Today, we shift our focus toward the nuts and bolts of running a successful enterprise with a goth, macabre bent. Our guests, Matt and Meredith, founded Boredwalk as a way to create quality designs with a dark sense of humor. Hear their stories, today, on Homespun Haints.

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About the guests, Matt and Meredith of Boredwalk

From their website, “[Matt Snow and Meredith Erin] are creative partners and life partners. The two met in Washington, DC in 2004 and married in 2009. When they’re not designing products for Boredwalk Matt and Meredith enjoy live comedy, road trips, low brow art, cocktails, B movies, trading “dad jokes”, cooking vegan food, and snuggling with their cat. For a more business-y “deep dive” into Boredwalk, you can learn more at My Brand Journey.”

The company aesthetic is suitable for those of us who only wear black, have a macabre sense of humor, and/or feel like this doomed world is hopelessly on fire so we might as well laugh about it. Becky and her tween daughter love Boredwalk’s Grievance Journal as part of their funny dark self-help practice. For an IV drip of their dark humor, listen to the Boredwalk Podcast, and follow them on Twitter or YouTube.

What’s this about another spooky business from yours trulies?

Not only have we interviewed other goth business owners on the show, we play goth business owners IRL. Long before we designed, built, wrote, and optimized this website, Becky formed her own web design company: The Concept Spot. Creating this website together has rekindled Becky’s passion for web design, just as it provided her with her new favorite coworker. Get the full scoop here.

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Episode Summary: the Ghosts of Santa Monica and Real Vampires of Romania

During our recent trip to California, Amber and Diana took the Santa Monica Pier ghost tour. And the tour guide was none other than today’s guest, Mihaela! She shares with us a little of the history of the city and where you can get the best view of its otherworldly residents. She also gives us some insight into the real vampires from her hometown in Romania. Settle in for some sunny and sinister ghost stories.

Haunted History of Santa Monica

Pearl of the Pacific. Jewel of Sunset Bay. And home to many, many ghosts. Groups of crows gather around the cannons in Palisades Park to carry supernatural messages to the spirits of the soldiers that haunt there.

Spirits from a car crash haunt boldly in broad daylight under the Arizona Avenue Pedestrian Bridge, seen here in the background on the right.

About the Guest: Mihaela Roe

Mihaela Roe is a ghost tour guide in the blissful oceanside city of Santa Monica, California. If you’d like to take the tour that Diana and Amber took with Mihaela, it’s the US Ghost Adventures Santa Monica Pier Ghost Tour. She’s also a retired professor. But, as she says, one never truly retires from being a professor. She currently teaches Romanian and Latin language classes through Strommen. You can sign up for a Latin or Romanian language class with Mihaela here.

Saint Monica, The Patron Saint of Santa Monica, California

The patron saint of widows, alcoholics, victims of abuse and adultery, and mothers facing family difficulties is also the patron saint of this city by the sea. Before Saint Monica was a saint, she was a real woman, born in 333 AD North Africa. In this episode, Mihaela shares a little bit of Santa Monica’s inspiring story, but she reviews even more details during the live ghost tour of the pier.

And if you want to be a patron as well, why, we make it much easier than it was in the 4th century! Nowadays, all you have to do is head over to Patreon.com/homespunhaints. Even the lowest tier membership comes with free admission to our big basement secret passage reveal livestream on September 24th, 2023.

Premonitions in Dreams

Mihaela had a vivid dream about her long lost colleague losing a pregnancy at the exact time that was really happening in a distant land. Then, her own dead relatives kept telling her what to do in her dreams. In one recurring dream, her father’s spirit wouldn’t leave her alone about moving to America. When she realized that her dream about her colleague’s pregnancy was a real-time premonition of an actual event, that lent weight to her deceased father’s argument.

Mihaela speculates that her paranormal sensory experiences, including these premonitions of death, might be due to her Romanian DNA.

Are There Real Vampires in Romania?

Mihaela says that the spirits haunting the Santa Monica Pier are nonconfrontational (as long as you don’t take their jewelry). But some of the spirits in her hometown in Romania might not be so friendly. She explains that the line between the living world and the “other world” is traditionally very thin in Romania. And that many people there have had actual experiences with real Romanian vampires.

