Haunted With Amanda Montell of Sounds Like a Cult Podcast

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Leia and I are going to introduce to you our special guest today it is Amanda Montel from sounds like a cult how did you get into Colts um how did I not okay so what kind of Haunting would you want to experience I want a ghost to fall in love with me very spooky hi everyone Leia and I are going to introduce to you our special guest today it is Amanda Montel from sounds like a cult as you'll notice my hair is pink in that episode meaning we recorded this back in February long time ago almost a year ago but we're super excited for this club

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and we got to talk to Amanda all about how she got into Cults as well as her dreams for uh her own ghostly encounters which we as a tgog community might need to manifest for her and we got some inspiration on how to throw the best Halloween parties so check out sounds like a cult wherever you listen to podcasts and Amanda has written a couple of books which are all out and available now to buy coltish is one of them and then the age of magical overthinking which I actually happened to find in the local bookstore in Marblehead and I picked it up for myself and I think you should too either way we hope you enjoy this episode and if you want to check out our episode that we did with sounds like a cult we talked about the reborn dolls which is a really fascinating interesting conversation if you want to check that out it came out October 22nd on the sounds like a cult feed it's perfectly timed that we're talking to you because I was visiting some friends in Portland Maine the other day and they said to me they were like

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we live in a world where quite literally everything is a cult these days it feels like there's no middle ground or like conversation you can have without people having really intense opinions arguing very vehemently for like the position that they belong in and I was like you guys do I have a podcast recommendation for you I know I know and people have equally cultish opinions about the podcast itself right I was going to say I feel like there's this like fan cult ESS that exists for sure like if we were to do an analysis of both of our podcasts like I don't know what would the analysis be it is a little bit culty yeah I would call it a watch your back what's the worst tier what's the ranking again our podcast's cultish ranking predicated on the idea that Cults fall along a spectrum rather than just a cult not a cult binary are live your life watch your back and get the [ __ ] out that's not like a scholarly taxonomy but it does prove pretty useful

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when trying to identify like okay that group is culty but in like a cute way and that group is culty in a get the [ __ ] out way get the [ __ ] out I think our podcast cult cess isn't a cute way yeah you no your podcast Community seems adorable creepy and adorable if you feel differently you can tell us when we're not recording no no I I like totally love the Paranormal community that you've erected uh oh sorry we were talking about that word earlier Y and I desperately want to be a part of it as someone who doesn't like sincerely believe in ghosts but desperately wants to meet one has put a lot of effort into trying to meet one so I don't know what that cognitive dissonance is all about but it's been present in my life for as long as I can remember yeah well I think that's a lot of our listeners too you know people want to believe and they want to hear those stories it doesn't mean that necessarily have experienced

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something and I feel like you can probably relate to that with a lot of your listeners because how many what percentage of listeners do you have that are actually a part of a cult or that actually know they're a part of a cult or yeah are cognizant and self-aware enough to know that they are in Ault well I think similarly there is a tendency in society to want to categorize things definitively like oh that is a cult and I can label it as such and then I know it's bad and then I know that I should avoid it and judge the people who are in it and you know there's a lot of like sensationalism surrounding that when my argument is that you know cultish is a little more fluid and what we perceive as a cult has so much to do with cultural normativity you know there are so many jokes that have been made over the years by religious studies Scholars saying you know cult plus time equals religion or a cult is a group where the leader thinks he can talk to God a religion is a group where that leader is dead so those like

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say sort of highlight the fact that you know there there hardly is like a one definitive unquestionable definition for what a cult is which is not to say that some of these groups that have been described as Cults aren't totally life ruining but I'm more interested in the gray areas like how do we all participate in cultish every day how are we all susceptible to this type of influence even if you're not in a full-blown cult and similar with the Paranormal it's like I'm very interested in the idea of how I can conjure ghosts from my past Alexa please play all my ghosts by Liz M Alpine um so it's like you know I'm interested in the more metaphorical or symbolic ideas of ghosts and CTS if that makes sense sure so how did you for people who are perhaps meeting you right now for the first time how did you get into Cults um how did I not okay okay so my dad spent his

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teenage years totally against his will

Personal Stories and Cult Influence

in a pretty notorious cult compound called cinon it was this '70s era alternative drug rehabilitation compound turn lifestyle movement for folks in that you know Peak cult era of time who just wanted in on the countercultural movement of the era and so my dad's dad who thought of himself as like an edgy intellectual was like kids were moving to a cult which of course is not what he said right no one like voluntarily joins what they believe to be a destructive cult but yeah it did end up pretty badly my dad escaped as soon as he could as soon as he graduated from high school he like snuck off the compound every day to attend a normal school even though you weren't supposed to do that which is just a testament too to his strength and his intelligence that he was able to recognize what was happening around him was not what he should be experiencing especially in such a formative time of your life where you're so easily

