Episode 302: Haunted Childhood Homes (with Mara Wilson
/We’re joined by Mara Wilson, who regales us with her experiences growing up in a haunted house, living the “gothic valley” life, and what would be scarier to meet: a ghost or an alien?
Content Warning: This episode contains conversations about or mentions of misogyny, aircraft accident, earthquakes, parent death, illness, body horror, mental illness, murder, blood, animal death, and the Civil War.
Guest
Mara Wilson, known for her childhood roles in Mrs. Doubtfire and Matilda, is a writer and actor living in Los Angeles. Recently, she has appeared on Welcome to Night Vale, Broad City and Bojack Horseman. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times, Elle, McSweeney’s, Reductress, and many other outlets. She also publishes a newsletter of her writing with Substack, 'Shan't We Tell the Vicar?' Mara's first book, Where Am I Now?: True Stories of Girlhood and Accidental Fame is available from Penguin Random House. Recently, Mara voiced Tania de Batz in the audiobook One For All, a gender-swapped version of the Three Musketeers by Lillie Lainoff.
Housekeeping
- Recommendation: This week, Amanda recommends Games and Feelings.
- Books: Check out our previous book recommendations, guests’ books, and more at spiritspodcast.com/books
- Call to Action: Check out the Queer Movie Podcast - a queer movie watch party hosted by Rowan Ellis and Jazza John. Join them as they research and rate their way through the queer film canon, one genre at a time. Search for Queer Movie Podcast in your podcast app to subscribe today!
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Transcript
AMANDA: Welcome to Spirits Podcast, boozy dive into mythology, legends, and folklore. Every week we pour a drink and learn about a new story from around the world. I'm Amanda.
JULIA: And I'm Julia.
AMANDA: And this is Episode 302. We are so excited and honored to be joined by the face of a woman who lives in your house herself in Mara Wilson. Mara, how are you?
MARA: I'm doing very well. Thank you. Thank you happy to be here.
JULIA: We're very excited.
AMANDA: I really had to acknowledge the you know, iconic role elephant in the room that our listeners will definitely know you from. So you're also a writer and actor, a podcaster. extraordinaire. Thank you so much for being here.
MARA: Yeah. Thank you so much for having me. It's, it's funny. I feel like I never really know what people will know me from sometimes. It's Matilda. Sometimes it's Night Vale. Sometimes it's even Mrs. Doubtfire, which surprises me because I was five at the time. So I kind of love that also, because I don't know what people are going to know me from and and it's fun. It's fun to see what they do.
JULIA: Yeah, absolutely. I know. Amanda and I recently recorded an episode of a fellow podcast, which is called the Queer Movie Podcast. And we did an episode which was just like media that made you queer.
MARA: Oh, yeah.
JULIA: I was like, so Matilda, you know?
MARA: That is, that is something I hear a lot. I mean, for me, I was kind of a late bloomer. I think. I always mentioned Queen Latifah doing When You're Good to Mama and Chicago that-
JULIA: Ooh, yeah.
MARA: -that was very formative for me.
JULIA: With the fan dance. Yes.
MARA: Yeah. With the fan dance and she's in that like bustier and it cuts between her being like the matron, but also her being like, yeah, it's fantastic.
AMANDA: It's everything.
JULIA: I gotcha.
MARA: But yeah, Matilda, Matilda I hear that a lot. I hear so many women saying that Ms. Honey was their first crush and admittedly that makes dating a little bit hard. Admittedly, it makes dating a little bit hard because I usually tend not to date super fans because you know, that can get a little weird.
JULIA: Sure.
AMANDA: Of course.
MARA: But it's very hard to find a woman who loves woman or just any kind of queer person who doesn't love Matilda. So-
JULIA: There you go.
MARA: Blessing and a curse, I suppose.
AMANDA: Yeah. Is it the wonderful actor or is it economic security? Like who can truly say what it is that speaks to young queer kids?
MARA: Yeah, I mean having a cottage I think I think is kind of-
AMANDA: That's it.
MARA: -everybody's dreams and people forget that she gets the Trunchbull's house at the end. Although it does have a beautiful garden and it does have you know, it's funny put your own spin on it. But I know so many people who are just like I want Miss Honey's, cottage, that is what I want. And we all kind of forget that she moves into the big house at the end. But our generation has simpler desires.
AMANDA: We do rent that doesn't raise 15% year over year.
MARA: Yeah. Yeah, exactly.
AMANDA: But Mara, we're here to talk about lots of things with you. Anything creepy/cool/queer that you want to talk about is fully on the table. But we were told something along the lines of you may have experience with haunted houses, is that true?
MARA: I'm a naturally pretty skeptical person. I'm always like, oh, I don't know. I don't believe in things very easily. But I do feel like I experience a lot of very cool things. And I've experienced some things and I'm just like, hmm, I can't understand that. And so even if I'm like agnostic about ghosts, or, you know, UFO visits or things like that, I still love hearing about them. And if I read about them late at night or hear about them late at night, I get scared. But yeah, there is no way that if ghosts and haunted houses do exist, I grew up in a haunted house. I really did. So, I grew up in Burbank, California, which was farmland for a very long time. It's called Burbank because Patton Oswald has a great bit about this. It was named after an animal dentist, who moved out here and decided to name it after himself.
AMANDA: What?
MARA: My mom always said it was sort of like somebody took a town from the Midwest and dropped it in the middle of Los Angeles County.
AMANDA: Yeah.
MARA: A lot of transplants here, and it's in the valley and it's very, it feels like it should be wholesome. But there's also kind of a weird John Waters quality to it. But the house that we moved into when I was I think six. It was right after Mrs. Doubtfire and I think right before Miracle we moved into this house and we, I had a big family, but we couldn't afford a big house. So we had five kids and in the first house we lived in we had three boys sharing one room and then two girls sharing the other and then my parents had their room, and it was sort of railroad style. It was a pretty small house, and now I feel like I would be happy to live in that kind of house. I was but at the time, it felt a little cramped. So my parents looked around, there was a street that my mom really loved the idea of living on it was a very beautiful street. And we found this house that was like really a fixer-upper. And we found out later it had been a farmhouse. And there had been a walnut farm all around. And so it was the first house on the block, which explained why it was built differently. And it was a strange house like it was clearly it was like an old farmhouse. And then somebody decided to tack like a second floor onto it. But the second floor was only half of it. And the second floor was only half what the first floor was, it felt very weird and uneven. And the staircase was like, right in the middle of the living room. And the bathroom was right in the middle of the living room as well. And it was just, it was a strange place. And there was a giant walnut tree in the backyard like our backyard was pretty small. But when we first moved in there, there were just all these dirt mounds, oh, just mounds and mounds of dirt. And I remember one of my friends saying like, oh, it's a secret burial ground or something like that, which she completely made up. But for all I know, it could have been some kind of burial ground at some point.
AMANDA: And most of the Earth at some point someone's been buried in like could both be honest.
JULIA: Yeah.
MARA: Exactly. And we had a tangelo tree, which is tangerines and pomelos. And somebody told me recently, it's tangelos. So despite growing up with what I might have had mispronouncing it all this time.
AMANDA: That just sounds like an R&B singer from the late 90s.
MARA: Yeah.
AMANDA: I think you're right.
