Unearth The Haunting Legacies of Women In the Paranormal With Alex Matsuo

Speaker A: Hi everyone, and welcome back to Haunted History Chronicles. Before we introduce today's podcast or guest, if you like this podcast, please consider leaving a review you it costs nothing, but it helps share news of the podcast and guests I feature with others interested within the paranormal. It's a simple and easy way to help the podcast continue to grow and be a space for people to chat and come together. If you haven't already found us on the Haunted History Chronicle's website, Instagram, Facebook or Twitter, you can find links to all social media pages in any of the notes for an episode. Come and join us to get involved and gain access to additional blogs, news and updates. And now let's get started. Introducing today's episode.

Speaker B: Alex Matsuo is a paranormal researcher, social media influencer, and author. She's the founder of the association of Paranormal Study and runs the Spooky stuff. If it's weird, spooky, unusual, scary, macabre, haunted she wants to write or talk about it all. My favorite subject topics so the perfect guest. Alex has written several books, her most recent being volume One of Women of the Paranormal, a book that helps you to discover the legacies of some of the most influential women in the paranormal field. It shares the stories of over 35 groundbreaking women and is a celebration of their accomplishments and their place in the history of parapsychology, psychical research and folklore. Alex excavates the buried legacies of women in the field who are often overshadowed and almost forgotten. From paranormal investigators, parapsychologists to psychic mediums and cryptozoologists, she helps highlight not only women who helped inspire the paranormal world, but set the very foundation for modern day investigation and practice. Trailblazers like Catherine Crow, the first ghost hunter who brought words like poltergeist into the English language. Helen Peter knowsworthy the mother of the Ouija board, rose Mcenberg, harry Houdini's right hand investigator sarah Wilson Estep, who adapted the classification system for EVP, and Dr. Florence Barrett, who documented extensive psychic medium readings and so many more incredible individuals. The book is available to read now, and I'll make sure that links are available on the website and in the podcast description notes. So get comfortable and let's meet our guest to discover more about some of these incredible women and dip our toe into understanding and seeing who have helped contribute to and shape the paranormal field today.

Speaker A: Hi Alex. Thank you so much for joining me this evening.

Speaker C: Yeah, thank you so much for having me.

Speaker A: Do you want to just start by telling us a little bit about yourself and your background?

Speaker C: Yeah, of course. So, my name is Alex Matsuo. I am a paranormal researcher and investigator. I am the founder and director of the association of Paranormal Study, and I also run the social media profiles and website The Spooky Stuff. I've been investigating and doing paranormal things for a very long time. I absolutely love it. I love the research side of it. And, yeah, it's just been a wonderful, spooky adventure so far.

Speaker A: And you've authored a number of books by this point, which is quite an accolade. And you have a newly released book that we're going to be talking about this evening. Do you want to just tell us a little bit about that book, what people can expect, what some of the key takeaways might be if they purchase and pick up that book from you?

Speaker C: Yeah, of course. So my latest book is called Women of the Paranormal, volume One a Brief History. And in the book, there are about 38 women that I introduce the reader to. Some of the names may be familiar, some of the names may not be so familiar. But essentially what this book has is it's just a very brief overview of that woman's life and what contributions she made to the paranormal and psychical research field. And really, I just wanted to shed light on these women because these are women who were very much overlooked in history and it's actually quite surprising. But a lot of these women in the book are contemporaries to very famous men who were involved in paranormal research, like Alistair Crowley, Charles Dickens, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Brahm Stoker. A lot of these women were these men's contemporaries, but yet we didn't know about them or we didn't know they existed. And their names aren't nearly as famous as their male counterparts. So I really wanted to just bring awareness that these women existed, give them credit for the work that they did, because we actually use a lot of their methods and ideologies and techniques to this day and just spread some awareness and hopefully inspire other women who are currently living and involved in the paranormal or have an interest in the paranormal. They know that the foundation of our research field comes from women, and they have a really strong foundation of these paranormal founding mothers cheering us on.

Speaker A: Oh, I just love that. I mean, it just totally resonates for so many different reasons, and I can't wait to unpick that more, to be honest. But before we do, is that the primary motivation for what made you want to write it yourself? You wanting to find out about these incredible women, these researchers, these investigators? Or was it something else that drove you to wanting to do it?

