I Ain't Afraid of No Ghosts (with Jamilah Lemieux)

racist money, martial stuff, you can't tell me. Yep, yep, yep, there it is. There it is. Ladies and gentlemen, Welcome to another phenomenal episode of My Mama Told Me, the podcast where we dive deep deep into the pockets of black conspiracy theories and we finally work to prove that race relations in this country will never be solved until Wes Anderson exclusively starts making movies starring Clifton pal That's right.

We need the whitest filmmaker and the blackest star of every b et plus film to come together and solve what is broken in this country. It's the only way, folks. I'm your host, Langston Kerman as always coming at you hig, baby coming in spry. I'm feeling good today. Baby. I got I got a nice little I got some pepper in my step, you know what I mean. I got I got some some a little hooks fun. You know, I'm I'm excited because my guest today she is a

person who deserves respects. Most of the people I have on this podcast are absolute idiot their foods, they're they're clowns who just say silly things. But she's a person who says very important things and thoughtful things. She's careful with the language that she used that she's a journalist, she's a cultural critic, and more importantly, she has a podcast called Mom and Dad Are Fighting. It's a a parenting podcast. You know her, you love her? Please give

it up for my guests. Ms. Jamilla Lemieux, Hey, Hey, thank you for doing this. Thank you for having me. Hell yeah, it's gonna be fun. This is uh I I you heard it in the intro. We mostly have comedians on, so it's always a beautiful treat when somebody who uh takes themselves a little more seriously is here to help enlighten us in a way that a bunch of my dumb friends can't. My career is such a great facade for how not serious I take myself, and

certainly none of my friends take me very seriously. Like the fact that I would get that sort of intro in my friend's circle is like a what the moment to this day, because I really I am the joker, I'm the silly one, I'm a friend. So yeah, so I I'm hugely disappointed. Now you should be because I came adequately unprepared to I did no research. I did. Oh that's beautiful. I here. This is always my fear whenever a journalist comes on is that you guys do my My presumption of the work that you do is

you're constantly doing research. And so my fear is that my my very inadequate research is only going to disappoint you. But now that I know you didn't even do anything, I feel like I'm gonna be I'm gonna be thriving throughout this episode. Hell yeah, I'm excited. So you came with a conspiracy theory that I'm super excited about because

we don't touch on the paranormal. In my opinion, often enough, it doesn't come up as often as you might think in this podcast, But you said my mama told me black people don't see ghosts, So to be fair, that's not what I said. I was presented a list of conspiracy theories to consider if I didn't have one of my own. Yeah, and all the ones I had were

not fun at all, you know what I mean? Like, like, I don't know that we could really I mean, I guess we could probably have a great conversation about the Popeye's causing sterilization or churches chicken causing sterilization rumor that rocks the nineties, but like, how much can we say about that? But I thought that this one was really interesting because I had never heard it before, and so I thought maybe this was something you were familiar with.

So I wanted to hear from you about black people not hearing or not seeing ghosts, because I think I have a counterpoint to that. Oh, I might disprove this conspiracy that I was not familiar with until tell me about it. You're telling me that you selected this just so you could flip it on the head and tell me why I'm stupid? How dare you, ma'am? How dare you? Isn't that what cultural compensators? Yes, and I don't care

for that at all. No. I I write a lot of silly things down, but I do think years ago I used to do this bit about having lived with a I lived with a white woman for a few years, and she was a like an avid believer in like ghosts and and the the fact that our apartment was haunted, and she used to tell me there was like a ghost in our apartment all the time. And we lived in fucking where were we living. We were living in

Crown Heights at the time, on Eastern Parkway. So it's like, nah, you don't get to you don't get to play ghost games over here when we like are amongst all these Jamaican people, you know what I mean. Like we went there together. It was it was a joint decision. I didn't go like, let me bring this white bitch to Karen Heights and see what happens. It was we were moving from Boston. We both needed a roommate, and and

we we teamed up to make that ship happen. You came from Boston and thought the safest thing for your black life that matters was to move to Crown Heights, Brooklyn with a white woman. No, No, no, I thought the cheapest thing for my black life was the move to Crown Heights. For the white woman, I didn't think it was safe. The moment we showed up, I'm glad. I'm glad you realized that you were not, in fact safe the entire time this year. Oh no, I know

when I know when a McDonald dis haunted. You know what I mean. Our apartment was fine, but everything else around that community was not doing well. It's I guess better now, I don't. I mean, I lived in New York probably around the same time. I loved Crown Heights then, but I can just imagine it would have been a difficult place for the two if you are to navigame or not, I don't know. I feel like they leave white women alone. It probably might have been harder for

me to walk around over there to Niggason. For her, they might have just stepped out being called the police, right. I feel like, uh, And we were like we were on like Crown Heights, we were on like Eastern Parkway and Troy, so like we were exactly we were moving into sort of like where it becomes that hasidic side

of things. So I think for a white woman over there, they're like, all right, we can make sense of of why you're here, whereas like other, I look like an outsider no matter what, ain't what direction I go into. So it was just a bunch of niggas looking at me weird and mean for no reason all day. No, there's always been, but every black community has always had their guy in the cardigan. I want to be special so bad. You know that person went to college. Don't

mean they like it. Motherfucker's. Motherfucker's still have opinions even though they're familiar with it. Okay. So, so that said, she was an aver believer in ghosts, and I think, and I'm curious to hear where you are with this whole thing. I think that ghost personally, I do believe that people see what they see. That like, if you believe in ghosts, you probably are going to see ghosts.

