What's that at the joy I'm pretty sure it's dead. It's coming this way.
Wait a minute, I nandas, Hey boo, it's me Roz.
Oh my god, I'm obsessed with this episode. This week I talked to Brian Fuller, who is this incredible writer, director, producer, showrunner. I mean, he creates some fantastic TV shows. Maybe you've heard of a few, like Hannibal, Pushing Daisies. He has this documentary series on Shutter. It's one of the best things I've ever seen. It's so tailor made for me, and I know a lot of you listening to the show would love it too if you haven't seen it.
It's called Queer for Fear. It is on Shutter and it's just an in depth exploration of queerness in horror films and just horror in general really, and it's it's iconic. You got to check it out. It came out last year and just just go watch it. You're also going to hear the brain on this man. I mean the brain on this man. This conversation is so fun today, talking particularly about queerness in horror and paranormal but also Brian's got some stories of his own, so let's get
into it. You can also watch the YouTube video version. The link is in the show notes, and check out the one from last week if you haven't. I got so many messages about how damn funny Mackenzie and Rachel are. Oh those two kill me. Ah, Okay, here we go. Here's my conversation with Brian Fuller on with the show. Brian Fuller, Hello, Hello, how are you.
I'm really good. Thank you for having.
Me, Thanks for doing this. I'm honored.
Well. I wore a Booberry shirt in your honor.
That means so much to me. And I was also just having a conversation about Booberry, who I believe is the ghost of a queer person that wears blue eyeshadow, a bow tie and no clothes and a hat.
Right, yes, yeah, it's yeah ghost.
Very much Provincetown. That whole serial spooky world is very queer, very spooky, and I love it.
It's absolutely queer. Chocula and Frankenberry. We've seen them in bed together, we've seen them clutching each other. Blueberry drives them into each other's arms frequently, or at least did in the seventies commercials. So the whole Burt and Ernie isms of same sex couples in non sexual circumstances that allow the viewer to interpret those circumstances as sexual was pervasive.
Yeah, everyone knows that kind of count Chocula queen. Well, that queen is a very specific type.
Yes, yes, And franken Berry. You know the big silent type that you would think is the top, it is probably actually the bottom.
No pants, no pants? Yeah, why would you need pants? What's the point the Well, you're the ultimate person to talk to you about queerness and spookiness.
I love queer reads of horror. I can give you just about any of them. Uh. In terms, we have Friday the thirteenth coming up tomorrow. I think the Jason Fourhees Missus Fourhees relationship is very queer. You have a domineering mother and a special child. It's an inversion of Norman Bates and his mother, where in Psycho you have the mother occupying the sun, and in Friday the thirteenth it's the son occupying the mother. And that relationship is hard to lift and separate as anything but queer.
Right, God, I don't even think about it that way. A lot of people, Well, I love so much Queer for Fear, Oh yay, which you did, and if anyone listening has not seen it, you got to shudder. Queerness, horror, deep exploration, amazing talking heads, beautiful visuals. I love it so much. And because what we do over here so much is talking about ess and the paranormal. Yes, do you see any relationship there?
Absolutely? I think anytime that look, queer kids are we don't fit into a corporeal box. We just don't. And our spirits are free flying and our instincts are free flying, so I don't think we can be contained within the normal. Also, we're just not normal. So being described as paranormal is kind of hand in hand with queerness is that we are we are strange, we are weird. That's the definition
of queer, and paranormal falls into that category. It's also we are we are looking for ways not to fit in, and the paranormal doesn't fit into understanding. So we lean into those things because it seems like they better represent our worldview than anything within a corporeal construct. Yeah.
People always ask me about ghosts and queerness, and I always think, like ghosts, I've always been attracted to things that aren't meant to be considered scary or demonized what they are, like clowns right, or ventriloquist dummies, or even like carnivals. Like all these things. A lot of people see a sinister side to it, and maybe there is, but I always, I always like things that didn't mean
to be that. I always have related to that. And I think ghosts too, Like with a lot of queer people, people go, it's a demon or it's evil or whatever it is. I don't understand it, so that means that it's bad, right, And so to me, ghosts are.
Queer, absolutely queer, and I think that if you're looking at how we relate to the physical, and so much of queerness is about not necessarily being relegated by the physical, but being kind of transported by a spiritual point of view. I was at an Outfest screening of Night Breed recently and Clive Barker was speaking, who was pivotal to my queer horror kind of experience, and somebody asked him, do you think horror is queer or is going to the
future of horror is queer? And he said, the future is queer because we are moving away from binary definitions of our realities. We are moving away from restrictions on how to be. We are seeing people relate to each other romantically in polyamorous ways that aren't necessarily confined by the previous, established systemic perceptions of how people are to
relate to each other. We see, you know, one of the Brianna Vinskiz, who is one of the Inner Ease on Queer for Fear, was talking about Mary Shelley and queerness and the monstrousness of Frankenstein's Monster as a queer paradigm because queers are constantly pulling together elements of feminism and masculinity in our own alchemic definitions of those words how they perceive to us. So that could be ten percent them, ninety percent mask, could be ninety percent them,
ten percent mask, and everything in between. And I find that so much more liberating because we don't have to follow the system, because the system is as old and tired and it doesn't apply anymore. So why wouldn't we want to dance outside the lines?