Speaker C: There was a couple of reasons. One, I did have an interest in learning more about who were the women that were involved in the paranormal, because when I did a lot of research, I noticed that it was just the names of a lot of men. And while that's not necessarily a bad thing, I wondered, I'm like, are there any women out there who helped set any sort of foundation? And it's absolutely true there were some other researchers, other paranormal researchers like myself, who had started showcasing women in the paranormal. But the information I noticed was very spread out. Like, I had to go to like three or four different websites to learn about the different women in the paranormal. And not that it was an inconvenience, but if someone wasn't as motivated, they probably would have given up. So I really wanted to just put as much information as I could and put it all into one place. So that to make it easy, easier for that information to come forward or for someone to find all of that information and actually putting it all in one place made it easier for me to connect the dots between all of these women and their research. And it made it really easy to tie it back into, like, Selma Moss, very famous parapsychologist who worked at UCLA. She tested Lorraine Warren. And it's easy to create those handshakes within the book of, oh, hey, this woman helped this person or this woman, and this woman examined this other woman. It was really easy to make that handshake and show that how we are all truly connected.

Speaker A: And again, this is what I think is one of the really beautiful things when you are able to collate something like this and put it together. Because part of what I think is sometimes problematic is this research. This knowledge is kind of safeguarded behind institutions and hidden away in libraries and in dusty, leafy kind of pieces of paper that's shuffled away in, like I said, some institution, and it's not easily accessible. You have to actually go looking for it. And in some cases, it's not easy to access that information, even if you do go looking for it. And so to join these dots can sometimes be difficult. And so much of what I think the paranormal research, the paranormal field is about, is about research. And people of the past, what they've done, it's a stepping stone. It's all part of this journey. And so to join these dots, to know what people have done before, the kinds of questions they were asking, the kinds of research they were doing, how they were conducting themselves, what investigating looked like to them, those are so important. And I find it quite disheartening that so many people who are really engaged in the field don't actually look at this kind of research. They don't know who these individuals are. And when it's a field that is kind of frowned upon by so many others in other areas of science and research, it doesn't have that same credibility in that. Kudos that a lot of other things do. We have to kind of bring that to the table ourselves, I think, by looking at this as this investigative research based thing, and we need to actually examine all of these questions and think about where we've been, where do we want to go, and tie those kind of connections together ourselves. And when that's hard to do, it's hard to even know where to start. And so, yeah, the work that must have gone in to do this. I applaud because it's so important, I think, to understand this, and I don't think people have awareness of where we've been and what we've done, like I mentioned.

Speaker C: Yeah, I think you're absolutely right, and I don't think so either. And the accessibility of the information, that was a big motivator for me. And Catherine Crow is one that has gotten quite a little bit of a social media resurgence, which I am so excited about, but there was always, like, the same information online about her, and not all of it is actually accurate. And so I had to kind of go beyond the Internet, and I went to Internetarchive Archive.org, which ended up being a beautiful resource, but I ended up having to go to the Library of Congress as well. And I live in the Washington, DC. Area, so that was accessible to me because I'm there. I can just hop on a bus and get on the Metro, and I'm good. But it wasn't quite so easy. And then I finally ran into the research archives at the University of Kent, and they have a whole collection of Catherine Crow, like, Catherine Crow letters, original documents. But I wasn't in Kent. I wasn't in Kent. But luckily, the archivists and the women who oversaw that special collection, they were able to schedule a remote appointment for me so that I could take a look at things. And I'm grateful for that, but again, I'm not there, so having access to that information was quite difficult. So it's definitely one of those things that I had to dig deeper in the research side of it than I've ever went in before. And I've been telling people, and it's totally true, but this was probably the hardest book I've ever written because there's so much research involved. And then when I think I was done with one woman, I would find another, do some research, and then find that previous woman's name that I had just worked on, and it would be something completely different. And I'm like, oh, dang it. Okay, I got to go back. I got to go back and do some fact checking or do some sort of, like, maybe make some edits. But, yeah, this book took a lot longer than I expected to write it. I was hoping to have it done by March, but it's June.

Speaker A: Never mind. The fact that it's here, though, I think is just as I say, I think it's wonderful because having done research myself and trying to find this information, it is hard. So I know exactly the kinds of steps that you'd have had to go down and the head scratching and trying to figure out how and where to look and just being able to know where to look. It's a very complicated process that it's not easy. They don't make it easy for you. And it's a shame. Like I said, it is a shame. So the fact that you have done that for people, you've pulled it together and you've brought something that gives a really good insight, I think, into what people can expect, that there is so much more than people are aware of in terms of just who these women are, but what they have accomplished, some of which is just it's incredible. And the things that we can learn from them is just so invaluable. And I suppose the next kind of stepping stone into kind of thinking about the book and your choices were when you were picking these women, what were the choices in selecting who you decided to get into volume one? Because I can imagine that would have been quite a complicated process in itself. Who ended up in the first one and so on?