That said, I do think that there's a weird conflation that white people do sometimes with scary sounds and and sort of like odd objects or experiences with what is probably a human experience outside of their their cultural norm, if that makes sense. Okay, So I'm gonna sound super hotep hat Okay, hold on, that's how they get you. But that's how they get you. This is seriously how

white people try to get you, for real. But she has one of my favorite podcasts, a little Bit of Juju and the host Juju Bay, because she articulated this in a way to really kind of helped me to make sense of it. So what are ghosts? Right? Those are dead people, right, people that used to be dead. So that's your grandparents, that might be one of your you know friends, we're grown friends, you know what I mean? Like people we've known, Were they cars? Were they monsters?

So why do we have this negative idea when we think of ghosts? You know, we think of people or spirits have been here before, you know. And I get part of it is just popular culture has glamorized or you know, there's been a lot of movies and TV shows and books that since her around the idea of haunting or somebody coming back with a bad you know,

intention or not wanting to do something good. And then there's you know, videos and and books and you know, even when you're a little kid about ghosts coming back to do good things. But it's still kind of like this weird being that's outside of you. It's not aspirational. In fact, it's usually kind of portrayed as if these spirits are stuck, you know, like they shouldn't be able to talk to you, they shouldn't be in the house, right. Even Casper is a boy who wishes he wasn't dead.

He's nice, but he's like, funk, I wish I was still kicking it, right, And so when are in some of the African traditions that we were stolen from, our ancestors communicated with ancestors, right, with people who had gone

on to the other side. You saw it depicted in Black Panther right on some level, and I guess that's most people's kind of mainstream introduction to to that level of ancestral veneration, right, the idea that like I respect and I care for and I talked to my ancestors, so like so to me, when I think of ghosts, are people that were here, Like those are my ancestors, and like I do have a communication with them because I talked to them and I set out food for them.

I have an altar set up in my house. I've gone full California bioble girl in the past two years, but It's like the most powerful thing that I've ever done. And I think it's something that black people need to tap into and white people need to tappen and other folks who haven't find out what your ancestors did and t happened that I have a lot of white blood and me I'm here. At some point I'm going to figure out, like, Okay, well what did my ancestors on

that side? What were their spiritual rituals. I hope it wasn't killing black people, you know what I mean, Like it probably was in you know, but like what were the things they did to honor their ancestors and they're dead? And like, I think that that's something that we should as as African Americans. We have not been taught that, you know, like in church, you're taught the spirits are bad,

and the movies you're taught they're scary. These are your people set out, you know, your grandma's favorite candy bar and a glass of water and a white candle for her. Wow, it doesn't have to be something super involved or crazy. Start small, but start talking to your ghosts. Start talking to your ghosts, is what you're telling me. But I have so many questions because this is a completely new idea to me. Right, I've never I've never once been

encouraged to talk to any ghosts. In fact, I think I've always functioned of the presumption that if I do not talk to them, they will not bother me. We we can, we can live at peace amongst each other. Right, So what am I meant? What is this candle meant to do? Like it? Is this just a way of initiating the conversation at the point that I've initiated it.

Are they coming to me like themselves as they were living, or is it like some weird dementia version of that that person who was gonna say, some weird scary ship that I gotta process. So that depends what your level of communication is and right, And there are people who have powers where they can really communicate beyond what the average person can write. I am, not, to my knowledge, one of those people. And I'm certainly not a guide or a teacher or you know, I'm still relatively new

to you know, ancestral veneration myself. But as I understand it, when you light a candle and you make the offering of water food, you know, maybe some of their something that reminds you of them. Maybe if you these are people that you know and you have to have, you should have a separate all ste for your relatives from your friends. You know, you can do something for friends and other people you admire too, but for your family, you want to have a place where it's like here's

big Mama, here's Granddaddy. You know, like here's my cousin passed away. Like you don't talk to the same ship with your with your grandma that you talk with your your ghost homies exactly. That would be different, you know, and like you know, you can go to that space. I go twice today. Some people go a few times a week. Some people go as they feel compelled to do so, you know, and you can talk to them, you know, I kind of talk to them as a group,

you know. I just say I'm thankful that they're part of my life, that they care for me, that I'm I'm part of this family that I come from, you know, and that that I hope they're well, and that I hope they accept my offering. You know, it's usually a plate of whatever food. I don't eat breakfast, but I make them breakfast. But like I when I eat dinner at night, I set out a plate for food for them. Like if I don't cook, then if I go to

popye as a good tupopeye chicken sandwich. You know, I went out from my you know, my big hobies and the sky and you know it in terms of communication, and I won't share everything because it's personal, but like I haven't really openly talked to me about any of

this before. You know, sometimes there's messages, right sometimes like there's something you were trying to see clarity on, you know, maybe the that you were working on that just figures itself out and you're like, oh, this is how I ended.

You know. For me, it could be something that I'm writing and you know, or or just material that i'm you know, something that I've been noodling on, like an essay just kind of starts and and spills out of my you know, brain and I just got to pull over and put it in my notes app So it's not that it always happens like when I'm at the alter, you know what I mean, But just these little things that have been unlocked. I got you. So let me ask you a little bit about this food because this

is I WoT, I'm dumb and I loved it. So you put out some Popeye's, right you have you ever seen a bite taken out of that bad boy? No, nobody's gonna eat the food. Nobody's gonna eat the food, and you don't have to do Some people will do a part, like if they're eating a sandwich, they just cut off piece of the sand you know what I mean, Like I, if it's a meal, I usually they'll usually get a smaller portion than what I feed us. But sometimes it's kind of like, you know, I'm gonna give

you the big piece of chicken. I gotta for a piece of the big piece of chicken out. And to me, it's just this kind of like sign of respect and acknowledgement. You know. Also it's it sounds similar to like in the Bible when you like cut a goat, like you you chop a goat head off, and you know like, yeah, this goats for you God, and then the other goat is for us, and we eat that goat. But this no essentially yeah, like we we don't eat this one.

