Listen to full episode:

Or watch on YouTube:

In this captivating exploration of supernatural death harbingers, folklorist and author Steven J. Rolfes takes us deep into the mysterious world of banshees and their counterparts across different cultures. With his book Beware the Banshee’s Cry as our guide, Steven reveals the fascinating complexities behind these ethereal messengers.

About the Guest: Steven J. Rolfes

Steven J. Rolfes is the author of several books about paranormal folklore. He also writes about the history of his home town, Cincinnati, OH. When he’s not writing, he tells ghost stories on the radio, which we can relate to. His most recent book at the time of this writing, Beware the Banshee’s Cry, is all about the history and mystery of banshees, and their origins in Irish lore.

What is a Banshee?

What exactly is a banshee? Steven presents three possibilities: the ghost of an ancestor with either loving or vindictive intentions, a fairy from the ancient Tuatha de Danann, or perhaps most intriguingly, a transformed Celtic goddess (at least one didn’t become a saint). The name itself—”bean sí” or “woman from the fairy mound”—connects these entities to pre-Christian Celtic traditions that have survived centuries of cultural evolution.

The Banshee of Irish Lore

From Lady Fanshawe’s encounter with a floating red-haired apparition at O’Brien castle in 1649, to a mysterious black cat haunting a Cincinnati hospital in 1879, these stories span continents and centuries. We also discuss similar lore about supernatural messengers worldwide, including Germany’s White Lady (Weissefrau) and Mexico’s weeping woman (La Llorona), showing how humans across cultures have personified premonitions of death.

The banshee folklore of Ireland contains some familiar elements—the banshee’s treasured combs that shouldn’t be stolen, the protective power of iron against supernatural entities, and the specific families traditionally haunted by these harbingers.

Will the Banshee Cry for You?

Banshees and their lore follow Irish families wherever they travel…but only specific families. Listen now to discover whether your Irish heritage comes with its own supernatural warning system, and consider: if you heard three knocks at your door tonight, would you have a spooky day?

The post The Irish Death Knock: Exploring Banshee Lore with Steven J. Rolfes appeared first on Homespun Haints.

Listen to the full episode:

About our guests: This Paranormal Life

Rory and Kit are childhood friends who take turns researching strange paranormal phenomena, and then try to convince one another that their researched story is true. You can find their podcast at thisparanormallife.com.

We ask the hosts some of their favorite stories, and they regaled us with tales of the White Lady of Union Cemetery in Easton Connecticut, the Kuchisake-onna (or slit-mouthed woman) of Japan, and the Jikininki, also from Japan.

When Rory asked us about one of our favorite ghost stories, we told them the story of the hellhound at Rotherwood Mansion.

This Paranormal Life‘s upcoming tour

Rory and Kit will be touring the U.S. in October of 2023! Check out their schedule here and be sure to grab tickets if you’re near one of the cities they’ll be visiting!

Love discussions of Irish cryptids and folklore?

In this interview, we discuss how the E.U. recently made leprechauns a protected species, and the other Irish cryptids Rory and Kit learned about in grade school. Like This Paranormal Life, we ourselves have heard stories about banshees, skunkapes, and bigfoot from our podcast’s guests. We also love hearing about cryptids in Scottish lakes and the chupacabra in Mexico and parts of the U.S. And we can’t wait to hear more strange Irish ghost stories and Irish cryptid stories, which can’t help but lead to a spooky day!

The post Exploding Ghosts and Buckets of Blood: Interview with This Paranormal Life appeared first on Homespun Haints.

Episode Summary: Three true short ghost stories

Sometimes it’s the little things that are the most scary. Those little incidents—the little unexplained happenings that pop out of nowhere—can be the scariest of all. Today, we share three short stories from three different guests, including one from our co-host, Becky.

AI-generated transcript of this episode available upon request.

Ghost Story No. 1

Our guest D lives in the Pecos Triangle (which encompasses the Pecos National Historical Park), where unexplained things have happened to him ever since he moved in.

Apparently, however, the events he experiences are just par for the course for those who dare to live within this strange region of paranormal activity in New Mexico. Strange disappearances, UFO sightings, and, of course, ghostly activity, are all common occurrences in this bit of wilderness in the Southwest U.S.

D references a video about the Pecos Triangle which you can watch below:

D’s experiences in Pecos aren’t the only strange supernatural events in his life. He also had an incident within a haunted house while he was studying photography in school.

Ghost Story No. 2

Ken Sledge of Sledgehammer Horror is not afraid of scary movies. In fact, his entire channel is devoted to horror, especially horror cinematography. However, when Ken was a teenager, he had an experience that could have come right out of a ’90s horror flick–except it was real. Ken retells his horrifying foray into a dilapidated haunted house and how the events of that evening terrify him to this day.

Ken also lets us know his very first horror film: House from 1985. And we have to agree, it’s a damn fine first horror movie for any kid to watch.

Ghost Story No. 3

We recently heard Becky tell of her visit to her family’s land in Lakeland, Florida, and the ghosts she and her family saw there. However, that story wasn’t the whole story. Another story recently emerged about a haunted clock that now, too, resides on the family property.

Be sure to listen to the entire episode to hear all three scary true short ghost stories. Until next time, have a spooky day!

The post An Unholy Trinity of Ghosts appeared first on Homespun Haints.

Episode Summary: A Haunted Florida Woman and her Ancestral Land

Ancestral ties run deep in the land that housed our predecessors. Blood mixes with soil, soul mixes with the air, and our lifeforce breathes into the green growth spurting out from the ground.

But what if we have to share our ancestral land with creatures from another dimension? How can we coexist with such entities? And how do we physically look to one another?

These are the questions our co-host Becky (a haunted Florida woman herself, in a way) had to face when recently visiting her family in Lakeland, Florida. Becky’s ancestors first dug a well in this sun-hardened soil in 1922. But it seems something that’s been on the land far longer than Becky’s family is still hanging around, causing mischief.

AI-generated transcript of this episode available upon request.

Episode Show Notes about the haunted Florida woman’s ancestral home

The original home standing in Lakeland inspired this podcast’s very first artwork. Becky knew the home was haunted long before the podcast began, so naturally the house built in 1922 and home to generations of her family seemed a fitting image for the first Homespun Haints website.

Even though Becky’s aunt and uncle knocked down the original house and built a new one on top of its original foundation, ghosts still lurk around the old walls. Becky, her aunt, her cousin, and her cousin’s children have all seen strange entities flitting around the walls. Perhaps all the antique dolls and other antiques around the house have something to do with it.

At one point, Becky brought out her SLS meter and took a look at the antique dolls.

Or, perhaps, the land is just haunted. By more than just ghosts.

Whatever the case, we want you to make your own opinions after you listen to Becky tell her story on the episode below. Until next time, have a spooky day!

The post The Lakeland Elemental appeared first on Homespun Haints.

Common myths about haunted houses

Before we go into signs of a haunted house, let’s talk about some common misconceptions of hauntings:

• Haunted houses do not need to be old. In fact, even new construction homes might harbor a spirit or two (remember Poltergeist and Stir of Echoes?)
• A house can be haunted even if no one died on the property
• Not all hauntings are malevolent. We’ve talked to people who love the ghosts they live with (though some professionals argue that it’s unhealthy to coincide with lingering spirits)
• Hauntings sometimes aren’t from the house at all–maybe you have a haunted object in your home
• The ghosts in a haunted house may not be there permanently–they could just be “passing through”

Scary things about hauntings that we’ve heard too many times not to believe

There are certain scary horror movie tropes that we used to think were myths, but they’ve happened to a lot of people we’ve talked to. If you think your house is haunted, have you or anyone you live with done the following?

• Recently remodeled your home
• Played with a spirit (Ouija) board or attended a séance of any sort?
• Recently visited a cemetery or a haunted location (yes, ghosts can follow you home!)
• Talked at length about ghosts, or watched a lot of horror movies

Okay, for that last point we need to make a clarification. Many people believe that talking about spirits will “give them strength” and make it possible for them to manifest more easily. Yeah, that’s not the way it works; at least not according to the data we’ve gathered.

What really happens is you become more attuned to the activity around you if you’ve been primed by recent conversations or things you’ve watched. Sometimes, horror movies can cause nightmares, too, if you have unresolved fears that the movie created.

Watch our video on how to dispel nightmares from horror movies before they manifest.

So how to know if your house is haunted?

Unfortunately, it’s difficult to know if a house is haunted before you purchase or rent it. Unless, of course, you or someone you know is a medium. Many hauntings start slowly and work their way into your lives over time, long after you’ve signed the contract saying you’ll stay there.

Some people know their house is haunted because they see or hear ghosts, in which case we’d love to talk to you on our show! But some hauntings are more subtle–and yet they can be just as menacing.