MARA: And we also had a lemon bush. It wasn't a lemon tree. It was a lemon bush because it never grew any taller than I did, and I'm very short. It was cute. The walnut tree was kind of a hassle because squirrels would come there and they would eat the walnut fruit and then leave the scattered shells all over the place.
AMANDA: Oh, yeah.
MARA: So that was kind of annoying. But we have these shells everywhere all over the backyard. And you know, my sister and I, we were California Girls, we would walk outside and step onto the pavement with bare feet, and just shells crunching under your feet all the time, and I remember thinking like squirrels have rabies. I hope I don't get rabies from stepping on shells that they've eaten.
JULIA: What a big anxiety mode there. I feel that.
MARA: Yeah, yes, I was an anxious kid, there was a lot that I worried about. But when we first got the house, it was a major fixer-upper, which was the only way that we could afford it. And my dad told us later, and my dad is the kind of person who will save a story. And then you know, 20 years later, he'll be like, oh, yeah, this happened. And we'll be like, What the hell? Like he's very quiet. But when he tells a story, we'll be like, how have you been hiding this for so long. But my dad said that when he first went in there, and we hadn't moved in yet. And he was just sort of examining everything. There were times that he would come in and nobody else had the keys, but he would come in and there were things that were just completely moved around. And it scared him he didn't know what to do. And he said that after that he changed the locks, but it might have kept happening.
JULIA: Oh
AMANDA: Oh, man.
MARA: And there were also mirrors everywhere. I think somebody who lived there before was very vain because they were mirrors on every closet door and one of the mirrors fell off I remember putting that mirror in the back of my closet and that really scared me because if I didn't shut my closet at night, I would catch a glimpse of myself and scare myself.
JULIA: Yep.
AMANDA: Yeah, I think especially to in houses that had later editions were just are older and like have settled, you know, and the angles are not quite square.
JULIA: Yeah.
AMANDA: Every apartment I've lived in New York City is this way either it was subdivided from a larger house, or someone just like didn't give a shit and like, you know, boxed up a weird corner with nothing in it. The light doesn't play the way you expect it to and looking down the hallway, you know, your mind expects symmetry, and then when it's not there, that's really disturbing. And especially I think with a walnut tree outside I'm just picturing like any you know, windstorm hearing little noises against the glass or against the roof. It sounds like you're kind of prying and set up for a lot of just unexpected noises, sounds things like that.
MARA: Yeah, it was sort of it was a kind of Gothic that I haven't seen a lot. I mean, maybe in like a Paul Thomas Anderson movie.
AMANDA: Yeah.
MARA: But it's kind of the valley Gothic.
JULIA: I love that.
MARA: It was strange. It didn't feel like we were in the same sort of time as our as, as the rest of our neighborhood, as the rest of our friends even that the house that we had lived in before, felt very sort of, you know, World War II Era.
AMANDA: Yeah.
MARA: This house just felt strange, and little things happened like, there was like they were just rooms that were always colder, and we had no way of explaining it. But then so there were just like slightly weird things that were happening. Some rooms always felt cold or things like that. But then there was the blender incident.
JULIA: Oh, I love a blank noun incident.
MARA: Yeah.
JULIA: Always good.
MARA: So my dad said that he was here and I think we actually had had a friend visiting at the time. She said she heard something too and was very nervous about this.
JULIA: You gotta have a secondary witness someone who's outside of the house.
AMANDA: Yes.
MARA: Yeah. So our dad said that he and our dad used to make milkshakes a lot for us. And one night, he said that he was awake. And I don't know why I know he was working early mornings at the time, maybe this woke him up. But he said he heard a thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump. Like, somebody was going down the stairs. And then all of a sudden he heard a brrrrr sound and it was the blender. And I think that I don't think he went off, I think I think it was on and then it was off.
JULIA: Mmm...
AMANDA: Huh.
MARA: And it went on, and then it went off. I think he was kind of too scared to go and see what was going on. And he and we still don't know actually, what happened. But we do know that there were footsteps and there was a blender going on in the middle of the night. So I know my sister can sleepwalk sometimes, but she was very young at the time and hadn't done it yet. And she also wouldn't a five-year-old isn't going to leave a lot of you know, big thumping sounds. on it. We sometimes wonder if it was another one of my brothers because I think he did sleep walk once when he was sick. But I don't know how he would have turned on the blender in the middle of the night, and he didn't use the blender regularly. So we still have no explanation.
AMANDA: Blenders are heavy for human adults to take down even if it was sitting on the counter. Like that's, that's a heavy, you know.
MARA: Yeah.
AMANDA: That's not just clanging of spoons or cutlery drawer or something.
MARA: To plug it in, and I don't know if there was anything in it or not. But, but yeah, the blender went on in the middle of the night. And it's funny because we just kind of joked about it. And I think we all were sort of like, oh, yeah, maybe the house is haunted. Who knows? Who cares? And I remember my brother used to say that our old house was haunted by a friendly ghost he called Amadeus.
JULIA: Great name.
AMANDA: Amazing.
MARA: Our mom was like a xenophile, and every time that we were sick, she wouldn't let us watch the TV shows that we wanted to watch. Not that there was really much to watch. It was all daytime TV. It was gonna be like Supermarket Sweep, right? She said that we had to. She said that we basically had to watch the movies that she wanted to watch. So we watched a lot of old movies when we were homesick. And some of my brothers hated this, but I loved it. Because I was like, Sure I'll wash Oklahoma with you, Mom.
JULIA: Oh, yeah.
MARA: There were a lot of like old MGM musicals that I was like, wow, this is great. And my brothers were like, oh, man, I hated that shit. But yeah, Amadeus, he said that Amadeus because he'd watched the Milosz Foreman movie, Amadeus. And he said that there was a nice ghost, that that stayed in his room called Amadeus. And I think he was just telling me that as a kind of a fun story. I don't think he ever actually encountered anything. But I know that he mentioned that to a friend and the friend got a little scared. But yeah, I don't know maybe Amadeus followed us. But if you think about it, like a blender is such a like, like that's, that's one of those things that like, was so big and so new, and like the 40s and 50s. And this was something that was supposed to make your life so much easier. This appliance would make your life so much easier. And-
AMANDA: Yeah.
MARA: -probably actually didn't. So I think about like an old farmer or-
JULIA: Yeah.
MARA: -somebody in a farmer's family being like, Oh, what's this? This is interesting.
JULIA: What's this newfangled contraption?
AMANDA: Yeah, you can make butter in a blender in like two minutes and it would take hours of churning. I– my, head canon here is like, is there a ghost that you know, can't eat necessarily, but loves to cook loves technology really wants to just hang out and play around in the kitchen?
JULIA: Yeah.
MARA: I also think that maybe they were a bit of a neat freak, which is why they were moving things around.
JULIA: There you go.
AMANDA: Yes, they're like, that's not where the keys go, actually.
JULIA: No.
MARA: I also felt like I kind of had this which now strikes me as very sexist this idea of like somebody having like, I think I have this kind of fairy tale image of like a farmer with like three daughters. And one of the daughters was very vain. And that's why there were mirrors everywhere.
JULIA: Ah, interesting.