Far from the sexy, immortal monsters we associate with the word, real, traditional Romanian vampires are the restless spirits of real people who, during life, engaged in evil deeds and dark sorcery. These vampiric spirits, still in league with dark forces of the underworld, maintain the habit of doing harm to other people, even after death.

Many Eastern European vampire stories we’ve heard have more in common with ghost stories than the story of Dracula. At the northern reaches of Eastern Europe, vampires are way worse than their fictional American counterparts. The Polish strzyga is a particularly terrifying monster. But on the east coast of the region, vampires are less monstrous, and more just…well, annoying and sad.

Do Real Vampires Drink Blood?

In Romanian tradition, vampires don’t necessarily drink blood. Nor can they create other vampires this way. In Romanian folklore, someone can become a vampire if that person did something despicable in life, and died never having had the chance or the inspiration to atone and confess. In other words, Romanian vampires are similar to your classic restless haints. A vampire demonstrates it’s presence via sudden spikes in misfortune or illness after the death of a local wicked person.

Modern Vampire Hunting and Vanquishing

If you get the chance to visit Romania, you can leave your wooden stakes and garlic at home. Sure, small remote areas across the globe all have their quirky traditions and superstitions, some of which likely inspired Stoker to pen the rules which would become canon to the Western concept of vampire-vanquishing. But modern Romanian rituals to help real vampires rest in peace more commonly involve an exorcism by a priest, and basically nothing else from the Hollywood vampire-fighting repertoire. Except maybe a cross. Nowadays, Romanian vampire rituals focus instead on helping the tormented spirit to break the cycle of harm and attain God’s forgiveness.

I’ll Eat Your Skin to Gain Your Beauty

Did glue used to be made out of bulls or horses? What about gelatin? What about fancy tea? There are likely several benefits to consuming collagen (or gelatin, but definitely not glue). But they probably aren’t the benefits that you’d intuit.

It is sadly not true that eating collagen will result in that collagen becoming big pouty duck lips. It is true that dietary and supplemental collagen contains the 4 amino acids that your body needs to produce collagen: glycine, proline, lysine and hydroxyproline. But so do many animal products (and some vegetarian foods, too). The consumed collagen is digested down into its parts; amino acids. Your body then uses dietary vitamin C, zinc, copper, and manganese to reassemble these 4 amino acids BACK into collagen within the body, if your body deems it appropriate to do so in the moment.

A tall, refreshing glass of iced meat

Some “collagen” supplements contain all 8 of these building blocks, and thus might result in more collagen production in the body…maybe, if the diet is otherwise deficient in these building blocks. And that might have an effect on how you look…maybe, if you are young and healthy enough to do this whole process efficiently. Collagen supplements without these additional nutrients and trace minerals, well, you might as well slap a “supports healthy, beautiful skin, hair, nails, and joints” label on every single package of meat at the grocery store.

That’s right; hydrolyzed collagen protein is basically pure liquid meat. Oh, don’t go making that face. You eat broth and gelatin, don’t you?

Romanian Vampire Folklore and The Haunted Santa Monica Pier

What a twofer! This really was only a very small part of the history of Santa Monica that we heard on the ghost tour we took with Mihaela. If you take a ghost tour of the Santa Monica Pier, let us know what you think. If you think you witnessed a haunting, submit your ghost story to be invited as a guest on a future episode of Homespun Haints. And if you find Arcadia’s ghostly jewelry on the ground by the cannons in Palisades Park, don’t take it! Or you’ll risk having a spooky day!

The post The Westernmost Haunting on Route 66 appeared first on Homespun Haints.

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Episode Summary

Hollywood, California; a neighborhood full of energy, dreams, celebrities, music, ghosts, and hauntings. Hollyweird Paranormal podcast hosts Tammie Merheb-Chavez and Brice Mitchell Williams seek out and report on the unusual amongst the legendary in this famous section of the world because they have some pretty freaky ghost encounters of their own.

Episode Show Notes

About the Guests, Hollyweird Paranormal Hosts

Tammie Merheb-Chavez is a costume-designer and a native of New Orleans. Check out her independent podcast Ghostland on the Paramormal Network for more music, murder and paranormal stories of LA.

Brice Mitchell Williams is an optimistically skeptical yet scaredy-cat Midwestern actor. His independent IG handle is @thesmirkingassassin.