First of all, look for these signs within your house

• Unexplainable cold spots
• Things going missing or moving when you’re not looking
• Flickering lights
• Pipes bursting
• Strange smells
• Pets avoiding certain parts of the house or staring/growling at what seems to be nothing

These are all great things you can look for. However, as you know, some houses just don’t have good bones. Some houses have cold spots, flickering lights, and pinhole leaks because the contractor cut corners. Hauntings, however, can cause other, less physical problems for you and your family.

Next, see if any of the following happen on a regular basis

• Everyone keeps getting sick after moving into the house (please check for mold if this is happening).
• Healthy pets go missing or die.
• You feel “off;” nothing seems to be working out the way it should.
• You fight with your co-habitants more often over trivial things.
• Someone in your home has consistent nightmares.
• Children in the home have new imaginary friends.
• You are more tired than usual.
• A part of the home has an unusual, sudden infestation of some sort that you can’t seem to get rid of.
• In your gut, something feels wrong.

We all go through spells of bad luck. But if we experience particularly bad luck right after moving into a new home, even when we’re doing everything right, Occam’s Razor suggests the house is probably the cause. And that makes sense whether or not the house is actually haunted.

Listen to an episode about a house so haunted it caused a breakup (or did it?)

You determine your house is haunted. Now what?

In horror movies, the family never moves out of the haunted house until it’s too late. And you’ve seen a thousand tropes explaining why. But that doesn’t have to be you. You can take charge of your situation and keep it from getting so bad it becomes a real horror movie at a later date.

There could be a thousand things that appear to be a haunting. How to know if your house is really haunted could be that all the things listed above are happening, and you have a funny feeling in your gut that things aren’t right. Even then, you will probably have a hard time convincing yourself or others that you are living in Amityville. You and I both know this house is haunted at this point, but it’s reasonable to expect the majority of people to be skeptical of your claims.

What do you do if your house is haunted?

Time to take charge and go through the following steps.

Step 1: Rule out non-paranormal causes

Hire an electrician to look at the lights, and a plumber to see what’s up with those leaking, banging pipes. Get a mold inspection, check your HVAC system, and maybe find a better pest control service. Even if your house is haunted, you don’t want physical problems preventing you from finding the source of the haunting.

Step 2: Investigate the history of the area

Talk to your neighbors, especially the ones that have lived there forever. Find out what stories and lore surround not just your home, but also the neighborhood. Go to the local library and look at old maps–is your home on what was once a crossroads? Is your street called “Hidden Dead People Way?” These are clues about what might actually be going on.

Step 3: Look at your own life

Are you in over your head with rent or a mortgage and it’s causing stress? Did you just take a job you shouldn’t have? Is there a particular food that you used to crave, but now you think you’re allergic to it? Are you pregnant?

All of these things can cause profound change in our lives and our relationships, and not always for the better. If you want to combat the ghosts in your house, you need to combat your own personal demons first.

Step 4: Cleanse your home

You can hire someone to cleanse the ghosts from your home, or do it yourself. And “cleanse” means more than “clean” (though clean houses produce less stress, less places for ghosts to hide, and generally are healthier places so you should clean that house, too).

Smoke out your house with sage or some other herb, give your home a sound bath with a bell or singing bowl, sprinkle salt and water in the corners, etc. There are many guides on how to cleanse your home. Or, if you’re not confident on how to do it yourself, hire a professional who is.

Step 5: Protect yourself from future hauntings

The best way to keep the ghosts at bay is to keep a positive attitude and repel negative energy from your home. We wrote an article on folk knowledge for positive homes, which is a great place to start. Take care of yourself, eat healthy, and exercise.

Also, keep your home as clean as possible, open your windows and air out your home when it makes sense to do so. Some people like to place crystals around their home (selenite is good for repelling darkness and bringing light). Others swear by certain herbs such as eucalyptus and lavender (I keep dried bunches of both in my bedroom). Not only is this just general good advice for mental and physical health; it also makes your home less hospitable for the ghosts.

Should you move out of your haunted house?

We’ve had professional psychic mediums on the show who tell us that it’s not necessary to move out of a house due to a haunting. This is because earthbound spirits and shadow people can all be forcibly relocated by an experienced medium, or by some accounts, even by an intrepid homeowner.

There may be some types of hauntings, however, that can’t be completely eliminated.

Residual hauntings

For example, residual hauntings may be unlikely to stop after taking the above steps. This is because residual hauntings aren’t due to the current presence of spirits. They are usually attributed either to a time slip, or an event in the past that was recorded, almost like a cassette tape, onto the surrounding land. The recording plays, and the living witness the events as a kind of ghostly mirage. But the ghostly images we see in a residual haunting cannot interact with us, as they’re not conscious, or even technically present, any more than the image on a movie screen.

What to do for a residual haunting

Apart from removing all the mineral deposits from the property (a practically impossible task), we know of no good way to eliminate a residual haunting. The good news is, by the accounts we’ve heard, residual hauntings can’t directly harm the living. The bad news is, they often happen unexpectedly, giving us a startle. Or, they will occur at night, interrupting our sleep.

Many people just get fed up with watching the same recording night after night, and decide they’re ready to move out. We’d love to live in a world where it’s perfectly acceptable to list your house for sale as-is due to a “harmless residual haunting.” But in some places, such a statement would get you laughed out of the HOA. In that case, they might seek advice from a professional medium on how to sell a haunted house ethically.

Do you live in a haunted house?

We love haunted houses. From the real haunted houses we grew up in, to the ones we see in our nightmares, they all fascinate us. We made a tutorial all about how to draw a haunted house, and our first t-shirt design was of a cartoon haunted house that Becky drew.

If your house is haunted, we’d love to hear your ghost stories! Send us a note on our submit page, and we’ll be in touch. Until next time, have a spooky day!

Listen to our interview with a medium who had a hard time finding a non-haunted house to purchase:

The post How to know if your house is haunted appeared first on Homespun Haints.

Episode Show Notes

Becky’s first encounter with the Pale Man, as she’s starting to call him, began years ago. At first she thought he was the former owner of her 40-year-old home; after purchasing the home she learned he had possibly died on the property. But after talking to mediums, Tarot readers, and other sensitive friends, she’s convinced he’s someone who perhaps knew her in the past.

And, after doing some automatic writing exercises with Diana on this episode, she thinks he may be something sinister.

We provide the few clues we have. Do you have any theories? Let us know on our Facebook group at facebook.com/groups/homespunhaints.

Diana’s haunted basement

Diana has been dealing with a haunted basement for nearly 40 years. And in this episode, she shares the latest strangeness occurring in her home. Catch the full play-by-play of her basement ghost story here.

The few clues we can provide in this ghost attachment story:

The figure appears as a pale, white man, perhaps in his forties, perhaps older. He has blonde or white hair. Becky and others have seen him hanging out in a particular corner of her bedroom. When people try to talk to him, he won’t say who he is; he’ll only smile.

The Pale Man sometimes rides in the back of Becky’s car, but most recently she saw him sitting at the edge of her sofa in her living room. If she asks him to leave, he will. But he always comes back.

Listen to the episode for more hints and clues, and learn what Diana discovers when she tries to communicate with the entity. Should Becky be scared?

Until next time, have a spooky day!

The post The Pale Man: A Ghost Attachment Story appeared first on Homespun Haints.

What daffodils symbolize depends on when you live and how many daffodils you’re looking at. Today, people associate daffodils with springtime, rebirth, renewal, and good fortune to come. However, in ancient times, people believed daffodils were food for the dead. And, if you give a single daffodil as a gift, you’ll be handing bad luck to the receiver.

In fact, daffodils can symbolize so many different things, we had to make a video to explain it all.

It’s a spring thing

Daffodils poke their bright blooms out of the late snow, heralding the end of winter and the start of spring. In most parts of the Northern Hemisphere, daffodils appear around the spring equinox alongside the holidays of Easter, Purim, Passover, Holi, and Ostara. Personally, we don’t really like this time of year because we’re morbid ladies and prefer holidays with darker meanings, but we actually kind of dig the daffodil because it’s not as lighthearted as you might think.

Ostara, the Germanic goddess associated with the holiday of the same name (or similar name, depending on the region), will grant you good fortune for the coming season if you make a point not to trample daffodils. Considering most daffodils are deliberately planted in your neighbor’s yard, this is just good manners anyway. (If you must trample your neighbor’s flowers because you’ve got your own vendetta against them, choose another bloom to torment.)

What daffodils symbolize for food and medicine

Don’t eat daffodils. Their beautiful coloring is there as a warning, not an invitation. Handling daffodils for extended periods of time can cause a rash. Because these wily little flowers have calcium oxalate crystals—a lovely substance full of tiny crystal needles—in their sap. When the plant senses moisture from your hands or your mouth or whatever other body part you’re touching it with, the daffodil ejects these crystals and they go into you. Fun times. Instant pain.

