Haunted With Amanda Montell of Sounds Like a Cult Podcast

Corinne and Sabrina team up with Amanda Montell from Sounds Like a Cult Podcast to unpack the eerily familiar connections between cults, community, and the paranormal. From Amanda’s lifelong quest to conjure a ghost to her wild adventures uncovering cultish behaviors in everything from Trader Joe’s fandoms to evangelical hell houses, there’s no shortage of spooky, intriguing tales. Plus, Amanda reveals her dream of encountering a ghostly admirer at twilight—an oddly romantic twist that has us wondering: what kind of haunting would you want to manifest? 👻✨ But it doesn’t stop there! We’re diving into the darker side of human behavior, the overlap between religious cults and the paranormal, and how intuition plays a critical role in connecting us to the otherworldly. Also, wait until you hear about Amanda’s Glass Onion-inspired Halloween escape room—complete with witches, werewolves, and a chilling mystery to solve. 🧛‍♀️🧙‍♂️ If you’ve ever been curious about the line between cultish communities and ghostly gatherings, or you’re just here for a few laughs about evangelical theater kids’ haunted houses, this episode will have you hooked! 🔮 PS: Stick around to learn how our community helps manifest hauntings—because ghosts don’t just appear…sometimes, you summon them. ✨ Listen to the Cult of the Reborn Dolls Episode Have ghost stories of your own? E-mail them to us at [email protected] Encounters episodes are released every Thursday at 9am PST/12pm EST. Corinne and Sabrina hand select a couple of paranormal encounters from our inbox to read in each episode, from demons, to cryptids, to aliens, to creepy kids... the list goes on and on. If you have a story of your own that you'd like us to share on an upcoming episode, we invite you to email them to us! This episode is sponsored by Hers and HexClad. Hers is changing women’s healthcare by providing you with access to affordable weight loss treatments. Start your free online visit today at forhers.com/TGOG. Hers Weight Loss is not available everywhere. Compounded products are not FDA-approved or verified for safety, effectiveness, or quality. Prescription required. Restrictions apply. Wegovy® and Ozempic® are not compounded. Whether you're treating yourself or looking for that perfect gift, now’s the time to snag the cookware that everyone’s talking about. For a very limited time only our listeners can shop HexClad’s biggest sale of the year for up to 42% off with our exclusive link. Just head to Hexclad.com/TGOG to unlock their best deals of the year. If you enjoy our show, please consider joining our Patreon, rating and reviewing on iTunes & Spotify and following us on social media! Youtube, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and Discord. Edited and produced by Jaimi Ryan, original music by Arms Akimbo! Disclaimer: the use of white sage and smudging is a closed practice. If you’re looking to cleanse your space, here are some great alternatives! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Speaker 00

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• 0:59Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Lea and I are going to introduce to you our special guest today. It is Amanda Montell from Sounds Like a Cult. How did you get into cults? Um, how did I not? Okay, so what kind of haunting would you want to experience? I want a ghost to fall in love with me.

• 1:37Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Hi, everyone. Lea and I are going to introduce to you our special guest today. It is Amanda Montell from Sounds Like a Cult. As you'll notice, my hair is pink in that episode, meaning we've recorded this back in February. A long time ago, almost a year ago. But we're super excited for this collab. And we got to talk to Amanda all about how she got into cults, as well as her dreams for her own ghostly encounters, which we, as a TGOG community, might need to manifest for her. And we got some inspiration on how to throw the best Halloween party. Parties. So check out Sounds Like a Cult wherever you listen to podcasts and Amanda has written a couple of books which are all out and available now to buy.

• 2:19Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Cultish is one of them. And then The Age of Magical Overthinking, which I actually happened to find in the local bookstore in Marblehead. And I pitched it up for myself and I think you should too. Either way, we hope you enjoy this episode. And if you want to check out our episode that we did with Sounds Like a Cult, we talked about the Reborn Dolls, which is a really fascinating, interesting conversation. If you want to check that out, it came out October 22 on the Sounds Like a Cult feed.

• 2:47Speaker 03

  It's perfectly timed that we're talking to you because I was visiting some friends in Portland, Maine the other day. And they said to me, they were like, we live in a world where quite literally, everything is a cult these days. It feels like there's no middle ground or like conversation you can have without people having really intense opinions, arguing very vehemently for like, the position that they belong in. And I was like, you guys, do I have a podcast recommendation for you?

• 3:14Speaker 04

  I know, I know. And people have equally cultish opinions about the podcast itself.

• 3:19Speaker 00

  Right. I was gonna say, I feel like there's this like fan cultiness that exists.

• 3:24Speaker 04

  For sure.

• 3:24Speaker 00

  And like, if we were to do an analysis of both of our podcasts, like, I don't know, what would the analysis be? It is a little bit culty.

• 3:31Speaker 04

  Yeah, I would call it a watch your back.

• 3:34Speaker 03

  What's the worst tier? What's the ranking again?

• 3:37Speaker 04

  Our podcast's cultish ranking predicated on the idea that cults fall along a spectrum rather than just a cult, not a cult, binary, are live your life, watch your back, and get the fuck out. That's not like a scholarly taxonomy. But it does prove pretty useful when trying to identify like, okay, that group is culty, but in like a cute way. And that group is culty in a get the fuck out way.

• 4:03Speaker 00

  Get the fuck out. I think our podcast cult.

• 4:07Speaker 04

  Cultiness is in a cute way. Yeah, you know, your podcast community seems adorable.

• 4:14Speaker 04

  Creepy and adorable.

• 4:15Speaker 03

  If you feel differently, you can tell us when we're not recording.

• 4:18Speaker 04

  No, no, I like totally love the paranormal community that you've erected. Uh oh, sorry. We were talking about that word earlier.

• 4:27Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 4:28Speaker 04

  And I desperately want to be a part of it as someone who doesn't like sincerely believe in ghosts, but desperately wants to meet one, has put a lot of effort into trying to meet one. So I don't know what that cognitive dissonance is all about, but it's been present in my life for as long as I can remember.

• 4:49Speaker 03

  Yeah, well, I think that's a lot of our listeners, too. You know, people want to believe and they want to hear those stories. It doesn't mean that they necessarily have experienced something. And I feel like you can probably relate to that with a lot of your listeners, because how many, what percentage of listeners do you have that are actually a part of a cult?