MARA: That's what I and then maybe there were you know, maybe it was sort of sort of the King Lear thing of like the older daughters being evil and the younger daughter being good something like that something very, I had this idea of there being sort of this like vain Princess type locked away in a tower and then there were other people and yeah, there was maybe somebody who just wanted to cook. Now, I realized I'm like that's that was kind of a fucked up [14:34]. But I remember having like an image of a woman with long hair, like combing her hair in the mirror all the time.
JULIA: That's entirely possible.
AMANDA: Maybe to if the previous family kept kind of catching glimpses of stuff like you mentioned, the mirror in the back of your closet.
MARA: Yeah.
AMANDA: I mean, the mirrors could have been a sort of detection device and a way to kind of keep an eye on most corners of the house. If you know you can get a glimpse of of corners and doorways maybe they had a symbiotic relationship and they just kind of tracking the apparition's progress and seeing where they're going.
MARA:
Yeah, I wonder about that. I wonder about that. I mean, why, why else would be there be so many mirrors. There were there were mirrors on the door, there's a mirror in the closet. There was mirror here, mirror there. I just thought there's something here. There was a story that we weren't hearing and we weren't understanding, I think. And I do think sometimes, our dad might have experienced weird things and just kind of kept it to himself. Like a couple of years ago, he told us about how the morning of the 1994 Northridge earthquake, which was pretty close to us, the day after he had to go, he was an engineer for a television station. And he had to go repair a helicopter at the airport. And while he was in the helicopter, an aftershock hit, and the earthquake made the helicopter, you know, jumped several feet off the ground.
JULIA: Wow.
MARA: He told us this story several years later, and I thought, that's really dangerous.
AMANDA: Yeah! Dad, that's a big deal.
MARA: And I was like, why did you never tell us that before but probably he didn't want us to be like, Dad, you could have been killed!
JULIA: Right? We do a lot of Hometown Urban Legends where people submit their own ghostly encounters and stuff like that. And a common throughline that I've noticed, especially when people are talking about like, haunted houses that they didn't realize were haunted until later in their lives. A lot of times, like the parents were like, oh, yeah, I experienced those same things you did when you were like 5 or 10, or 12, or 16. But I didn't want to tell you because I didn't want to freak you out. And I'm just like, I'm of the mind where I'm like, I would just confirm for my child that they're not alone in this, but I understand at the same time, like wanting to protect your child and be like, No, everything's okay. Don't worry about it. So–
MARA: Yeah, I mean, I think that things are really crazy and hectic in my family's life at the time, you know, that was around the time my mother died, and I was filming and I was away a lot. And there was other just awful family drama. And so I think that we kind of felt like a ghost was the least of our problems. But my friends, and I remember my dad dated a woman for a few years, and she lived in another state, but they would come to visit us. And her daughter was like two years older, and I kind of saw her as like the cool older girl who, who knew all about shaving your legs and knew all about you know, she like she really was boy crazy in a way that I never was, but she was very heterosexual. But we, we had a lot of fun together. Actually, there was a really funny moment that I think of a lot now where we went to the video store and she was like, I'm gonna get a grown-up movie for me. You can't watch it because you guys are still babies.
AMANDA: Oh.
MARA: And I was really mad about that. And we'd seen I was like, I've seen Scream, come on, I see some scary movies. And she's like, I'm gonna get a Rated R scary movie for myself. So she got like, Chitty Chitty Bang going for my sister. She picked out the Goonies for me.
JULIA: Okay.
AMANDA: Okay.
MARA: And then she picked out she was like, Alright, I'm gonna go get a and so this was a time when like, the word Gothic was really big. It wasn't the era of the craft, but it was a couple years after the craft.
JULIA: Gotcha.
MARA: Where people and I mean, my brother was a teenager at the time. And he was like, oh, yeah, I remember the girls coming to school with black lipstick after that. It was really big, and so Gothic kind of meant something. So she got a movie called Gothic. But the movie is by Ken Russell, who is an experimental filmmaker who makes very, very weird over the top ridiculous movies. So he makes movies where people will be like, tied to crucifixes and like bleeding and like, but like having sex at the same time, but there'll be like, like, he made the Who's Tommy?
AMANDA: Oh, yeah.
MARA: So there's like a scene in that where Ann-Margret is rolling on the floor covered in baked beans.
JULIA: Yeah.
MARA: It's all very, it's all very weird and and very, like, sort of, it feels like you're watching like very weird porn when you're watching his movies where there's like, there'll be like two nuns making out and then like a chicken's blood will be thrown everywhere. And-
AMANDA: Yeah.
MARA: And then it'll go into a scene where there's like, I've seen some of his movies and it's all just like David Lynch went into a church and drop some acid and started having sex. And it's like, poor David Lynch. I don't mean to he probably would never do that. He's he's-
JULIA: I know what you mean though.
MARA: But you know what I mean.
AMANDA: Be aesthetic. Yeah. And then And then, you know, 30 years later Little Nas X is like carrying on the legacy in Montero, yeah, yeah, yeah.
MARA: Exactly. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Sort of like that. Sort of like that. So she gets this movie and we bring it home. And she's as she thinks because the title is Gothic. It's going to be something sort of like cool and fun and Gothic, but we watch it and there's like, scenes where somebody has to strip down and then they're married. They're wearing a mask and a mask symbolizes this and that and there's there's a nightmare and there's somebody standing on the roof naked screaming at the sky and then like there's somebody's like drinking somebody also like menstrual blood or something like that. And she was just like, what?
JULIA: What did I do?
MARA: What did I do?
AMANDA: I'm scarring, you guys. But for reasons, I didn't plan.
MARA: Exactly. And I was kind of catching glimpses of the TV too. And I was like, What the hell because this is not a movie that a 12/13-year-old girl should be watching. And eventually, we're 20 minutes in, and she's just like, I don't want to watch this anymore. And we didn't get to the really weird stuff. Like, I've read the Wikipedia summary, and it gets really weird, but she was like, she was like, I don't want to watch this anymore. And so we put on Goonies instead.
JULIA: Very good choice.
MARA: And everybody had a good time because Goonies is great.
AMANDA: We can all agree on.
JULIA: There you go. There you go.
AMANDA: I feel lucky. My dad's version of that is fairly famous French short film from the 1950s called the red balloon about just like a boy that loses his red balloon.
MARA: Oh, yeah, I've seen that movie.
AMANDA: And I was a kid who was very overly attached to inanimate objects.
MARA: Oh, I was too.
AMANDA: Yeah. Like the VHS of the Brave Little Toaster was like my worst nightmare. And my mom texted me recently and was like, oh, Amanda, do you remember this movie it was a picture of the Brave Little Toaster and I'm like, Mom, you're re-traumatizing me. Like I was so sad about that movie.
MARA: Yeah.
AMANDA: But I feel lucky that the one he loved was just like, strange and French and black and white. And like, kind of, you know, wistful.
MARA: Yeah.
AMANDA: And not chaotic, and operatic.
MARA: I remember seeing it too. And then at the end, the balloons, pick him up and carry him away.
AMANDA: Yeah.
MARA: And I was like, Why did they do that?
AMANDA: Yeah. Where does he go?
MARA: It was my studio teacher on the side of Matilda. He was like, he was like, I want to show you some classic movies because he knew I liked old movies. He showed me a Bell, Book, and Candle with who's in it. Kim Novak?
JULIA: That seems right.