If daffodils do that to you for touching them, imagine the damage they bring if you try to eat them. Usually you’ll just get pretty sick from ingesting daffodils, but in excess you could die. Unfortunately, daffodil bulbs look a lot like wild onions or even fennel, so mistakes are made.

Traditionally, however, daffodils existed in a lot of old medicinal practices. As you can imagine, small amounts of daffodil extracts can cause hallucinations and/or numbness, so applying daffodil-sourced salves on wounds can ease pain. Currently, researchers are looking at whether daffodils can be used to treat Alzeimer’s.

The Daffodil’s Origin Story

Daffodils as a species originate in the Mediterranean (you know, that place where all those Greek and Roman myths come from). The daffodil is also known as narcissus, and if you know the story of Narcissus you already know the story of the daffodil. But for those of you who don’t know the story….

Narcissus was a beautiful man, spawned from a god and a nymph. And he knew he was gorgeous. In fact, the gods warned Narcissus to never look in a mirror. If he did, he’d become so consumed by his own beauty that he could never look away.

So Narcissus wanders the countryside, looking all gorgeous and getting whatever he wants. Enter Echo, a young woman who falls in love with Narcissus and follows him everywhere. Narcissus can’t be bothered by Echo, though. He only thinks of himself.

After years of pining after a man who won’t give her the time of day, Echo wanders into a cave and wastes away to nothing until all that’s left is her voice, echoing through the rocks.

The goddess Nemesis takes pity on Echo and leads Narcissus to a still pool of water. Caught by his own beauty, Narcissus stares at his reflection until he falls into the pool and drowns. Daffodils sprout up where he stood.

What does the story of Narcissus symbolize for the daffodil? I have no idea, but you can make your own meaning from that. Maybe your neighbor growing all those daffodils you long to trample is self-absorbed?

You can come to your own conclusions on that one. Regardless, you’re bound to have a spooky day.

The post The meaning behind the devilish daffodil appeared first on Homespun Haints.

Transcript

BECKY
Hello, Hainted Loves. Welcome to Homespun Haints, Bonus Edition. I’m Becky

DIANA
I’m Diana.

BECKY
We just heard from Gerry Hunter on our episode on Monday. He is a minister. He’s retired now though; he’s the Reverend Gerald Hunter. He’s an author. He is a paranormal investigator. And what I think he spoke about in depth on that interview was the machismo of many of the men that were around him and how they reacted to ghosts.

And Diana, I thought this would be a great opportunity to revisit a topic that we had on our Patreon. If you guys are not members of our Patreon yet, you can go check that out on patreon.com/homespunhaints where our lovely patrons get all sorts of bonus content. And one of the things we talked about in depth was the idea of masculinity and femininity in paranormal investigation.

DIANA
Specifically for TV.

BECKY
We’re going to talk a little bit about that again today. But if you want more detail, go join our Patreon

DIANA
We talked about how it’s kind of emphasized for the benefit of the viewer and the television milieu. But what I want to talk about today is more just the general idea of approaching spirit communication and paranormal investigation in general, and what that has to do with masculinity and femininity in the larger scheme of things. Yeah.

BECKY
That sounds great. Let’s dive in.

Please subscribe!

Before we get started, I just want to give a shout out to you guys. Thanks so much for listening to us. If you like what we’re doing here today, I already mentioned our Patreon. Please consider joining that at patreon.com/homespunhaints. Also subscribe, subscribe, subscribe, subscribe wherever you’re listening to this. If you’re listening to it on our website, you can go to Apple or Spotify—wherever you like to get your podcasts—and look for us and just follow us there. Or if you’re on YouTube, please subscribe because we want to be in your ear holes every day. Or at least twice a week.

DIANA
And if you aren’t watching this on YouTube, you could be watching this on YouTube right now. Go to YouTube.

BECKY
Yeah, we have a YouTube.

DIANA
You can see our faces. Do you know what color our hair is right now? Do you even—can you even guess?

BECKY
I don’t know, changes every day.

DIANA
I guess you could call it “undefined.”

BECKY
I can tell you though, that our hearts are black. [EVIL LAUGHTER]

The Book We’re Referencing

I wanted to point out this book, Ghost Channels by Amy Lawrence. We got a lot of information about this on our Patreon episodes because it is the first, perhaps the only sociological study of ghost hunting shows. Ghost hunting reality shows. We will have a link to it on our website, but it is called Ghost Channels: Paranormal Reality Television and the Haunting of 21st Century America by Amy Lawrence.

And it is a fabulous book, and we’ll touch on some of the things that she talks about today. Then, we’re going to go into our own experiences in this field as storytellers who have talked to a lot of paranormal investigators and what masculinity really means. We’re going to do our best because as you can probably tell, we’re women.

DIANA
Well, it doesn’t mean we’re not masculine

BECKY
That’s true. Or are we women?

DIANA
Yes.

BECKY
Oh, okay. Thanks for defining that for me.

DIANA
You’re welcome. Put you in your box and stay there. Get in that pumpkin shell!

Aside from gender, does that book also kind of address, like you mentioned, that part of the title is “21st Century Ghost” stuff. Does it address the difference between how you would have been seen in the 20th century having a haunting or talking about your haunted house or talking about the ghost you saw, and how people are seen in the 21st century, because that is also a topic that Gerald brought up was that, nowadays, there is less stigma because people are actually seeking out haunted tourism and ghostie experiences and ghost hunting and ghost shows. And growing up in the mid sixties, he was very, very afraid of being made fun of and being a pariah for having a ghost in his house.

Did the show Ghost Hunters change attitudes about the paranormal?

BECKY
Yes, attitudes have definitely changed between now and 10, 15, 20, 30 years ago with regards to the paranormal and being open to the paranormal. And the show, Ghost Hunters, really kind of paved the way for that. And that that was the first one. The original Ghost Hunters came out on the Syfy Channel, and Ghost Hunters really came about in about 2002.

BECKY
And what happened was there was an article in the New York Times about this group of plumbers who were doing these paranormal investigations on the side. TAPS. The Atlantic Paranormal Society, and somebody over at SYFY saw the article and was like, Hey, this would make a great reality show.

DIANA
Absolutely.

BECKY
By 2009, it was the most popular show on SYFY.

DIANA
Really?

Your Average Joes

BECKY
The reason that the show is so successful isn’t just because they’re looking for ghosts. However, I do remember—and it may be in this book, but I do remember hearing this elsewhere—that because of the show of Ghost Hunters, belief in the paranormal amongst average Americans soared.

DIANA
Could that be because they were manly plumbers?

BECKY
That is part of it, yes. So the show did kind of open the way—it made it okay for people to kind of come out and be like, yeah, it’s okay. I believe in ghosts because these average Joes are out here doing these paranormal investigations. And sometimes they find things, sometimes they don’t, and they’re very scientific about it.

Now, prior to Ghost Hunters coming out, you definitely did have people on the fringe. Especially in the south where I live, there’s always been this sort of belief in spirits and haints and things like that. And then of course, we had the whole spiritualist movement in the Victorian era with mediumship and all that. So it does go in waves.

The Relationship Between Horror and the Economy

BECKY
It does go in trends. However, belief in the paranormal and interest in scary things such as ghosts and horror and all that tends to go up when the economy goes down.

DIANA
That’s so cool, isn’t it? Because also, I know that the interest in horror movies is linked to how many wars are currently waging on the planet.

BECKY
It’s an escape, right? It’s an escapism. Think about it now. Ghost Hunters, 2002 and then what happens in 2007 to the Global economy?

[MISSILE EXPLODING SOUND]

DIANA
Nothing good.

BECKY
We have this big major crash. And guess what we start seeing a lot of? Ghost hunting shows.

DIANA
Ghost shows! Ghost shows! yay!

Gender and Paranormal Investigation

BECKY
But we want to talk about gender, don’t we?

DIANA
I think so. That’s what we started out talking about. So. Yes, yes, that’s what we’re talking about.

BECKY
Let’s backtrack a little bit and let’s talk a little bit about what Gerry said about being macho and the reaction to ghosts.

DIANA
Oh, I just love that he used the word “macho man.” That way we can use it without feeling awkward. Yeah. No, he actually came out and said my dad was a very macho man and the brothers were also macho. And then he said, “I’ve always been the one who wasn’t macho in my family, despite my best efforts.” That kind of surprised me. Like, Oh, right, I wanted to be macho, like my family, but I’m not. But I tried, but I’m not.

BECKY
Well, it’s interesting that to him, being open to the spiritual kind of ran contrary to being quote unquote macho. And that also is discussed in this book. So when you think about the reason that these paranormal investigation shows have done so well, and if you notice that there tends to be a formula that they follow.