Speaker C: Oh yeah, that's a great question. I'm so glad you asked that. So I started out with twelve women and I thought it was just going to stay at twelve. As I mentioned earlier, I now have 38 in this volume because I kept finding names. And in my approach, and maybe this was another reason why the book took so long, but if I ran into any name that may have sounded female, I would just do a secondary check and be like, you know, I should take a look at this person and see who they are and what else they've done. And a lot of the times it was, oh, they are significant. Okay, let's put them in. So I think right now, let me take a look at my list. So 38 for volume one. Right now I have 47 names for volume two. Now, I don't think all 47 are going to make it in there, but I have 47 names to follow up on for volume two, and then I have about 32 for volume three. Basically, how I chose these women was mainly because of access to information. If their life story was fairly available or there was already a lot of information on them, then the research of it didn't have to take so long or they were easier to write because there was already information out there. Like Catherine Crow. Catherine Crow, her story is pretty much already out there for the most part. With Katherine Crow, it was just more of troubleshooting and spot checking to make sure the claims that were made were actually correct or were true. That one was fairly she was still difficult on her own, but her story is pretty much out there already. But there are some women who I would see in a parapsychology journal that did quite a significant experiment or testing, but I can't find any information about them. And in that case, then I held off on including her so that I could see if I could do a little bit more digging. And a lot of times that digging means I'm doing genealogy research to see if I can track who they're related to, if I can find family or if I can find newspaper articles about them, just trying to piece different parts of their story together until I have a somewhat coherent, linear story with them. And the other thing about all of the women in the book and will likely happen in volume two, is every woman that's been included is passed away, and that's because their story essentially is done. And I did that for a reason. Could that mission change? In later volumes? Maybe. But in a day of social media and whatnot someone's okay one day, but then someone says something or does something or they're outed as like, a fraud the next. I just want to be like, well, let's wait until their story is over. Things can change. Research can change. I want to say I probably moved about 15, so volume one could have been more like 50 women, but I moved about 13 or 14 out of volume one into volume two. And a lot of that was because and some of those women include, like, to give your listeners a heads up of what to expect in volume two, like Rosemary Brown and Sybil Leak and Alice Bailey, their stories are quite dense. And yeah, dense is probably the right word for that. And I feel like I need to take a little bit more time getting to know them because, again, these women are meant to have just an introduction. I think each woman is no more than like, maybe ten pages, but a life story takes as much more than ten pages. So I have to be able to Take all of the information about them and then condense it into what are the most important parts, because what I would like the readers to do when they're done reading Each chapter, I want them to get on the computer and start looking up these women like, oh, Alexandra david Neal. She sounds interesting. I want to know more about her. I'm going to go to Amazon or I'm going to go to the library and check out a couple of biographies about her. So really it's meant to be like, I don't like to call it paranormal speed dating, but it is kind of like that where they just get a chance to meet and get acquainted with these women. But a lot of times it's, how do you create an elevator pitch about someone's life? You know what I mean?

Speaker A: But I love that because it is it is introducing people. It is this wonderful introduction to these women and what they've accomplished. And for many, I think they'll find it really eye opening to see how what these women were doing and did, how it still plays out today, how things that we see in the paranormal field where it stemmed from and who were the architects of that, really. That, I think, is going to be the really revealing thing for a lot of people who maybe will not have even heard of that name, it will be totally and utterly mind boggling to them. Because from my experience, when I approach someone and we're having this conversation about who their kind of idols are in the field, who they've really been inspired by, and if they ever mention people of the past, it's people like Harry Price. Lorraine Warren sometimes gets a mention, but not always. And I think they only know her name because of, obviously, recent films and so on. I think before that, nobody ever really mentioned her name if I was speaking to people. So there is this kind of gray area where people just don't have this knowledge. And when you see the names that you've got in the book, they cover such a variety. We've got a few from more contemporary periods. We've got people going back right to kind of the foundations of some of this research starting. We've got people who are the first investigators, we've got people setting up the SBR. We've got people with connections to things like the Ouija board. It kind of covers geography. It covers what they were doing, differences in what they were doing. It doesn't kind of fit into one box of, well, I've only included this type of person in this volume. It really, truly covers, I think, the breadth of what the paranormal field is across different countries, completely different time periods. And I think there's something wonderful about that because it is this journey, if you like.