• 5:04Speaker 04

  Or that actually know they're a part of a cult.

• 5:06Speaker 03

  Or, yeah, are cognizant and self-aware enough to know that they are in a cult.

• 5:12Speaker 04

  Well, I think similarly, there is a tendency in society to want to categorize things definitively. Like, oh, that is a cult and I can label it as such, and then I know it's bad. And then I know that I should avoid it and judge the people who are in it. And, you know, there's a lot of like sensationalism surrounding that. When my argument is that, you know, cultishness is a little more fluid. And what we perceive as a cult has so much to do with cultural normativity. You know, there are so many jokes that have been made over the years by religious studies scholars saying, you know, cult plus time equals religion, or a cult is a group where the leader thinks he can talk to God. A religion is a group where that leader is dead.

• 5:54Speaker 04

  So those like things sort of highlight the fact that, you know, there hardly is like a one definitive. Unquestionable definition for what a cult is, which is not to say that some of these groups that have been described as cults aren't totally life ruining. But I'm more interested in the gray areas. Like, how do we all participate in cultishness every day? How are we all susceptible to this type of influence, even if you're not in a full-blown cult? And similar with the paranormal, it's like, I'm very interested in the idea of how I can conjure ghosts from my past. Alexa, please play "All My Ghosts" by Liz MacAlpine.

• 6:34Speaker 04

  So it's like, you know, I'm interested in the more metaphorical or symbolic ideas of ghosts and cults, if that makes sense.

• 6:43Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Sure. So how did you, for people who are perhaps meeting you right now for the first time, how did you get into cults?

• 6:51Speaker 04

  Um, how did I not? Okay, so my dad spent his teenage years totally against his will in a pretty notorious cult compound called Synanon. It was this 70s-era, alternative drug rehabilitation, compound, turn, lifestyle movement for folks in that, you know, peak cult era of time who just wanted in on the countercultural movement of the era. And so my dad's dad, who thought of himself as like, an edgy intellectual, was like, "Kids, we're moving to a cult." Which of course, is not what he said.

• 7:27Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Right.

• 7:28Speaker 04

  No one like voluntarily joins what they believe to be a destructive cult, but yeah, it did end up pretty badly. My dad escaped as soon as he could, as soon as he graduated from high school. He like snuck off the compound every day to attend a normal school, even though you weren't supposed to do that.

• 7:42Speaker 03

  Which is just a testament, too, to his strength and his intelligence, that he was able to recognize what was happening around him was not what he should be experiencing.

• 7:52Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Especially in such a formative time of your life, where you're so easily influenced by everyone around you.

• 7:58Speaker 04

  He didn't love it, yeah. I mean, he joined, uh, at the beginning of his high school years, and up until that point, he'd grown up in the school of Hard Knocks in Spanish Harlem, New York. And so like, he'd been around the block, you know what I mean? But at the same time, like, it's hard to identify with any confidence what qualities make someone more susceptible to groupthink or whatever than another person. I mean, my dad definitely craves community, like, I've seen it, and he's a birder. There we go! Fellow birder! Yeah.

• 8:30Speaker 03

  See his list.

• 8:31Speaker 04

  Yeah, yes. So, you know, I can see those tendencies in my dad, but for sure, he showed up on this compound, took a gander around and he was like, there's too much conformity. People are worshipping this dude at the top. It's just not for me. And my parents are research scientists and so they're sort of like professionally skeptical, which is not to say that they're not susceptible to the influence of like a charismatic leader or ideology, you know, we all are. But I grew up on my dad's riveting stories of this cult, Synanon. And he didn't think anything of it. You know, I would like beg him to tell me stories from his life growing up and my mom too. And he was just like, stories, stories. I don't know. I guess, you know, when I was 14, I moved to this

• 9:13Speaker 04

  cult or whatever. And I was like, what? Like, record scratch.

• 9:17Speaker 03

  Classic dad move to just like drop it like it's nothing, years and years into you living. And you're like, excuse me?

• 9:25Speaker 04

  I know. I mean, I feel like it's generational to do more or less reflecting on your past or whatever. So I think he'd always just been like very forward thinking like, get out of poverty, get out of the cult, you know, chuck along, make it work. So I sort of feel like I cut my teeth journalistically and storytelling wise on like interrogating my dad about his like cult stories that were like out of order. And I was like, wait, wait, wait, back up. What's going on? And then throughout my upbringing, I couldn't help but notice cultish influence, like that which my dad described in Synanon, everywhere, like in my high school theater program and in the startup where I worked when I first moved to LA. And certainly in the ways people would interact on

• 10:09Speaker 04

  social media, you know, you're talking about these like fierce ideological debates that people get in over nothing online. That all inspired me to write my book, Cultish, which is about the language of cults from Scientology to SoulCycle, because my background's in linguistics. And then Sounds Like a Cult was kind of like a spin off of that idea. Let's keep talking about this in a more lighthearted, cheeky way. The cults we all follow, Disney adults, Trader Joe's, et cetera. Yeah.

• 10:35Speaker 03

  I also feel like it's hard not to be fascinated by the idea of cults. But I think the first time that I realized cults didn't necessarily have to just be, you know, a group of fanatical people drinking the Kool-Aid was growing up and seeing all the MLMs pop up around us.

• 10:53Speaker 04

  Yes, ma'am.

• 10:53Speaker 03

  You know, those Tupperware parties, the makeup parties. And then I was like, wait, what is all of this about? Because people get so intense about their beliefs and you get more and more sucked in and it becomes more and more dangerous. And the stakes can increase most of the time. I'm sure, I think I'm a part of the cult of Trader Joe's.

• 11:10Speaker 04

  Absolutely.

• 11:11Speaker 03

  There's nothing bad about that, right?

• 11:13Speaker 04

  It was a live your life. We called it a live your life. Yeah, we like really went in. And that is one of those groups that has like such a distinct aesthetic. The cashiers like low key love bomb you a little bit.

• 11:25Speaker 03

  They flirt with you.

• 11:26Speaker 04

  Yes. And people get so obsessed with the limited edition product drops and there are Facebook groups and people get really fucking into it, but not in a way that destroys their life, you know, sets up these exit costs. The us versus them mentality isn't so bad. There's no ends justify the means philosophy. It doesn't really check off those boxes, but MLMs do, no doubt about it.