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influenced by everyone around you he didn't love it yeah I mean he joined uh at the beginning of his high school years and up until that point he'd grown up in the School of Hard Knocks in Spanish Harlem New York and so like he'd been around the block you know what I mean but at the same time like it's hard to identify with any confidence what qualities make someone more susceptible to group think or whatever than another person I mean my dad definitely craved Community like I've seen it he's a bder there we go fellow bder yeah I got to see his list yeah yes so you know I can see those tendencies in my dad but for sure he showed up on this compound took a gander around and he was like there's too much Conformity people are worshiping this dude at the top it's just not for me and um my parents are research scientists and so they're sort of like professionally skeptical which is not to say that they are not susceptible to the influence of like a charismatic leader or ideology you know

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we all are but I grew up on my dad's riveting stories of this cult cnon and he didn't think anything of it you know I would like beg him to tell me stories from his life growing up and my mom too and he was just like stories stories I don't know I guess you know when I was 14 I moved to this cult or whatever and I was like what like record scratch classic dad move to just like Drop it like it's nothing years and years into you living and you're like excuse me I know I mean I feel like it's generational to do more or less reflecting on your past or whatever so I I I think he'd always just been like very forward thinking like get out of poverty get out of the cult you know Chuck along make it work so I sort of feel like I cut my teeth journalistically and storytelling wise on like interrogating my dad about his his like cold stories that were like out of order and I was like wait wait wait back up what's going on and then throughout my upbringing I couldn't help

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but notice cultish influence like that which my dad described in cinon everywhere like in my high school theater program and in the startup where I worked when I first moved to LA and certainly in the ways people would interact on social media you know you're talking about these like Fierce ideological debates that people get in over nothing online that all inspired me to write my book cultish which is about the language of Cults from Scientology to Soul cycle cuz my back in linguistics and then sounds like a cult was kind of like a spin-off of that idea let's keep talking about this in a more light-hearted cheeky way the Cults we all follow Disney adults Trader Joe's Etc yeah I also feel like it's hard not to be fascinated by the idea of Colts but I think the first time that I realized Colts didn't necessarily have to just be you know a group of fanatical people drinking the Kool-Aid was growing up and seeing all the mlms pop up around us yes ma'am you know Tupperware parties

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the makeup parties and then I was like wait what is all of this about because people get so intense about their beliefs and you get more and more sucked in and it becomes more and more dangerous and the stakes can increase most of the time I'm sure I think I'm a part of the cult of Trader Joe's which absolutely there's nothing bad about that right it was a live your life we called it a live your life yeah we like really went in and that is one of those groups that has like such a distinct aesthetic the cashier like he love bomb you a little bit they flirt with you yes and people get so obsessed with the limited edition product drops and there are Facebook groups and people get really [ __ ] into it but not in a way that destroys their life you know sets up these exit costs the S versus them mentality isn't so bad there's no ends justify the means philosophy it doesn't really check off those boxes but mlms do no doubt about it totally and I think Trader Joe's is a live your life cult because we haven't been given the opportunity to move the needle forward

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like if there was opportunity if they created like these crazy Ambassador programs or whatever I'm sure it would slide into kind of that more dangerous territory oh the Loyalty that Trader Joe's has they could easily spin it into a watcher back or get the [ __ ] out absolutely so it reflects well on them that they're just you know handing out free cookie butter samples and like chilling talking about cults I'm sure can be difficult because it involves talking about a group of people who often can be really hurt or like respond aggressively towards what you're discussing has there been any Cults or or I guess like topics within Cults that you have had a lot of fear going into discussing for sure but they're not the groups that you might think like who well that well that's true and untrue this is what I'll say I went through an intense legal vet when writing my book and I learned a lot from like the in-house council at Harper Collins how to to protect myself there's a bit on

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sounds like a cult where I'm like always singing SL frantically repeating the word allegedly but it's like not a bit like it's it is very interesting how you can sort of like skirt litigation if you make sure to phrase things as an opinion and not fact yeah and not a fact or like in my book I talk about groups that are more Sinister more destructive Scientology Etc and you become exposed to legal ramifications if you start saying things that haven't been alleged in a reputable Source already so like with Scientology you know I wasn't like blowing the lid open on on Scientology like there are so much that's already been said by like whistleblowers and stuff about that group I was really just putting my spin on it and analyzing how that group uses language to influence their followings in ways that we certainly can't see and that we might not ECT on sounds like a cult we have