Speaker C: Yeah, I tried to be as diverse as I could. Definitely, there's room to be better. I do have two women of color in the book as well. I have Zora Neil Hurston, who really was the one who brought the research of Hudoo, voodoo, zombies and that world into American culture, and speaking on it as somebody who is from that community and not just a white person interpreting this through their own lens. And then I also have Iko Gibo, who was the famous psychic, who actually was the one who identified the ghost of Annie at Mary King's Close. And how famous is that ghost today at Mary King's Close? Everywhere. But you rarely hear or see Iko Gibo's name associated with that. But she was the one who made contact with Annie, and she was the one who said, you need to bring her dolls. But she nearly has been erased from that narrative.

Speaker A: And she was one of the ones that I was going to ask you about because for precisely the reason that you just mentioned. I've looked at that, I've been there. I know so many people that have heard that story, but no one has ever told her name. And that's a story that here in the UK, obviously, has been part of documentaries. It's been published in print. Nothing. I mean, she really doesn't appear it. She just becomes this empty pronoun, this empty kind of person who was part of the story, but yet her name isn't there. And that's so bizarre.

Speaker C: It's very bizarre. And she had the buy in of some of the most famous parapsychologists and writers of the topics at the time. Like Colin Wilson wrote the foreword for her book. That's significant. That is very significant. And I found that to be very interesting. And I kind of found Iko Gibo by accident because I had zora Neil Hurston and I'm like, okay, we have to have something else here. And a side project that I'm working on is the belief in the paranormal in Japan. And I ran into Iko Gibo's name from there because she was like, I don't want to compare her to Sylvia Brown, but fame level, she was the medium of Japan. That was her claim to fame. And then I noticed something really interesting because she was able to have some paranormal programming on mainstream TV in Japan and the format is odly similar to what we see in modern day ghost hunting shows today. It's almost like the exact same style. And her programming predated most haunted, most terrifying places on Earth, fear on MTV, like with the sensationalism. It really did predate all of that. And so I found her, I was like, oh, this is really interesting. And then I found the story of Mary King's Close and I was absolutely blown away that it was her. And I checked my sources. Colin Wilson backs her up. The people who went to Mary King's Close who worked there at the time back it up. I was just very shocked that not only was this famous medium, this unknown, unnamed famous medium was able to do what she did, but it was a Japanese woman who was able to identify probably one of the most famous ghosts at Mary King's Close today.

Speaker A: But one of the things that, again, I think that is really truly fascinating, like I said, there is just this incredible scope that you mentioned at the beginning. So many of these women were working alongside other people, and I say other people, I mean other men. And so their kind of accomplishments in terms of what was being done by all those involved is somehow minimized. They're forgotten by the person who gets all the credit, which is, again, typically the man. I'm thinking you've got references to Harry Houdini and his work that is so well known. I mean, I don't think there isn't anybody who doesn't know Harry Houdini's name, but do they know the woman who was working with him and the influence that she had and what she was accomplishing? And I know she's one of the women that makes presence in the book. These are people whose names are completely obliterated. And so it's so fascinating why and how they get forgotten compared to their male counterparts. And I was wondering what you were thinking about that. Why do you think they are the ones that do get forgotten as part of this story, this journey?

Speaker C: Yeah, that's a great question. It's one of those things where between especially the United States and Great Britain and Europe, it's still very much a patriarchal society and a patriarchal structure. And it's been getting better over the past, I want to say 50 years, but during this time, like eleanor sidgwick, helen helen peters knsworthy, these women who were rose mcenberg, who were working alongside these men, they were already rather taboo in of themselves and going against the grain of what the traditional viewpoint of women was at the time. And sometimes it was one of those things where the woman would do the work and the man would get the credit. But that's how it was back then. And I wouldn't even say it's, not necessarily because they weren't trying, but at the time, it's like women were not expected to be in the laboratory or they weren't expected to have any sort of autonomy of their own. And even if they were helping, like, surely they were just helping out with the mission of the man who was in charge and who clearly came up with the ideas. I think it has a lot to do with that. And it's only, I want to say maybe within the last 20 years that we've really been able to see women come to the forefront as leaders in paranormal and psychical research and be able to hold their own. A lot of times, as I was reading a lot of these biographies and reading these papers and whatnot I mean, one woman that really stands out to me is Eleanor Sichwick. No offense to Henry Sitchwick, her husband, who is one of the founders of SPR, but if you read what she was doing in SPR, that organization really was lying on her shoulders, and it was built on her back. She did almost everything. She was doing administrative work, she was editing papers, she was viewing papers and giving feedback. After Edmund Gurney took his own life, henry Sidgwick, Frederick Myers, that group, they were rather devastated, and they couldn't really function for quite a while after Edmund Gurney's death. And it was Eleanor who kept the organization going. She kept the society running, but she doesn't get the credit for that. She was very much known as, like, this silent but resilient person. She didn't say a lot, but when she spoke, you listened like she could command a room, and her opinion was very much valued and you wanted her on your side. But again, she did not get the accolades that are bestowed upon Frederick Myers and Henry Sidgwick and Edmund Gurney and the rest of the group of men that, quote unquote, founded SPR.