The Formula

DIANA
Yes, I have noticed that.

BECKY
So a couple of things that I want to point out. First of all, the men—because they’re mostly men. Yes, there are outliers. There are definitely women. They tend to be white men. Again, huge exception of Ghost Brothers, but they’re still dudes and they all tend to be from like a working class tough guy background. They’re plumbers, they’re contractors, they’re handymen. They are your everyday Joe. They’re your guy next door.

DIANA
Yeah, exactly. You know, you’re not going to get like, I’m Dr. Anthony Fauci, and I’d like to talk to you about ghost hunting. Yes.

BECKY
No.

DIANA
It’s like average people.

Your Average Joes

BECKY
It is. It is. And that’s very appealing. That’s very appealing to guys just like them, because what do they do, even though they’re these average Joes, even though they’re not out there conducting brain surgery, they’re still really tough because they can walk into a haunted house and not be afraid of the ghosts. It’s very appealing. So you dudes that watch the show, have you been like, “Yeah, I want to be like that?” I mean, I’ve watched the show and I’m like, “Yeah, I want to be like that.”

DIANA
Not afraid to go into a haunted situation. I think at first when I started watching the show, it kind of did impress me.

BECKY
Yeah, I was like, I want to fill up with that masculine energy and just be like, Yeah, and bring me my K2 meter. Come and get me ghosts. Mm hmm. No, I love it.

DIANA
I always thought that it was because they were plumbers. They could find out like, is it the pipes? Like, everybody always blames the pipes. Like they’re plumbers. They would know. Finally, we can get somebody to eliminate all these pipe sounds for for hauntings.

BECKY
Think about the stereotype for the average Joe, Right? He’s not the Ph.D. ivory tower academic; he’s down there working with his hands; he’s got more common sense. It’s the common sense, it’s the being of the people, knowing how stuff works. It’s not just theoretical. So that’s kind of where that comes in.

Analytical vs. Empathic

BECKY
Couple other things. They’re very analytical, right? They use tools.

DIANA
Yes.

BECKY
It’s not about feelings. It’s not about sensing.

DIANA
It’s supposed to be objective measurements, regardless of what those measurements are, they are objective.

BECKY
And in very stereotypical gender roles, men are thinking, women are feeling men use tools and objectivity, women use their emotions and their intuition. Hence, again, a big masculine thing. These guys never show fear because they have their tools. Now I’ve heard in actuality they do get scared. They just cut that out of the final cut.

DIANA
They just cut out the scary, scary part. Oh, oh, I feel cheated. I want the scary track. I want the track of of of screams beep.

BECKY
There’ll be a lot of screams, but it’s usually the women on the team. Have you noticed that?

DIANA
I have noticed that the women scream a little bit more, or at least their screams make the edit.

BECKY
Yeah. So that is the second aspect, right? So we’ve got Average Joe; common sense; doesn’t get afraid, not giving in to silly flights of fancy, right. Because he’s a blue collar worker, he just is in the dirt. He’s climbing under houses every day. He’s very analytical, very masculine. Again, very analytical, uses tools, does not get caught up in feelings.

Outside vs. Inside; Public vs. Private

BECKY
And thirdly, all of these shows—have you noticed that every single one of these shows, they always show them going to the place? They always have to have that cut of them in the vans, talking to one another on their way to the location. They make a very specific point of showing them going to the location. And that’s that’s a lot of film work, right?

Like they got to have the cameras in the car on the dash. They have to have the camera set up on the road watching their black vans in succession go by. Why—why make such a big point about it?

Why?

Again, traditional gender roles. Women are of the inside, men are of the outside of the world. And this dates back to ancient times. Ancient, ancient times. Back in classical Athens, the saying was a righteous, virtuous woman leaves her house twice in her life: once for her wedding, and once for her funeral.

This is this is where this comes—I mean, that’s not where it comes from. But that idea, right, is that women are supposed to be of interior spaces. They take care of the home. Men are of exterior spaces. They are public. And so, you have to make a point of showing that the men are outside. They’re going to another location.

It’s public to them, even though they’re going to be in a house, maybe. There’s a big deal of showing that they’re going there. They’re existing outside of the interior. They’re doing something in public.

DIANA
Yes.

BECKY
It all follows a formula and it’s very appealing to those of us that want to embrace our love of ghosts but not feel like we’re not macho. Read the book.

Does machismo mean you won’t do paranormal investigation?

DIANA
Interesting. You don’t think it’s got anything to do with just, happenstancially, in Gerry’s case, his mother believed in ghosts and his father was macho and didn’t believe in ghosts. And those have nothing to do with machismo. It’s just he saw a masculine role model, and so did his brothers, who didn’t believe in ghosts. And so that’s how they learned machismo.

BECKY
It has everything to do with machismo.

DIANA
So it’s an inherent quality of machismo to be like, I don’t believe in this. You’re making this up. I want nothing to do with this. I’m going to leave instead of—

BECKY
Well, think about it.

DIANA
—sticking it out and seeing if I—

BECKY
Even in these paranormal investigation shows, they always have to—it has to be proven right. And 95% of the time they don’t find anything. And that’s okay.

It has to be proven. It can’t be felt.

DIANA
Yeah, that’s true.

BECKY
It has to be proven through analytical tools. They have to catch something that cannot be shown any other way to be true.

DIANA
That makes sense to me. I like that. I don’t consider that necessarily an inherently masculine trait. To want objective proof of something. Stereotypically, yes.

Masculinity and Femininity in all of us

BECKY
When I say masculine, I don’t mean men. We all have masculine and feminine sides to ourselves, right? I’m talking about just society’s way of defining what masculine versus feminine is and whether or not you agree with it or not, I’m talking about the stereotypes that we’ve grown up with. Masculine is objective, analytical, feminine is feeling and intuitive. I know we are not cut and dry like that.

BECKY
That’s just the societal definitions that we are using to apply to this analysis. Does that make sense?

DIANA
I was looking at what I what I wrote in the show notes. If you’re interested in the show notes, they’re at homespunhaints.com right now, top of the page. But when I was kind of like rolling this around in my mouth earlier this week and I was thinking about the way that he was presenting the how he kind of viewed interacting with ghosts in general as an anti masculine trait.

And I was trying to think of qualities that I consider like inherently masculine, not manly, just masculine qualities has nothing to do with machismo. But the idea in my mind of like what is masculinity is I was mulling it over and I’m thinking like guidance and protection for one’s wards. Gallantness In the face of defending people who have less power or advantage than one’s self. Bravery in accomplishing intimidating tasks or confidently taking some action, mainly action based on rational reason and feats of physical strength and endurance, of course.

And those are kind of like when I kind of distill what is a masculine quality versus what is a stereotypical machismo quality. That’s what I think of. Does that make sense?

Machismo vs. Masculinity

BECKY
It does. And I love that. I love that. And I think you’re absolutely right. Like the machismo, I guess prior to these ghost hunting shows, that was typical of macho men or women who considered themselves macho men would be, Oh, I don’t believe in that. You’re just being silly. You’re being silly. There’s no proof. There’s no proof ghosts exist.

It’s not like you told me you saw a spider.

Rationality vs. Always Being Right

DIANA
And that’s interesting to me because, okay, I understand saying I don’t see any rational explanation within your ghost theories. I understand that. And kind of taking a step back as a masculine person wanting to be like, I don’t see the rationality behind your theory. You’re just talking about your feelings and what you imagined to be there. You’re not proving anything objectively.

I understand that and wanting to take a step back away from that. But the idea, especially when, you know, Gerry’s showing his brother, look at this, here’s my evidence. And his brother goes, I told you I didn’t want to see any of this, and leaves. That doesn’t strike me as masculine. That strikes me as very fearful, which again, is kind of contrary to the idea of masculine people being gallant, brave defenders.

I don’t know. So in that sense, the machismo itself kind of goes against masculinity.

BECKY
It does. It does. No, I think you’re absolutely right. And I think it’s because part of this machismo is having to prove that you’re always right. And if you see something that completely goes against that idea of, Oh, I was right, you’re just going to want to get out of the situation, you can’t handle it because your head’s going to explode.

Full of Rage

BECKY
He also points out that when these people are afraid, their reaction to being afraid is to get angry.

DIANA
To get full of rage.

BECKY
It’s like he got angry. He said, I don’t want to have anything to do with this. And instead of forcing himself to look at what he was seeing and re analyze all of his beliefs, he just left. He just removed himself from the situation. He couldn’t handle it.

DIANA
So what you’re saying is machismo is more about perhaps close minded authority.

BECKY
And always being right. Yes.

DIANA
Than it is about real masculinity. Right?

BECKY
Right. It can certainly appear as leadership. Right. If if you happen to always be right and people follow you.