And so you can do that with Popeyes. I didn't know that I do it with if I have a milkshake or Starbucks or something, I don't finish it, you know what I mean? Like I say, if I don't pour some out, usually if I have an alcoholic spe or drink, I usually pour some out, you know. But if I'm out in public, I can always pour my drink out, So I just leave some you know. Okay, I got you, So let me ask you. This is this a practice that you grew up with in like

your childhood home or is this something you then? I know you said you you've really gotten into it later in life, but like, is that something that that you created for yourself or were you being taught that by by your parents, by the people before you whatever. No, I didn't get any of this growing up. Interestingly enough, my father practices or practice or religious tradition that involves some of these kind of rituals. But we were kind

of allowed to make our own decisions. I didn't live in the house with him, and we were all kind of like allowed to make our own decisions about like how we wanted to engage virtuality. So I explored a

few things. But now, this is something I discovered quite recently in the past two years, and what motivated that transition into welcoming spirits in this way because you know, like you said, if we live in a in a society that teaches us that ghosts are scary, and so for me, as a person who treats them like some scary motherfucker's, I think I would feel hesitant to start

to treat ghosts differently. So was there something in your life beyond I know you said you you listen to that podcast, but like, is there anything that prompted you deciding, like, Yo, I'm not gonna be scared of them anymore, I'm gonna welcome them in a different way. I was never scared of ghosts, you know, Like I hadn't thought, like I kind of always thought, to what extent I thought about it that if people were communicating with me, it was usually in my best interests, you know what I mean.

Like I hadn't crossed anybody, so like nobody should be coming back mad at me, you know what I mean. Like if anybody, if somebody's on the other side, and if they've got of all the people in the world they have access to there trying to talk to me, they're probably trying to have it back, you know. But like I can't remember the inciting moment. I just remember that that I noticed. And I was living in Brooklyn at the time where I first started really kind of

noodling around this stuff. But I noticed that a lot of the women around me were doing these things when I really admired, and that they would talk about, you know, their ancestors, and they were talking about their ancestors in a way that I wasn't, because when I talked about my ancestors, I might as well have been talking about like Malcolm X and Harriet Up, you know what I mean, like we would say ancestors or you know, probably at some in an event or a dinner where people were

pouring libations for their you know, I was thinking of those people like more still than I was my own family, and you know, it kind of started me doing some just kind of thinking about how it was disconnected from most of my you know, my the people when you think of your your folks, like your grandparents, you know, like how I was, you know, my past. Most of mine passed away when I was pretty young, so I didn't get to know them, you know, and so we

didn't really have a relationship. And how I had some resentment about some things that happened before I was born, and just some stuff I need to work through, and so kind of send me on a journey of thinking

about them. And over time, you know, I became aware of ultra building and the idea of like trying to actually communicate with them, and so you know, I picked up some books, listen to some podcasts and some Instagram streams, and you know, again like I'm not an expert, but you know, I would say to that my ancestors are my religion at this point. You know, this is kind of what my spiritual practice like primarily is, and I

feel very good about it. You know. I talked to them and then I pray, and I just I've never praised, so I said day in my life. You know, like I've just never been that consistent spiritually, and this is just I don't know, I just feel like my life has been going well. Like things have been good, you know, They've been It's it's a pandemic, like I'm suffering like everybody else. I definitely have sometimes the past two years. But you know what I mean, like in general, my

ability to deal with it has been improved. Like you hit your our own stride in sort of like accepting of I guess, uh, these new rituals in your life. It's fascinating to me because I think the way you're

articulating this I've never thought of. But I do think that is something really important in sort of taking ancestors as a word, from like this generic space of like the you know, the people we find in a in a high school textbook, to people that are literally people who were connected to what becomes your day to day

the experiences that are right in front of you. And I would argue there's probably a level of like intentionality right that, Like for black people especially, we are trained to not see our our own people as valuable and just to be like, well, you know these big, hyperbolic, extreme names, those are the ones you should you should look up to. But your grandma and ship and I gotta ever think about her as a valuable human on

the planet whatever. And it's like, Malcolm X is not the reason you're alive, what I mean, like like that

was not his walk. I didn't say that, but you know what I mean, Like your your grandparents met and and made a serious of decisions that led to your you know, one of your parents being here and unlessie you're being here, and like that alone is something to honor, and like you can have a complicated relationship with these people, you know, for some unfortunate that I don't have abuse or or trauma related to any of my ancestors, you know what I mean, that I know of or anything

like that. But I know that you know, there are people who do you know what I mean, And that's to work through that. And what I've heard about it, and again I'm not the expert, is that you know, the people who may have harmed you on this side might be the ones working the hardest to help you out on the other side. You know, perhaps the grandparent who was very miserly and unkind, you know, becomes the

generous parent, you know figure on the other side. But the one thing I want to make sure I connected is like the music you played or the little hotep sound bite thing that our ancestors who were enslaved, you know, came with these practices and were prohibited from practicing openly, you know what I mean, and so they began to, depending on where they were located, hide their religious practices and their ways of showing reverence to ancestors and staying

connects them in other things, and certain parts of the world that was Africans hiding their spiritual practices and Catholicism, right, So, which is why if you go to certain parts of New York and you see all these you know, black Spanish speaking people, you know with Catholic you know all around, and they're not Catholic, you know what I mean, it's really really fascinating, Like we've always figured out ways to

do what we've always done. And you know, from every history of Africa that I've I've come across, like something we've always done has been talking to our ancestors. So I think it's just a great opportunity that African Americans have that most of us have been scared out of participating it or just have never heard somebody talk about

it like this before. Yeah, and I think you you made a really interesting point that that I think helps to sort of ease someone into this experience or at least considering an experience like this, which is the fact that like your grandparents and you may have a complicated relationship or your ancestors and you may may have a

complicated relationship and that's okay. I think ghosts for for the average consumer are are sort of treated as like the scary entities because they themselves are just bad people or complicated people, or people that still needed to solve a problem that got left behind. And in a lot of ways, the human experience is that. So there is

no good ghosts and bad ghosts. It's just complicated individuals who can either lift you up or help you answer questions that maybe you you couldn't answer yourself, or help you find free parking wherever that can exist. But one way or the other are there for for resolve more than adding conflict. As you're you're sort of putting it,