• 11:47Speaker 03

  Totally. And I think Trader Joe's is a live your life cult because we haven't been given the opportunity to move the needle forward. Like if there was opportunity, if they created like these crazy ambassador programs or whatever, I'm sure it would slide into kind of that more dangerous territory.

• 12:04Speaker 04

  Oh, the loyalty that Trader Joe's has, they could easily spin it into a watch your back or get the fuck out.

• 12:10Speaker 03

  Absolutely.

• 12:11Speaker 04

  Well on them that they're just, you know, handing out free cookie butter samples and like chilling.

• 12:16Speaker 03

  Talking about cults, I'm sure can be difficult because it involves talking about a group of people who often can be really hurt or like respond aggressively towards what you're discussing. Has there been any cults or, or I guess like topics within cults that you have had a lot of fear going into discussing?

• 12:37Speaker 04

  For sure, but they're not the groups that you might think.

• 12:40Speaker 03

  Like who?

• 12:41Speaker 04

  Well, that, well, that's true and untrue. This is what I'll say. I went through an intense legal vet when writing my book. And I learned a lot from like the in-house counsel at Harper Collins, how to protect myself. There's a bit on Sounds Like a Cult where I'm like always singing slash frantically repeating the word allegedly, but it's like not a bit. Like it's, it is very interesting how you can sort of like skirt litigation if you make sure to phrase things as an opinion.

• 13:12Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  And not fact.

• 13:13Speaker 04

  Yeah, and not a fact. Or like in my book, I talk about groups that are more sinister, more destructive, Scientology, et cetera. And you become exposed to legal ramifications. If you start saying things that haven't been alleged in a reputable source already. So like with Scientology, you know, I wasn't like blowing the lid open on Scientology. Like there's so much that's already been said by like whistleblowers and stuff about that group. I was really just putting my spin on it and analyzing how that group uses language to influence their followings in ways that we certainly can't see and that we might not expect.

• 13:55Speaker 04

  On Sounds Like a Cult, we have run into like a little bit of like sketchy legal trouble with maybe only one group. But in general, I feel like I'm pretty good at identifying like what's kosher because of that legal vetting that I went through.

• 14:12Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yeah.

• 14:14Speaker 04

  And it is funny that like if you're in on the joke, you'll probably like being called culty, you know? It's the sort of thing where it's like, if you can't laugh along with it, that's a red flag.

• 14:28Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Right. If you take yourself so seriously that you're not willing to acknowledge there's like a culty element to it, then it's like, well, what are you trying to protect yourself from? And like, that feels like there's a little bit more danger in it.

• 14:40Speaker 04

  Exactly. So like, we're always writing this line where I tout sort of more seriously and journalistically in my book that like the word cult can be used itself to separate us into an us versus them. And you know, the last thing you want to do when talking to someone who you think might be involved in a group like QAnon or something like that, is to be like, you're in a cult, you're a brainwash. But at the same time, like, language is so context dependent and you can't control it from the top down. And it's just a fact that people toss around the word cult more cheekily all the time to refer to rans and fan communities and such. And so like, we're always navigating those nuanced

• 15:20Speaker 04

  waters. But there was a, like a pretty cult-followed Peloton instructor named Hannah, oh gosh, I don't remember her last name, don't cancel me, cult of Peloton. But like, she shouted us out in one of her classes the next day. She was like, I knew they were gonna do us, I knew they were gonna do us, I was waiting for it, you know? So if you're in on the jo- that's the thing too, is that like, the, the show is kind of protected by the fact that it's entertainment. But yeah, no, it's, it's for sure tricky. Yeah, the backlash, I mean, it's so entertaining to me, like, when listeners take our cult categories like super seriously, because like, they're made up. Like, I just made them up. They're not real. And so, it's too funny how people, how some people in reaction to a certain

• 16:03Speaker 04

  episode, and I love this discourse, by the way, like, I think the disagreement and debate is the whole point, like, this is also subjective. In reaction to the same episode, someone will be like, I can't believe you're calling this a cult, at all. And another person will be like, this is a get the fuck out, how dare you call it a watch your back. I'm like, it's just silly, like, it's not-

• 16:21Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Right. And it's up for debate. It is up for debate.

• 16:25Speaker 04

  Which I welcome. And, you know, it, again, it is riding that line between like earnest cultural commentary and like, just a bit. So, it's like a recipe for debate, and I love that.

• 16:34Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  I also feel like you are not going into your episodes being like, definitively X, Y, and Z. You're just trying to understand. And you, I feel like you're coming at it from a psychological, human empathy approach of like, understanding why people would be drawn to-

• 16:50Speaker 04

  Something and at what point does it become dangerous or does it ever become dangerous?

• 16:55Speaker 03

  And exploring the people who are in it and the people's opinions who are outside of it too. Because that also what people who aren't in it feel towards that group is some of the biggest defining parts of a cult being dangerous, right?

• 17:10Speaker 04

  Definitely. And the fact that we're talking about not Heaven's Gate and the Manson's in Jonestown, but the reborn doll community and CrossFit makes it all the more subjective and all the more nebulous. So it's, yeah, it's, it's been really interesting, like doing the show all these years and seeing people's reactions to it. And I like, I mean, I never could have foreseen the like cult that's been born out of the, the listeners of the show. But yeah, it's like fascinating to apply the sort of, you know, boxes that we check off when we cover certain topics on the show, like to the listenership of podcasting in general.

• 17:52Speaker 03

  Cause it's a lot of connections. Yeah. I mean, Krit and I kind of in a cheeky way have said, join our pyramid scheme. And it's kind of in reference to if you listen to our podcast, tell two other people about it, you know, pass along the word. And then you get an invisible ghost mobile when you get so many listeners to listen.

• 18:09Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 18:09Speaker 03

  It's an MLM.

• 18:11Speaker 04

  Totally. I mean, also like the line between cult and just good marketing is very fine. We're just living in a particularly cultish time when we're losing trust in institutions that are supposed to make us feel held. We're looking to fill those voids in alternative places. Sometimes they're on Reddit. Sometimes it's a podcast. Sometimes it's a really fucked up spiritual community. And I'm just like so interested in finding cultishness in a positive way, if you can.