Yeah, and ghosts. It's like a part of us that is now, Like I don't have to play by the rules anymore. If I want to walk through a wall, I could if I want to slap someone in the face, I could. I can do whatever I want now.
Well, and ghosts aren't bound by their physical bodies. Yea, so so much of you know, when I think about sexual expressions, it's I rarely think about the physical body, because at the height of sexual expression in my experience, when it's good, your body goes away and and your energy and your energy share. You're sharing energy with another person, and that's kind of the beauty, and that feels non corporeal, it feels spiritual, it feels ghost like. So I think
a lot of us as queer people. I was thinking about this the other day because I see a lot of folks who are kind of identifying with a lot of queer identifying men are identifying with really toxic representations of masculinity that I never understood as as being kind of a kid that defied traditional definition, like I didn't fit in with the jocks. I was a nerd, but I was also feminine, and so there wasn't any kind
of place for me to see myself. And now we're getting into an expression where people who don't feel like they've been able to see themselves are able to see themselves in representations, whether it's you know, the Booley Brothers or drag Race. There's something about taking down the systems of masculinity because let's say, said men are kind of awful as a species, and straight men are awful to women,
and gay men are awful to other gay men. Because there's there's something about this perception of anybody who wants to experience the d in some capacity that makes them less than as a human being. And that feels so counterintuitive to queerness. But I see a lot of queerness embracing it that that kind of boggles my mind. I don't know if that is relatable to ghosts, but it's relatable to kind of corporeal definitions of the physical.
Right God, I don't know what I was expecting, but you're like blowing my mind right now. Oh do we get some honey coffee? Oh my god, honey coffy.
Oh my god. Thank The conversation is going to get a lot faster. Here we go.
Oh my god. It's like that classic drag Queen bit where they sniff some white pottern then the song gets fast. Ah, the classic drag queen lip sync.
Well, I'm curious, what was your first expression or experience of ghostly awareness and uh, thinking about your relationship to that ghostliness.
Well, I was raised Catholic.
Oh me too.
I do you think that that does it? Like that that opens up a belief to that stuff? Because for me, I do believe it does.
It certainly did for me because the holy.
Ghost, Holy God, there's so many of the stuff like even just this bread is gonna turn like this wine's going to turn in the blood, Like there's so much like spooky into it. And there's also so much like you know, exorcism and possession, but also the extravaganza of like the stained glass windows and the dresses that the priest wears. Like I just love that Catholic Church made me who I am in a not the way that they were hoping for same.
And there's so much about Catholicism and Christianity that is so deeply queer. And I mean transubstantiation is you know, turning water into wine and the body of Christ and all of those elements of something that you see is more than what you are experiencing. It in its physical form is integral to Catholicism and the spiritual beliefs. So why Catholics are so bent out of shape with queerness. Is boggling because it is innate in the belief system
of Christianity and Catholicism. If you've taken a little biscuit into your mouth and imagined that being the body of Christ, a the horror elements are there. You've got cannibalism, You've got you know, transubstatiation again, and those things they're very fertile on young creative minds. And I was an altar boy.
Oh so love that. I never got into that, but I did pretend. I did lip sync in choire and that's where I really started the drag Queen, like the first like just lip sing some of those songs. I could still hear them. I did a thing on my Patreon a couple months ago where a lot of paranormal content.
And you know, I'm not religious, I think of anything, I'm witchy, but I don't see a lot of paranormal content in terms of like not scripted stuff, stuff like this exploring like the religious miracles and that sort of thing as paranormal. But to me, I feel really drawn to that, and so I was like researching all of these different examples of when people believe Mary has come back, or like the Shroud of Turin or whatever, you know,
all of these these miracles. Like in Italy there's this vial of blood that it's supposed to be the blood of some saints, and like, I'm probably getting this wrong, but like once a year they pull it out and they do this whole ceremony with like this bishop or whatever, and then if it turns to liquid from the solid, then that means there's gonna be a good year. But if it doesn't, it's a bad year. And in twenty twenty it didn't turn to liquid. I'm like that kind
of shit. Come on, how can you not believe? And like the paranormal, if that's like what you're told to believe.
What's worse the breakdown than between believing in the paranormal and equivocating it with evil like putting a assigning a good bad kinsey skin too. Yeah you know these supernatural.
Events, Yeah I don't. It's interesting because at least the Catholic, the way that I was raised Catholic, it wasn't what I hear from a lot of other evangelical Christians of there's only one kind of spirit and it's the Holy Spirit, and if there is a spirit that's not that's evil. And I wasn't necessarily raised that way, but I guess I don't recall much discussion of that, but certainly angels
or the Holy ghost or whatever, and then demons. But I mean, I was raised with an understanding that there are ghosts, and I encountered my grandmother's ghost when I was like very young, and so that's really what got me going and got me being like, Okay, this is a thing.
Well and how did she appear to you?
She appeared in my bedroom?
Oh?
She or she was like in the room like I was in bed. She wasn't over me, but she was like in the room and she was like up. So I want to say, you like floating and she knew, she knew the assignment. She was like, I'm gonna be a ghost.
And she was.
Slightly transparent, floaty and glowy, and she was she was given ghost.