DIANA
We don’t know anything about that in America. Not one bit!

[LAUGHTER]

Qualities of Masculinity

BECKY
I think real masculinity is like you said, if you’re presented with evidence that doesn’t fit with what you knew before, you have to pivot because you’re a leader.

DIANA
That would be the scientific method for those people who enjoy objective data. It’s the willingness to change your mind in the face of new objective data. That’s why I was so baffled by that reaction. I don’t want to see this leave What?

BECKY
Because it challenges your worldview and it also implies that you were wrong. You can’t be feeling like you were wrong. Yeah, you just got to get out of there.

DIANA
It’s a vulnerable position to realize you were wrong because before you realize you’re wrong, being wrong feels exactly like being right. So it doesn’t matter if you’re wrong or right, as long as you think you’re right.

BECKY
Right, right.

DIANA
But as soon as you realize you’re wrong. Uh oh, that’s very vulnerable. Machismo and vulnerability don’t tend to go very well together.

But masculinity and vulnerability do.

DIANA
Oh, there you go. Tell me more about that.

The Wartime General Analogy

BECKY
So let’s say you’re a general, right? General leading people to war or coming up with strategies and you get new information that says, oh, we’re being flanked on all sides. The approach that we were planning isn’t going to work. Are you going to be like, Oh, I’m never wrong and just go with your original strategy? Or are you going to be like, Oh snap, I better change?

Okay, I didn’t know that. I got new information. I gotta, I got to protect these people. These are my soldiers. I’m not just going to lead them into a slaughter just because I can’t be wrong.

DIANA
It’s your job to defend people who have less power or station than you do as a leader. And so therefore you’re going to pivot. Yeah, I agree. I think it’s good to reexamine your point of view when faced with new evidence.

BECKY
Also, you can choose whether or not that that makes you appear vulnerable or weak, because what real weakness is, is not being able to accept things in front of you. That’s real weakness.

Pretending Machismo is Masculinity

DIANA
In this case. We’re seeing the actions that Gerry was labeling as macho as something that is kind of almost like a mask, a masc mask, if you will. That will hit with a certain subset. An appearance of masculine qualities that don’t actually embody the qualities that you’re hoping to embody. I don’t want to tell you anybody is doing it wrong. That’s not what I mean.

I just it feels like in this whole episode, the machismo ran contrary to analyzing evidence and protecting and defending. Thank you for sharing your insider’s viewpoint of masculinity for me and those of us who may or may not be in the know. And I guess you’re not really a real, real, real insider because you weren’t raised male in a patriarchal society where you had to embrace certain trends of masculinity to survive and not get the crap beat out of you

BECKY
I feel so sorry for men. It’s got to suck.

DIANA
Especially growing up in 1960s, rural Michigan. Blech. Hainted Loves, If you were raised male in a patriarchal society and you have a differing viewpoint or want to point out things that we missed or want to point out things that we did wrong, or just feel like mansplaining your two cents into our conversation, we welcome that. Please let us know.

The conversation goes on and on, on our Facebook group, Facebook.com/groups/homespunhaints

BECKY
You could also leave a comment below on our YouTube.

DIANA
But either way, let us know. Let us know from the insiders point of view. Let us know from an outsider’s point of view. We just want to understand what machismo and masculinity have to do with ghosts. And in the meantime, have a spooky day.

The post Are You Macho Enough to go Ghost Hunting? appeared first on Homespun Haints.

Holidays covered: International Rescue Cat Day, International Women’s Day, Barbie Day, Pi Day, and St. Patrick’s Day

NOTE: All images below are created by our Executive Ghost Wrangler and Assistant Editor, Amber. Feel free to download and share these images, and let people know where you found them!

March 2: International Rescue Cat Day

At Homespun Haints, we LOVE our rescue kitties (even if one of them recently destroyed our upstairs carpet). Celebrate this day by donating to your local shelter, fostering a cat, or becoming a forever home for a kitty in need.

Spooky March 8: International Women’s Day

All of March may be Women’s History Month, but March 8 holds a special place in the world. In celebration of this day, we present to you an alternate reality where the term “final girl” takes on a whole new meaning.

March 9: Barbie Day

Yes, yes, it is scary isn’t it? Luckily, we’ve created these terrifying 11.5″ doll images to soothe your dark soul and make March extra spooky.

March 14: Pi Day

What’s so scary about Pi Day you might ask? Well, it all depends on what’s in the pie! May your pie runneth over with forbidden fruits!

March 17: St. Patrick’s Day

Did you know the holiday of Halloween (Samhain, pronounced sou – when) came from Ireland? No wonder these leprechauns look so scary!

As time goes by we’ll be adding more images to our website. Until next time, have a spooky day!

The post What’s so Spooky about March? appeared first on Homespun Haints.

Transcript

BECKY: Hello, Hainted Loves. Welcome to Homespun Haints bonus edition. I’m Becky.

DIANA: And I’m Diana.

BECKY: And I can’t hear out of my right ear, so this is gonna be really interesting.

DIANA: Oh, no. 

BECKY: I don’t know what happened. Well, I do know what happened. I got into a fist fight with my Hapkido instructor and she put me in a choke hold.  It was stupid. She kept going, “come at me!” And like an idiot. I did. It resulted with her putting me in this weird choke hold and I haven’t been able to hear out of this ear since. 

DIANA: Well, you signed a waiver, 

BECKY: Yeah, I guess I did. That’s okay. I’ve got another ear. It’s like having two kidneys, right?

DIANA: I thought you were gonna say like having two kids, just in case.

BECKY: Whoa. That went dark. 

Definition of Wildcrafting

BECKY: Today, we are going to talk today about wildcrafting.

DIANA: Oh, this is so exciting. I can’t wait to hear more about this because you, you tell me, I know what it is. But Becky, I’m not sure if I know what it is in the context of the way Tempest was talking about it earlier this week.

BECKY: Yes. On Monday we had the episode where we interviewed Laura Tempest Zakroff. One thing she talked about in that interview was wildcrafting a spell by using a pen from the bank and a gas receipt. And Diana was like, “oh, tell me more of that.”

DIANA: I wanna know, what does it mean?

BECKY: Wildcrafting is usually used synonymously with foraging, but it’s not quite the same thing. To Wildcraft basically means to look for something. and obtain something for free. And use it for a purpose other than what it was originally intended for, if it was planted or constructed by people, or to just go into nature and find things that are growing.

Right now there’s this huge push for foraging, and this is something we’ve been doing in Appalachia forever. We’re like, “Okay, you guys finally figured this out!” Because, we’re poor.

DIANA: [laughing] These roots are free.

Foraging in Appalachia

BECKY: Yes. And a long time ago, a lot of the woods in the Appalachian areas were just communal. It was communal.

You could just go in there and you could pick things, and I did this as a kid. I’m sure everybody does this as a kid. You wander through the woods, you pick random things. Sometimes you get a rash, sometimes you die. Sometimes it’s fine.

DIANA: Sometimes you hear an eerie fiddler, and then all the snakes go by and you just go, eh, Tennessee.

BECKY: You understand? Yeah.

DIANA: I understand. I’m getting it now. I’ve known you long enough. 

BECKY: right? And I did this as a child and I got pretty good at knowing which herbs were going to cause which colors. And I could like rub ’em together with cloth or paper and stain them and make different colors and things with them.

DIANA: Oh, I thought you meant colors, like which colors of rashes you would end up.

BECKY: Oh, well there was that too. And also I learned what color of fire I could make with different things too 

DIANA: Ooh,

BECKY: That’s fun 

DIANA: that’s a dangerous experiment. 

BECKY: Uh, you know, being a free range kid in the eighties in Appalachia, all sorts of things happened.

Surge in Wildcrafting Popularity

BECKY: Nowadays this has gotten very popular thanks a lot to Covid, right? People are stuck at home and now there’s a recession or, or people are getting out in nature because it’s like all they could do, to enjoy someplace other than their tiny apartments. Then, there’s been this huge upsurge on social media about going out and harvesting your own mushrooms. And this root will cure warts, and this root will make a great salve that you can use for bug bites, and this you can make an oil out of and it will cure herpes….

I don’t know, there’s just so many things out there and people are like, “Oh my God, all this stuff is for free? And I can just go get it and then I can spend two years drying it out and canning it and putting it in my storeroom?” And, yeah, that’s the great thing about it is it is free, but it takes a lot of time, it takes a lot of effort.

It does take a lot of knowledge. There’s a reason a lot of those foragers on their social channels sign off by saying, “Don’t die!”

DIANA: Because you get what you pay for.