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run into like a little bit of like sketchy legal trouble with maybe only one group but in general I feel like I'm pretty good at identifying like what's koser because of that legal vetting that I went through um and it is funny that like if you're in on the joke you'll probably like being called culty you know it's a sort of thing where it's like if you can't laugh along with it that's a red flag right if you take yourself so seriously that you're not willing to acknowledge there's like a culty element to it then it's like well what are you trying to protect yourself from and like that feels like there's a little bit more danger in it exactly so like we're always writing this line where I tout sort of more seriously and journalistically in my book that like the word cult can be used itself to separate us into an versus them and you

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know the last thing you want to do when talking to someone who you think might be involved in a group like qanon or something like that is to be like you're an Ault you're brainwashed but at the same time like language is so context dependent and you can't control it from the top down and it's just a fact that people toss around the word cult more cheeky all the time to refer to Brands and fan communities and such and so like we're always navigating those nuanced Waters but there was a like a pretty cult followed pelaton instructor named Hannah oh gosh I don't remember her last name don't cancel me Cult of pelaton but like she um shouted us out in one of her classes the next day she was like I knew they were going to do us I knew they were going to do us I was waiting for it you know so if you're in on the J that's the thing too is that like the the show

The Subjectivity of Cult Definitions

is kind of protected by the fact that it's entertainment but yeah no it's it's for sure tricky yeah the backlash I mean it's so entertaining to me like when uh listeners take our cult categories like super seriously because like they're

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made up like I just made them up they're not real and so it's too funny how PE how some people in reaction to a certain episode and I love this discourse by the way like I think the disagreement and debate is the whole point like this is also subjective in reaction to the same episode someone will be like I can't believe you're calling this a cult at all and another person will be like this is a get the [ __ ] out how dare you call it a watch your back I'm like it's just silly like it's not and it's Up For Debate it is Up For Debate which I welcome and you know it again it is writing that line between like Earnest cultural commentary and like just a bit so it's like a recipe for debate and I love that I also feel like you are not going into your episodes being like definitively XY and Z you're just trying to understand and you I feel like you're coming at it from a psychological human empathy approach of like understanding why people would be drawn to something and at what point does it become dangerous or does it ever become

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dangerous and exploring the people who are in it and the people's opinions who are outside of it too because yeah that also what people who aren't in it feel towards that group is some of the biggest defining parts of a cult being dangerous right definitely and the fact that we're talking about not Heaven's gate and the Mansons in Jonestown but the reborn doll community and Crossfit makes it all the more subjective and all the more nebulous so it's yeah it's it's been really interesting like doing the show all these years and seeing people's reactions to it and I like I mean I never could have foreseen the like cult that's been born out of the the listeners of the show but yeah it's like fascinating to apply the sort of you know boxes that we check off when we cover certain topics on the show like to the listenership of podcasting in general like cuz there's a lot of connection yeah I mean k and I kind of in a cheeky

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way have said join our pyramid scheme and it's kind of in reference to if you listen to our podcast tell two other people about it you know pass along the word and then you get an invisible Ghost Mobile when you get so many listeners to listen yeah it's an MLM totally I mean also like the line between cult and just good marketing is very fine we're just living in a particularly cultish time when we're losing trust in institutions that are supposed to make feel held we're looking to fill those voids in alternative places sometimes they're on Reddit sometimes it's a podcast sometimes it's a really [ __ ] up spiritual community and I'm just like so interested in finding cultish in a positive way if you can right and there's so many nuances like I think I look at something like the Mansons or Jim Jones and all of the like Heaven's Gate and stuff and I'm like oh I would love to believe that I would never get caught up in something like that oh my God but you look like a Manson girl

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we all do we all do I was going to say all three of us do these brunette girlies we would be over right but then

Parasocial Relationships and Cult Dynamics

like you look at things and Cults that you talk about kind of that feel more benign and wouldn't necessarily on like the surface be called CTS but then I'm like oh I have exhibited all of these behaviors and I understand how easy it would be to if like say Trader Joe's did slowly evolve into a more Sinister cult like I'm already lowlevel there you know I talk about this all the time and this is like on a slightly more serious note I would not necessarily be as susceptible to a group cult environment but throughout my life I have found myself in so many Cults of one where like I've been attracted to the influence of a single charismatic figure who's like you know allured me into a one-on-one relationship using many of the same language and tactics that cult leaders use it's just I'm their only