Was she did she have legs or did it just sort of blend into atmosphere.
I don't. All I could look at was her face, because it's like, I feel like, when you're in those situations, you can't look away, you know, it's like I was just equating it with someone too, like if you see a bear in the wild, like if you look away, you don't know what's gonna happen. Is it gonna charge at you?
Is it?
So you just like stare like and then I kind of I remember it being quick. It was a blip, like she was there and she gave me a look that was like you're okay, and then just like bye bye.
That has been kind of like the blip in my mind when I've had ghost experiences or have seen something that was there in an instance and then not. It always feels like a flash, like a flash bulb where like a flashbub goes off and you close your eyes and you get that fading imprint, but it's it's it's a lightning strike that quickly fades, and that feels kind of conducive to a scientific explanation of supernatural. Are you following doctor Dray four thousand on Instagram?
No?
Who's that? He's a chemist and a chemistry teacher and he's like, chemistry is queer because it's all transitory and here's why. And he's fantastic follow doctor Dray four thousand because he sort of brings you know, chemistry and the scientific discussion into something that is so creative and philosophical that it's hard not to be able to take that into a conversation about the paranormal as well, because and
looking at the paranormal as if it were chemistry. And you know, when we first met, we talked about an experience that I had and I was living in in the Crenshaw district in Los Angeles and around Westmoreland, and I was in this old craftsman house and that just had energy. And everybody who lived in that house said they had some sort of experience with a free floating apparition of some kind.
And Mike, there were multiple different ones.
Yes, yes, there was like a person who was in the attic bedroom. They kept on seeing somebody. My experience was I was in the bathroom and I opened up the door to come out of the bathroom and there was a little old lady in her bathrobe holding her towel, and she looked up at me as I looked at her, and we both startled, like we were both startled by each other's presence in that moment. And so what was exciting about that for me is that it absolutely happened.
I had the experience, I witnessed it. I had a physical reaction that was not necessarily a chill, but more of an electric current, and she was gone in an instance. And for me, because I love science fiction, and my explanation is that I was like, oh, two points in time touched each other in that moment. And is that a science fiction explanation of ghosts or was it an
echo of presence? Or was she there and we were there at the same point of time, or were we in different points of times that we're touching each other. What I enjoy about it is that I can imagine many different explanations for it, and I don't need to know which one is accurate, right, just that it was heightened and real to me.
And then she just disappeared in front of you.
It was like somebody took a picture of her and I was looking through the camera lens and the flashbulb ignited and then I closed my eyes and it was that after image, you know when a flashbulb goes out in its sort of silvery and translucent. So that was the quality of light in that experience that I mean, that was very exciting for me because I was like, Okay, that was real. It happened, and I felt something in
that moment, so I couldn't deny it. I've been in situations where I've seen ghosts around sleep states, and I've been able to sort of say, like, well, you know, how much of that was sort of a sonombulus kind of experience. How much of that was Oh gosh, what do they call it when sleep paralysis? Sleep paralysis? And I have had a sleep paralysics experience and it was
different than waking up and seeing ghosts standing around my bed. Okay, so the sleep paralysis experience I've had was almost like a crystalline entity, like a physical like a crystalline shape above my body. It was almost like a vessel above my body, and I couldn't move, and I could hear the scream building in my throat because I was I was. I wasn't terrified of it. I was terrified of not being able to move.
That is so scary. Yes, I am a believer that there's some things that can be explained by science and can't be explained by science, and there are our explanations, firstly prolysis, but I think that it could be both things happening at the same time, I don't discredit people. That's when they say, like I saw a demon in
my room and I couldn't move, I'm not. I'm not like, oh, that was just something that can be explained by science, Like I think it's I think that could have really been in some kind of creature, right.
And it could be explained by science in some way. Like that's why, you know, a scientific explanation of something paranormal does not obviate it from being a paranormal experience. It just sort of rationalizes it. And I kind of I kind of like that, like it's that's where it does become witchy and magical, because witchcraft is alchemy and there is a scientific basis for it. It's not broad. It's sort of the the merging of science and nature.
But nature is science, So how can you step rate them in that way that I find really exciting to talk about and explore, because I mean, we don't know how our brains work most of the time, Like how are we supposed to understand how a vision of light is appearing to us in any circumstance? And and I've I lived in an apartment in Cochrane in on Cochrane in Los Angeles, third and Cochrane. And there were many, many experiences in that apartment.
Wait, wait before we get to that one. So the first house, did you have other experiences or was that the only time that there was.
Emotions?
There were there were kind of light plays, but that was the one thing that I was like, Okay, hey, that's undeniable.
What do you mean light plays?
Shadows, moving light coming through curtains, dissipating the light in a way. I mean my first as a very young child, my bedroom, I could see into the living room and when the curtains were drawn, light would pass through them in a way that was a traditional depiction of what we've seen in popular culture as ghosts. What you know in terms of you and in my mind, I could say, Okay,
that's light passing through the curtains. That's whether moving the light in a way that my childhood imagination took it to a place that felt magical and heightened, but was not like the experience I had with the ghost spirit in that house in Westmoreland. So I could differentiate those.
Did anybody else in that house ever see that woman?