Examples of common wildcrafting foods

BECKY: Because a lot of this stuff is harmful and you need to know what you’re looking for. Now, that’s not to say that you and I cannot wildcraft on our own without having to know all of these things about which herbs to eat or not to eat, or how to know if an acorn is infested with maggots before you try to roast it and make tea out of it or something. Cuz that’s a thing, you know, you have to like, put ’em in water and if they float, you throw ’em out.

DIANA: Oh, cool. Kind of like eggs.

BECKY: Yeah. I mean there’s all sorts of cool things. Oh, and also another cool thing is like, there’s different fruits you can cut open and it will tell you by like how many seeds there are and things like what the winter’s gonna be like coming up.

DIANA: Oh, right. The persimmons with the spoon seed versus the knife seed. Yes. Yes.

BECKY: So Wildcrafting is pretty cool. Like I said, a lot of people use it synonymously with foraging, but foraging specifically refers to food. And some will go so far as to say foraging refers to eating while you move through the space. So you’re like, “Ooh, a berry—CHOMP. ooh, that mushroom looks like it won’t kill me. CHOMP. Ooh, a snake. Yum!” That kind of thing.

DIANA: Oh dear. I’m a big fan of cooking , especially snake. 

BECKY: Yes, especially nowadays when you don’t know if pesticides have been spread around.

Non-edible Wildcrafting

BECKY: But Wildcrafting also refers to gathering things for free that you may not necessarily want to eat.

DIANA: Okay.

BECKY: So, Diana, have you ever gone dumpster diving?

DIANA: Oh God, yes. Do you know me?

BECKY: Exactly. I told you you’ve wildcrafted.

DIANA: I was raised in a dumpster.

BECKY: I know that that’s not what all these earthy, cottage core sites are advocating for when they talk about wildcrafting. But, I’m sorry. Dumpster diving is wildcrafting. I just wildcrafted a cheetah covered chair from my neighbor’s driveway two days ago.

DIANA: Yeah. Okay. Okay, gotcha. So it’s this like freeganism.

Wildcrafting basket-weaving

BECKY: Yeah, exactly. One of the very first examples I can remember of my family doing this: I had to have some kind of a basket for school. I was like five or six, and I needed to have a basket for school.

And my father—there was no internet. It’s not like he looked this up. He was just like, “oh, okay.” Dad went to our side yard where we had a bunch of English Ivy growing. He cut off a huge vine of the English Ivy. Then, he pulled all the leaves off, and he soaked the vine so it was malleable.

And then he took an old can of—you remember those old Quaker oats jars, the big round, cardboard jar? He used that as a mold and he wove this vine around the Quaker Oats thing. Then, when it dried, he pulled the Quaker oats jar out and I had a basket. It had a few leaves still stuck on it. And it wasn’t exactly woven very well, but he was like, “there you go.”

Like it was nothing. This is what you do. You need a basket? Well, you go find some ivy, duh, 

DIANA: “I just learned the art of basket weaving for you child to have one single basket. Enjoy.” And as a child you were probably like, damn it dad. Everybody else has a Jansport basket, right?

BECKY: No, I was an Appalachia. I was like, “dammit Dad! Everybody else’s ivy woven baskets were better.”

DIANA: So this was the assignment basically, unofficially.

BECKY: I don’t remember. I was very young. But, I do distinctly remember a lot of curse words coming out as he’s trying to figure out how to weave. And my mom going, “Mark, what are you doing?” He’s like, “I’m making a basket, Okay?”

DIANA: the confidence required to make that statement. “I’m making a basket” as opposed to just, “I have no idea, but I hope it works.” So we don’t have to go buy a basket from a store. It’s what I would probably be saying, but yeah, I’m making a basket. That’s quite a declarative sentence. For someone who’s never done it before. 

BECKY: I’m sure you’ve made baskets.

DIANA: Have I made a basket? I mean, yeah, out of like construction paper when I was a kid, but not like out of English Ivy that I’ve stripped from a hedge

BECKY: Oh my God. Okay, well another thing to add to the list of things to do, next time you come.

DIANA: We’re already making corn husk dolls.

Wildcrafted dolls

BECKY: Making cornhusk dolls is also a form of wildcrafting, if you think about it. Especially if you go to the grocery store, you know how they have that bin where—

DIANA: you shuck your corn Or husk your corn? 

BECKY: Shuck corn, husk corn, whatever. 

DIANA: Shucking? Detassling? Do you detassle your corn?

BECKY: I don’t know words.

DIANA: I’m traumatized because farmers make fun of me for not knowing the difference between lady parts and, and male parts of corn. They knew a lot about corn sex. It was kind of awkward.

BECKY: That’s a discussion for another episode. Anyway, when you go to your grocery store and they have that trashcan. They’re just gonna throw it out, you know, where they’ve got all the corn husks. So you can be like, “Hey, can I take these husks?”

DIANA: Oh, you ask, does it still count as wildcrafting if you ask permission?

BECKY: Yeah, of course. You should always make sure you are doing things legally

DIANA: “Woodland creatures, I’m taking this root!”

BECKY: Well, actually, there are some wildcrafters who say you should always give thanks.

DIANA: Well, I mean, that’s just in general a good thing to do.

BECKY: Yeah, especially if you’re like picking bugs off of a tree to then go roast and make red dye out of their shells. Somebody’s giving their life for you. It’s not completely free.

DIANA: It’s not completely free. It’s only life or death.

BECKY: right?

DIANA: Poor carmine bugs.

BECKY: So be like, “Hey, thank you for letting me use your shells so I can make pretty things.”
So, I would ask that grocery store employee and be like, “Hey, you just gonna throw those out? Can I have some of them?” And that 16 year old kid who is trying to organize the tomatoes and you know, they keep falling off and he’s trying to put the tomatoes back. They keep falling off and you make a note to yourself, do not get those tomatoes today. You ask him that and he’ll be like, “yeah, sure, whatever.” And you walk out with your arms full of corn husks and you go make tamales or corn husk dolls. Hey, cool, you wildcrafted some corn husks!

DIANA: Okay.

Diana is cheap

BECKY: Another thing that I remember doing as a kid, and this is why I’m like, Diana, “I bet you’ve done some of this stuff,” because you are so goddamn cheap that I know you have. I did not mean that as an insult, by the way. It is a hundred percent a compliment.

DIANA: I take pride in that.

BECKY: For people who do not know, Diana can take a quarter and stretch it over three or four years.

DIANA: A quarter won’t buy anything anymore, but a dollar I could stretch for three or four years. Yes.  Quarter won’t even last one year. It’s strange math.

BECKY: Anyway, I’ve seen this woman in action and I have learned so much from her. It is amazing. This is why one day I want to create a series on living with Diana. It’ll be like that Ed Begley series where he’s so cheap that he’s like powering his toaster by riding a bike.

DIANA: If, if I could do that, I would do that. Definitely, it would get me to ride my exercise bike, which it doesn’t go anywhere, so that’s really the only way to make it worthwhile.

BECKY: He was like, “if I want toast, I gotta work for it.”

Diana’s wildcrafted TNAble

DIANA: Ddid I tell you the story about my TNAble?

BECKY: Oh no you didn’t. Please share. Is this a wildcrafting project? 

DIANA: I don’t know that this was a Wildcrafting story, but you can tell me if it is. So when I was living in New Orleans, we dumpster dived a lot. And what I mean by dumpster diving is, of course, driving up and down the street and seeing if people put furniture out by the side of the road, you know. Not like actually leaping into a dumpster, cuz that would be illegal.

We would never do that on this show. But, for people who put stuff out by the side of the road. A lot of the time they’ll put stuff out that’s still perfectly good. It’s just ugly. And so we got this coffee table one day that was just the most beautifully, structurally-sound coffee table, but the top looked like somebody had done tap dancing lessons on it.

It was just awful. And we don’t know how to refinish a table. So I thought, what else do I have that I can get for free? And it turned out that earlier in the year I’d signed up for a new bank account. And at the time when you opened a bank account, they gave you crap instead of money. Like today, they’ll be like, get a $200 bonus when you do these deposits. Back then they were like, get a toolbox and a subscription to a magazine. And we were like, okay, sounds like a deal to me. So I opened up this bank account, I found this magazine subscription list. There was nothing on it that I was resonating with at all. I’m like, I don’t care about golf, I don’t care about fish, I don’t care about Businessweek, whatever.

I don’t want any of these magazines. And the only one on the list that I could think of that I’d want as a free magazine was Maxim, which if you’re not familiar, is basically kinda like theCHIVE kind of vibe. It looks like a men’s health magazine where they have mostly, not quite, but mostly naked women on every page. 

BECKY: They’re not completely naked.

DIANA: Not completely. 

BECKY: it’s not like Playboy, but they’re very scantily clad.

DIANA: like skimpy, bikini-clad women. And I was like, that’s really the only magazine I could think of that I would even open 

BECKY: It’s a good magazine.