I think, yeah, we just you know, we don't. And that's not to say that you know, there aren't spirits that may have bad intentions, but like that's not our definitive history of engaging with ghosts, you know, like as the people for us, engaging with ghosts means talking to our dead and and speaking to them with respects or just thinking about how black people do funerals, you know what I mean, Like just that there's a level of performance for a lot of them, you know, the ritual

of the repast and kind of like who cooks and what they cook or or you know, just the amount of time that we spend together. I think, you know, on those occasions is and how it's spent is on some level, I think, a nod to how we used to feneralize I did, you know what I mean? I think the thing that was missing is that for a lot of people, the communication of the conversation stops there,

you know. But but but I've always throughout my life heard people talk about you know, it may just be posting an Instagram picture and they're writing it to the dead homie, you know what I mean, or people talking about you know, sometimes I feel my mother's presence and I just talked to her, you know. Like I think a lot of people are engaging in their day to

day life without calling it anything in particular. Do you think that the hesitancy to call it something in particular or to to directly align it with what you're describing with like an altar and sort of like this active effort to place food in front of the altar towards your your ancestors is connected to black people's relationship with religion in this country that like you know, we we got a heavy hand of Christianity like slapped on top

of us. Do you think that that is in any way in obstruction to what we're moving towards in your your description of ghosts. Absolutely, And there are people far smarter than me who can really make the connection between what goes down and and you know a lot of our average Black churches and some of our traditional stuff and how there's a through line, you know what I mean, like how it's not all brand new and native to America.

Some of this is our traditional spiritual practice. It's just showing up with this other religion that we've been you know, introduced to. But like, yeah, I mean there's a deep fear of African spirituality and Africans that lives in a whole lot of African American people, and uh, you know, fear of I mean we've been made to feel infeori and the inferiority complex is not limited to like what we think of African Americans on some levels, what we think of who we were before we got here, you know,

like not thinking of us as industrial. I mean there are some people that only can think of us as kings and queens before you know, slavery. And then there are people that can't think of us as having a society and having ristules and things that matter, you know, that just kind of thinks of us as these our ancestors. Is these folks that were just kind of there until they were uprooted, you know, but that they don't have any real imagination or curiosity around who they were before.

But like also as a means of survival, you know what I mean, Like on the plantation, you had to hide these things. And so for some people the hiding was how do I get creative and and figure out

a way to stay true to myself? And for others it was how do I, you know, assimilate into something that you know, it is safer and easier for me to deal with, you know, how do I survive my circumstances, which I think connects really nicely back to what you were saying about, like the this adopting of like Catholic candles for non Catholic not services, but experiences. It's just we are using what is placed in front of us

to express ourselves however we can. And it doesn't necessarily matter if this is the right equipment for the job. The job is just getting done however we needed to get done. That's essentially the story of our lives as black people, right, Like, we don't always have the quote unquote right equipment, but somehow we have to figure out how to get through. And that's what we've done, you know.

And a big part of the reason that we've gotten through is our relationship to religion, both our traditional religion and our relationships Christianity. But it's also in some ways held us back because there are things that we don't challenge and things that we don't interrogate or you know, attitudes that are incredibly detrimental that are funnel through the church that you know, are a lot of our people are successful to. It's tricky. Yeah, White Jesus, uh, he ain't.

He ain't done the best for us. I think there are times, right, I love White Jesus, but he's not always the best. There there's a bunch of hurt that comes along with at least the representation of him. For sure. There's there's the hurt of the representation. There's the way that black queer people have been made to hide, you know, in the music ministry, right, hide in the dance ministry, hide you know, with their little friends and and you

know at gatherings. There's the ways that black women, you know a lot of black women are in these deeply emotional and on some level unhealthy relationships with their pastors, you know what I mean. It becomes the man of the household, even though he's not the man of the household, and they're tithing money that they don't have and making sure that he's getting a new Cadillac or his mortgage

paid off for his anniversary. But they're struggling to make ends meet, and so, you know, contorting to some ideas about gender that that don't really work necessarily for us, but that have been funneled to us through religion. You know. Yeah, let me ask you this last question before we go to break you are you are a mother, and I'm curious to know how this newer practice in your life now relates with your daughter. It's this something that you

are teaching her as well. Are you at all worried that she's gonna like bring this up at school and then people are gonna be like, get your weird ass out of here. With the ancestors and the altars and all that is this is this something you're worried about, are you like? Hell yeah, this is an exciting let's dig in. You know what I thought, Hell yeah, this is exciting. Let's dig in. And I brought her into it,

you know, after not very long. You know, I have told her that the altar is among the number of things that happened in our household that might be different than what other people doing their households. And so our household business is our business. So you don't need to tell anybody everything. We eat, what we what I put out for home. Who comes through here? Like you know, I think the traditional the tradition of a black mama's business is her business is something that I have managed

to indoctrinate. It's her that's very smart. You stack tradition on tradition, and it sort of protects the tradition from being damaging for both you and hers as she's navigating the world as a young person. Hell yeah, all right, we're gonna take a break. We'll be back with more than me, a little new and more. My mama told me. And we are that. No, no, yep, yep, we're back.