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follower so that's happened so many times influencers too you know right where like they don't even necessarily try to create an individual relationship with someone but somehow they just get the entire world or whoever Their audience is to feel such a strong connection to them despite never meeting despite never speaking having zero interaction that's a two-way Road it's very much for the majority of people a one-way relationship it also makes me think of like my relationship with my older sister like I'm two years younger than my sister and growing up I wanted to be just like her like I did everything she did and it was just like she never asked me if anything that pissed her off but like right well I feel like triangulating amongst like your parents your friends your sister in real life in order to build a an identity a set of rituals for yourself like that's the classic healthy way of like you know moving through the world it's just that you know kin to your

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point like so many Cults these days are parasocial and online you know you're perceiving so many identities and trying to you know we get choosers Paradox like I I talk about this on the podcast I talk about it in my book a lot like I think one of the reasons why you know we feel so lost and and find ourselves in these parasocial Cults a lot of the time now is because we have this choosers Paradox where there is at least the illusion of infinite possibilities for the dire that your life can go in and that wasn't always true you know like in the hunter gatherer period it's like you were born in this tribe and you're going to survive and and now you know it's like I could have any hair color I could move anywhere in theory you know I could have any I could online I I scroll through Tik Tok I personally don't have Tik Tok thank God for me but in theory

Exploring the Paranormal

like you scroll through Tik Tok you're like oh my God look at all these careers that people have look at all these you know fashion Aesthetics that people have and that can feel really overwhelming and so you know if you can find a group that provides an identity template of

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like you are a glossier girl or you are a devoted Soul cycler or you are a Swifty or you are a Traer Joe's stand or you are a reborn then that can feel like oh thank God I can surrender I can relax and then in that sense of relaxation you might not realize that that group could like take over your life in a more Insidious way right well so for today's sake would you like to momentarily step inside this paranormal cult that we've created we call it our most haunted friends or our Phantoms and you were saying that you haven't necessarily experienced anything paranormal yet but that you would like to or have you or are you like not sure if it was paranormal I mean certainly when you're a kid every single night when you like pee you are certain there is a ghost in your hallway I mean that evolved into my adulthood I don't think that's ever gone away yeah I mean I was absolutely terrified of my basement throughout my entire childhood which I think is normal

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but I I couldn't get over the fact that like the world is a graveyard so many people have walked this earth like everything is probably built on top of someone's decomposed corpse mhm so I don't know I mean I've been on hell of ghost tours in my life I want to believe that everything that I experienced on those tours was a paranormal interaction but you know do I really believe I don't know it is tough on ghost tour situations because I've been on a few and I feel like I almost find myself believing certain people in the group and not believing others where I'm like well I don't know if I actually believe that you saw that shadow around the corner that you just said that you saw but if I experienced anything I would tell people and I'd be like oh my God so I find myself feeling that too on the ghost tours being someone who fully believes in the Paranormal yeah no you have to sell it I mean we're all theater kids you you really have to sell it and I actually think I would love to guide ghost tours like I think I I would love for that to be like a a maybe a late

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like a retirement ERA career for me the best ghost tour that I went on was in New Orleans in the French Quarter and that like square mile or less of space is haunted if anywhere on this Earth is haunted I know that to be true I love graveyards yeah I'm no I'm eager I'm eager for ghosts to be real well yeah and I think that's something that's so interesting is the Paranormal world is so unknown that we don't really have the ability to say or speak with certainty and there's so many different types of hauntings but like on a very very basic level of energy and this is not necessarily paranormal but like if you walk into a room where people were just fighting you can pick up on that you know and I think that so true that is a an experience that I feel like almost every human can understand and relate to that if you just take that and then try to understand that like that can exist when your body your living Soul passes

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away that energy does go somewhere or it has it doesn't just disappear you know yeah in the past few years cuz I I just finished writing this book about irrationality and like growing up the daughter of scientists I was like conditioned to sort of like worship rationality you know dismiss mysticism but I've come to really respect and value intuition like as a profoundly useful human quality and skill and it's something that yeah like you can't quite describe like what is like feminine intuition what is that thing that tells you that like those people were just talking about you you know like there is just like the intuition is very very real and it helps us survive so yeah if you take that thought exercise a little bit further I don't know yeah there isn't a fine line between like something that's real and something that's not that's a danger statement but sure but even having grown

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up with Scientists as parents like science is so baked on like proof and hypotheses and then finding things to back it up and evidence but a lot of science begins with a theory that has no evidence and then it's the like discovery of that evidence I sometimes feel nervous like existing at that Nexus of because because science is under such threat speaking of culture isness you