• 18:40Speaker 00

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• 19:09Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  And there's so many nuances, like I think I look at something like the Manson's or Jim Jones and all of the like Heaven's Gate and stuff. And I'm like, oh, I would love to believe that I would never get caught up in something like that.

• 19:21Speaker 04

  Oh, my God, but you look like a Manson girl.

• 19:26Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  We all do. We all do.

• 19:28Speaker 04

  I was gonna say all three of us do.

• 19:30Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  These brunette girlies, we would be over. Right, but then like you look at things and cults that you talk about, kind of that feel more benign and wouldn't necessarily on like the surface be called cults. But then I'm like, oh, I have exhibited all of these behaviors. And I understand how easy it would be to, if like, say Trader Joe's did slowly evolve into a more sinister cult, like, I'm already low level there, you know?

• 19:58Speaker 04

  I talk about this all the time, and this is like on a slightly more serious note. I would not necessarily be as susceptible to a group cult environment. But throughout my life, I have found myself in so many cults of one. Where like I've been attracted to the influence of a single charismatic figure who's like, you know, allured me into a one-on-one relationship using many of the same language and tactics that cult leaders use. It's just I'm their only follower. So that's happened so many times.

• 20:31Speaker 03

  Influencers too, you know?

• 20:32Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Right.

• 20:33Speaker 03

  Where like they don't even necessarily try to create an individual relationship with someone. But somehow they just get the entire world, or whoever their audience is, to feel such a strong connection to them, despite never meeting, despite never speaking, having zero interaction that's

• 20:50Speaker 04

  A two-way road. It's very much for the majority of people, a one-way relationship.

• 20:56Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  It also makes me think of like my relationship with my older sister. Like I'm two years younger than my sister. And growing up, I wanted to be just like her. Like I did everything she did. And it was just like, she never asked me to. If anything, that pissed her off.

• 21:10Speaker 04

  Right. Well, I feel like triangulating amongst like your parents, your friends, your sister in real life, in order to build an identity, a set of rituals for yourself, like that's the classic healthy way of like, you know, moving through the world. It's just that, you know, Corinne, to your point, like so many cults these days are parasocial. And online, you know, you're perceiving so many identities and trying to, you know, we get choosers paradox. Like I talk about this on the podcast. I talk about it in my book a lot. Like I think one of the reasons why, you know, we feel so lost and find ourselves in these parasocial cults a lot of the time now is because we have this choosers paradox where there is at least the illusion of infinite possibilities

• 21:54Speaker 04

  for the direction that your life can go in. And that wasn't always true, you know, like in the hunter gatherer period. It's like you were born in this tribe and you're gonna survive. And, and now, you know, it's like I could have any hair color. I could move anywhere. In theory, you know, I could have any, I could, online, I scroll through TikTok. I personally don't have TikTok. Thank God for me. But in theory, like you scroll through TikTok, you're like, oh my God, look at all these careers that people have. Look at all these, you know, fashionist antics that people have. And that can feel really overwhelming. And so, you know, if you can find a group that provides an identity template of like, you are a glossy girl, or you are a devoted soul cycler, or you are a Swiftie, or you are a Trader Joe's stan, or you are a reborn-er, then that can feel like, oh, thank God, I can surrender. I can relax.

• 22:39Speaker 04

  And then in that sense of relaxation, you might not realize that that group could like take over your life in a more insidious way.

• 22:45Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Right. Well, so for today's sake, would you like to momentarily step inside this paranormal cult that we've created? We call it our most haunted friends are our phantoms. And you were saying that you haven't necessarily experienced anything paranormal yet, but that you would like to, or have you? Or are you like not sure if it was paranormal?

• 23:06Speaker 04

  I mean, certainly when you're a kid. Every single night when you like pee, you are certain there is a ghost in your hallway.

• 23:16Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  I mean, that evolved into my adulthood. I don't think that's ever gone away.

• 23:20Speaker 04

  Yeah, I mean, I was absolutely terrified of my basement throughout my entire childhood, which I think is normal, but I couldn't get over the fact that like, the world is a graveyard. So many people have walked this earth. Like, everything is probably built on top of someone's decomposed corpse.

• 23:38Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Mm hmm.

• 23:39Speaker 04

  So I don't know. I mean, I've been on hella ghost tours in my life. I want to believe that everything that I experienced on those tours was a paranormal interaction, but you know, do I really believe? I don't know.

• 23:51Speaker 03

  It is tough on ghost tour situations because I've been on a few and I feel like I almost find myself believing certain people in the group and not believing others where I'm like, well, I don't know if I actually believe that you saw that shadow around the corner that you just said that you saw. But if I experienced anything, I would tell people and I'd be like, oh, my God. So I find myself feeling that too on the ghost tours, being someone who fully believes in the paranormal.

• 24:14Speaker 04

  Yeah. No, you have to sell it. I mean, we're all theater kids. You really have to sell it. And I actually think I would love to guide ghost tours. Like, I think I would love for that to be like a maybe a late, like a retirement era career for me. The best ghost tour that I went on was in New Orleans in the French Quarter. And that like square mile or less of space is haunted if anywhere on this earth is haunted. I know that to be true. I love graveyards. Yeah, I no, I'm eager. I'm eager for ghosts to be real.

• 24:50Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Well, yeah. And I think that's something that's so interesting is the paranormal world is so unknown that we don't really have the ability to say or speak with certainty. And there's so many different types of hauntings. But like, on a very, very basic level of energy, and this is not necessarily paranormal, but like, if you walk into a room where people were just fighting, you can pick up on that, you know? And I think that

• 25:13Speaker 04

  So true.

• 25:15Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  That is a, an experience that I feel like almost every human can understand and relate to. But if you just take that. And then try to understand that like that can exist when your body, your living soul passes away. That energy does go somewhere or it has, it doesn't just disappear, you know?

• 25:32Speaker 04

  Yeah, in the past few years, because I, I just finished writing this book about irrationality. And like, growing up the daughter of scientists, I was like conditioned to sort of like worship rationality, you know, dismiss mysticism, but I've come to really respect and value intuition, like as a profoundly useful human quality and skill. And it's something that, yeah, like you can't quite describe, like what is like feminine intuition? What is that thing that tells you that like those people were just talking about? You know, like there is just like, intuition is very, very real and it helps us survive.