MARA: And Jimmy Stewart was she's a witch and she puts a spell on him to make him fall in love. And she's a black cat named pi whack it and yeah, I loved that one.
AMANDA: Amazing.
MARA: I love that one. I was like this is this is great. Yeah, it's Kim Novak is a modern-day witch living in New York City's Greenwich Village when she encounters German publisher Shepard Henderson. She decides to make him hers by casting a love spell. Yeah, it's an auntie is engaged to her old college rival.
AMANDA: This sounds fully like a contemporary rom-com novel. Like it really does.
MARA: I feel like it's sort of a like a predecessor to like the like Doris Day Rock Hudson kind of [22:18] movies which down with love parodies very beautifully. I also love that they have I think is it Jerry Jones and and David Hyde Pierce are a couple in that movie, which is like the lavender marriage from heaven.
AMANDA: So good.
MARA: I was in a lavender marriage in preschool, by the way.
JULIA: Say more.
AMANDA: Tell us more.
MARA: My preschool boyfriend was totally gay.
JULIA: Okay.
MARA: And I was you know, I was not straight. I had a feeling I might be a little different, you know, and it wasn't like, I'm not like the other girls, although I did go through it. Not like the other girls phase. But you know, there were certain things, and yeah, and he and I decided we were gonna get married. And yeah, he's a very good ex-husband. I'll say that we're still friends to this day.
JULIA: I'm happy. That was an amicable separation.
MARA: Yeah, it was I remember watching the red balloon and it was sort of weird and beautiful. But at the end, the balloons take him away. And I remember being like, Where are they taking him? And he's like, we've he's they're taking away from all that sadness in life. And I was like, okay, but I think I was a very literal kid and French movies were a little beyond me at that time.
AMANDA: Exactly. Especially in like the in the mid-50s. Like they're really doing. They're doing a lot with the medium of the motion picture in a way that I think a child much less a literal-minded child may not necessarily fully jive with.
MARA: There's definitely yeah, I mean, I watched a lot of weird movies like my brother told me that his favorite movie growing up was The Parallax View. Which is this like Watergate era paranoid thriller-
AMANDA: Oh.
MARA: -about corruption, and brainwashing and deception and assassins starring Warren Beatty, and I watched that for the first time, the like a couple months ago and I was like, John, that is not a movie a child should see. But he was a very smart kid. And yeah, he really loved this paranoid thriller about corruption and there being no justice in the world.
AMANDA: That's amazing.
MARA: We were spooky little kids, I think.
JULIA: Yeah, that's fair.
MARA: Some kids are just spooky.
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AMANDA: Hello, everybody, you've made it to the mid-roll. I know again, tried to play cool but god damn it's Mara Wilson. Wow. I'm so excited. It is finally getting cooler around here and I am so ready for the Fall not just because it's spooky month and that is always a special time here on Spirits. We do of course have some tricks up our sleeves and some fun stuff coming up that you are really, really going to enjoy. But also because I get to wear my favorite clothes and eat my favorite foods and get my pumpkin and apple flavored desserts and drinks and pastries. It's the best and as I've been walking around my neighborhood as the leaves have been changing and the sun has been shining and the cool wind has been blue lowing I have been listening to a podcast that I really enjoy and I know it's a little bit cheating because it is a Multitude podcast but I am shouting out Julia and Jeffrey Cranor's episode of Games and Feelings the show that my fiance soon to be husband Eric Silver runs all about games and the feelings that the games give us and what we do with those feelings and playing games with other people. It is so much fun. It's an advice podcast that I love listening to and Julia and Jeffrey are such a fabulous combination. So go to gamesandfeelings.com or search Games and Feelings in your podcast player. As a reminder, our Patreon is blooming just imagine it's spring okay, but it's here in the fall and the leaves are changing on our Patreon the edits going monthly and we have exciting new rewards and benefits there for you Julia and I just posted our first advice video podcast last week and this week is coming up our first audio tarot dispatch for folks that are at that tear it is going to be so good I cannot wait every equinox and Solstice you get Julia's audio update in the tarot tiers. So join us over there at patreon.com/spiritspodcast where I also want to welcome, Ginger Spurs Girl, and Jiminy’s Journal. Thank you so much. I also want to thank our supporting producer and legend-level patrons who we will soon be polling by the way to get your new myth monitors for the new month. Thank you to Uhleeseeuh, Anne, Brittany, Daisy, Froody Chick, Hannah, Iron Havoc, Jack Marie, Jane, Jessica Kinser, Jessica Stewart, Kneazlekins, Lily, Megan Moon, Nathan, Phil Fresh, Rikoelike, Captain Jonathan MAL-uh-kye Cosmos, Sarah, Scott, and Zazi are supporting producer patrons and the legends, Arianna, Audra, Bex, Chibi Yokai, Cicuta Maculata, Clara, Morgan, Sarah, Schmitty, & Bea Me Up Scotty, as you're walking around as you're listening to Julian Jeffrey Cranor on Games and Feelings, why don't you also subscribe to Queer Movie Podcast? This is a Queer Movie Watch Along party hosted by Rowan Ellis and Jazza John where they research and rate their way through the Queer Film canon one genre at a time from rom coms to slashers. Hey, that's, that's you know, seasonal and in the in the air right now contemporary art house cinema to black and white classics. You gotta listen to Queer Movie Podcast with new episodes every other Thursday, edited by our very own Julia.
AMANDA: And now it is time to thank our sponsors. First, you know it, it's Wildgrain, the place that gives me delicious croissants right in my freezer that I make so often and love so much. Julia's mother-in-law's got Wildgrain. Her mom got wild grain. My dad got Wildgrain from one of his friends, people have been saying, Hey, I know you've sort of talked about it on the show. It's actually so good. And that is the kind of reaction we love to hear when we get a new sponsor. This of course is the bake from Frozen box for artisanal bread, including rolls, pastries, and handmade pastas, which Eric made last night for dinner. He loved it so much every item bakes from frozen and 25 minutes or less. And for every new member Wildgrain donates six meals to the greater Boston food bank that's over 120,000 meals so far, hungry already for unlimited time, you can get $30 off the first box plus free croissants in every box you get when you go to wildgrain.com/spirits to start your subscription. You heard me people free croissants in every box and $30 off your first box when you go to wild green.com/spirits That's wildgrain.com/spirits or use promo code Spirits at checkout.
AMANDA: And finally, we are sponsored by Blueland where every night I clean my kitchen sink because I love cleaning my kitchen sink I mean not particularly but mostly I really enjoy the lemony citrusy scent of my blue and all-purpose cleaner. This is a true story people I do it every single night and a makes me feel good about you know cleaning a thing in my house that I know is famously pretty dirty. But be it is genuinely smells really good. And I love it so much of the classy glass bottle they come labeled for you with all-purpose cleaner versus window cleaner versus bathroom cleaner. Gosh, it's so fun and ordering refills is a breeze where instead of either going to the store and lugging back like these heavy cleaner bottles, they send you amazing tablets that you just drop in your forever bottle filled with warm water. And hey, bingo, there's cleaning product right there for you, you should totally check out their clean Essentials Kit which has everything you need to get started. That's what they sent us. And that has their delicious scents like Iris agave, fresh lemon. That's the one I love the most and eucalyptus mint right now you can get 15% off your first order when you go to blueland.com/spirits That's 15% off your first order of any blue land products at blueland.com/spirits, blueland.com/spirits. And now let's get back to the show.