DIANA: Yeah, it’s an okay magazine. It’s very funny. I read it for the articles. [laughing] So anyway, I had this giant stack of Maxims that I gotten for free and I had this ugly table that I had gotten for free, and I had an idea.

BECKY: Oh.

DIANA: And so I went through my stack of Maxims and I cut out all the pictures of, of scantily clad lingerie models, and I pasted them with Mod Podge all over the table.

BECKY: That is brilliant. I love it. 

DIANA: And then when Amber asked me what I was doing, I said, I’m making a TNAble,

BECKY: That is so cool. Do you still have this?

DIANA: No, I sold it at a garage sale, and I was incredibly proud of myself. I sold it for much more than I had gotten it for.

BECKY: Well, yeah. Anything is more than free. How much? I’m just curious. How much did you sell it for?

DIANA: It was probably like fifteen dollars!

BECKY: Whoa!

DIANA: I know! Like, what a profit, right? It only, it only took like four days of work, and voila!

BECKY: See, I told you 

DIANA: I was wildcrafting.

BECKY: You are a wildcrafting queen. 

Other fun wildcrafting ideas

BECKY: I wanna give you a couple more examples of things I wildcrafted as a kid. And I wanna know if anybody else did this stuff. So, this is another fun project you could do with your kids, with wildcrafting.

My mom and I used to do this all the time. It’s so stupid. But we loved it. So again, this is the eighties where fashion was a little bit—um—I know we think about eighties fashion now as like all cool with all these sharp angles and fun hairs and lots of sequins and stuff. But let me tell you, there was a lot of junk that came out during that time and one of ’em were these sweatshirts mom and I made 

DIANA: Was it puff paint?

BECKY: No.

DIANA: Was it hook and latch?

BECKY: No, not quite.

DIANA: What was it?

BECKY: You could use puff paint. Actually, I don’t think you could use puff paint. We would go to Walmart or Goodwill, and we would actually buy like the ugliest sweaters. Not intentionally ugly, it was just whatever was really cheap and we probably thought they were pretty, cuz like I said, this was the eighties. Or we would go through our closets.

So this is wildcrafting, I guess, to go through our closets and find old garments that just didn’t look that pretty anymore.

DIANA: Hmm.

BECKY: Then, we would go into the yard and find leaves that had fallen from the trees. And, the cooler, the better. The leaves with the holes in ’em and the veins showing and all that, that was cool, too.

And then we would set out all of these paints, fabric paints, and we would dip the leaves into the paint. and just then press ’em onto the shirts. To make all these cool patterns. And we used, of course, lots of sparkly paint because it was the eighties. We made all of these garments, with all these patterns and cool things with these leaves coated in paint. And then, because we did not wanna waste anything, we took these paint-covered leaves and we put them on a sheet of card stock and framed it and made art.

DIANA: I thought you were gonna say you crumbled them and made confetti for parties.

BECKY: Oh, no, no, no, no. I think there’s still one framed somewhere, somewhere in the family. But yeah, that was kind of a fun little project we did.

Natural Dyeing

And of course, we’ve all gathered nuts and made dye out of it. Right.

DIANA: Nuts. When you say nuts—

BECKY: Or, leaves from a nut tree.

DIANA: I made Easter egg die out of onions.

BECKY: okay. That works. Yeah. Especially if you found the onions.

DIANA: Why Becky? I do have wild onions growing in my backyard, but I don’t think they’re yellow enough to dye Easter eggs. 

BECKY: I used to make bracelets out of wild onions

DIANA: That sounds stinky. Was it to ward off vampires?

BECKY: No, it’s just cuz they were like long and you could like weave ’em cuz they’ve got that weird like tubular thing. I loved that; I loved picking wild onions. I wonder why my parents hated it so much. 

DIANA: The laundry. Oh, no.

Wildcrafting Bouquets

BECKY: Making bouquets out of wildflowers. This is another great thing you can do, especially along the side of the road.

I don’t know if it’s like this where you are, Diana, but where I grew up, the side of the road was the best place to find wildflowers. And I think also where I grew up, you probably didn’t have to worry too much about pesticides. County probably just couldn’t afford it.

And the three wildflowers that we would find most often, which I see people growing these in their yards now and I’m like, I grew up and just told those were weeds.

But they are thistle, which actually has a lot of medicinal properties. Black-Eyed Susans, and Queen Annes lace.  

DIANA: Those are like commercial flowers now.

BECKY: Yeah. I grew up like being told they were weeds and I would make like wildflower bouquets out of them and people would be like, those are just weeds. I’d be like, “but they’re pretty, it’s really pretty!”

DIANA: I used to make little chains out of the clovers in the yard too, and make a little clover crown to wear and be a fairy king.

BECKY: Or buttercups. You could probably do it with buttercups, too.

DIANA: We never had buttercups. That’s amazing. I love that idea. We had forsythia and I made like little crowns of thorns out of the little branches of the forsythia bush.

BECKY: Oh, did you actually have like blood dripping down your head too?

DIANA: I mean, ketchup.

BECKY: Would you ever just like, string yourself up on a fence post? Like a scare crow, but like a weird Jesus Christ scarecrow?

DIANA:Yeah.

BECKY: And your mom would come home and be like, Ugh, Diana, there you are.

DIANA: My mom would probably take photos of it and if it was, if it had been a few years later, post them on Facebook.

BECKY: Right. Oh, my daughter, she’s so creative. Yay.

DIANA: Aw look at her. She thinks she’s Jesus.

BECKY: Well, those are just some things from my childhood. But I mean, a lot of this sounds crafting ish, but it is wildcrafting, right? Like you could do a lot of craft projects from things you find in your yard. What are some other things that you’ve done, Diana, besides your TNAable?

Wildcrafting ugly Christmas sweaters

DIANA: Oh gosh, everything I do, Becky. I don’t think I’ve ever not wildcrafted. I wildcraft an ugly Christmas sweater every year from things that I find at the thrift store, but also just from things that I have laying around from the rest of the projects. It’s like my Fridge Cleanout Day, except it’s Project Cleanout Day for the year when I make my ugly Christmas sweater.

So it’s kind of like a rule that I have to use everything on this sweater. And I never win any contests, but I do win a lot of weird stares. Like, what were you thinking? It’s fun. I had one where I had Santa’s face that like flipped up and then you saw a little body dangling below. Little like wiggly legs.

BECKY: Like it was his uvula, but it was legs?

DIANA: Yes, exactly.

BECKY: That’s awesome. I love it.

DIANA: [looking around] I found that chair in the garage and I had a scarf that I found in the basement. And I reupholstered the chair with the scarf. Chair was broken. The scarf was torn, but now it looks perfect. Doesn’t work. It’s still broken, but it looks perfect from a distance.

BECKY: I’m sure you can find a nail in somebody’s driveway and fix it.

DIANA: probably. I did get a new roof a couple years ago, so there’s probably a nail in my driveway. I made that pillowcase. out of vegetables, I think.

BECKY: What??

DIANA: Dyeing with beets.

BECKY: Oh, okay. So you used it to dye it.

DIANA: Yeah. But beets are horrible for dyeing synthetic fabrics cuz it looks nice and bright magenta when you put it on and then you rinse it off and it looks like dried blood. So it’s kinda like a shocker, like, “Hey look, this is gonna be so pink. Oh.”

Kids and Wildcrafting

BECKY: I think kids just naturally wildcraft. I think this is just something that we’re born with and I don’t know why it gets beaten out of us when we’re like, oh yeah, I do know why. Because there comes a point, and this is why I think a lot of people like me, like know how to do all this stuff, but we don’t because there’s a point like, “ugh. I have already been through that phase of my life where I had to like find my own food and make my own stuff, and now I just wanna go to Walmart.”

DIANA: Exactly. Yeah. It’s, it’s my time is more valuable than my wallet.

BECKY: yeah. 

DIANA: It’s the mindset of being a grownup. 

BECKY: Yeah. It’s not novel anymore.

DIANA: like that time you told me to use dryer lint to make my own felting projects and like sheets of felt are 60 cents. It would take like four days of work to bleach and shape this lint into a piece of felt. Maybe in the past, I’m not that desperate nowadays.

BECKY: I feel like the very first time I ever walked into a Michael’s, I was like, “you could buy this stuff? You don’t just to have to find it?”

DIANA: It’s like, “Look, they have baskets, Dad!”

BECKY: Oh, and then I would see how much baskets cost, and I was like, “what?”

DIANA: I get it. Baskets are expensive.

BECKY: Yeah, like, why? Like you could just go fight some ivy. Don’t use poison ivy. If it’s furry, leave it alone. 

DIANA: Exactly. That’s a good plan.