• 26:14Speaker 04

  So yeah, if you take that thought exercise a little bit further, I don't know. Yeah, there isn't a fine line between like something that's real and something that's not. That's a dangerous statement, but.

• 26:26Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Sure, but even having grown up with scientists as parents, like, science is so baked on like proof and hypotheses and then finding things to back it up and evidence. But a lot of science begins with a theory that has no evidence. And then it's the like discovery of that evidence.

• 26:45Speaker 04

  I sometimes feel nervous, like existing at that nexus of, because, because science is under such threat, speaking of cultishness, you know, like especially now post COVID. Like there's such a weaponization of like questioning of science, you know? And so I feel reticent to do that, but you're right. Like, I think there is a point when you're talking about like human feelings and human experiences, when like doing the math, so to speak, doesn't help you, you know? And beyond that, you kind of do have to rely on intuition. If you're talking about feelings and these more like abstract phenomena. But what I think is really funny is when like ghost hunters and things try to.

• 27:32Speaker 04

  Docking Back to the Future style, like use science to find ghosts. And I'm like, you can't, I have, you can't square that, like inventing those like machines and whatnot. And at that point, I'm just like, relax, like you're just a boy who wants a toy. I think the manual bodily ghost hunting, that's what I can get behind.

• 27:53Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Sure. I think it's hard with the paranormal when you're using those tools and you're like 100% it's this. Because we can't definitively say that because Corinne and I have gone on ghost hunting paranormal investigations where we use those tools and it's like, okay, is this an indication of something? And I mean, it's fun, first of all.

• 28:11Speaker 04

  It sounds so fun.

• 28:13Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Just having an openness of like, we don't know what this is, but maybe it is indicating something otherworldly.

• 28:19Speaker 04

  Totally. I mean, I narrativize the shit out of my life. Like I create stories and narratives and attribute like cause and effect and try to shoehorn plot points into my life that don't exist. It's like, things are just happening at random. Your life is not a story. And that's some of the same mental gymnastics that I'm seeing here. It's like, we're trying to create a story out of events that might not even be events or phenomena that might not even be phenomena. And I actually think that that's a very human impulse. Like we want things to make sense. We want this cause to connect to this effect. And even if I'm not doing that in a ghosty way necessarily on a daily basis, I'm still doing it in a kind of like mystical way.

• 29:03Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  I mean, we talked about this on your episode, actually, where in order to survive, there is a little bit of delusion in all of us.

• 29:11Speaker 04

  For sure.

• 29:11Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yes. We kind of can't spend too much time thinking about the big picture. So we like delude ourselves into thinking that the small minute things of everyday life is the most important thing because that we can understand and we can grapple with and we can allow ourselves to live the next day.

• 29:27Speaker 04

  Completely. And it's like, not irrational, but it's how we cope with the intolerable overwhelming mystery that is life as a human on this planet.

• 29:36Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Right, right.

• 29:40Speaker 05

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• 30:10Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Okay, so what kind of haunting would you want to experience? If we were to like manifest one for you right here?

• 30:16Speaker 04

  Oh, my God, what a wonderful question. I've been living for the past month in a cabin. You might perceive the A-frame shape of the wall and ceiling behind me.

• 30:26Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Is this a writer's retreat?

• 30:28Speaker 04

  Oh, sure, but it's like a mostly I've been podcasting this month, but it's like mostly a change of scenery, you know, like LA can be a lot.

• 30:38Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  I get that.

• 30:39Speaker 04

  So I'm in a town called Idlewild, which is very mystical. And there's just something haunted in a nice way, positive, good spirits about this town. Every structure looks like like a little ghost child is like running through it and laughing like just around the corner. Like, that's how every

• 31:00Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  I love it.

• 31:00Speaker 04

  like coffee shop and

• 31:02Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  inspiring, we need to go.

• 31:04Speaker 04

  Oh, my God, you would freak out here like it's a mix of like crunchy mountain people and like hippies and libertarians and like conspiratorialists and witches like it's a cultural poo poo platter of nonsense. So I would love before I had to go back to like the vile modernity of the big city. If just like one of Idlewild's like first peoples were to appear in this area, you know?

• 31:38Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Do you want like a physical? You want to see like a full bodied apparition or do you want to like hear voices?

• 31:43Speaker 03

  Wake up in the middle of the night with them over your face?

• 31:47Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yeah.

• 31:47Speaker 03

  Tickling your

• 31:48Speaker 04

  Okay, no, sorry. Yeah, let's get specific. I would love for it to be outside at twilight.

• 31:54Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  This sounds romantic.

• 31:56Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 31:57Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  You're romanticizing your ghost experience.

• 32:00Speaker 04

  I want a ghost to fall in love with me. Is it too much to ask about Twilight? I want to go on a sunset walk with an apparition. I'm kind of sick because you know how like your eye is hyper tuned to be like overly paranoid during twilight? Because you're like adjusting to the dark and so if a threat is coming from behind a tree, you know, you want to be able to clock it. So I feel like that's a great time to be open to seeing things that you ordinarily wouldn't. And so I, yeah, I would love for the physical embodiment of an apparition to just like, maybe, well, I have been seeing things. I actually have been seeing things around this cabin.

• 32:40Speaker 03

  Okay. What kind of things?

• 32:43Speaker 04

  There are these shadows in my periphery. And I've been actually, oh my God, I'm so glad we're talking about this. I've been seeing shadows in my periphery, like animals. Like maybe they're animal ghosts. So then I guess I would love to see just like more of what I've already been seeing, but maybe in a human form.

• 33:01Speaker 03

  Hmm. Your cats are with you right now. So I bet that there are some sort of like animal hauntings within the space that you're in. And now they have new friends to interact with. Because I mean, how many people who are going to this A-frame are bringing their cats with them? Probably not that many.

• 33:18Speaker 04

  No, they're not even allowed to be here, actually. So none. Yeah, I think now that you mention it, my younger cat, Theodore, he has been acting a damn fool. He has been bananas, beyond normal cat zoomies. I do think he has a ghost friend here. Because Claire, my other cat, who he's normally terrorizing, she'll be like sleeping in bed, totally chilling. And he's like berserk. So I love this theory that he has made a bygone animal friend in this cabin.

• 33:49Speaker 03

  Yeah, I'm here for that.

• 33:51Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 33:51Speaker 03

  We always say, trust your pets. And if your pets are behaving like there's spirits around, then that to us is most certainly haunting.