Speaker A: I mean, I have to say, she's, I think, one of my heroes of every single person that you can imagine imagine within the paranormal field in the world of parapsychology. She's one of mine simply because I don't think I've come across anybody who is as hardworking as she was. You mentioned she really did carry the SBR. I don't think it was just the SBR. I think it was Newham College, which she was also the principal of. She just did so much for so many different things. She advocated for women's rights. She was setting up this college so that higher education would be available for more women. She was working in the SBR, and the work that she was doing was just an incredible amount of research and data. She was going through thousands and thousands of articles and research papers and visiting hundreds of mediums. She was one of the people doing that backbreaking work to collate it all and put it all together. And there was nothing that she wasn't prepared to do. If it took her learning code skills to try and crack something to understand if a medium was a hoaxer or not, she would do that because to her, it was important to do those things, to be able to try to get to the very real nuggets of, I can't explain this. She would do everything she could to get to that question. And that work is just something to be really admired, because I don't know how she found the time, quite frankly. She's just incredible. And she was quite ballsy. She was quiet, but she had this kind of bit of strength to her, which I really, really admire. She always faced a problem and a criticism and a challenge in her way. She wasn't someone that wasn't going to shout and advocate something from the rooftops, but she'd quietly go away, do all the research, gather all the information, and she would then put it in front of someone's face where they could not argue with her. She was so smart, and she knew exactly what she needed to do to get that information and to stop some of the critics and the people who were pushing back. And I just think that's incredible.

Speaker C: Agreed. Yeah, she was definitely one of my favorites. Looking her up, I was like, wow, I already knew who she was, and I had an idea of her contributions. But then reading her life and all details, I want to read her niece's book about her as well. I got a chance to skim some of it just to make and I made that more. So I'm like, okay, I need to check, like fact check, and let's look through this biography. But I really want to do a deeper dive into her niece's book about her. There's just so much there about Eleanor Sidgwick that I don't know if she got enough credit while she was alive, but like you said, she was quiet, but she was very ballsy. And it was one of those things where if she opened her mouth, everybody listened. She could silence a room with just a single word.

Speaker A: Well. I don't think she gave any scope for people to not know that what she was saying was completely genuine and fact based and driven by this commanding presence from this very quiet, normally woman. And I think that's her real kind of skill, that she gave no room then to have someone push back when she presented what she needed to present. They couldn't challenge it because she gave people no wriggle room. And that, again, I think, just is a testimony to that kind of hard work and dedication that she did, because she was one of those ones in the SBR very much bringing together and focusing on the research side and the publications that were put together while she was part of it. They are huge, huge documents. We're talking hundreds of thousands of examinations of testimonies and interviews and so on. And I don't think even all of that was really credited by the organization until like, the 1930s, when people could look at it and go, oh my gosh, we can really now understand and appreciate just how much work was involved in this. I mean, you just can't imagine that kind of work ethic, I think. And she was she was just very, very driven by what she was doing and very analytical and critical. And again, I think that's something that we can all take and learn from her, that you can have an open mind, but having an open mind doesn't mean that you don't come in with questions, that you shouldn't come in with those critical questions that really do help move that research forward. And that's what she was doing. She wanted to just get to the heart of what some of these things were, these paranormal phenomenal experiences were, and cut away a lot of the stuff that just was nonsense, that were completely fabricated hoaxes. She wanted to understand what were the true experiences that she couldn't explain, and showcase those. And yeah, she's kind of one of my idols, I think that's fairly evident, I have to say. I just think it's fantastic that you've just got this real breadth of coverage, really. And part of that, I think, is showcasing how women were. Like Catherine Crow, who you mentioned earlier, and Eleanor Sidgwick. We've got people here who really were the architects of much of what we do today. And that's totally forgotten because now we are, you know, we're kind of still in a place, I think, where for the last few decades, this is a field where it's predominantly populated in terms of mainstream TV as only men. And yet so much of what has gone before started with a much more diverse kind of field. And that's not something that you see replicated today, which is sad. Yeah.