Well, the the person who lived in the attic saw a woman very regularly, and it was a younger woman because I was like, no, this was an older woman. This was like her hair was back. I could like, I could see the lines on her face. I could I could see that she was an older woman and that she was also you know, had shrinkage, you know, you know from age that she was you know, a little little hunched. And she was in a bathroom when she was holding her towel.
She was probably so terrified just getting ready to take a nice little bath.
Wow, is this tall man in her bathroom, you know, with a towel wrapped around his waist.
Yeah, because I wondered, did she open?
You?
Open the door?
I opened the door and she was like it was it was one of those experience that we've all had when we're opening up a door and somebody's about to open it and it's like, oh, like there's a startle and it's like, oh, hi there and come on in. But it was it was in a flash. And I think about her a lot. I think about like, oh God, you know, I I wish we could have had a conversation.
I wish we could have had more than just a microsecond of a moment that we shared together and also a shared supernatural experience that we could discuss.
It's just so weird to think, like why did it happen at that moment, and like I don't know, I because how much longer did you live there? I lived there for like a year, and you never saw her again.
I never saw her again, and I wanted to. I wanted, but I also like, I witnessed a murder in that house in the front yard. It was a tough neighborhood and there was a gang murder on the front lawn. Took the cops like forty minutes to show up. I called them so many times.
And say, wow, this guy's still in the front yard. Wow.
Yeah, they and they were. I had learned at that time that they don't they give it time for everybody to dissipate because they don't want the cops to be put into a dangerous situation. So they let everything. They just let the person die. And it was fascinating because it was kind of the first awareness like oh, they don't know what they're doing. Because the cops were like, are you sure he was shot? And I was like, yes,
he was shot. Like how they shot him in the back and they're like, we don't see it, and they lifted him up, and when they lifted him up, his shirt kind of came up and there was like a big hole in his.
Back and he was dead at this point.
And I was like, well, there's the bullet hole, and they were like, oh, there it is, and so I was just like, I don't nobody knows what they're doing. So that was upsetting. But the house had like was sort of a confluence of little ghostly experiences as an old house and an old neighborhood in Los Angeles. So that was if it were if I didn't see the personality in this this entities face and expression, I could say like, oh it was, you know, a drifting apparition.
But I saw personality. I saw a relatable human reaction to my presence, and so the entity was dimensionalized as a person as opposed to just a ghost or a spooky thing. It was there, there was a person in that entity experience that I was interacting with.
I think this is my favorite kind of ghost story. Seriously, Like anytime I hear these ones that make it seem like spoiler alert, the others, the movie, the others, like that idea to me is so fascinating and I don't necessarily know that it seems like that's always the case. It just seems like, yeah, maybe it is some kind
of science fiction y thing that happens sometimes. Who knows why, but it seems to be about a handful of times on the show had people over the years tell me a story like that that would make you believe, Oh my god, where the.
Ghosts right right? I'm obsessed And I kind of I was like that house had been there for a long time. So the idea, I mean, there's something also kind of mutual and beautiful about that relationship that I am her ghost and she is my ghost and we are providing an experience for each other.
She's probably on a podcast right now, being like one.
Time there's this guy who shut up in the bathroom.
Yeah, she probably is.
Well. I mean that was the thing that occurred to me. It is like, who says that this woman was from the past. Yeah, you know, maybe I am her past and she is the future. And that was kind of fun to imagine this, you know, chain link of a timeline and you don't know is it is it moving forward or is it moving backward, and that was because we always center our elves in the narratives because that's our experience. But I love the idea of being her ghost.
I know, that's so fun. You have to be a ghost.
Yeah, that would be I mean so, and I like it that.
I don't know, but I will say she's probably from the past because grannies are kind of a thing of the past. Have you seen a woman in her eighties nowadays? Like they're hot? Yeah, yeah, they are fine. There's no such thing as like little old grannies.
No, No, they are.
In you know, Minnesota, but like the little hard candy Like, no, these are only people that anytime I watch a sixties documentary you see some lady on LSD doing this dance mood, I'm like that someone's granny right now, she's not a granny, and.
We have a geriatric porn So there you go. It's a different expression.
There you go. Yeah, oh god, no, I don't want to think about grannies, So tell me another one.
Okay. So uh that was sort of college era. And then I moved into this house or this apartment on Cochrane in Los Angeles, like Third and Cochrane, and had the sleep paralysis was when I was at school and I was in a dormitory and that's when the crystalline entity that was shaped like a bipedal person was hovering over my bed and I couldn't move and that was wild. But that felt like a sleep paralysis Stephen in terms
of the experiences that I've read about. And I was like oh, because I was like, oh, crystalline entity is coming to get me, and that's awesome. But then I was like, oh, these this is so once again, like, yes, there there are many incidences recorded detailing these experiences, but that doesn't necessarily mean they're not supernatural. It doesn't necessarily mean yeah uh, And so that was terrifying because of
the paralysis. That was the most terrifying thing. And oh and it grabbed my arms, It grabbed my wrists.
I hate that.
Yeah, Like so that was the thing that like free and I woke up with my my wrists in the air as if they were like being clutched.
That was real.
It felt real.
Also a great dragon name Crystal Line and Tea.