The Intersection of Science and the Paranormal

know like especially now postco like there's such a weaponization of like questioning of science you know and so I feel reticent to do that but you're right like I think there is a point when you're talking about like human feelings and human experiences when like doing the math so to speak doesn't help you you know and beyond that you kind of do have to rely on intuition if you're talking about feelings and these more like abstract phenomena but what I think

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is really funny is when like Ghost Hunters and things try to docking Back to the Future style like use science to find ghosts and I'm like you can't I have you can't square that like inventing those like machines and whatnot and at that point I'm just like relax like you're just a boy who wants a toy I think the manual bodily ghost hunting that's what I can get behind sure I think it's hard with the Paranormal when you're using those tools and you're like 100% it's this because we can't definitively say that cuz K and I have gone on ghost hunting paranormal investigations where we use those tools and it's like okay is this an indication of something and I mean it's fun first of all it sounds so fun just having an openness of like we don't know what this is but maybe it is indicating something other worldly totally I mean I narrativize the [ __ ] out of my life like I create stories and narratives and attribute like cause and effect and try

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to shoehorn plot points into my life that don't exist it's like things are just happening at random your life is not a story and that's some of the same mental gymnastics that I'm seeing here it's like we're trying to create a story out of events that might not even be events or phenomena that might not even be phenomena and I actually think that that's a very human impulse like we want things to make sense we want this cause to connect to this and even if I'm not doing that in a ghosty way necessarily on a daily basis I I'm still doing it in a kind of like mystical way I mean we talked about this on your episode actually where in order to survive there is a little bit of delusion in all of us for sure yes we kind of can't spend too much time thinking about the big picture so we like dude ourselves into thinking that the small minute things of everyday life is the most important thing because that we can understand and we can grapple with and we can allow ourselves

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to live the next day completely and it's like not irrational but it's how we cope with the Intolerable overwhelming mystery that is life as a human on this planet right right okay so what kind of Haunting would you want to experience if we were to like manifest one for you right here oh my God what a wonderful

Personal Hauntings and Ghostly Experiences

question I've been living for the past month in a cabin you might perceive the A-frame shape of the wall and ceiling behind me me is this a writer Retreat oh sure but it's like a mostly I've been podcasting this month but it's it's like mostly a change of scenery you know like La can be a lot I get that so I'm in a town called Idle Wild which is very mystical and there's just something haunted in a nice way positive good spirits about this town every structure looks like like a little ghost child is like like running through it and laughing like just around the corner

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like that's how every like coffee shop and inspiring we need to go oh my God you would freak out here like it's a mix of like crunchy mountain people and like hippies and Libertarians and like conspirituality like the vile modernity of the big city if just like one of idol Wild's like First Peoples were to appear in this area you know do you want like a physical you want to see like a full bodied Apparition or do you want to like Hear Voices wake up in the middle of the night with them over your face yeah tickling your toes okay no sorry yeah let's get specific I would love for it to be outside at Twilight this sounds romantic yeah yeah you're romanticizing your

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ghost experience I want a ghost to fall in love with me is it too much to ask that Twilight I want to go on a sunset walk with an apparition I'm kind of see cuz you know how like your eye is hyper attuned to be like overly paranoid during Twilight because you're like adjusting to the dark and so if a threat is coming from behind the tree you know you want to be able to clock it so I feel like that's a great time to be open to seeing things that you ordinarily wouldn't and so I yeah I would love for the physical embodiment of an apparition to just like maybe well I have been seeing things I actually have been seeing things around this cabin okay what kind of things there are these shadows in my periphery and I've been actually oh my God I'm so glad we're talking about this I've been seeing shadows in my periphery like animals like maybe they're animal ghosts so then I guess I would love to see just like more of what I've already been

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seeing but maybe in a human form your cats are with you right now so I bet that there are some sort of like animal hauntings within the space that you're in and now they have new friends to interact with cuz I mean how many people who are going to this A-frame are bringing their cats with them probably not that many no they're not even allowed to be here actually so none yeah I think now that you mention it my younger cat Theodore he has been acting a damn fool he has been bananas Beyond normal cat Zoomies I do think he has a ghost friend here because Claire my other cat who he's normally terrorizing she'll be like sleeping in bed totally chilling and he's like berserk so I love this theory that he has made a bygone animal friend in this cabin yeah I'm here for that yes we always say trust your pets and if your pets are behaving like there's spirits around then that to us is most certainly haunting but it

