would call out for help.

(51:07):
But didn't he have he had evidenceof this recording or he actually did every
recording. BBC played the recording ina paranormal show back in I want to
say this seventies or eighties. Theyactually had they played live on the show
the recording that he had captured fromit. And did you ever find that

(51:30):
recording? I did, and itdoes somewhat sound human, But having grown
up with cats all my life,I also know the cats can make some
strange noises to sound very human,So it could go either way, but
it's still an interesting concept. Welldo you remember that video that came out?

(51:52):
It was like one of the earlyYouTube phenomenon videos of two cats talking
to each other, and the subtitles, yeah, yeah, that we have
a cat, and and she shehas evolved her sounds. Oh yeah,
and there's you know, once ina while there's a new voice. You're
like, where did that come from? My cat does the same thing,

(52:15):
and he's it's it's it's weird.It's like he's coming up with new ways
to communicate with me based on adaptingto Let's see how he reacts to this,
right, because nowadays he's one thinghe started in the past year is

(52:36):
this weird half me out, halfper which is when he's when I'm when
I'm doing something that he enjoys,but he wants to make me think he
doesn't enjoy it, Like if he'slonely and I pick him up and cuddle
him and he wants it's almost acat version of oh no, don't do

(52:58):
that. Please don't stop it.It'd really weird. But he and he,
he makes a lot of weird noisesand he's I'm not completely studies Feeline,
so Begger Spells says, I havefull blown conversations with mine. Yeah.
I did, most humans too,Yeah, yeah, I do too.

(53:21):
I don't know if I'm always gettingthe point across, you know.
Uh, but it's amazing. Likemy wife recently, you know, said
something very specific, very specific,and you know, our cat. She
she might she just did did didthat, And I was like, how
how did she know? It's amazingmy cat? Uh, probably two or

(53:47):
three years ago, he was inthe kitchen giving me grief because even though
it was one o'clock in the afternoon, according to him it was dinner time.
And so I point blank told him, it's not time yet, if
you have to wait, and hesat there, looked directly up at the

(54:07):
clock on the wall, looked backat me and just kind of soundered away
like whatever, but he looked deadat the clock. Yeah, that's amazing.
So where did the transition come infrom spiritualism to New Age? I

(54:30):
would say that had a lot todo with sort of the psychedelic movements and
basically all the societal changes that happenedin the sixties and seventies. I would
say that's really what started to shiftpeople from from a more normalized I guess

(54:57):
you could say spiritualism in a wayis like a a traditional traditional style of
spirituality. It's more of a likefor the spiritualists that still exists. They
still have churches, and they stillhave like a regiment type of thing.

(55:20):
And then you get into the sixtiesand seventies and the era of free love
and independence and everything else and thingsand experimentation and all of that, and
you get more of sort of anexplosion of free thought and independent actions and

(55:43):
not having to sort of obey thetypical societal rules with everything. And I
think that's where things started branching offinto an idea more of I can believe
what I want, and I caninterpret things in a different way. I
don't have to follow the way everyoneelse has done it before. Although I

(56:07):
would I would say that spiritualism didthat too right. It did in its
own way. It definitely was.I wouldn't say it strayed as far as
New Age really has it. Itwon't ye come to think about it,
Yeah, you're talking about if youlook at people like Levatski and other people,

(56:30):
there were a lot of very eccentricpeople with very non traditional views and
lifestyle. So I guess it's ourinterpretation because types have changed over that,
that we think of that as normalized, since it was radical at one point

(56:53):
and then normal, and then allof a sudden, the New Age came
up, and now this is radical, and that's just normal, right,
Because even spiritualism Madam of Leavotsky,for instance, took religious ideology, ideologies
and ritual from Tibet and you know, other Eastern religions and incorporated that into

(57:17):
their their belief system. Oh yeah, and basically formed an entire new religion
on it. And wasn't she likea cigar smoker, Like really pretty pretty,
pretty vodka swelling cigar drinking. That'snot that's not the New Age yoga

(57:38):
studio stereotype, right, So inthat regard, you're very right, there's
definitely a difference. Yeah, butbut not not every medium was like that.
What was it about Madame Lavotsky thatso appealed to so many people?
I think a lot of it hadto do with she was She was very

(58:02):
convincing. How some people just havethat natural charisma to make you believe things,
and they can sway you with justtheir bravado and their their presence.