Speaker C: And that's another thing, another little motivator for writing the book was paranormal media right now is so saturated with men, with not a lot of representation for women, and we don't have a TV show yet that has a woman leading the way. We may have a few shows with women that are co leading a show. And actually this is something tim Dennis from Darkness Radio asked me he's like, wouldn't you consider someone like Amy Bruni like they're co leading or they're leading their own TV show, or Katrina Wideman? Is she not leading her own TV show? And it's like, technically, yes, but they're not doing it alone. They have a male counterpart. We don't have a show with a format like Ghost Adventures where you have a woman leading the charge. Not that I'm not sure if I would want a female version of Ghost Adventures, but that just shows like the lack of representation, equality, because we don't have that at all. Even with one of the reboots of Ghost Hunters that came out recently, there was like four men and two women, something like that. And again, these women were very much sought on the side. They weren't leading, they were the researchers, they were the mediums, they were the witches. And that's kind of where women's place seems to be when it comes to these paranormal shows. And that hasn't always been the case, or that's not representative of what real life paranormal investigation and research and psychical research is about. Like you mentioned, much of the foundation of what we have today was created by women. And it seems that the paranormal media space has kind of turned that around to make it very much a man's space, which is unfortunate. One show that I think it got a little bit closer. Was it's the show on Hulu called Repossessed? When I saw the poster for it, I actually got really excited because we have two women and one man and they're all people of color, and I was very excited about that. Then I watched the show and overall it was a pretty decent show when it comes to paranormal TV. But there was still a man leading the charge.

Speaker A: Yeah. And again, I think we have the same thing over here in the UK. I mean, we have shows where we've got phenomenal investigators and researchers that are part of that. I'm thinking of Dr. Kate Cherrell, who worked alongside Jack Osborne in that three part series where they were kind of going back to Jack's childhood, places that he grew up and locations around his home and were investigating there. Fantastic. But it wasn't Kate on her own. We've then got Evelyn Hollow, brilliant parapsychologist, who did the show about Edinburgh and other places around Scotland alongside a team, and I think they're heading to Ireland next for the second series. But again, she wasn't fronting the show as the lead male, if that makes sense. And it's a shame because when you look at just those two examples, evelyn is an incredible parapsychologist. Her knowledge is outstanding. I mean, you could basically ask her anything and she would know the answer. Kate is so incredibly knowledgeable in terms of what she does and reads so widely, so passionately, is so involved in this, and yet you don't see them getting the easy route into this the same way that others seem to naturally be able to step into it, which is, again, a shame. And what's really, really frustrating is when you then see commentary about what they do, focusing on things like Evelyn Hollow and her performance in the show, not for the intelligent research, the questions that she's asking, the investigations that she's setting up to try and explain certain things that were being experienced on that show. None of that. It's what she's wearing. And it's like, I want to bang my head against the wall because you're missing what they're bringing. And what they're bringing is something really fresh and innovative, and I want to see more of that. I want to see some of the deep thinking and the investigations and that stuff that they're bringing, that analytical research side. Kate speaking Latin as part of an investigation to see if it brings up activity. I want to see that. I don't want to talk about what they're wearing and what they look like. Men don't get that. They don't have that if they're the presenter.

Speaker C: It's extremely frustrating. I mean, over here in the US, it's like you have Zach Bagan's taking off his shirt during investigations. But if a woman is wearing a shirt that's too low cut, it's heaven forbid. The standards of expectations between the genders is quite fascinating to look at, but can also be a bit infuriating at the same time.

Speaker A: We are about to celebrate hitting our 100th episode of Haunted History Chronicles on the last Friday of April 2023 to say thank you for the months of May, June and July, there are going to be daily paranormal podcasts available to enjoy on all tiers over on Patreon, as well as the usual additional items available over there. Signing up now will gain you access to these, as well as all previous archived content. For as little as one pound, you could be getting hundreds of podcasts to enjoy and more and know that you're contributing and helping the podcast to put out another 100 episodes. You can find the link in the episode Description Notes as well as on the Haunted History Chronicles website, along with other simple and great ways to support the podcast directly. It's all truly very much appreciated. And now let's head back to the podcast. So, as you were doing your research for the book, who was the most interesting woman that you came across that you included for this one?