Yes. Well, and if you're a star trek Faniel, that goes deeper because there was an alien entity called the crystalline entity and it would just suck up life force and it became an episode, fantastic episode where it was like that became this woman's moby Dick because it had consumed her son and she was trying to kill it, and they were like, no, it's just the thing that exists that we should let exist.
You know, I never watched Star Trek. I know you worked on it.
Yeah, it's you know, it's one of the things that I love about Star Trek is the science fiction explanation start. Like Star Trek, the Next Generation at its height was doing what X Files was doing, which was really high concept science fiction stories that often bridged into horror or the spirituality. But then we're then explained in a science fiction context, but not disproved, just explained, which is what I loved about it. And so the Cochrane House or
Cochran apartment, that's where I frequently woke up. There was there was an older woman who would watch me sleep.
These old ladies love you like.
I'm really good with like other people's mothers, grandmothers living or dead, living or dead, And there was one time that she brought some friends like I would I would wake up and regularly see her.
Okay, wait a second, So the first time did anyone ever tell you that this might happen when you moved in?
Yep?
So one night, how far in?
I was probably there for three months and i'd lived there for like three years?
Three months. You're sleeping, did you live alone? And all of a sudden you wake up there's an old woman standing there?
Yeah?
Now was she like my grandmother? Was she floating?
Was she she looked like uh, she looked corporeal, She looked physical. She looked like she was in the room because there was a light coming in from you know, the window that was on the opposite side of the room, so she was lit as if though she were physical. The woman in the house in Westmoreland. That was the flashbulb kind of experience. And this woman didn't disappear what I looked at like, she was just there.
No, she's supposed to, yes, But you didn't think for a second like is this really a lady that crept into my house?
Yeah for a second. And then but I would look at her for a long time and then I would blink and she would go away. And it was quasi when I I'm saying quasi romantic, not that it was sexualized, but you know the you know when your eyes meet across a crowded room type of thing where you're just looking at somebody in their eyes and you're feeling a connection. That was the experience of looking at this woman and
she was standing over my bed. She was like a foot and a half away from me, and but I got no sense of threat from her.
What was the vibe just staring.
It was a very peaceful stare and there wasn't any like the crystalline entity scared me because he lunged at me, or it lunged at me and grabbed my wrists, and that was terrifying.
But let's be honest, he as you were saying earlier, manner awful.
It had male energy. This woman older. She was in clothes and the you know, whereas the woman that was at the house, she was in her robe and had her towel. And that was very, very very specific.
This lady does she always have the same outfit on?
Yes, yes, it was very conservative. It was it was like a dark dress. She was wearing a dark dress. I couldn't see the colors because it was dark. Uh, And I had had people who had slept with me also see her, which was fascinating.
Oh my god, she's like a room for one more.
Yeah, yeah, exactly, skewed over. Uh. And so that was kind of an interesting confirmation to have somebody who was sleeping in the bed and me sort of startling awaken them waking up and seeing somebody next to the bed and confirming it the next day, I was like, Okay, that's that's hot. That's a that's a hot move to have that. And then the the great thing is when she brought a bunch of people.
What was that.
I woke up one night and the room was crowded.
Stop. She's like, you, guys, you got to see.
This shit Like He's like you look at the way he snores. And I don't think I snore. I snore sometimes, But that was cool. And I remember specifically looking around the room and seeing the different faces, and there was somebody at the foot of the bed that was just looking at me like this. It's sort of like who it was a younger person, a younger man who was just and he had a striped shirt on horizontal stripes and was looking at it, had his elbows up on the edge of the bed, like down by my feet
and was just like sort of looking and there. It was like I was an animal in a cage that they were looking at, like some sort of specialized experience. But there was there was probably fifteen people in the room. It was crowded, and that was It wasn't scary. It was so cool. And once again you know blink and they go away or they fade away, and uh that that felt special. I felt really special when she brought friends and you know, once again like is she throwing
a party thirty years ago? It was like like, Okay, at one o'clock in the morning, you're going to see this dude in my bed. So coming to the bedroom, everybody looks see there he is yeah, like hol yeah, that's cool.
Yeah. Wait, so are are you not the kind of person that is gonna need to look into this and figure out because like, did you do you ever think to ask your landlord or whoever, or you know, look for records of the apartment or.
It was a rental agency. So I asked, like what the history and they were like, yeah, a lot of people have over the years.
At least fifteen Yeah, and they've all died in this room.
But the one of the coolest experiences that was beyond that was not sleep related, because the sleep related stuff, I'm like, yeah, it could be any of the number of things I'm choosing because it felt magical, that it was magical and spiritual and a heightened experience and lovely. It was. It was it was, it was a cool thing. It was affirming. I had an experience. And I had two cats that lived there the entire time that I lived in this apartment, and they always greeted me at
the door. They always followed me into the kitchen because I fed them immediately when I got home from work.
And so one day I came in and my hands were full of groceries and I kicked the door shut with my heel and went into the kitchen and the cats didn't follow me, and I could hear them meowing at the front door, and I went I was like, like, what's up, Like they're usually you can't wait to get their food because they haven't eaten since, you know, eight thirty when I left, and they were staring at the
door and meowing. The door was chained and bolted, and you have to put the key into bolted which I didn't do because I had my hands full of groceries. So that was that was an experience where I was like, Okay, that's undeniable, like something happened there and the fact that the cats didn't like the cats probably saw the chain being chained and that was really.