(58:22):
They can make you feel like theyare definitely in charge of things, and
because of that, they know whatthey know is the truth above all else.
And I think that was definitely incase of her. I think she
definitely was well in a lot ofways. She had the traditional what people
expect from like a fortune telling,psychic type of person. She had that

(58:47):
mes rising stare that almost creeped youout, and she just looked like she
could be menacing, but you shouldreally take her seriously. Could look steely,
menacing, but the messaging wasn't noright, no, Yeah, it

(59:07):
kind of re minds. We werejust watching Netflix documentary and the way you're
describing her kind of reminds me ofhow people on the documentar are described John
Gotti. You could just kind ofcommand a room, and he had a
certain charisma or magnetism about him.Yeah. So in the in the eighties,

(59:30):
right, so we really get intolike the new age moving Where does
the LGBTQ person fit into into allof that? Surprisingly, in a lot
of ways, I know that wassort of when Witchcraft and Wicca and all

(59:53):
of that became part of the mainstreamculture and less of a a willgemand type
idea and more of a well,this is an alternative type of religion and
it's not going to harm anyone.And I think that openness is what actually
eventually led to the Satanic Panic,as different religious sects sort of tried to

(01:00:21):
counteract this church. But it definitelybecause there was this one interesting story that
is in the book involving that wherethere were some gay rights activists that were
trying to protest police brutality and theyattempted to use magic to levitate a police

(01:00:50):
station to sort of threaten the policeand scare them into making changes. Of
course, they weren't able to liftthe build thing, but they did give
it a try. Couldn't they havestarted something smaller or something, But I

(01:01:10):
guess they just went all out.Hey, I guess, yeah, go
big or go home. Two forstars, get the moon? Did they
get the moon? Did anything happenor no, it didn't happen. It
didn't really make many waves other thanbecoming a footnote in history sort of,

(01:01:31):
but but it definitely I think thatwas sort of part of the beginning of
a lot of LGBTQ people getting involvedin witchcraft more and opening up to the
idea of it. Since a lotof churches were very homophobic and anti anything

(01:01:52):
that wasn't heterosexual. So I thinkthe people started awakening to the idea that
there were alternative religions out there thatwould be accepting of them in a lot
of ways. Yeah, in allyour research, what is the most what
did you take away or what reallyMHM impressed upon you being the most significant

(01:02:20):
part of our history. I Iwould say there's two things. First of
all, in a non non queerrelated thing, but probably changed my mind

(01:02:44):
or at least opened my mind upto thoughts that I had never really even
considered. That I hadn't considered isreading about voodoo and understanding voodoo and Haitian
voodoo and the practice is but notjust the practices, but the thoughts and
ideas behind it. Because there's likezombies and zombification. It was so badly

(01:03:13):
trashed by Hollywood and everything, andit's always been basically taken completely out of
context. And it's because to understandvoodoo, this process of zombifaication involves basically
taking everything you think about the souland all of that and turning it on

(01:03:35):
its head. Because for Voodoo practitionersand a lot of different non traditional or
non Western belief systems, the conceptof the soul is different. We think

(01:03:57):
of a soul as being inside ofus, as a part of our body,
that when we die it leaves us. These beliefs. It's the best
analogy was from a book that Iread on the subject. They compared it
to being a cashew. How ifyou look at a cashew growing on a

(01:04:18):
tree, it's a fruit and atthe bottom of it is the cash you
itself. It's not inside the fruit, it's attached to it. And that's
the belief system with the soul ofa lot of these similar belief systems.
So is not inside of you,It is attached by anbilical cord to you.