• 33:58Speaker 04

  But it feels very, it, it could be scary, but like a teddy roo is having fun. So.

• 34:04Speaker 03

  Right, right. And I think every haunting is and can be scary because you're not expecting it. It's something that you didn't invite into your.

• 34:13Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Face showing up unannounced and unexpectedly. And even if it's like, you know, a deceased loved one popping in to say hi and check in on you like, you're not expecting that.

• 34:23Speaker 04

  Right.

• 34:24Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  So at first there is fear. And then maybe over time you can be like, oh, now I know what it is. But then there's also like, we've heard so many stories where something appears as one thing or as one person to get your trust.

• 34:39Speaker 04

  Right.

• 34:39Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  And then it's actually something more sinister.

• 34:41Speaker 04

  Yeah, now that we've purged through it, it's definitely feeling like, because Teddy Rue also has like, this little boy energy, like, like the, like the little boy in the ring, you know what I mean? And I really think he's made a friend. And so perhaps I just want Teddy Rue's experience for myself.

• 35:00Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  You're envious of your cat. That's fair.

• 35:03Speaker 03

  Okay, well, I have a piece of advice for you, Amanda, and this is something that I don't know if you've heard of before. We certainly have because we live and breathe the paranormal world every week, all week. Knowing that you're in a cabin, if you hear your name, if you hear a whistle, if you hear crying child outside, you must ignore it. Do not go looking. Because I mean, it could be paranormal, but also on the flip side, like you're the person who talks about the cults, which involves real life people, and Sabrina and I have said this a million times. The paranormal can be absolutely terrifying, but oftentimes what's scarier are humans.

• 35:39Speaker 04

  So of course they are. Oh, my God. I have like an, I have a vacation responder on my email like all the time. Cause I just, I don't want anyone to say my name.

• 35:49Speaker 04

  I'm just like, you cannot reach me. No. Yeah, I have like a healthy respect for the ocean. I have a healthy respect for wild animals and I have a healthy respect for the dead. I have been waiting to like fully embrace a paranormal experience, I think, since I was a little kid. Cause I, I mean, my partner and I are big into Halloween. Like we throw the most outrageous Halloween party. We have a seven foot animatronic witch named Agatha. We turn our whole front yard into a graveyard. Oh, yeah.

• 36:19Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  So cool.

• 36:20Speaker 04

  It's ridiculous. Last year we were like, okay, we're gonna have a smaller Halloween party this time because in 2022, there were 80 people there and it was too much. So we're gonna, we're gonna keep it more intimate this year, we decided. And so to make up for the fact that it wasn't quite the same level of rager, I devised this glass onion style ghost mystery escape room.

• 36:42Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Amanda, you are literally speaking, like I've said this on the podcast, like this is my dream for every year to have a Halloween party like this.

• 36:49Speaker 04

  I couldn't recommend it more. It was actually, so, because you can order like a escape room accoutrements, you know, online. And so I divided all my guests into three parties and one party was in the apothecary. I had transformed my office in the back of my house into an apothecary. One group were dedicated to the witches. One group were dedicated to the vampires in the living room. And one group was dedicated to the werewolves in the yard. And the idea was that our house, which is like 120 years old, old for LA, had been haunted all along. And that night, the night of Halloween, our energy had unleashed the evil ghosts of

• 37:28Speaker 03

  I'm obsessed.

• 37:29Speaker 04

  Yes, vampires and werewolves, and that they had already killed one of the guest attendees, but they didn't know they were dead. And no one else could tell which of us was dead.

• 37:38Speaker 03

  Ah, I love this.

• 37:40Speaker 04

  Yes, we had to go through these different, like unlocking of a thing and decoding of whatever, to figure out who was dead, to find ingredients to add to a cauldron, and to find a spell to recite, once those ingredients were added, to bring this person back to life and lay the evil spirits to rest.

• 37:59Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  I'm sorry. Don't be surprised when I come knocking on your door on Halloween this year. I will be there. You didn't invite me, but I invited myself.

• 38:07Speaker 04

  100%. You have to come because you'll appreciate it.

• 38:09Speaker 03

  I want all of the information of how to run this, because I want this to be my own Halloween party.

• 38:15Speaker 04

  Oh, it was too fun. The other thing was like, there were these other spirits that were communicating to the different teams to like, direct them where to go and like, oh gosh, there was like a clock that opened up. It was, yeah, we'll offline about it.

• 38:29Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  So Amanda, can I, I have a question. Did you, do you have a clone? Because how do you do all of the things that you do?

• 38:38Speaker 04

  Um, we just recorded an episode of Sounds Like a Cult that will be airing in October, and it's February. So that's how.

• 38:45Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yes, a lot of pre-planning, pre-recording.

• 38:48Speaker 04

  Yeah, pre-planning, pre-recording because we just have to make more time for Halloween party planning.

• 38:54Speaker 03

  You're inspiring me to do this because I feel like, well, I'm on the East Coast in Massachusetts and a lot of my friends have requested that I have a Halloween party and I've just never felt prepared enough because I don't want to just half-ass a Halloween party. Like if I'm gonna throw a Halloween party, I'm gonna fucking throw a Halloween party. And this is making me motivated.

• 39:12Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Corinne, your maternity leave is now, in addition to taking care of your child, should also be dedicated to your, like, relaunch into society at a Halloween party.

• 39:22Speaker 04

  Well, I think something, like, speaking of chooser's paradox, I think a constraint that could really help you would be just to come up with a theme. So like, the escape room was a great theme. It like really narrowed down what we were gonna do. And I would love to host another Halloween party that's sort of like French Belle Epoque dinner party, you know? Where like the ghosts of dead French intellectuals.

• 39:50Speaker 03

  Oh, my gosh. Yes.

• 39:52Speaker 04

  I'll help you with this.

• 39:53Speaker 03

  This sounds so good. I will tell you, one of my good friends, she is having her wedding next year and it's gonna be this beautiful garden party. Everyone's gonna wear like big floral dresses, but she's heavily debating making what would look like this just like gorgeous wedding into a murder mystery party at the same time. She's like, how do I make this?

• 40:14Speaker 04

  I love that.

• 40:15Speaker 03

  More aggressive.

• 40:17Speaker 04

  I recently got engaged. I feel like I always need to make the disclaimer that I proposed. I love that. Thank you. But I keep referring to the wedding-esque event that we want to throw as a carnival?