But that's nice that they did it behind you. It's like because they obviously they could have the capability of locking you out then, so it sounds like really nice and helpful and.
The like I've explained that story to I've told that story to people and they were like, you just did it absolutely, and I was like, no, I didn't. My hands are full of groceries. I couldn't have right. The confirmation that made it so lovely and exciting and wonderful and aspiring is that I knew I couldn't have done it because my hands I was carrying two sacks of groceries.
I believe you.
It was cool.
Do you have other stories?
Uh?
Those are the those are the main supernatural stories I feel like I because of I mean, I love going to cemeteries. I find cemeteries to be a very peaceful place and kind of the old adage of like you make cemeteries this beautiful park, because you don't want the dead to leave, you know, you want them to be happy where they are and stay in their graves and have a good time. So I find cemeteries to be places that are full of positive energy. Like I don't
find them terrifying. I find them really peaceful with like deep roots did kind of wells of spirituality that that feel welcoming and comforting. And you know when I was talking about the electric experience with the entity at the house, I went to burn in Switzerland for my birthday a few years ago and I swam in the airs and it was all this water running off of the Alps, and so it was freezing cold, but it didn't feel cold.
It felt like you were an electric current and it was it was so invigorating, and you you hopped out of the water and you just wanted to have sex because like your body was buzzing, and that's what it felt like. And these experiences, it felt like there was a supernatural, preternatural electric current run through you me in that moment that that yes, we can manifest all of these things with our brains, and our brains do amazing things.
But take the wind, take the aspiration, take the message from the universe or what have you that it's something special. One of the happiest moments in my life, one of the most thrilling moments in my life, which was followed by a big disappointment, was when I thought I had a recovered memory of being abducted by aliens.
Just go with it, go with it, and I like it popped into my head and I was like, holy shit, Like I was abduct I was on a table in a spaceship, surrounded by aliens who were like poking and prodding me, and for.
A split second, the universe became so magical and big and you know, filled with endless possibilities. And then I contextualized the recovered memory and I was like, oh, I came out of the aesthetic when I was getting my tonsils removed when I was nineteen, and I was I broke my heart because for a split second, everything was possible.
But also maybe maybe the moment that you got abducted just so happened to be when you were under for your tonsils could be could be is a possibility.
Well I think that's the that's the big point is, you know, and why I get excited about scientists like doctor Dre four thousand on Instagram is that they have this queer, spiritual interpretation of science that allows you to extrapolate from what they're saying and apply it to so many different circumstances where we can talk about what would
be happening in his spiritual context. He's sort of the there's something about him that is so warm and welcoming, and it's all scientific based, and I imagine if you had a conversation with him about the supernatural, it probably wouldn't be as fun as him explaining the queerness of chemistry.
But what he says for anybody who's queer and looking for buttresses and support structures for these moments where we have something supernatural and special that we experience to kind of go like, you know, life is pretty fantastic, and we have to seize those moments and appreciate the whether we are the ghost or they are the ghosts, that we get to have contact with something outside of the system.
And it's I'm always like, it wouldn't be fun if we knew everything.
No, I don't need to know everything.
I would be out of business. This show would be nothing we'd just be talking about things, things that happened to us, like, no, it's not that interesting.
It's it's not And the world is fantastic. I mean, the things that we can do with our minds are astounding, astounding. Like I remember as a kid staring at the house across the street and with my mind being able to collapse the distance with the window outside, where I went into a state where the space between houses just collapsed until I like, I just like I didn't even do it intentionally, but it just brought the window from the house across the street to the window of the house
that I was in. And yes, that's perception, Yes it's it's kind of bending of physicality. But if we step take a step back from how we understand a reality and say, you know, if this is a hologram, if what we are experiencing is perceptual, then our ghosts, glitches in the hologram are they extra added levels in the hologram? Is spirituality? And the hologram makes much more sense to me than a lot of the traditional explanations of time and space and reality because I am open to these
supernatural experiences. So I'm like, Okay, is this another chain of code and the hologram and how we perceive reality. And that's why it's exciting to move beyond all of these binary structures that we have been raised to believe are permanent and reject them and float. That's what you like When Pennywise is like we all float down here, is like that sounds fucking lovely. Yeah, right.
I love to float well, And it's what's so interesting, Like the idea that children can see ghosts, and I always kind of feel that as we get older, same thing with like animals that can you know, your cats,
like whatever can pick up on this. We're just so clouded with boring adult things and the realities of the world and all these structures that we're put into and all these things we're told to believe that it takes away that creative or whatever it is, that side of our brains that is able to connect with the other worldly.
I swim regularly, and I don't think of it as exercise. I think like, I'm going to the pool and I'm playing for an hour, and I'm playing in an environment where my body is not bound by the physical in a way that it traditionally is, and I can float and I can fly and I can drift, and it is It makes me feel in tune with a spiritual world in the way that you're never going to get me into a gym to lift weights. It's not gonna happen.
That I am transcending the physical by taking advantage of the physical in a way that the fluidity of the environment, the fact that I can literally fly like I am flying through atmosphere in a way that is dream like and feels like it is analogous to what I experience in my dreams when I fly. That I would encourage anybody who is looking for a form of physical expression that is into spirituality go to a pool and play.