(01:04:43):
So the process of zombifacation is basicallydiscovering that invisible attachment with your soul.
How it happens. That's how youcan separate a soul in Voodoo,
and that's why it's so hard forus understand because we think the souls inside
of and how do you separate somethingthat within. But that when I understood

(01:05:05):
that whole concept, that totally blewmy mind in a lot of ways,
and it made everything makes so muchmore sense than I had ever thought of
before in my life. But that'sinteresting because people who have had near death
experiences or research it have spoken oflike a blue or thread, like a

(01:05:28):
teather from the soul to the body. Even astro projection involves heather like that.
It's so common in a lot ofbeliefs and different theories of anything relating
to the soul and all of thatthat I'm almost surprised that we don't lean

(01:05:48):
more towards that concept than we doof the traditional internal soul. Yeah,
yeah, like it's just here,Yeah, but why can't it be out
here somewhere? Yeah? Right,that's yeah. Interesting. What is the
future significant importance of LGBTQ people inour paranormal community moving forward? I think

(01:06:16):
it's becoming a lot more accepting.It's something I have noticed more so in
the past ten years than in theprevious thirty or so. It's definitely moving
in a different direction, and I'mglad to see that because a lot of

(01:06:40):
times anyone who knows anything about ufologyand the UFO movement knows that there's a
lot of people out there who preachabout having an open mind about different things,
but they are most close minded peoplein the entire face the earth.

(01:07:01):
But at the same time, Isort of felt like this was bound to
happen in the first place, becausethat was the second profound thing that I
took away from researching this book.It's a quote that I took from an
old book. Well, it's moreof a pamphlet than a book, but

(01:07:26):
it's an interesting quote to read.It is from Fritz Kuntz, and I'll
read it first before I say whenit was written, we are going to
have this queer intermediate sex that isnow appearing very rapidly. It is possible
for the whole of us here tonightthat we will welcome these revolutionaries that are

(01:07:47):
appearing and sympathize with them. Theywill make us look antique, antiquated,
obsolete, These young people with thesun of the dawn in their eyes and
the breath of spring in their hair, boys and girls who don't know they
are boys and girls that only knowthey are souls. That was from a

(01:08:09):
book or a pamphlet he wrote calledsex Concepts of a new age. It
was written in nineteen twenty six,yet it sounds like something that was written
within the past twenty years. Yeah, Yeah, that's amazing and that and
it definitely goes to show that thingsare cyclical. Nothing ever stays the same,

(01:08:35):
and it tends to go back andforth like a pendulum. So if
you look at like Berlin in thenineteen twenties and thirties, where being gay
was completely accepted, straight people wentto drag shows all the time, they
were everywhere, and then Hitler camealong and everything change. There's a constant

(01:09:02):
ebb and flow. Nothing nothing is, nothing new is ever completely it's just
rediscovered. Right, maybe we cando a little less ebb and a little
more flow. So going like that, let's let's yeah, let's move in
that direction. Uh. If youcould leave us with one thought, Ken,

(01:09:28):
what would it be? I wouldsay that people often forget that paranormal
research study questioning all of this isnot a modern concept. It's the amount

(01:09:51):
of work that people have done overthe past centuries is staggering, and no
one person could ever read every singlething that's ever been written about it,
and there's so much out there tounderstand and explore and don't get caught up

(01:10:15):
in just what's popular and what isthought to be. Well, this is
the way things are done. That'sit's one of my favorite Mark Twain quotes.
But whenever you're on the side ofthe majority, it's time to pause
and reflect. And that's the conceptreally that there is is there are so

(01:10:41):
many other things out there, andlearning is an important thing. Exploring beyond
your known bubble or what a fewpeople say is an extremely invaluable resource.
And there's so much to find outthere, and you can find anything if
you try hard enough. And thereare so many people who have been forgotten

(01:11:05):
and lost their voices that more peopleneed to know about, and they are
the ones, most often who arereally worth knowing. Yeah, once someone
who is in this world of interesthad said to me that, well,
you know, I don't know aboutall this stuff because if you go back