AMANDA: We are also sponsored this week by Apostrophe skincare. And I know that especially this time of year I like wake up sweaty, sometimes I wake up cold sometimes it just like things are changing in the air. It is a lot drier than it was during the summer or it might be like weirdly humid for that one week in September. You know what I mean? And so sometimes I find myself at night looking for like an extra heavy moisturizer or an extra light one or feel my skin is like really oily and I want to do an extra step and there can be a lot of options and feel overwhelmed for someone like me who never felt particularly like beauty focused or I don't know, like other people got a lesson in skincare that I didn't get. And so I appreciate that Apostrophe helps you treat your specific skincare goals. For me, that was rosacea. I thought I had acne, I had rosacea and the Apostrophe, people helped me figure that out. It was really easy. They follow it up, they've been sending emails, checking in on how my experience is going, and I'm genuinely having a really good experience with their product, we have a special deal for our audience, you can get your first visit for only $5 at apostrophe.com/spirits when you use our code Spirits as a savings of $15 and this code is only available to our listeners. To get started just go to apostrophe.com/spirits and click Begin Visit then use our code Spirits at sign up you'll get your first visit for only $5. Thank you, Apostrophe for sponsoring this episode.
AMANDA: Next, we are sponsored by BetterHelp. I know I definitely get focused and sort of fixated when there are issues in my life that I am worrying about and getting really anxious over, I'll start kind of spinning up about the problem and God, what's going to happen and what happens if it goes badly. And I kind of skip over the fact that I can do something to fix that problem. And it sounds so basic and I hate that I get caught in that trap, but it really does happen again and again. And so something that I've been working on with my therapist, Amanda who I see via BetterHelp is kind of interrupting that cycle midway through when I find myself worrying about outcomes or what might happen I asked myself instead like how can I problem solve here? How can I not just sort of dwell on the possibility and the worry but what can I actually do so when you want to be a better problem solver therapy can help get you there you can visit betterhelp.com/spirits today to get 10% off your first month. That's better H E L P.com/spirits. For 10% off your first month. Thank you, BetterHelp.
AMANDA: I had the distinct memory of watching Tim Curry's it way too young.
MARA: Oh yeah.
JULIA: Like way too young, like the balloons exploding and blood being all over the place. And just, there's so much there.
MARA: I think I was scared of horror movies because of my own imagination. A lot of times after I actually saw them, I realized that my imagination was worse. Like I have sort of a famous story about I was traveling to promote a movie when I was I think 11 or 12 or something around then and we got this script before we left, and while we were traveling, I got sick. And I was I was very, very nauseated. I think I had a bad reaction, like an allergic reaction to a medication or something. We didn't know why I was so sick, but I was throwing up. I couldn't sleep. I couldn't keep food down. It was awful. And then I started reading the scripts that my dad had brought along. And it was Donnie Darko.
AMANDA: Oh no.
MARA: And so imagine being 12. I mean, Donnie Darko is the kind of movie that blows 12-year old's minds. Imagine reading that after you haven't slept or eaten for two days-
AMANDA: Oh, boy.
MARA: -when you're 12. And I didn't even I just kind of flipped through it. I didn't read all of it. But that and the idea of time loops and bunny rabbits and things like that. I just flipped through it. And I was like, I can't read this anymore. This is going to give me nightmares.
AMANDA: Yeah, I'm sure to the descriptions of just whatever imagery the script included, like-
MARA: Yeah.
AMANDA: Even the stills are uncanny. But I feel like the description of the stills gives your mind a chance to supply like the most horrifying version of that image.
MARA: And then I finally watched it when I was I think around 16 I watched it maybe, you know, four or five years later. And I was like, was that it? That wasn't that scary. It was all right. It was it was an okay movie. But that was nowhere near as scary as I thought it was going to be that was nowhere near as scary as the version I imagined.
JULIA: Yeah.
MARA: I was like, Yeah, that was pretty good movie. But this was the thing that I've been afraid of for four years? It had some spooky elements, but it wasn't life-shattering terrifying the way that I thought it was when I was practically hallucinating rabbits myself.
AMANDA: Yeah, that's one of the reasons that we love podcasting. And I'm sure Mara is an experienced voice actor. You know, you may have some thoughts on this as well. Just like the experience of being able to, you know, imagine the speaker imagine the setting, you know, supply if somebody says, you know, you go down to the kitchen and make breakfast, I'm picturing my own kitchen and my own breakfast. And-
MARA: Yeah.
AMANDA: -that is always going to be more intimate and vivid, at least for me and the very bookish, you know, child I was then anything visual.
MARA: I'm not a very visual person. I really am interested in the way that other people think, what is it like in their brains, how do they think because I mostly think and sound and then there'll be a little bit of pictures here and there, but it's very hard for me to imagine something that I've never seen before. So every book I read, it takes place in a house that I grew up in a house that a close friend had when I was very young, or an apartment that I used to live in. Like every story about a small New York apartment is the small New York apartment that I lived in on St. Mark's Place when I was 22. Like, I remember reading Patti Smith's just kids.
AMANDA: Oh, yeah.
MARA: And I was like, oh, Patti Smith and Robert Mapplethorpe are living in my old apartment.
AMANDA: Yeah, that came out, and what like, 2009/2010.
MARA: Yeah.
AMANDA: Like, I just when I moved to the East Village for school as well, and I was living on you know, I think East 10th Street or something, but so not even the exact street, but I was sort of looking around my window like, did they look at that tree? Did they go to church?
MARA: Yeah.
AMANDA: You know?
MARA: That was a book that yeah, that was a book that I think definitely very much spoke to a certain subset of our population. I gave it to my sister when she graduated high school, her roommate became obsessed with it to like a dangerous degree. And like started hanging out with the poets and things and-
AMANDA: She starts smoking like wearing men's shirt.
MARA: Well, yeah. And the fact you probably don't want me to beat poet who's around now. Like they're not-
AMANDA: No, you don't.
MARA: They're not great people. In the 50s, there were some great beat poets and also some creepy predatory ones. But yeah, people who are still beat poets in this day and age. Yeah, a little weird. Little bit weird.
AMANDA: Yeah, I too, spent a lot of time in Tompkins Square Park being like Helen Ginsburg walked here, but all of the young men who are interested in what I'm doing here probably are people that should not be dying.
MARA: Yeah, yeah, definitely. There's there's a lot of stuff where you're just like, oh, wow, that was just considered okay, back then.
JULIA: Yeah.
MARA: But I think that having been raised in that kind of house, a couple years ago, my sister was working as an assistant to like a much older woman who she was Russian, and she lived in this house. And this woman was a witch, she had just tons of books on her shelf. From like, there was that group that she was with that was like the order of the something temple like she was in all these like esoteric spiritual groups, there were all kinds of spiritual groups, all kinds of books and things on there on the wall, and she was a painter, and she would have visions, and she actually painted something, she painted this procession on the wall. And it was of a vision that she saw images that just came to her mind. And there was this one terrifying face in there like this demonic face. And I don't know if it was just the way she painted it. Or if this person was supposed to be demonic, but my sister would stay there overnight. And the room that my sister slept in, sometimes, the door would open onto that image.