• 40:31Speaker 03

  Beautiful.

• 40:32Speaker 04

  Weddings, it's like, everyone's been to those. I would totally do like an escape room kind of thing.

• 40:36Speaker 03

  Yes. Now I'm just thinking of all of these different themes. Okay, I'm gonna pitch you a wedding theme idea that that is kind of escape roomy.

• 40:44Speaker 04

  Amazing.

• 40:47Speaker 05

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• 41:17Speaker 03

  A miniature theme where all the people, like you create everything around you to make everyone else feel really small. Like you have giant, giant flowers, like sculptors and stuff. So you feel like you've all been, it's a Honey, I Shrunk the Kids.

• 41:31Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  What's the budget on this wedding?

• 41:33Speaker 03

  Unless it's $5 million, maybe this won't be able to be executed.

• 41:38Speaker 04

  You never know the favors you can call in, you know?

• 41:41Speaker 03

  That's true.

• 41:42Speaker 04

  I could cult leader style manipulate some company into giving me like large blow up installations of flowers and stuff. A psychedelic theme is cool. I wanted to feel immersive.

• 41:54Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  I've always wanted a room full of kittens at a wedding and everyone can play with the kittens during the event and adopt them if they would like.

• 42:05Speaker 04

  Oh, that's very doable. Yeah, like I could partner with one of the rescues where I got one of my cats or like the best friends society, if you've heard of that. Yeah, like anyone could do that. That's what, I love that idea.

• 42:18Speaker 03

  Well, Amanda, knowing that you're obviously into Halloween parties, what sort of direction do you go with your Halloween costumes?

• 42:27Speaker 04

  So the costumes take a back burner because we're all about the decor. This is like a needs improvement category. Last year, my partner Casey and I were Darla and Alfalfa from The Little Rascals.

• 42:40Speaker 03

  That's cute.

• 42:42Speaker 04

  The year before, I was Elizabeth Holmes, which was like very easy to pull off. You know, just black turtleneck, blonde wig, red lipstick, which I wear anyway. And the voice, do or do not, there is no try. So that was easy.

• 42:55Speaker 03

  Okay. So you get into character though. So I, which I very much respect.

• 42:59Speaker 04

  For sure. For sure.

• 43:00Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 43:01Speaker 04

  Growing up, I was Captain Hook for different Halloweens. So that's just worth noting.

• 43:06Speaker 03

  You gotta bring it back. You're a theater kid and you were trying to perfect the character over time.

• 43:13Speaker 04

  Yeah. Yeah. It grew up with me because I was Captain Hook at four, nine, 12, and 17. By 17, it was Captain Hooker.

• 43:22Speaker 03

  Of course.

• 43:23Speaker 04

  Thank you for laughing.

• 43:24Speaker 03

  I said, I want like a pirate themed, Captain Hook themed Halloween party where you turn your home into a boat.

• 43:29Speaker 04

  I love that. Okay. I know my best friend isn't listening. Well, no, she should 100% be listening to this podcast, but.

• 43:34Speaker 03

  Don't tell her about it. So you can say whatever you want.

• 43:36Speaker 04

  Yeah, that's, that's a point.

• 43:38Speaker 03

  She doesn't need to know.

• 43:38Speaker 04

  So I am co-planning a 30th birthday extravaganza for her that's Titanic themed. And there is going to be a pirate scavenger hunt. And I'm proud of this. I'm gonna make a signature cocktail that's a whiskey based, rose flavored cocktail called a Jack and Rose.

• 43:58Speaker 03

  Oh, brilliant.

• 44:01Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Brilliant.

• 44:01Speaker 03

  Thank you.

• 44:02Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Brilliant.

• 44:03Speaker 04

  Once this podcasting thing really starts to get to be too much, I'll just abandon my life, move to these woods permanently, and do a ghost tour, full-time profession, and a bit of nautical themed party planning slash holiday planning.

• 44:20Speaker 03

  You have your future planned out. Los Angeles is the perfect place to just buy a warehouse and do these types of events. I feel like people would be so into it.

• 44:29Speaker 04

  Completely. Like I've, I've been resisting the delusional atmosphere of the town. I need to lean in.

• 44:34Speaker 03

  Lean in. You have the natural ability to give the people what they want, and it's this. It's a town of theater kids and you have the skills.

• 44:42Speaker 04

  There are theater kids in LA, but I also feel like a lot of like hot people, like the popular, popular girlies move there. And that's.

• 44:51Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Scary. LA is scary.

• 44:53Speaker 03

  It is.

• 44:54Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  I mean, it goes back to like, what's really scary, the paranormal or real people. And I think the answer is real people.

• 45:00Speaker 04

  So accurate. Thank you for bringing that back.

• 45:03Speaker 03

  You've had so many episodes and so many cults that you've covered on Sounds Like a Cult. Are there a couple of episodes that you would recommend to our listeners that kind of would be a good crossover, a good in between of our subjects?

• 45:15Speaker 04

  Definitely. There was a Halloween episode a few years ago on the Cult of Hell Houses, which are the, are you familiar? There are these like evangelical haunted houses that youth groups will put on, like Christian youth groups. But instead of there being like a Dracula room or like a Frankenstein room, it'll be like an abortion room. Or a premarital sex.

• 45:40Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yep.

• 45:41Speaker 03

  Oh my God, I've never heard of this. I need to go listen to this.

• 45:45Speaker 04

  Horrifying, horrifying.

• 45:47Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  There was a weird, I think this was when I was looking up the McMammy Manor, like the haunted house, which is like horrific. If you don't know about it, basically it's like a torture house, haunted house. But when I was looking that up, there was like a whole Reddit subreddit of these hell houses actually being haunted, which I thought was hilarious.

• 46:07Speaker 04

  They deserve it. They fully deserve it. Well, these are like, this is truly like the Venn diagram of everything we've been speaking about. Because it's Halloween, it's culty evangelicalism, but it's also theater kids. This is what evangelical theater kids like have to do, you know, like Lord knows their high school is not putting on spring awakening.

• 46:28Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Nope.

• 46:29Speaker 04

  It's like you do your hell house. That's how you be creative if you're an evangelical theater kid. So that's a good one. And then we just had an episode on the cult of Catholic school, which like Catholicism is so spooky. So I feel like that would be a good listen too.