(01:11:27):
in time, there's no mention ofall these people of gender fluid and non
binary and blah blah blah. Andit's because it's because it wasn't written down.
It was left it was left out, and you have to you have
to unfortunately, go back and readbetween the lines often and it wasn't always

(01:11:49):
the same words. There were alot of words. Homosexuality didn't exist until
about in the eighteen eighties. Yes, term didn't exist. Inverts a lot
of you'll see a lot of thingstalking about inversion therapy and things like that.
An invert was someone who was basicallygay, someone who and they had

(01:12:14):
this concept of that somehow there wasan inversion in their sexuality that needed to
be fixed, and there were alot of psychologists who specialized in that,
doing some pretty horrible things that todaywe would laugh at. But but there's
there's the problem is our modern languagelimits us. We don't know. There's

(01:12:40):
so much out there that exists,and it wasn't talked about in the same
way, So you have to understandwhat words were used at that particular time.
So it's it's difficult. But therehave always been people of different genders,
of multiple gender, of different sexualities. It's been going on since the

(01:13:03):
dawn of time. Yeah, onething I do want to mention before we
wrap up. You refer to thebook The Trickster and the Paranormal, and
I really like this, this ideathat experiencers have a paranormal experience, like
three things that stand out. Oneis liminality, the one is anti structure,

(01:13:27):
and the other is marginality. AndI really like that trifecta. Yeah,
I feel like it does a reallygood job of encompassing what one goes
through. What how do you relateto the marginality aspect of that in a
lot of ways, I think.I think for me Ashley, marginality sort

(01:13:51):
of led me into the path ofthe paranormal in the first place. Was
I never there was a time inmy life where I actually questioned whether or
not I was human. I didn'tfeel like I fit in with any human
beings at all. I didn't couldn'trelate to any of them, and I
started to seriously question, am Ipossibly some kind of alien that was dropped

(01:14:14):
on this planet? Because I don'tunderstand people at all? So you felt
alien? Yes, very much.I realized very quickly that I was actually
human. It's just an idea,but I think marginality gives people a different
perspective, and it's you're not goingto see everything from the center of it

(01:14:39):
all. It's when you're on thefringes that you have a different perspective and
you can look at the mass andsee what actually is composed of. If
you're in the center of it all, you are so swamped with everything that
you can't see anything. But it'swhen you're on the peripheral that's when everything

(01:14:59):
comes into focus, well everything atleast within that kind of yeah, not
everything everything, but no, no, no, yeah, because that and
that's the thing that's really tough aboutthe paranormal, because there's there's so much
to it, you know, andit's like, you know, you're reading
a book and you're like, ohmy god, I want to go down
this road. But then you readanother book you're like, oh, this
is really interesting too. Like yousaid, there's so much information and there's

(01:15:24):
so much to be researched. Oneyou'll never get the answer, but too
it never gets boring either, whichis what I love about it. Yeah.
Yeah, And that's that's why Ipoint out actually in the beginning of
my book that this is by nomeans an absolute complete compendum of everything in
the paranormal. This is just thetipping point. This is just the beginning.

(01:15:46):
But it's a damn good Ken Seriously, I really You're writing is perfect.
I just I've really enjoyed this bookso much. So thank you so
much for doing the work, becauseI know it was a lot of work,
and so glad to see you again. Man, thanks so much for
coming on always here. Hope tosee you again too. Yeah. All

(01:16:06):
right, so everyone, thank youfor joining us tonight. We know we're
a little bit over time, andso thank you Ken for hanging out a
little bit longer. If you wantto get Ken's book, Weirdly Queer Exploring
the LGBTQ perspective of the paranormal,occult and Mysterious world, go to Moonspenders
dot com. Thank you all atthe EX Network, including Margie k and

(01:16:30):
Race Hobbs. This show is rebroadcaston the UNEX Network at two am Eastern
Standard Time Fridays eleven pm Pacific TimeThursday nights. If you missed this live
stream, you can also catch thepodcast. If you like the podcast,
please give a review and thumbs uphere on YouTube channel. I appreciate all
of your support. Thank you everybody, and until next time, Live in the Mystery