AMANDA AND JULIA: Oh, no.
MARA: It was terrifying for her. And eventually what she did is she has always been very interested in plants. She just put up like a painting or some kind of drawing, I think, I think was one of those like prints, actually, that you get of plants. And like, what this plant does, and she just put it up over it. So it wouldn't scare her anymore. But I remember her saying to me, she was like, this place is definitely haunted. And what I told her was, I said, Well, Anna, if ghosts actually exist, we grew up in a haunted house. So you've already been inoculated.
AMANDA: That's true.
MARA: This is like, Yeah, this is like you getting a sickness when you're very young, and then not getting it anymore. You were inoculated, we're gonna be fine.
JULIA: I think it definitely depends on the level of haunting to like, if you grow up with a very kind of like, not mundane, but like mild, right? Yes, like a very benign ghost. That'll be a different experience than something that was like very malevolent.
MARA: Yeah.
JULIA: Your experiences, they really remind me of my mother-in-law, grew up in a house that her father was like a bungalow, and they had eight kids. My husband's grandfather got it for extremely cheap. And the family didn't know why at the time. And then much like your father did. Many years later, he revealed Oh, yeah. You know, when they listed the house, I went to go see it. And I asked the realtor like, hey, why is this house so cheap? And he's like, Well, like legally, I do have to let you know that there was a murder on the premises. And then they walk into the living room. And there's still bloodstains on the wall, like an Axe Murderer, and he's like, alright, I'll take it. And they just they lived in that definitely haunted house, all eight of them for like, years.
MARA: Wow. I wonder if there's something about children and a lot of children.
JULIA: Right.
MARA: I remember hearing that the median age or what for, ghost experiences was seven.
JULIA: Yeah.
MARA: There's something about children, you know, and that makes me wonder I'm like, well, are just children more imaginative, or is this? Is this something, you know, are just children more sensitive? Or what is this? Exactly? That's something that's very interesting-
AMANDA: Yeah.
MARA: -to me, and I definitely know many children who have had very spooky experiences, you know, nieces and nephews who have said things and I know people who've seen ghost animals as well.
JULIA: Oh, yeah. I love that.
MARA: Being visited by a pet that didn't quite get that they needed to move on, things like that. I've asked people this before, and I'm curious what you think. Would it be scarier to meet and there's like, no question, you know what they are, you're actually encountering them. Would it be scarier for you to meet a ghost or an alien? I know my answer.
AMANDA: I know my answer. That's very clear to me.
JULIA: Yeah. I think for me, at least, alien would be definitely scarier.
AMANDA: For sure.
JULIA: The idea of like, knowing like, because I can fathom the amount of people on the world that shakes up everything. Yeah. I can't fathom like, life forms, and I love sci fi.
MARA: I do too.
JULIA: But I can't fathom the real-life consequences of seeing an alien and knowing that there are like multiple worlds that can support life and there is other intelligent life in the world.
MARA: Yeah.
AMANDA: Yeah, that implies so much. And the overlap between life and death is already so permeable, right? Like that border feels so porous. And evidence of ghosts would make me go like, a lot of things make a lot of sense now. Okay. All right. Yeah.
MARA: Yeah. Well, ghosts, I think, yeah, for me, I think if you're meeting a ghost, they are either a human, maybe they're an animal. I know people who've seen ghosts of cats, dogs, horses, pets like that.
JULIA: Yeah.
MARA: Which makes me wonder, like, I had this talk with a Lyft driver a couple months ago. He said, being afraid of sharks. And I said, Do you think there are any ghost sharks? And he was like, oh, no, no, I have to worry about that, too.
JULIA: They've been around for so much longer, longer than trees!
MARA: They have been. Yeah, longer than trees. I love that. Yeah. I love that woman, I love her TikToks. But there's, yeah, that's that's something to think about.
JULIA: Yeah.
MARA: Or is it really only just proximity to humans, you know? there's probably, or does it have something to do with intelligence? Does it have something to do with you know, sometimes I'm like, humans probably don't have souls, but animals do. Or, you know, like, I feel like, I feel like I don't know. And that's such a weird thing to think I think, but like, I can't fathom like cats and dogs not having souls, even though I don't know if humans do for some reason. And that's, that's some kind of inconsistency in my unbelief, I think. But if you're going to meet a ghost, it's going to be something from Earth.
JULIA: Yeah.
MARA: It's going to be something that you know that you've experienced. I have a friend who claimed to me to ghosts while she was visiting Gettysburg. She was from Pennsylvania like rural Pennsylvania and she said she met a boy who said like that he had to go to the battle.
AMANDA: Oh, no.
JULIA: The Civil War ghost, a classic
MARA: It's possible it was somebody playing a prank like somebody came on fire and then was like, I have to go the battle needs me. If I lived around that area, I would probably and-
JULIA: Oh, all the time.
MARA: Yeah, I would.
AMANDA: All the time.
JULIA: Constantly.
MARA: But it also makes me think about how, yeah, there are so many civil war ghosts, and I was like, well, probably a lot of ghosts are racist.
JULIA: Yeah.
AMANDA: Yes. We've debated for a long time on this podcast. why there aren't more modern ghosts? Why are Victorian ghosts so over-represented in pop culture?
JULIA: And Civil War ghosts.
MARA: Yeah.
AMANDA: And Civil War ghosts. Like it's the you know, battle armor. It's the war wounds are all very cinematic, right? Like the long white dresses is sort of like, you know, Rochester his wife in the attic era of ghosts.
MARA: Exactly.
AMANDA: But we're like, where are the ghosts that text? Where are the ghosts that like, you know, we've had some Hometown Urban Legends around like someone really likes TikTok in my house who is not me or my children. And so you know, my phone will just open to TikTok all the time, things like that.
MARA: There was a, I know there was like a 70s ghost that was supposedly haunting a studio near here. There was a little girl that they thought might be named Janet, who looked very 70s so they're still you know, some 70s ghosts around.
JULIA: I feel like as we gain more time we get newer ghosts, you know what I mean?
AMANDA: Exactly.
MARA: Yeah. Yeah. Something like that. I also think that there is I also had a friend who said she was tickled by a little girl ghost, which some people say is the most terrifying thing they've ever heard because it does feel a little horror movie. But she said that it was a good experience. She said that this girl came into her room and while she was sleeping, but she wasn't scared of her. She was just a little girl and she came up and she tickled her and then giggled and ran away.
JULIA: So we've had a debate on the show many times what is like the most benign but creepiest thing a ghost can do to you? I think like blowing in your ear is one of the creepy ones.
MARA: Oh, yeah.
JULIA: Yep.
MARA: Yeah. Or touching your face.
JULIA: Yeah, just like a gentle like stroke like an old man.
MARA: Yeah. Which is something that I think I've actually said as the faceless old woman
JULIA: Naturally, that makes sense.
MARA: And and she is a disembodied voice that that is the thing. It's funny because I'm not a very imposing figure, you know? I'm five feet tall, but people sometimes tell me I'm intimidating and I think it's my voice. And if you look at the characters that I play, and like the the books that I've done audiobooks for it's, it's usually very spooky stuff. And I'm either spooky or I'm sexy. And and that's what I think you get when you have a low voice there.
JULIA: There you go.