That's such great advice. Oh I love that.
It's like it's the thing that like I look forward to. Just go to the pool and.
Play for an hour, float drift, We all float down here.
Yep.
You want to hear some ghost voice? Yes, okay, it's time for EVP or ev please EVP Electronic voice phenomena. It's when ghost hunters believe they've captured a ghost speaking. You ever watch those shows, So it's that thing. So what I do is I go to YouTube and I look for people's EVPs and I'm gonna do two of them, and I want you to tell me what you hear. And I'm gonna give you some options of what the
ghost hunter believes they've caught. Okay, okay, first one is from full Moon Paranorm'll post it on the YouTube page called Haunted or Not. It is at the Lake Shawnee Amusement Park. What is this ghost saying? Make sure it's not too loud? Okay, there's definitely some crickets going. There's a lot of background noise. Do you hear it?
It's like a yeah, it's very small.
I the teeny teeny little voice.
I'm projecting, but I'm hearing. Help me? Can you see me? Help me?
Can you see me?
Okay? That helped me? Is right?
But can you see me as as possible? That's not what they believe it said.
Is it?
Are you serving? Mama?
I love this ghost already? Is it? B?
Have you seen my brother C f U, C K or D. You're a super model? It's a RuPaul fan would be.
Can we hear one more time? Oh gosh, I don't think it's any of those choices.
They believe it's have you seen my brother. I hear can you see my mom? Or have you seen my mom?
Well, it's also the cadence of it is odd, like I would think it's like have you seen my brother as opposed to have you seen my brother? I mean if she's doing a you know, with music.
Yeah. Well, okay, I do believe that they caught something. I don't know what it says. Okay, what's this next one? This is from Fox Valley ghost Hunters, also posted on the same YouTube page as that last one, and it is at the Summer Wind Mansion in Lando Lakes, Wisconsin. What is it saying?
Okay, I'm hearing have some pizza?
Seriously, have some pizza? Okay? Is it a damn it? I'm being bad? See damn I want pizza. Wait those b CE damn it you piece of crap? Or d damn there goes Pee Buddha Judge.
I think it's b pizza and it's a really seductive pizza. That pizza must be so good. Some pizza. I feel like they're already inside me and whispering in my ear. Some pizza.
Well, it's funny because it's that's not what they believe, but they believe something that I would say if I saw pizza, which is, damn it, I'm being bad. Listen, that's what they think, it says.
I could hear it.
I could hear that, I guess, but I hear it like a pizza. Okay, let's do one last thing, just like a rapid fire, unless it turns into something. I don't know, but let's just hear your thoughts on some things. Demons.
I think that they're like, I think demons are misunderstood. I think that, like what I love about Catholicism is that if you look at the story and if you're especially if you're dealing with like mean old Testament God who's punishing everything. I'm on Lucifer's side, Like God seems like an asshole. Yeah, Like why Like of course he's he's rising up, he's resisting, he is not falling in line. It's our r R like the you know, the the
Indian movie Resist and Revolutionize. So that's demons. I'm also like, if you're going to all that trouble to get into that little girl and communicate with that's effort, Like you're like you are making effort to have a relationship.
Yeah, which is that's impressive yes, that's more than a lot of men do.
People don't return text and this person is occupying a body to talk to you. They're they're invested in that relationship.
Out in the farmlands of Minnesota or wherever.
I mean, thank you for making the effort. That's something I feel seen.
What about curses, You know, I was.
Just thinking about curses on the drive over here because I was thinking about somebody whereas like, God, if I had the opportunity to curse them, would I And I was like, you know, I think the universe has to take care of curses because I'm just I'm afraid of the ricochet of curses, and also, like I believe me,
I am. I watched a lot of horror movies. I imagine violent ends for a lot of people, particularly in the Senate, and so I'm I'm definitely not of the moral and ethical compunction to be above wishing bad for folks. But I am. I also really believe in karma.
I very much do, which is why I wouldn't curse. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I was just like, if you told me somebody that I felt it deeply wronged me was in a tragic car accident, I would really exist the corners of my lips curling into a grin and wished them well, but it would it would cross my mind that I like.
That's human. Yeah, I get a what about Bigfoot?
You know, I grew up in the Pacific Northwest and so Bigfoot was a big deal because there were like in the seventies, Uh, there were a lot of bigfoot uh docu horror kind of franchises and uh we we kind of don't know what bigfoot is specifically. There are so many different interpretations and I can I can see that, like, is there is there a missing link? Like one could have got away from Homo sapiens who were eating all of the proto Homo sapiens, which is why we don't
see a lot of them because we ate them. Like that's the kind of history is like we we were smarter than them, we killed them and we ate them. That's why there's there's there are gaps in our change is because we're horrible.
So someone was like, this is a big foot burger? Yeah, I caught one. I made it. I chopped it up right. Come on over, we're gonna have a barbecue some bigfoot, would you No, I'm a.
Pescatarian, got it, Yeah, I need I would like to be vegan.
Now let me ask you this, what if it was the Locknus monster, I might kind of fishy.