We're back. We're still here with more, Jamila Lemieux, more and my mama told me, we're still talking about the possibility that goes do in fact exists and that black people can see them again. I was I was bamboozled with this episode. I was presented this as if Jamila believe this or at least considered this, And it turns out this was just a character study. This was just her chance to make me feel shame at uh at

presenting this very dumb idea in the first place. Do you feel like, and this is I guess maybe a good question to lead us into some of the research that I did, do you feel like in relation to this, this con this this conversation around the ancestral uh plane, around these these ancestors that you're experiencing things with, do you feel like they've ever presented themselves in an actual, like physical form. Have you seen one of your ancestors before? No,

I have not. Are you at all concerned that that might happen and that changes your relationship with them? It might change the relationship. I'm not concerned about it. You know, That's that's something I worry over. Okay, You're like, if it happens, we'll figure it out. Things. It's just not a thing to SIW my mind. It's not like what if they walked through. I'm like, nobody's gonna bite the sandwich, you know, and just that that would be the part

that sucks me up. I could not handle somebody biting the sandwich. And still I don't think I can handle that either. But it's not gonna happen. I feel confident the sandwich won't be bidden unless my child decides to violate what I've explicitly instructed her, which is that we don't eat the altru food. Don't you dare eat that sandwich? Al right? Well, fair enough, you have much more faith than I do that, Uh, people are gonna be reasonable

about not eating those sandwiches. Let's dig into some of this research, because I think some of this might I don't know what it does anymore, actually, because I think you've you've spoken so eloquently about some of like what you consider to be ghosts. But I'd be curious to hear what you think about what the standard beliefs of ghosts are sort of being communicated as through like I guess, research and science, if we want to call some of

this that. So, a study from this company you give shows that forty one percent of Americans believe in ghosts, and only twenty percent of those people actually claim to have seen a ghost. So almost half of us think ghosts are real. Only about of us actually feel like we've we've encountered some sort of paranormal spirit. That's interesting. I mean I'm not surprised that those numbers, you know.

I I also think, like, I don't know, like we're obviously from something very vast and complicated, right, Like, so the idea that it just ends at death, it's easy to believe otherwise, because like what a just fascinating thing that the world is, you know what I mean, Like, you know, we don't know what the other side looks like, so I think why not believe in something else? I mean, we could be I could be completely Ryan, could just die and that's the end. But like I feel good,

you know, thinking otherwise, Like it it feels nice. It feels like you're a part of something. So I don't really see the harm. And you know, people just kind of blindly, you know, the majority of us who have not seen a ghost believing that there is some sort

of spiritual matter. Yeah, what's especially fascinating if in this um this sort of like research study that they did is that forty percent of Americans believe that ghosts exists, but forty three percent of Americans believe that demons exists. The number actually like spikes a little bit when you start putting this in a different context. And I'd be curious to hear your thoughts on why you think that

might be. Why are we more Keep in mind, they've only eleven percent of those people actually think they've seen a demon or encountered a demon, but they are much more faithful, much more. They're more faithful regarding demons than

they are regarding ghosts. Why is that. I think it's because of the the desire to believe that there's some evil force responsible for some of the things that happened in the world, as opposed to recognizing the evil of human beings, you know, to like the idea that a devil figure is responsible for our problems, as opposed to like, no students an asshole and he shut up at school. You know, everybody looked the other way like he was an asshole for a very long time. You know. Yeah,

it's like BL's above, didn't get him. That's that's him. That's always was, you know. And so if spirits come from humans or if spirits you know, become humans, I guess depending on how you look at that process. But like, ultimately I can't imagine that they're all good, you know, like I don't believe that like just because somebody's dead, like now you know, they're they're on the winning's team, or they just want everybody to live, right, I think

that's an ideal outcome for most people. And and and I think that perhaps that might be the outcome for most people that they're trying to do something, you know, like that you get to go in the good direction when you're done. But you know, I also would suspect that a lot of the people who said they've seen a demon like I would be dying to know the percentage of them that were like talking about their like ex spouse, you know what I mean. I'll show you

a Facebook you know, like a bitch live on third God. Yeah, I I do think these terms right there so vast when you when you really break them down, a demon, a ghost, whatever it is that it it has the potential for me to just apply it as I see fit, or or to put it on someone or something that may not in fact be that, but in my life, in my very subjective experience, they represented something frustrating or sad or evil as it were enough that I was like,

that thing is ungodly, that thing is is undead or whatever it is that that sort of motivates you calling someone a demon or something demonic. Yeah, I definitely think you know, it's going to make the distinction between dead and evil. Yeah, everything that's dead is not even that kind of the bad guy because you're you know, you're dead.

But it's something you said earlier, Like there are so many movies like even Casper, you know, like the dad wants to be still here and so everything that they're doing is motivated by that. But like as I would imagine it, and the dead are aware of their circumstances and that they are not you know, up for renewal. Like that's some movie stuff, you know, where it's like, well, if you do this, then the third you can go

back and and and be alive again. So like they're not trying to come back, they're not trying to take over your body, they're not trying to take over your life, you know, because they can't. Yeah, we've had this conversation a few times on the podcasts regarding like aliens, right, that there's like this weird instinct on the part of human beings to presume that aliens have human motivations, right, And it's the same I think applies for for spirits.