MARA: And I'm and I'm fine with that. I think it's fun because it's things that I'm not in my everyday life. Like I'm not sexy in the way that these people expect to be sexy. Like I've played like, tall hot blondes, you know, and that's not who I am. And I've also been very, very scary in a way that I'm not a spooky person. I'm a person who's afraid of everything. So that's really fun for me being spooky like that is really fun for me. And I do think that I was kind of a spooky kid, but I didn't really know it. I think like all of us in our family, we were very intense. We were intense kids, but we also were very earnest. And I think that earnestness is something that I mean, you kind of have to be earnest if you're a ghost, right?
MARA: Yeah.
AMANDA: Exactly.
MARA: You have to be sincere.
JULIA: Yeah, you have to cut through the bullshit of the living.
MARA: Yeah, it's true. There's there's no secrets anymore. I mean, you're literally transparent.
AMANDA: Exactly, and so me that's why I think a lot of trickster and poltergeist figures and you know, the sort of playful ghost is such an archetype because you know, if you were invisible or if you had the chance to do that like wouldn't part of you want to fuck with other people especially I think those of us who are very, you know, rule-following or very serious were forced to grow up early, like whatever those reasons were. I think my ghost-sona would be kind of opposite to my real life, which would be like really light-hearted and playful and kind of trickster oriented.
JULIA: Yeah.
MARA: Yeah. I mean, I guess there's there's a sort of freedom that you get in death that you didn't get in life, which is what I mean, you'll see that in Beetlejuice, those the movie and the musical like there's a song in the musical about how the couple is so boring.
JULIA: Yep.
MARA: And Beetlejuice is trying to make them scary and interesting. And it's just not taking, it's just not working. So I, which I think is, you know, it's very funny. There is sort of that freedom there.
JULIA: Yeah.
MARA: And that's what people often argue with me about when I mentioned the alien thing. I say you don't know what an alien is, you don't know what it's made of. You don't know if it's malevolent. If it's not, you're not going to be experiencing this. You don't know if it has consciousness. You don't know if it's sentient. If it's sapient, you don't know any of these things. And that's also why I'm skeptical of a lot of Alien Encounter stories, although I do still love for your hearing about them. Because I think they're really fun. Like I recently did a project, an audiobook that involved aliens and UFOs. And I was reading the book late at night, because you know, you have to read it a couple times before you record it to get a feeling of what the book is. My sister lives with me, but you know, she was in her room. And it was late at night. And I was like, Anna, look at this picture of an alien. She was like, wow, creepy. And then I was like, "Do you want to sleep in my room tonight?" I was a little bit scared. That stuff scares me. I especially don't want to look at a window-
AMANDA: Yes.
MARA: -anytime that happens because I immediately get like my hackles up and I'm just like, I become like a cat basically. Speaking of which, a couple years ago, like during the early part of the pandemic, one of my cats who unfortunately died about a year after this, he started growling at the door, which was very strange. And we opened the door and there was nothing there.
AMANDA: A classic cat.
JULIA: Oh, boy.
MARA: Yeah, well, we'd heard of dogs growling at doors, but a cat?
JULIA: Yeah, I have never heard of a cat growl.
MARA: Scratching and like and like making strange noises at the door. And he was he was not that sick at the time. So he was still you know, himself. He was still there. But we opened the door. And this was, you know, the first month of the pandemic. So we were just kind of like, overwhelmed and anxious anyway. And we were just like, holy shit.
AMANDA: Yeah.
MARA: And we called every family member we have that believes in this stuff to be like, what do we do? We sprinkled salt all over it like-
JULIA: Smart.
MARA: We're Jewish, but our stepmothers Catholic, but she was like, she was like, tie white thing around the door. And you know, do you have a rosary, put a rosary around it. And we looked up like the Jewish traditions to so we used you know, all sides of the family in this. And we were just like, this is just so scary. This is so creepy. Anyway, what I was saying before I got off track was that some people say that it would be scary to meet a ghost, because you don't know their intentions. And you also don't know. And yeah, and you know, like Amanda was saying, they probably have a lot of freedom and death that they didn't have in life. Yeah. So you don't know their intentions, whereas aliens, if they're visiting us, in their view, you know, they're just like, ET-like creatures who are just here to like, pick up plants and go and pick up samples of things and go, I know a lot of people find ET really scary, and he's a bit creepy looking. But he's just a botanist. He just, he's just a botanist.
AMANDA: Yeah.
MARA: My brother is a botanist. You know, I that's just what he wants to do. He's just a little scientist.
AMANDA: You know what that is? Exactly. And to me, aliens would so clearly have the upper hand of the power dynamic there.
MARA: Oh, yeah.
AMANDA: We're kind of at their mercy, you know, and like if they have been able to travel through space, time, and other dimensions to be here, like, you guys know what you're doing and I have no hope versus a ghost, you know, they are so often characterized as sort of like repeating patterns of human behavior that either you know, the pattern is outlasting the person the life the time so often when a ghost is like, you know, walking down a hallway, it's because the hallway used to, you know, lead to somewhere that's where their child lived, or like whatever the reason is, there's always a motivation that I in my living human brain can understand and any form of like non sort of humanoid sapiet alien I could not fathom.
MARA: Yeah, I mean, I just read a really terrifying book series about the idea of aliens called Well, the first book is called The Three Body Problem.
AMANDA: Oh, yeah.
JULIA: Oh, yeah.
MARA: And The Dark Forest Theory is a terrifying thing where it's basically like, the theory is, you know, humans want to survive in any alien beings want to survive. And so they probably, if they encounter any, any threat, you know, we're humankind, or is in a dark forest. And if they hear a noise, and they're scared, they're scared, they're probably going to fire or something, if you come into a creature, and that's what the universe is. So, and that's the theory of those books. But you know, there's criticism of that theory, because there's also like, well, they could be just so far evolved that they don't care about us.
JULIA: Ooh, yeah.
MARA: That they don't, and we wouldn't understand that or they, they're, you know, sentient sapient life is, is very rare in the universe. And that's when you get to like the Fermi Paradox and all of that, which is also stuff that scares me when I listen to podcasts about it late at night.
JULIA: Yeah.
AMANDA: Yeah.
MARA: It is very scary. It is very frightening. But it's very interesting as well.
JULIA: The idea that aliens like just don't have to play by the rules of biology and the universe as we know them is terrifying.
MARA: Yeah.
JULIA: And I think that's why space is so scary. For me. It's like, if I think about it too much, my Head feels like it's gonna explode.
MARA: If I think about it, too. It's, it's, I mean, like, I have like a good friend who's an astrophysicist. And I've asked her about some of these things. And like, you know, does the universe start over and things like that? And, it's always amazing to me how she can be very calm while explaining these terrifying things like the end of the universe.
AMANDA: Yes.
MARA: She literally wrote a book called The End of Everything.
JULIA: Yeah.
MARA: And I told her, I was like, I'm gonna have to read this book very slowly. So I don't give myself an existential anxiety attack.
AMANDA: Yeah. And she was like, that's fine. Yep. No, yeah, that's normal. That happens to me at work as well. We also have heard from people and I've read a couple books as well, of people who grew up running funeral homes or other kinds of like, you know, parts of the death business and you know, anything becomes familiar becomes routine becomes, you know, a thing that's part of your day, and you think and talk about all the time, and intersecting with the public about things that have become so normal to you, and your job must be pretty mind bending.