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feels very it it could be scary but like a teddy R is having fun so right right and I think every haunting is and can be scary because you're not expecting it it's something that you didn't invite into your space showing up unannounced and unexpectedly and even if it's like you know a deceased loved one popping in to say hi and check in on you like you're not expecting that right so at first there is and then maybe over time you can be like oh now I know what it is but then there's also like we've heard so many stories where something appears as one thing or as one person to get your trust and then it's actually something more Sinister yeah now that we've pursed through it it's definitely feeling like because Teddy Rue also has like this little boy energy like like the like the little boy in the ring you know what I mean and I really think he's made a friend and so perhaps I just want Teddy

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ruse's experience for myself you're envious of your cat that's fair okay well I have a piece of advice for you Amanda and this is something that I don't know if you've heard of before we certainly have because we live and breathe the Paranormal world every week all week knowing that you're in a cabin if you hear your name if you hear a whistle if you hear a crying child outside you must ignore it do not go looking because I mean it could be paranormal but also on the flip side like you're the person who talks about the Cults which involves real life people and Sabrina and I have said this a million times the Paranormal can be absolutely terrifying but often times what's scarier are humans so of course they are oh my God I have like an I have a vacation responder on my email like all the time cuz I just I don't want anyone to say my name I'm just like you cannot reach me no yeah I have like a healthy respect for the ocean I have a healthy respect for wild animals and I have a healthy respect for the dead I have been waiting

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to like fully Embrace a paranormal experience I think since I was a little kid cuz I I mean my partner and I are big into Halloween like we throw the most outrageous Halloween party we have a 7 foot animatronic witch named Agatha we turn our whole front yard into a graveyard oh yeah so cool it's ridiculous last year we were like okay we're going to have a smaller Halloween party this time because in 20 22 there were 80 people there and it was too much so we're going to we're going to keep it more intimate this year we decided and so to make up for the fact

Creative Halloween Celebrations

that it wasn't quite the same level of rager I devised this Glass Onion style ghost mystery escape room Amanda you are literally speak like I've said this on the podcast like this is my dream for every year to have a Halloween part like this I couldn't recommend it more it was actually so cuz you can order like uh escape room autra mons you know and so I divided all my guests into

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three parties and one part was in the Apothecary I had transed my office in the back of my house into an apothecary one group were dedicated to the witches one group were dedicated to the vampires in the living room and one group was dedicated to the werewolves in the yard and the idea was that our house which is like 120 years old old for La had been haunted all along and that night the night of Halloween our energy had Unleashed the evil ghosts of the witches yes vampires and werewolves and that they had already killed one of the guest attendees but they didn't know they were dead and no one else could tell which of us was dead ah I love this yes we had to go through these different like unlocking of a thing and decoding a whatever to figure out who was dead to find ingredients to add to a cauldron and to find a spell to recite once those ingredients were added to bring this person back to life and lay the evil spirits to rest I'm sorry don't be

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surprised when I come knocking on your door on Halloween this year I will be there you didn't invite me but I invited myself 100% you have to come because you'll appreciate it I want all of the information of how to run this cuz I want this to be my own Halloween party H it was too fun the other thing was like there were these other spirits that were communicating to the different teams to like direct them where to go and like oh gosh there were there was like a clock that opened up it was yeah we'll we'll offline about it so Amanda can I I have a question did you do you have a clone because how do you do all of the things that you do um we just recorded an episode of sounds like a cult that will be airing in October and it's February so that's how yes a lot of pre-planning pre-recording yes yeah pre-planning pre-recording because we just have to make more time for Halloween party planning you're inspiring me to do this because I feel like well I'm on the east coast in Massachusetts and a lot of my

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friends have requested that I have a Halloween party and I've just never felt prepared enough because I don't want to just half ass a Halloween party like if I'm going to throw a Halloween party I'm going to [ __ ] throw a Halloween party and this is making me motivated k your maternity leave is now in addition to taking care of your child should also be dedicated to your like relaunch into society at a Halloween party well I think something like speaking of choosers paradox I think a constraint that could really help you would be just to come up with a theme so like the escape room was a great theme it like really narrowed down what we were going to do and I would love to host another Halloween party that's sort of like French Bella po dinner party you know where like the ghosts of dead French intellectuals oh my gosh yes I'll help you with this this sounds so good I will tell you when of my good friends she is having her wedding next year and it's