• 46:42Speaker 03

  I mean, if we think about Catholicism too, it's like the priests are the ones that do the exorcisms on people's houses.

• 46:48Speaker 04

  Tell me about it.

• 46:49Speaker 03

  So there is a lot of spookiness surrounding that.

• 46:53Speaker 04

  And then of course, like where's the line between religion, cult, ghost story, eh? And then of course, I have to say that you two will. Beyond, it sounds like a cult Halloween episode this year, the Cult of Reborn Dolls teaser spoiler, which, um, what a hoot. Very much so.

• 47:10Speaker 03

  That was a scary topic because it's like dolls inherently are scary, but then it's also scary to talk about. You do this all the time, but we, we don't. It's scary to put yourself out there where like you provide opinions on a group of people that you are not a part of. And so it's kind of, I'm like, don't cancel me.

• 47:32Speaker 04

  Oh, right, right. Y'all are so safe and it's so genius. Like a ghost can't sue you or cancel you.

• 47:38Speaker 03

  No, they can't.

• 47:39Speaker 04

  We do try our very best to bring generosity to the table when discussing these culty communities. And they're all like, all the discussions are predicated on the foundational thesis that like, we are all a member of a cult of some kind. Absolutely. I need to step back sometimes and remember like, not everybody is comfortable sitting around being like, everything's a cult, but, but it is, so it's fine. But it is. Which cults are you a part of? Oh my God. Um, great question. I mean, I'm in the cult of Los Angeles, definitely. This is why I have to like come retreat to places like Idlewild for periods of time because the cult of celebrity is so profound, like even just parasocially.

• 48:24Speaker 04

  So then when you live in a town and work in an industry where you're actually interacting with celebrities in real life, oh my God, I'm so susceptible to a celebrity like summoning me to like a meeting or a party or like some ridiculous thing. And me, me truly like dropping everything and like dismissing my values and doing whatever they want me to do. So that's bad. At least you acknowledge it. Yeah. No. So I'm really like, I have to step away from like the Hollywood of it all because celebrity is so alluring and oh my God, could go on and on about that. Yeah, I was fully in the cult of theater kids, which was maybe the precursor to the cult of Hollywood. And we're all in the cult of podcasting. I mean, shit.

• 49:08Speaker 03

  It's obviously a cult because there's so many more people trying to. Be sucked into the cult of podcasting. It's there's some crazy statistic where it's like half a million podcasts that exist out there. Probably more than that.

• 49:22Speaker 04

  I mean, this, this is like three years old at this point. So I'm sure it's even more dramatic now. But when I heard the stat, it was there are two million podcasts uploaded to Apple Podcasts and one million of them only have one episode.

• 49:36Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Oh, wow.

• 49:37Speaker 03

  Oh, man.

• 49:38Speaker 04

  I have so many thoughts about this, like the Sounds Like a Cult live show, like two live shows we did a few years ago were about the cult of podcasting. So we like got into a little more deeply then, but I think it really is like classically a space that lends itself to cultishness because it's so new. It's so sort of like DIY, low barrier to entry, like anybody can get into it, which is amazing and cool. But it also makes podcasters really vulnerable to Hollywood-esque exploitation. Like I will never get over how nuts it is that my like career that I pursued on purpose was writing books. And like, when you write a book, your intellectual property belongs to you.

• 50:19Speaker 04

  Of course, like by default, like when you write a book, like that's your book and the publisher would never claim any ownership of that. But I was so shook when I got into podcasting that like how the industry or podcast networks or whatever, like lay immediate claim on your IP if you don't push back. And you know, that's like a little bit predatory, right? So like, there are so many pros and cons to the industry that have to do with the fact that it is so nascent and low barrier to entry and DIY and full of green creators.

• 50:52Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Right.

• 50:53Speaker 04

  Yeah, I could talk on and on about that.

• 50:54Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Well, okay, speaking of like you're writing your books, what books have you written? What is coming out? What are you working on right now? Where can everyone find you and the books you have written?

• 51:05Speaker 04

  Oh my God, thank you for asking. So I wrote these two books about language called Words Slut, which is about language and gender, and Cultish, which is about the language of cult. And then in April, April 9th of this year, I have a book coming out called The Age of Magical Overthinking: Notes on Modern Irrationality, which I think anyone who's interested in the paranormal and how our brains wrap around sort of like mystical ideas would be interested in because it's about the clash between our innate cognitive biases, like the mental magic tricks our minds play on themselves, and the information age and how those like two phenomena interact in sometimes like freaky ways.

• 51:43Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yeah.

• 51:44Speaker 04

  That book's coming out in April and I'm going on a tour and I'm putting on this show called The Big Magical Cult Show and like it's gonna be ridiculous, so.

• 51:52Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Oh, so fun.

• 51:53Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 51:54Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  If you experience more hauntings in your cabin, you'll have to let us know.

• 51:59Speaker 04

  I will.

• 51:59Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  We'll manifest it. Our community has this like weird power. One, we're a haunted community. Everyone's haunted and then people listen to our podcast and get haunted. But we also have had an experience where one of our listeners was experiencing a haunting and like together we all like set intentions and tried to clear their space. They never experienced it again. So I'm gonna try to use this in a, let's manifest a positive haunting and you gave us, you gave us the recipe of what you would like to experience. So we'll manifest it. Whoever's listening, help manifest this for Amanda and maybe it will happen.

• 52:33Speaker 04

  Oh my God. And please tell me what spell you use because that's what I'm obsessed with. That'll be another career is like writing spell books. I would love nothing more. Yeah, anyways, send me your spells too, please.

• 52:45Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Amazing.

• 52:45Speaker 03

  Oh, well Amanda, thank you so much for joining us. This is so fun. And we really liked being on Sounds Like a Cult, which will direct everyone to that episode too.

• 52:53Speaker 04

  Hell yeah.

• 52:54Speaker 03

  Where we had very intense discussions about maybe one of the creepiest uncanny valley dolls out there, the reborn dolls.

• 53:03Speaker 04

  We really went there. Thank you for going there.

• 53:06Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Well, thanks for allowing us to go there with you.

• 53:10Speaker 03

  What a love fest. What a love fest. We will See you. On the other side.

• 53:21Speaker 06

  Very spooky.

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