MARA: I think that it's it's interesting, because I think there was some kind of NPR I don't know if it was This American Life, or Radio Lab, or it was something that I listened to, like 10 years ago. And I've talked about how this book called In The Dust of Planet Earth, became a meme. And I think like Jay Z, or somebody famous, like, wore it on their T shirt. And basically, they said, this was a book that was a pessimistic story, a book about the future. But it kind of became a meme later on. And the reason that it became a meme was because it was an evocative phrase. And the whole point of like, wearing it on a t shirt is showing that you are not afraid to die. If you think about what we consider cool, we consider cool to be bravery. And I think at least in America, we consider anybody who's kind of rebellious or, or iconic clastic, or doing it on their own to be to people who stand up for things. That's sort of our that's like what American mythology is, is it's it's all based in rebellion.
JULIA: Yeah.
MARA: But I think that that also leads to a lot of cynicism, and a lot of celebration of people who aren't really doing anything. They're just being very cynical in their behaviors or in their speech.
JULIA: Yeah.
MARA: And that's why, you know, I mean, I feel like I'm a pretty earnest often, you know, cringy, insufferable person, but that's who I am. And I do think, though, that there's something that we are attracted to, which is that bravery in the face of death, that bravery in the face of the unknown.
AMANDA: Yes.
MARA: Yeah. And I think it's also why like, Athena was like, my favorite goddess growing up because she had knowledge. Yeah, you know, now now, I kind of like Artemis more.
AMANDA: Both are very good.
MARA: Just wanted to hang out in the woods with a bunch of nymphs like-
AMANDA: Sure
JULIA: Yeah.
MARA: It's a pretty sweet life.
JULIA: Listen, as a woman loving woman, you have to at least love Artemis to some extent. That's my theory.
MARA: Exactly. Exactly yeah, you got to do that. You got to do that. I liked Hermes when I was young, too. I thought he was funny. Now I have a cat named Freya because Freya and my cat Freya is she is a goddess of war and a goddess of love. We have a Freya playlist, and it's all just it's a mix of songs that are like very tough girl songs like you know Oh Bondage! Up Yours! and Bitch Better Have My Money.
JULIA: Yeah.
MARA: And and a lot of riot girl and a lot of those things, but every now and then there'll be like a Carly Rae Jepsen song thrown in there like Alanis Morrison. Let's Head over feet. Because it's all about her begrudgingly love us, begrudgingly loving us. Yeah.
AMANDA: Exactly. Oh my god. That's great.
JULIA: I love that. Oh my gosh, I want to listen to that playlist.
MARA: And it's funny because we found out that Freya, the Goddess has something to do with strawberries.
JULIA: Really?
MARA: So we got her a little strawberry collar.
JULIA: Oh, I love that.
MARA: But she doesn't like wearing it. She doesn't like her collar.
JULIA: Well, she's a rebel. So-
AMANDA: I know I look cute, but no, thank you. She is
MARA: She is and yeah, and I mean, I do think that we kind of we hold up rebellion and disruption and and doing it on your own and entrepreneurship to an insane degree in this country. I think that I don't know, I also don't know if that's really something that I can divorce myself from, because it's the culture that I was immersed in.
JULIA: Yeah.
AMANDA: Yeah.
MARA: And there's going to be a part of me that always, you know, like, always wants to be a riot girl.
AMANDA: 100%. That's something that I've really kind of changed my thinking on in the seven and a half years, we've been doing the show.
MARA: AYeah.
AMANDA: Of realizing that like the supernatural, and the weird and the uncanny, and the unexplained is not something that we can, you know, shut our doors to, or assault circle our lives everywhere we go to keep out. It's something that we coexist with and overlap with. And all those instances of, you know, coming up against the unexplained or the weird, or the sad, or the, you know, exciting is the times I feel most grateful to be alive. I'm in something that I love that we get to spend our days kind of thinking and talking about.
JULIA: Yeah.
MARA: Yeah. And I think that I don't know, I kind of go back. I'm definitely the kind of person who likes to know, the explanations of things likes to know the reasons for, for things, and wants to figure everything out, and which is why like, I don't like people who just automatically debunk everything. I think that I have a lot more respect for people who are like, oh, you know, people are talking about Bigfoot. How would we know if there if there is a Bigfoot or not like actually doing? You know, that kind of science? I think that stuff is actually much more interesting to me.
JULIA: Yeah.
MARA: I like figuring out how things work. But I also am at a place in my life where I'm like, well, you're just not going to understand everything, and you have to make peace with that.
JULIA: Yeah, there is something super freeing about that.
AMANDA: There is.
MARA: Yeah, and even if you don't enjoy it, you have to do it. And I guess that kind of goes back to the idea of what it is to be cool. What it is to be cool in some ways is to to look in the face of these things and be like, Well, I don't know.
JULIA: That's fair.
AMANDA: Exactly.
MARA: So yeah, maybe we don't need to be cynical or iconoclastic to be cool. But we need to, we need to accept the limits of our own knowledge.
AMANDA: That is why our shows sign off for so long has been to stay creepy and stay cool. Because you know, you just you got to keep those things hand in hand.
JULIA: Yeah.
MARA: Yeah, definitely.
AMANDA: Mara, thank you so much for giving us your time today for I feel like I too, grew up in the sprawling farmhouse under the walnut tree. Can you let folks know where they can catch up with what you are doing and writing and putting out and thinking about these days?
MARA: Yeah, you can go to I'm @MaraWilson on Instagram and Twitter. I'm not on Twitter as much anymore, but I'm still on there to promote things. So if I'm doing something you'll know about it from Twitter and from Instagram. I also have a Substack that I haven't updated that much lately, but I will get back to it. I had some health problems I needed to recover from so took some time off from it, but that is mara.substack.com. And yeah, that's pretty much where you can find me. Oh, and also I'm doing a lot of audiobooks these days. So if you like my voice and you would like to hear me reading creepy things, adventurous things, definitely go to libra.fm or Audible or any of these places where you get your audiobooks and give them a listen.
JULIA: Well, thank you so much. And remember, as always, listeners–
JULIA: Stay creepy.
AMANDA: Stay cool.
[outro]
AMANDA: Spirits was created by Amanda McLoughlin, Julia Schifini, and Eric Schneider with music by Kevin MacLeod and visual design by Alison Wakeman.
JULIA: Keep up with all things creepy and cool by following us @SpiritsPodcast on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Tumblr. We also have all of our episode transcripts, guest appearances, and merch on our website. As well as a form to send us in your urban legends and your advice from folklore questions at spiritspodcast.com.
AMANDA: Join our member community on Patreon, patreon.com/spiritspodcast, for all kinds of behind-the-scenes goodies. Just $1 gets you access to audio extras with so much more. Like recipe cards with alcoholic and nonalcoholic for every single episode, directors' commentaries, real physical gifts, and more.
JULIA: We are a founding member of Multitude, an independent podcast collective, and production studio. If you like Spirits you will love the other shows that live on our website at multitude.productions.
AMANDA: Above all else, if you liked what you heard today, please text one friend about us. That's the very best way to help keep us growing.
JULIA: Thanks for listening to Spirits. We'll see you next week.
AMANDA: Bye!
Transcriptionist: KM