Both moved to LA about a decade ago. After meeting at a haunted acting academy just around the block from the Hollywood Walk of Fame, the pair bonded over their similar inexplicable spooky life experiences and severe coffee addictions. And the result is the Hollyweird Paranormal True Crime and Paranormal podcast. You can follow their collaborative work on TikTok, IG and FB @hollyweirdparanormal, or Twitter @hwppodcast.

Tammie’s haunted New Orleans story

Before moving to L.A., Tammie lived in New Orleans. Hear her spooky ghost story from her time there in our special bonus episode!

Stories of haunted Hollywood from their show that they mentioned on this episode of our show

Want to start listening to Hollyweird Paranormal Podcast, but not a start-at-the-beginning kind of person? Why not start with the episodes they spoke about on the show you are currently reading about?

Check out their Braken Fern Manor investigation with OC Ghosts and Legends, where Tammie challenged a mysterious translucent figure to a ghost dance battle. Then head over to the infamous haunted Oman house, where the ghosts knew Brice was scared of them. Finish by speculating if Tammie and Brice really do work with the ghost of Charlie Chaplin.

Have you been haunted in Hollywood, CA?

Los Angeles has so much history, experienced by so many souls. As Becky says, every theater is haunted. And isn’t it the dream of every aspiring screen actor to become immortal?

Why do you think Hollywood is haunted? Do you have an experience to share? Let us know in the comments, or by joining the discussion in our private Facebook group. Or if you’re brave enough, submit your story to be considered as an interview guest on our podcast, so you can be immortalized yourself!

Until next time, have a spooky day!

The post Haunted Hollywood is Hollyweird appeared first on Homespun Haints.

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About our guest, Ludovic

Our guest this episode, Ludovic Vuillier, is CEO of The Good Life Manifesto. His company is dedicated to helping its clients live the best life they can through actionable processes. Learn more at thegoodlifemanifesto.com.

Notes on the Evil Apartment in Los Angeles

What is esoteric Judaism?

This episode makes the distinction between Judaism, at its core, and offshoots of Jewish mysticism such as Kabbala.

Many outside of the Jewish faith are fascinated by kabbalistic teachings and imagery. And why not? Kabbala is full of fascinating paranormal mysteries! Many within the faith, however, would argue that true Kabbala cannot be understood, nor should it be practiced, by those without a strong foundation in Jewish teachings. After all, dabbling in faith-based rituals without proper context can have unforeseen consequences. Surely we learned that from Episode 18: Dennis the Demon and the Meth Gators.

Here’s an article on High Profile Kabbala from Hadassah magazine. It includes an in-depth analysis of Kabbala inside—and outside—of Judaism.

Want to learn more about spiritual cleansing concepts within the core of Judaism? Encyclopedia Judaica has an in-depth article about ablution.

Jewish Horror

With so many classic horror film tropes pulling from Christian (specifically Catholic) origins, it’s easy to forget that Judaism has its own traditions revolving demonic evil, and how to protect and ward against it.

What is a Golem?

You may be familiar with the concept of a golem. Not the one from Tolkien. The term “golem” appears in the Talmud, referring to something unshaped or incomplete. In the context of Jewish tradition, it originally described an unformed or unskilled human. Kabbalistic mysticism added the concept of creating a supernatural golem to protect its creator. Kabbalistic texts provide detailed instructions on how to animate a golem from clay through mystical practices. The concept bears some vague similarity to creating a tulpa, or reanimating a corpse into a zombie.

Modern Golems appearing in film and television, such as in The X-Files, Supernatural, and The Simpsons, often show this creature as something horrific and dangerous; the protagonist is tasked with trying to kill or destroy the Golem before the creature wrecks havoc on the world. In fact, the 2018 Israeli film The Golem explores this theme delightfully. For a great article on how the film connects to the roots of Jewish horror, check out this well-written article in Tablet.

Have you ever rented a haunted apartment?

Apartment living can be spooky, even when there’s nothing paranormal involved. Startling noises, an unknown number of open flames in the building, and sleeping only 2 layers of drywall away from a stranger who might be listening to every breath you take is not for the faint of heart. That’s what makes these stories of real haunted apartments even more sinister than haunted houses. If you have a true ghost story you are willing to share with us, submit it here, and you might get to speak on a future episode of Homespun Haints!

Thanks again for spending time with us! Until next time, have a spooky day!

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