Wildcrafting Magic

DIANA: So, okay, so we’ve talked about how we’ve wildcrafted random crap in our houses, but have you ever wildcrafted magic.

BECKY: Oh yeah, actually, last year I was doing a spell and I needed some kind of flower for it. And, a friend of mine was with me and she ran in the backyard and picked them, and came back. She was like, “here we go.” And it didn’t specify what it was. It just had to be a white flower. And she was just like, there. There’s some right there. Because I was like, “oh, I didn’t buy any white flowers.” And she’s like, “Ugh. Becky, have you forgotten your roots?”

DIANA: Oh, you don’t buy flowers. They don’t belong to any man. I love that. Oh, that’s nice. W

hen I was a kid, I think my main wildcrafting project for magic was taking everybody’s candle wax. When I went to their house, I would take their melted candle wax that was like around the edge of the candle holder and stuff.

And I was like, are you using this? And they’d be like, that’s trash, Diana. I’d be like, thank you. Put it in my pocket. And then I would make my own candles out of the previously melted candle wax, which just so you know, kids, if you get this idea, it doesn’t work that well after already burning. It doesn’t seem to burn as well the second time around.

But you can make it out of an orange juice concentrate can, like a frozen can of orange juice concentrate. If you open it up and take the orange juice out, rinse it out, you can put the wax in there, and then when you peel it off, it’ll have this cool like whiteish waxy film on the outside of your candle. And make it look different colors and mottled. It’s fun.

BECKY: Oh!

DIANA: So yeah, that counts wildcrafting magic, right? Making my own ritual candles out of orange juice cans and and people’s trash wax, if that counts.

BECKY: Absolutely. that is so cool.

DIANA: I mean, of course I’ve taken apart random garments of clothing and tablecloths and curtains and stuff to make like altar cloths,

BECKY: Uh huh. 

DIANA: I don’t know if that counts.

BECKY: Absolutely, it counts. Yeah, because it’s using it for purpose different than what it was originally intended. I actually have some wildcrafted lake water right here for use in a spell.

DIANA: Is that the one Kristy left in your mailbox? You haven’t used it yet?

BECKY: I’m afraid to open it. Last time—

DIANA: I can’t blame you.

BECKY: Last time she used some sea water and we made some spells and then we opened them and it was, um—

DIANA: It was smelly. 

BECKY: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Freckle Juice of Doom 

DIANA: I told you my freckle juice story from elementary school, didn’t I?

BECKY: No. Tell us the freckle juice story. 

DIANA: Do you remember the book Freckle Juice? The kid’s book from the Scholastic Book Fair? Yay. It’s Reading Rainbow. It’s 1990 something. And the book, Freckle Juice was all about a child who wanted freckles and was jealous. Somebody gave him this disgusting recipe of how to make juice to grow freckles.

And he used it and it didn’t work. So he faked the freckles. And it was a story about, I don’t know, accepting yourself. But I’m such a literalist that I had to do a book report on this book. And I chose to make that exact recipe, like the actual recipe for the freckle juice. It was gross. There was some really, really, really gross stuff in it. I was as authentic as I could be, like an exact replica. 

BECKY: Did you try it? 

DIANA: I did not try it. Notice my freckle-less visage. But I hear it doesn’t work anyway. No, I actually made the recipe and I put it in a pickle jar and I brought it to school in my satchel because when I was in third grade, my parents didn’t think I was cool enough to carry a backpack, like all the other kids. I had to carry a leather satchel from the thrift store, which was a wildcraft…I didn’t realize. 

BECKY: Well, no, if you pay for it, it’s not wildcrafting.

DIANA: Oh, really? Oh, okay. Well then all my thrift store projects, I guess don’t count.

BECKY: Well, I mean, if you’re using it a second time after you found it. And swap meet stuff definitely.

DIANA: I think it was, because it was a purpose for which it was not intended because I was an eight year old, and this was obviously a briefcase for an adult (satchel). But yeah, so I had my satchel, I was waiting for the bus. I had my freckle juice in my satchel, I totally forgot. And I was swinging it because I was bored waiting for the bus and the freckle juice fell out and landed on me and busted all over the place.

And I smelled really exciting for the whole bus ride home.

BECKY: Oh no! At least it happened at the end of day!

DIANA: At least it happened at the end of the day. That’s the one time in my life where I can be like, “well, thank God I don’t stink until the end of the day.” Like that was the one silver lining of that story. That’s why it was not too traumatic to remember.

BECKY: Oh.

DIANA: Yeah. So freckle juice, don’t make it. Don’t be literal like me. Make a bottle of purple food coloring and water and tell your teacher you made it. That’s all you need to do. No one’s gonna smell that. She didn’t wanna smell it. 

BECKY: hopefully you got extra points for doing it authentically.

DIANA: No, are you kidding? No one cares about authenticity in a third grade book report.

BECKY: Tell me about it. I know we would’ve been best friends in third grade.

DIANA: I know.

Becky’s Wildcrafting Alcohol Disaster

BECKY: When I was in 10th grade, I had gone away to a summer camp and I had gotten like a Snapple iced tea. I was staying in this dorm. When I was done with it, I closed it back and I kind of put it on my desk, thinking I would finish it later.

And I didn’t. Two days later, I was like, “Ooh, do you think it’s still good?” And this guy was dating at summer camp, you know, summer camp crush. He comes in and he’s, “Oh cool!” He like lifted the lid off and it was fermented, like it was alcoholic. And he chugged it and he got drunk, which was all fine.

This is another part about being Appalachian is you get your kicks where you can.

DIANA: Wildcrafting alcoholic Snapple with saliva culture. Yum.

BECKY: So when I got back home, I told a friend about this and she was like, “Ooh, we could make our own booze.” So we went into her closet. I was over at her house all the time. We went in the closet cuz she always kept her closet doors shut cuz she had a pet mouse in there that she had to keep away from her cat.

And I remember this mouse was named William. He was really cute. The cat eventually got him.

DIANA: There are so many loops and turns to this story. I’m loving this.

BECKY: So anyway, so we got a jar of—I think it may have been an old like pickle jar. It had a little bit of juice left cuz I think somebody in the family liked to drink the juice. And we took that and we just were like, well, what do we put it?

Okay, we need sugar. So we dunked a lot of sugar in and we’re like, now what? Oh, we need, the sugar has to be like bound to a liquid. So we poured in ketchup and then we found some iced tea, cuz I remember it was Snapple. We poured in some iced tea and we made this awful concoction, and we couldn’t find a lid for it then.

So we took like—no wonder it didn’t ferment! And then we took like a piece of cloth and a rubber band around it and put it on the top. We’re like, well, doesn’t alcohol have to have like oxygen to…? I mean, we didn’t know what we were doing. We were not scientists by any stretch.

DIANA: Shockingly good guesses, though.

BECKY: So we left it in the closet for about a week and then we came back. I came back the next weekend and we’re like checking on it and we’re sniffing it and like we pulled it out. We’re sniffing it, we’re trying to like, steel each other up, like who’s gonna drink it first or whatever. It doesn’t really smell like alcohol and it’s got a little bit of mold in it.

And just then my friend’s mom walks in and she’s like, “what are you girls doing?” And we’re like, “eh… well?” And we explained it to her because like we were just…there was nothing we could make up. Like, we’re sitting around this jar of moldy ketchupy pickle juice, like how else do you explain that?

So we told her what we were trying to do and she’s just looks at us and she’s like, “what the hell? We’ve got beer in the fridge! If you just wanna steal some beer! Dumb-ass teenagers.”

DIANA: That’s fantastic. Oh, wow. I wasn’t expecting that twist ending. 

BECKY: Yeah, so I guess we kind of—we tried to wildcraft alcohol. We didn’t pay for any of those ingredients.

DIANA: You started an illicit bathtub gin ring in 10th grade. I’m so proud of you,

BECKY: If only I knew what I was doing.

DIANA: If only.

In Conclusion

BECKY: Hainted Loves, hopefully we gave you some fabulous ideas for how you can wildcraft around you.

DIANA: I’m full of ideas. I can’t wait to start making things out of magic and trash.

BECKY: To make magic, all you need is, as we learned, the intention and just whatever, you know, maybe some supplies for brainstorming. Again, our guest talked about a gas receipt and a pen from the bank. It can be anything. And if you just need to burn something, there’s sticks in the woods. There’s old hair. I mean, anything will work And if you need to make a basket, now you know how. And if you need to make a candle now, you know how.

DIANA: And if you need to make illicit beer, now you know how not to,

BECKY: Right? Exactly.

DIANA: Don’t do it. Just steal it from your mom’s fridge. Hainted Loves, what have you. wildcrafted lately? Have you ever wildcrafted magic? Did the magic work better than store bought magic? We’re gonna guess it did, and we hope that you have a spooky day.

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