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going to be this beautiful garden party everyone's going to wear like big floral dresses but she's heavily debating making what would look like this just like gorgeous wedding into a murder mystery party at the same time she's like how do I make this love that more aggressive I recently got engaged I feel like I always need to make the disclaimer that I proposed I love that thank you but I keep referring to the wedding esque event that I that we want to throw as a carnival beautiful weddings it's like everyone's been to those I would totally do like an escape room kind of thing yes oh now I'm just thinking of all of these different themes okay I'm going to pitch you a wedding theme idea that that is kind of Escape roomy amazing a miniature theme where all the people like you create everything around you to make everyone else feel really small like you have giant giant flowers like sculptures and stuff stuff so you feel like you've all been it's a Honey I Shrunk the Kids

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what's the budget on this wedding unless it's $5 million maybe you this won't be able to be executed you never know the favors you can call in you know like that's true I could cult leader style manipulate some company into giving me like large blowup installations of flowers and stuff a psychedelic theme is cool I wanted to feel immersive I've always wanted a room full of kittens at a wedding and everyone can play with the kittens during the event and adopt them if they would like oh that's very doable yeah like I could partner with one of the rescues where I got one of my cats or like the best friend Society if you've heard of that yeah like anyone could do that that's what I love that idea well Amanda knowing that you're obviously into Halloween parties what sort of direction do you go with your Halloween costumes so the costumes take a back burner because we're all about the decor this is like a

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needs Improvement category last year my partner Casey and I were Darla and Alfalfa from The Little Rascals that's cute that's so cute the year before I was Elizabeth Holmes which was like very easy to pull off you know just black turtl net blonde wig red lipstick which I wear anyway and the voice do or do not there is no try so that was easy okay so you get into character though so I which I very much respect for sure for sure yes growing up I was Captain Hook for different Halloweens so that's just worth noting you got to bring it back you're a theater kid and you were trying to perfect the character over time yeah yeah it grew up with me because I was Captain Hook at 4 9 12 and 17 by 17 it was Captain hooker oh of course thank you for laughing I said I want like a pirate themed Captain hooked themed Halloween party where turn your home into a boat I love that okay I know my best friend

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isn't listening well no she should 100% be listening this podcast but don't tell her about it so you can say whatever you want yeah that's what that's the point she doesn't need to know so I am co-planning a 30th birthday extravagance over her that's Titanic themed wow and there is going to be a pirate scavenger hunt and I'm proud of this I'm going to make a signature cocktail that's a whiskey based Rose flavored cocktail called a Jack and Rose oh brilliant brilliant thank you brilliant once this podcasting thing really starts to get to be too much I'll just abandon my life move to these Woods permanently and do a ghost tour full-time profession and a bit of nautical themed party planning SL planning there go you have your future planned out Los Angeles is the perfect place to just buy a warehouse and do these types of events I feel like people would be so into it completely like i'

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I've been resisting the delusional atmosphere of the town I need to lean in lean in you have the natural ability to give the people what they want and it's this it's a town of theater kids and you have the skills there are theater kids in LA but I also feel like a lot of like hot people like the popular popular girlies move there and that's scary La is scary it is I mean it goes back to like what's really scary the Paranormal or real people and I think the answer is real people so accurate thank you for bringing that back you've had so many episodes and so many Cults that you've covered on sounds like a cult are there a couple episodes that you would recommend to our listeners that kind of would be a good crossover good in between of our subjects definitely there was a Halloween episode a few years ago on the cult of Hell houses which are the are you familiar there are these like Evangelical haunted houses that you groups will put on like Christian Youth groups but instead of there being like a

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Dracula room or like a Frankenstein room it'll be like an abortion room or a premar prar sex yep oh my god I've never heard of this I need to go listen to this what horrifying horrifying there was a weird I think this was when I was looking up the MC mamy Manor like the haunted house which is like horrific if you don't know about it basically it's like a torture house haunted house but when I was looking that up there was like a whole redddit subreddit of these hell houses actually being haunted which I thought was hilarious they deserve it they fully deserve it well these are like this is truly like the vend diagram of everything we've been speaking about because it's Halloween it's culty evangelicalism but it's also theater kids this is what Evangelical theater kids like have to do you know like Lord knows their High School is not putting on Spring Awakening n it's like you do your hell house that's how you be