I mean, if it's already dead, and if there was, if there if chef jose and Dress was preparing a very specific meal with phams and you know, emolliates, I might have to have a tape because I'm tempted when I when a friend says, oh my god, this is the best steak I've ever had, and I'm like, maybe one bite won't morally and ethically destroy me. And I just have to imagine it's a human child as opposed
to a cow or a baby cow. But possibly luckness, if somebody was like this this beast, because I mean, I've eaten eel, I've eaten a lot of I.
Ate a rattlesnake one time. How did it tastes like chicken a little bit? But I was so gross out it snakes grossed me out, like it was really nice. It wasn't a chili. I didn't like it. And I just remembered that you did Hannibal, yes, which is fun. My last job, like day job was tour guy at Universal Studios and we would talk about Hannibal. Would you go buy the Dents?
Yeah?
Piece she was amazing.
Oh she was so great.
Yeah, and she was great. So the tour guys to come out.
And wave and talk to people.
Yes, yeah, I think there was a time when we showed a preview or like a trailer or something of Hannibal.
Yes, she was very heavily involved because the trams would go by, and I used to get like I got in trouble once because when our offices were at the Dela Reentu's Hitchcock Bungalow, I would take the golf course and I would do my own Universal tour and so many times I like turned a corner and was almost ran down by a tram. And then there was like a studio wide memo of if you have a tram, if you have a golf cart, you are not allowed on the tram routes. And I was like, that's for me.
I used to when I worked there, they would let us like go jog around like I would jog and just like walk around and sit over at the Bates Motel or it was so cool.
I would like the up above amity, like the Amity Island. There was like a little road and I would set up there and get high and watch the tours.
Those houses are just a facade. It's so Hollywood. Oh, I love it. And you know who I had on this podcast was Butch Patrick, who did the monsters there.
And I did Mockingbird Lane, and Butch came and visited the set.
Yes, And I was thinking about that too, because it wasn't that shot in that area or that house or one of those houses.
We built it like right around the corner from the original Mockingbird House. We built our big Mockingbird house. Yes.
And he was telling me stories about like going to because there was that Phantom of the Opera stage for Forever.
Yeah, isn't it bird Down? Yeah?
Stage twenty eight. I think it was called I don't know, don't quote me on that, but it was super haunted.
Yes, And I had all of the opera boxes and then you could pull up the floor and it would go down. And when we were going to do Mockingbird Lane, uh, you know one of the show, one of the episodes that was lined up is that Christian Chenowith was going to play Marilyn Monster's original mother, who like gave her up and we were she was going we were going to do a whole fanom of the opera episode and go back and time and we were going to film it on those sets. And then the show never went
to series. Oh so yeah, but that, like I stood on that set and you could just feel the energy in the history of just being there and looking at the opera boxes that were still intact. The fact that it was still there from the thirties or the twenties.
It's so incredible. There's you know, another ghost there over by, okay, like the War of the World's plane crash. And then there's like that big screen with like the pit thing.
I don't know, uh huh yeah, were they where they fill it up? Yes?
Yeah, over there, and it's.
The house from that John Candy Dan Aykroyds. Yeah.
So over in that area somewhere people see this pilot man because on like the opening day back in nineteen fifteen or whatever, there was like a guy that was hired to do like plane tricks and crashed and people see him walking around.
Oh wow, because that's also right it like the six million dollar man tunnel is right there.
Yes, I don't know if it's still that. I don't know, it's something else. Yeah, but I worked there probably twenty fourteen, fifteen sixteen or something like that. Oh, such a I haven't been back yet. It's magical.
I love Universal Studios too, and Warner Brothers, like both of those lots are magical and paramount.
I'm so happy you came by.
Thank you for having me by.
Your brain is incredible. I mean yeah, you create literally worlds for us to consume. So this brain it just hearing you talk about the paranormal, it's really really cool.
Well I rarely get to do it, so this was delightful.
Well, thank you. Can you tell people like you know what's where to find you? What he got going on?
I met Brian Fuller on Twitter and brain Fuller Graham on on Instagram. I'm doing uh, We're working on a Crystal Lake series that's coming up, and I'm about to do a movie with Mats Michelson called dust Bunny about a little girl who hires a hit man to kill the monster under her bed. And so yeah, it's gonna be an exciting year.
And Queer for Fear.
And Queer for Fear and shutter watch it and ask for more. Yes, we have like three seasons worth of material and we've only done four episodes.
I love it well, Thank you, thank you, thank you so much to Brian Fuller. Again, check out Queer for Fear. That was I mean again, I don't know what I was expecting out of that conversation because the man is brilliant, but he really he really opened my eyes to a lot of things. And the stories. How fun. Oh, it was a great, great, great, great time. Okay, guys, are you subscribed to the show, Make sure you rate it five stars. Wherever you listen, tell your friends about it,
and you know the Patreon still exists. The link is in the description of this show, and the YouTube video versions are linked there as well. You know, I love me a listener episode, so send me your listener stories to ghosted by Roz at gmail dot com. Put in the subject line listener episode, and then just give me, you know, some bullet points of what your stories are about. I am on Instagram at Roz Hernandez TikTok and Twitter at It's raz Hernandez. I love you all, both living
and dead. But if I didn't ask you to haunt me, don't haunt me. Came Back star bands offer a podcast, a podcast network