Speaker C: OOH, there's a couple. Well, I would say one. Well, technically it's two because it's a pair. And if anyone follows my social media, I posted about them today, but it's Radcliffe Hall and Una Trowbridge. They were a couple and they essentially went through this months long investigation of Gladys osborne Leonard. So to give a little backstory behind that, Radcliffe Hall was radcliffe hall is best known as a lesbian British poet author. She wrote the book The Well of Loneliness, which is probably considered one of the most important pieces of lesbian literature today. So Radcliffe Hall came into inherited quite a bit of money when she was young, so she didn't have to depend on the process of marriage in the late 18 hundreds, early 19 hundreds, in order to be financially secure. So Radcliffe Hall was able to wear whatever she wanted, wear her hair however she wanted, and she very much dressed in men's clothing. She identified herself as a man living in a woman's body. She was in a long term relationship with a woman named Mabel Batman. Mabel was about, I want to say, 20 ish years older than Radcliffe, and actually, Radcliffe was also nick's named John. If we were to look at Radcliffe Hall today, we possibly quite could speculate that Radcliffe Hall may have also been a trans man. So Radcliffe Hall was in this relationship with Mabel Baton, who was also nicknamed lady. And lady did become ill, like gravely ill, and lady did pass away. Now, towards the end of Lady's life, lady's cousin Una Trowbridge, came into the picture, and Radcliffe and Una ended up falling in love. That obviously did cause some contention between the three. After lady passed away, Radcliffe Hall and Una, they became very interested in spiritualism after death communication, and that actually led them to becoming council members of the Society for Psychical Research, which I was like, okay, interesting. So Radcliffe received a letter from a woman who recommended that Radcliffe investigate Gladys Osborne Leonard. Gladys Osborne Leonard actually comes up a couple of times in the book. And again, that's where you realize how involved these women were with each other in the circuit. So Radcliffe hall. Radcliffe decided to do it. And during a sitting with Gladys, radcliffe believes that lady was actually coming through to give her advice. And so Radcliffe was the only one who was there at the sitting at the time, but wrote everything down in the subsequent visits. Radcliffe made sure that Una was also there. What they would do is they would have one person talking to Gladys Leonard, and then the third person would be writing down notes and writing down the conversation verbatim. Sir Oliver Lodge from SPR encouraged Radcliffe and Una to publish their findings and present them to SPR. So they ended up doing they did a whole presentation for one of their meetings, and their paper on the sittings ended up in the proceedings for the Society of Psychical Research. This one I found, again by accident. I actually originally was trying to find information on Una Trowbridge, because I saw Radcliffe's name and I knew the name Radcliffe Hall, but I wasn't super familiar with Radcliffe. So it didn't even occur to me that Radcliffe was assigned female at birth. So once I did the deeper digging and the motivations as to why they got involved in psychical research in the first place, that was fascinating to me. But I have to say that so those two might be my favorites. Oh, yeah.

Speaker A: I mean, it's one of those ones where I hadn't heard of them. And so I always love something where if I get to read something, I actually discover new people or something new that I haven't beforehand. And their story was very much something that I wasn't familiar with. So, again, it's something that I think people will come away with this new experience, this new understanding of someone, or many people in some cases, where they will have a story of a person and what they've done that they have just never, ever heard of before. And that's quite profound, I think, especially if you are really interested in this field, to find a new discovery, a new person, because there is so much more to it that I don't think people are aware of. It's something that is just not talked about, it's just not known about in quite the same way that you get in other fields. And that's so bizarre to me. But here we have an example of someone who I had never heard of. And so, yeah, again, it's just a really brilliant thing that you're doing to showcase and highlight the lives of some of these women and what they were doing and what they were bringing to the table. Because it's such an important aspect to not forget sharing their story and what they've brought and they've added to this picture of the field, really, as it is today.

Speaker C: Yeah. Actually, while I was writing this book, I was really discovering how and this might be a whole other book or a research paper, I'm not sure, but how SPR became a safe haven for marginalized communities in Great Britain. You had Radcliffe hall and una trowbridge. They could exist as a lesbian couple in late 19th, early 20th century, and they did get some pushback for being a same gender couple. But overall, Oliver Lodge was rooting for them and saying, hey, you should do this. Hey, go present that. So he was really bumping them up and supporting them. I noticed quite a few stories like that, even if the endings weren't necessarily happy. When people read the chapter about Ada Goodrich Freer, we have Harry Price and Borley Rectory. But then we have Ada Goodrich Freer and Ballachin House. Again, that goes back to saying, like a lot of these famous men we know of, they also have there was female contemporaries who were doing the exact same thing. But Ada Goodrich Freyr was another one who was believed to be queer. Trevor hall did not have a lot of nice things to say about her and very much paints her as like this evil, scary, lesbian woman. But then alleges that she and Frederick Myers had an affair. And I'm like, okay, which is a buddy. And that was something that I really had to navigate to, was sometimes I was reading really I'm really hoping maybe I can work on something about Ada Good Rich Fear and maybe get her some justice, maybe. I don't know what the word is, but really some of the only source materials about her comes from Trevor Hall, who is a little bit of a problematic historian, especially for SPR. So I'm hoping maybe to rewrite something for her, at least, because I was really having to come to terms with just because somebody wrote about it 100 years ago, it doesn't necessarily mean that it's unbiased or it may not be completely inaccurate. I don't know what the word is I'm looking for, but I really had to navigate through, okay, is this opinion? Is this fact? Is this correct? Is this incorrect? I dealt with that with Katherine Crow's chapter, too, but I found with Ada Goodrich frere, that was very much I was running into that a lot. But Trevor Hall seems to be one of the only sources about her that exists right now.