There's no reason that a spirit that has made it past this mortal plane to show back up and be like still desiring fucking sneakers and Bodega sandwiches or whatever it is, Like, Oh, I've seen the other side. Now, I want to go to the d m V. I know all the mystery of the universe. I want to get on the train sitting next to somebody who's no, they got better shipped to do I think, I hope. And if they don't, God damn, that's sad. That. Uh, that's that's where we stopped. That's the case. Let me

come back then, Yeah, I'm gonna come back. I'm gonna come back cool as funck. If this is as good as it is. Uh, I think I'll have it all figured out once I die. So the other thing that I think actually might be very helpful in our conversation around like the ancestors and spirituality is I wanted to the question that sort of kept popping up because there

were all these statistics about who believes in ghosts. Republicans apparently believe much more commonly than Democrats, women tend to believe. In fact, four year to women with four year degrees are sort of like the the biggest advocates of ghosts existing, I guess, in the country. But then education, in almost an opposite direction, says that the more educated you are,

you tend to believe less. Right, there's all these statistics, but the question that kept popping up in my head is why do we believe in ghosts in the first place, Like what is the motivation behind that? And one of the main things that seem to keep popping up was this idea that it is the human mind trying to

make sense of things that we can't explain. That like there's a bunch of ship in the universe that that doesn't make sense to us, and the best thing we can do is try to add logic to the unexplained, and sometimes the easiest way to do that is to call it a spirit or a ghost or an ancestor whatever it is. Absolutely, I mean, so much of what we say and think is us trying to make sense of our circumstances in the world around us, you know.

And again like especially because the way you know, the bad goes through the demon idea is used, I think looking for excuses to explain things as opposed to really get into the core of what happened and and and is what something that a lot of people are just prone to do. And this again not disparaging the presence of spirits, but I think that the reasons that people believe in spirits and and goes, they're not always connected

to what I believe, you know, continual spirit presence. To be right, that we all sort of find our own motivations, good and bad for our belief and some of those motivations are just uh, making patterns, and some of them are like I am seeking a way to to sort of like feel good and feel present in the world. And some of that comes through talking to these ancestors. So one of the things that that they talked about in one of the articles I read is this idea

of creating logical patterns. Right, Like, there's this this term that they used, uh paranoia paranno leia. Is that what how you say it? I don't know. I'm not to learn mid Man, but it basically explains that, like the human brain has this tendency when we see blurred images or when we hear like weird muffled sounds, to want to add human words or images to that to make

sense of it. So it sort of explains like why when we when they have those haunted house shows, right and they walk through the haunted house and you hear a weird sound and they go, do that's that ghost? Just say suck my dick, and then you they play it back and you're like, you did say it's like my dick. It's because of how easily suggestible our brains are when it comes to creating those those rhythms and

patterns when it comes to these sounds. Yeah, it made me feel like, in a way, the suggestion of this existence doesn't it doesn't eliminate the possibility of these sounds coming from a source that we didn't expect them to, but it does tell you that we decide what we can receive from it. If that makes sense that, like, if somebody decides to tell me that the ghost is mad at me, I will interpret the ghost as being

mad at me. Whereas if I just listened to the sound on my own, maybe I could hear something more peaceful or friendly inside of that ghost noise. Hell yeah.

So the other thing that I thought was really interesting and some of this research was like the idea of people summoning spirits, and I think this connects a little bit to what you were talking about in terms of summoning spirits as a means of coping with trauma, especially like the pain of losing a loved one, And you sort of talked about that earlier, with like people writing messages on like Instagram, Facebook, whatever, saying like we miss you,

We've been thinking about you, remember when this happened. All of that, and that being while we see that's a public connection that we're seeing, they suggest that some of the reasons that people claim to see a ghost in their home is sort of a more physical I guess

outpouring of that exact same feeling. That makes sense, you know, and again back to the idea of us trying to cope with the set of circumstances around us, it would make sense that as a response to trauma, you know, the way that we're engaging with that idea is oftentimes one that's designed to bring us comfort. Yeah, and interesting sort of in a nice way. In terms of the percentage of people who who claim to see ghosts of

them and this surprised me. Percent of the people who said that they had a ghostly encounter said that that encounter had at least one upside to it, such as like a sense of connecting to others, So like they're seeing more often than not, the people who are seeing ghosts are not having a bad time afterwards. Yeah, you

know what, I had been curious. I wonder how many of those like I saw a ghost are literally like I saw something that looked like a ghost or a figure, or you know, like I stumbled across a copy of my father's high school yearbook in the middle of the living room, you know what I mean, and it felt like he was there some ship, meaning that like you didn't actually see your father, but it was just you saw this picture and you had a feeling as if

your father was there because of like the feelings that came up and looking through the book something like that, or like, you know, maybe feeling like a picture fell off the wall and it was your grandmother trying to tell you something. You know, like that kind of like encounter. I wonder how many of those would be counted him on the like you know, I saw a ghost moments. Yeah,

I mean, I think again. It sort of goes nicely back to that idea of like patterns, right that, like if if I am having an emotional day, or if I am thinking about a person that I'm missing, and then something big enough happens around me or small enough, and that might be enough for me to feel like that was them trying to communicate to me, when in fact, I don't know if it's them trying to communicate to me, But the communication it maybe doesn't matter. Maybe it's just

the feeling that it brings it legitimacy. Yeah, it's kind of nice in that way where this doesn't have to be scary or traumatic if you don't want it to be, and if you do, I don't know, you're a sick fuck. Enjoy yourself. There's also a fair amount of evidence, it seems like, of people blaming ghosts, and I'm curious to

hear your thoughts on this. There are lots of people who claim that that some of these ghost sightings might be connected to mental illness or at least schizophrenia, unchecked sleep paralysis, over use of l s D are all things that they're saying essentially can lead a person to feel like they're having a paranormal experience when in fact is it's just all in their head. People hallucinate. But does that make it real? Does that make it less? Like? Where where do you think that that that falls in

terms of its legitimacy on the hallucination scale? Like you know, I mean, I think the legitimacy will be for them, like to what ability are they able to reckon or or to parts like I thought I saw something because I had a bad trip, you know, or because I was off my meds versus No, I know for a fact that I had this encounter. And that's not to say the people that are you know, dealing with the psychological emergency or drug dependency can't have a legitimate encounter too.