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creative if you're an Evangelical Peter kid so that's good one and then we just had an episode on the cult of Catholic School which like Catholicism is so spooky so I feel like that would be a good listen too I mean if we think about Catholicism too it's like the priests are the ones that do the exorcisms on people's houses tell me about it so there is a lot of spookiness surrounding that and then of course like where's the line between religion cult ghost story and then of course I have to say that you two will be on sounds like a Cults Halloween episode this year the cult of reborn dolls teaser spoiler which um what a hoot very much so that was a scary topic because it's like dolls inherently are scary but then it's also scary to talk about you do this all the time but we we don't it's scary to put yourself out there where like you provide opinions on a group of people that you are not a part of and so it's kind of I'm like don't cancel me that's

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I feel oh right right y'all are so safe and it's so Genius Like a Ghost can't sue you or cancel you no they can't we do try our very best to bring generosity to the table when discussing these culty communities and they're all like all the discussions are predicated on the foundational thesis that like we're all a member of a cult of some kind absolutely I need to step back sometimes and remember like not everybody is comfortable sitting around being like everything's a cult but but it is so it's fine but it is which Cults are you a part of oh my god um great question I mean I'm in the cult of Los Angeles definitely this is why I have to like come Retreat to places like Idle Wild for periods of time because the cult of celebrity is so profound like even just parasocial so then when you live in a town and work in an industry where you're actually interacting with celebrities in real life oh my God I'm so susceptible to a

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celebrity like summoning me to like a meeting or a party or like some ridiculous thing and me me truly like dropping everything and like dismissing my values and doing whatever they want me to do so that's bad at least you acknowledge it yeah no so I'm really like I have to step away from like the Hollywood of it all because celebrity is so alluring and oh my God could go on and on about that yeah I was fully in the cult of theater kids which was maybe the precursor to The Cult of Hollywood and we're all on the cult of podcasting I mean [ __ ] it's obviously a cult because there's so many more people trying to be sucked into the cult of podcasting it's there's some crazy statistic where it's like half a million podcasts that exist out there probably more than that I mean this this is like 3 years old at this point so I'm sure it's even more dramatic now but when I heard the stat it was there are 2 million podcasts uploaded to Apple

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podcasts and 1 million of them only have one episode oh wow oh man I have so many thoughts about this like the sounds like a cult live show like two live shows we did a few years ago were about the cult of podcasting so we like got into a little more deeply then but I think it really is like classically a space that lends itself to cultish because it's so new it's so sort of like DIY low barrier to entry like anybody can get into it which is amazing and cool but it also makes podcasters really vulnerable to hollywood-esque exploitation like I will never get over how nuts it is that my like career that I pursued on purpose was writing books and like when you write a book your intellectual property belongs to you of course like by default like when you write a book like that's your book and the publisher would never claim any ownership of that but I I was so shook when I got into podcasting that like how the industry or podcast

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networks or whatever like lay immediate claim on your IP if you don't push back and you know that's like a little bit predatory right so like there are so many pros and cons to the industry that have to do with the fact that it is so nessian and low barrier to entry and DIY and full of green creators right yeah I could talk on and on about that well okay speaking of like you're writing your books what books have you written what is coming out what are you working on right now where can everyone find you and the books you have written oh my God thank you for asking so I wrote These two books about language called wordslut

Upcoming Works and Community Engagement

which is about language and gender and cultish which is about the language of Cults and then in April April 9th of this year I have a book coming out called the age of magical overthinking notes on Modern irrationality which I think anyone who's interested in the Paranormal and how our brains wrap around sort of like mystical ideas

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would be interested in because it's about the clash between our innate cognitive biases like the mental magic tricks our minds play on themselves and the information age and how those like two phenomena interact in sometimes like freaky ways yeah that book's coming out in April and I'm going on a tour and I'm putting on this show called The Big magical cult show and like it's going to be ridiculous so oh so fun yeah if you experience more hauntings in your cast you'll have to let us know I will we'll manifest it our community has this like weird power one we're a haunted Community everyone's haunted and then people listen to our podcast and get haunted but we also have had an experience where one of our listeners was experiencing a haunting and like together we all like set intentions and tried to clear their space they never experienced it again so I'm going to try to use this in a let's manifest a positive haunting and you gave us you gave us the recipe of what you would experience so we'll manifest it whoever's listening help Manifest this

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for Amanda and maybe it will happen oh my God and please tell me what spell you use because that's what I'm obsessed with that'll be another career is like writing spell books I would love nothing more yeah anyways send me your spells too please amazing oh well Amanda thank you so much for joining us this is so fun and we really liked being on sounds like a cult which will direct everyone to that episode too hell yeah where we had very intense discussions about maybe one of the creepiest uncanny valley dolls out there the reborn dolls we really went there thank you for for going there well thanks for allowing us to go there with you what a Love Fest what a Love Fest we will see you on the other side very spooky