But you know, I think we definitely would be careful between you know, lining up somebody maybe having a passing moment, what a spirit and somebody you know, thinking that the wall is talking to them because they're on LSB. Okay, So so if I'm understanding you correctly, then it that would mean that if it feels real to me, it is real, and the justification for that afterwards doesn't that's a a thing that that needs to be parsed out personally.

It isn't necessarily something for us to decide for them, not that it's real, but that it's a valid experience that you had. You know, like during this period of time, you felt like the toaster was talking to you, So like what kind of lasting impact does that have on you? Do you understand now that it didn't really talk to you? Do you? Are you able to use this toaster anymore? Is it like off limits? Now? We gotta get at

the house, you know. I think it's a thing to be dealt with as opposed to lack a truth to be accepted. I got you. Yeah, Okay, there's a subjective nature to this, but that doesn't mean that you didn't objectively have an experience. The experience is real, even if the the byproduct of that experience is something that we should, uh, we should have more conversations about if nothing else that's fair. There is also sort of like what they call paranormal

uh side effects that happened in our brain. Like, for example, there was a scientist. This this dude who basically thought that he like, while working really late at night in a lab, thought that he could hear a ghost or

see a ghost moving next to him. And he was a super skeptic, hated the idea of of sort of paranormal activity being a real thing, and he decided to sort of like try to dig through to see if he can make sense of of what this thing was, and ended up finding out that there was a fan nearby him that was basically spinning out of frequency something they called the fear frequency, which was like eighteen point nine hurts, that was spinning at such a slow pattern

he couldn't pick it up. The human ear isn't able to pick up stuff below twenty hurts, but it was enough for our brain to start to try to make sense of things, thus creating the illusion of ghostly sounds and ghostly movement. And so he says that that maybe the justification for a lot of our ghostly experiences is the stuff around us moving in a way or or making noises in a way that aren't perceptible to our human ears and eyes, but are in fact happening in

the real world independent of any spiritual bodies. He did a lot of research. I just read stuff and then repeat it back. I don't know. Do you think that the fear of frequency in any way bumps against any of your your beliefs, the stuff that you've been practicing with your your altar and scestral sort of like prayers and whatnot. I don't think so, just because fear is just completely devoid, like just not present in that relationship. Like I just don't have any fear around the practice

I got you. So it's it doesn't matter, because I think the fear frequency, even the language around it, does suggest that ghosts or whatever we're seeing hearing blah blah blah is scary, and to your point, we shouldn't be or you're not treating this as a scary thing, So it doesn't really matter. That's fair. Okay, this is the last thing that I'll bring up to you before we

go to break. The one thing that's sort of like really started to ring out to me in terms of this conversation around like all of these these illusions of the mind, be it be a mental illness to be at the fear frequency. All of these things are the the idea that they are in some ways terms and and sort of like connotations I guess that are created by white people, that white people sort of like create

the language and logic around these things. And so our understanding of ghosts, and I think you've spoken to this pretty well so far, it seems like our understanding of ghosts is largely limited to what white people want us to understand ghosts to be in a lot of ways.

That is, so long as like the media and the things that we read are connected to fear and to sort of like ghosts being people in in fucking you know, colonial outfits, then we are always going to understand them as like this scary, dangerous thing and not, as you said, something a little more peaceful or helpful in your life.

Yes physically, yes, Like I don't really even have much asked that I just said, like, there's been I think in recent years of movement of people, you know, I say young people in the broadest sense, because I'm still including myself, but you know, millennials on down that have been exploring spirituality and who have been tapping into some

of the things that people came before us did. And you know, I think that I will continue to hear more about folks doing that, you know, and you'll see more of an influence of this sort of thinking in pop culture with black folks here and there, and hopefully that'll influence, um, you know, a reconsideration of what white folks have told us about ghosts and about our dead. Yeah, we can we can reconsider the white stories. We can make this a new if we if we all built

altars in our in our homes. Is it like in the front of your house or is this like in a private, quieter spot. It's in my living room. There's a divider, a role, Irish screens, so it's like it's kind of obscure, you know. And sometimes if I'm gonna have people in the house, I don't really want, you know, all eyes on my stuff. I can close it up. Hell yeah, So you don't have to make this a public experience. But we can all build altars and and and privately start to break some of these, uh, these

white teachings as it were. Okay, we're gonna take one more break. We'll be back with more to me, a little mill and more. My mama told me, we need a back. Yeah, We're back here with more, Jamille, little more. My mama told me, we're still talking about ghosts, the ancestral plane and breaking white habits. I guess breaking our are white beliefs out in the world. Let's play a quick game, and we we have one last game that we love to play on the podcast. This is a

new game. It's a brand new game that I cooked up special for this episode. It's called I'm Dreaming of a White Spirit. I'm Dreaming of a White Spirit. It's a it's a fun game where Jamila, I am going to introduce to you a few stories of white celebrities because I tried to look up black celebrities who said that they saw ghosts, and truly, there were very few who would even talk about it. I think Rihanna at one point had like a quote where she was like,

I don't eat at that restaurant no more. I get eerie vibes there. But like that was kind of the extent of it. So there aren't a lot of like ghost stories from famous black people. But well, yeah, you probably can't afford to to talk to in the media about whatever you're you're experiencing in your home. But there are lots of white celebrities who are like bugging I'll tell you about it. So I just would love to read you some of these stories and get your thoughts

on them. Hell yeah, So let's let's start with a fun one. This is a nice one. Let's start with my boy, Matthew McConaughey. Matthew McConaughey. In two thousand nine, he shared a story that his his home was haunted by his spirit name Madame Blue. He says, I was not even under the influence, and she was there. She wasn't that happy. It didn't seem like she was going to be much fun to hang around or have in my house. So I went ahead and stood my ground. I opened the door, and I said, you can move

around all you want, but I'm not going anywhere. For weeks, everyone that came to the house said the same thing, that someone's down the hall. There's somebody down in that hall. He says that Madam Blue basically eventually stopped messing with him and eventually let him and his guests, uh, just enjoyed their home. Your thoughts. Just like a white man said, yell at the ghost. That's his first thought. I'm gonna yell at it. I'm gonna tell her to stop I

moved into her house. She been here, who knows how long she could have been This could have been her land, and here you come. I'm a yell let her. If her name is Madame Blue, she's been there a long time, she's been there. Well, she's definitely that's her territory. And Matthew mcconaugheytes said no, I'm not leaving. And apparently Madame Blue gave up. Maybe she realized he was a decent enough dude minus the yelling at her part. Oh that she was like, I don't know, he's got his shirt off.

He seems like he might have just legitimately gotten on her nerves. Like he seems like he'd be pretty chatty when he smokes. And I could see like Madame Blue being like, okay, well nothing's Matthew McConaughey has trapped you in a corner vibes, you know what I mean. And as a ghost, you don't want to be trapped in a corner. You're already you've got enough going on. We got enough going on. So okay, here's a here's another fun one. Jenna bush Hagar and you know the daughter

of George bush Uh. She claims that during her time in the White House that she had a number of mysterious spirits sort of interact with her. She said, I heard ghosts. I was asleep. There was a fireplace in my room, and all of a sudden, I heard nineteen twenties music coming out. I could feel it. I freaked out and ran into my sister with room. She was like, please go back to sleep. This is ridiculous. Could have been some of those slaves have built the White House.

Could have been some of them dad iraq Eas that were like slaughtered because of her daddy's stupid war. Some of the US soldiers that were killed because of her daddy's stupid war. I'm sure there were a lot of spirits that are displeased with the Bush family. Yeah, And it makes me wonder how many of these these unhappy spirits are more in your brain that like, you know what your daddy did, and maybe that's just living in

in your spirit. You are articulating it in a in an odd way around your heart to look at it. I think it's a very good way to look at it. Okay, here's here's another one. We'll do two more. This is Demi Lovado. Demi Lovado. They said that they were haunted by a bad spirit. Not by a bad spirit, excuse me, but by a little girl. I think her name is Emily. I've been at had a medium come over, and and ghost hunters, and they both told me the same name, Emily.

There were so many times that I saw her when I was growing up. Lovado wrote, I believe that everyone can tune into that part of their mind. I think I have a really strong connection to the afterlife. When I walk into the room I can tell if something has happened there or not, or if a hotel is haunted. Okay, you think you think Demi Lovado is connected like you? Now? I hope they're good enough to call two sets of ghostbusters that like don't communicate with each other like Okay,

bat the name is Emily, you know what I mean? Like, but it's two different entities and dide I know each other, have no prior relationship. Both came up with the name Emily. It's kind of hard not to think there's something to that. Fair enough, Okay. Last one, my boy, Keanu Reeves said that he's he's had ghostly experiences. Reeves claims that he saw a ghost as a child living in New York City. I'm probably like six seven years old. He said, we'd

come from Australia and nanny in the bedroom. My sister is asleep, she's sitting over there. I'm hanging out. There was a doorway and all of a sudden, this jacket comes waving through the door, this empty jacket. There's nobody, there's no legs, it's just there and then it disappears. He explains, he said, I was a little kid and I thought, okay, that's interesting. And I looked over at the nanny and she was making this terrified face and I'm like, oh wow, so that was real. It's possible.

You've got enough money to have a nanny. You probably your family probably did some bad stuff. So maybe it's the same as like the bushes, just on a smaller level. You know, there might be there's bodies buried in the repace. So we're just in Australia with our nanny, Like, excuse me, Sarkian I did, like, my favorite part of this is that there he doesn't like go like And then I talked to the nanny and we figured it out together.

He's just like, oh yeah, she's Serpen so it must have been real and then went to sleep like, yeah, you don't want to help her feel better, Big beast still be sitting right in that very spot. That would be the mystery of my life that I had to figure out. Dog, If a moving jacket seems so much scarier than if it's a person, I can let's talk, we can work this out. But if it's just a jacket, God, I'm sucked up forever. That's that's about a scary can get. Yeah.

All right, well, Jamila, I think we did it. I think I think we nailed this episode. Thank you for doing this. Could you tell the people at home where they could find you and what cool ship you of going on? Yeah? You can find me at Jamila Lemiu dot com to learn more about my work. Um, I'm one social media at Jamie Lemiu. Depending on where this airs, I have a story coming out that I'm like terrified of. People may talk about it. I don't know when you're

gonna air this, so I can't say what it. We'll keep up with me on social media. I'm a freelance writer. I have I've done stuff for The Arly Times and Playboy and The Cut, and I've got a big story coming up, and like I'm waiting for the editor to hit me with like the okay, here's when I dropped. So it's like I can't even really promote it, but like you might remember that you heard me on this podcast when you see the story. It might be a

little bit of a thing. All right, Well, keep your keep your eyes and ears peeled for that big story and follow Jamila on on all of her ship and uh as always, you can follow me at like Saint Kerman and please subscribe, do whatever nonsense you're meant to do the podcast to make people care about them and yeah, okay, we did it by because I've been growing babies my crop chips in your pans Ocola bears are racist. He also players hosting the money versions de many Turkey stuff.

I can't tell me nothing,