Speaker A: Yeah. And I was going to mention, I think you can see the same thing with Katherine Crow because in some cases, the stories of these women really was being told by their male contemporaries. And in many cases, there was bias involved, whether it was frustration because that person was more popular, they were printing more books. They were the kind of the figurehead for a different movement that they were clashing with. It was kind of like a bit of a competitive element. There are so many things at play. And I also think that question that you were asking earlier just, were women supposed to be part of this? Was this a sphere that society wanted to see them part of? So were they just scrubbed from the piece altogether? And so you do have to kind of sift through a lot of that to try and find the truth, because, sadly, a lot of what remains isn't an accurate portrayal of their true story. And it's kind of uncovering that. That can be the tricky thing, because so much of what is reported as fact is based on something written 100 years ago that really speaks to that bias more than the realities of what was really going on. So as you were kind of going about this and doing your research, I mean, we we've mentioned Katherine Crow. Her her story is problematic. You've got women like the Fox sisters. You've got Lorraine Warren. Some might consider some of these problematic kind of individuals to include. Why did you include them in the book? What was your perspective and your reasoning for kind of having them there and having that representation there of some that others may think? I'm not sure. I would say that they were someone that I would want to kind of look up to or kind of have that information about?

Speaker C: Yeah, that's a great question. So this was an interesting one for me because it kind of started with Lorraine, because I truly went back and forth as to whether or not to include Lorraine in the book. And one could argue that Lorraine was already famous and didn't necessarily need to be included. But then I also knew that there would be people asking me, well, why didn't you include her? She still made an impact. And that's ultimately why you see the Fox Sisters as well, even Helena Blavatsky, that was a tough chapter to write. But while they were very problematic, they made significant contributions. And one of the things that I say in the chapter about the Fox Sisters, I do say something to the effect of, and I'm going to try to quote myself somewhat verbatim, we'll see how it goes. But I essentially said, because the Fox Sisters even themselves came out and said that they could be frauds. But I did say, and I say this in the book and I'll just go ahead and quote it, but I said it could be argued that when a contemporary investigator is attempting to communicate with a spirit from the 19th century, they will be more familiar with wrappings and therefore be able to create these sounds. Perhaps the Fox Sisters simply taught the people of their time how to communicate escoast even if their intentions weren't so positive and they were able to create a bridge between our time and theirs. So even if it was a fraud, maybe in a way, because we still use those methods to this day, perhaps they just helped teach the people of their time to communicate with us.

Speaker A: But I just think to exclude them, like you said it would lead that question of why aren't they there? Because they are so integral to this story. And I think something could be said for in 100 years time. We can always look back and look critically at what someone has done before and think, we wouldn't do it like that. That's not really how we would go about it. We would do it like this so that it's a fairer investigation. Our methods have changed, our thoughts have changed, and that just is somehow wrong. And that research, therefore, is wrong. But actually, the methods, what they were doing, how they were doing it, the questions that they were bringing to the table, what they were doing, just so much of that is something that shouldn't be forgotten. Because, again, it's part of this journey, it's this step, and without them as that step, would we be where we are today? And that's the bigger picture. I think you have to have problematic people who come up with things that today people can criticize and pull apart and even then could criticize and pull apart in the case of the Fox Sisters. But without them, there would be this big gap because they filled a purpose. They were doing something that has paved the way for others, and Lorraine Warren is an example of that. Without what she was doing, would we have what is happening in the field today with others who are exploring those same issues, looking at the same types of things and doing the same types of research? Would we have that in the same way? I don't know. Would we have a greater understanding of spiritualism without the Fox sisters and the way that it exploded? And like you mentioned, would we have some of these techniques for communicating? Maybe not. We don't know. And so, again, I think it's important to have that representation because, again, it's part of that journey. It's the bigger picture.

Speaker C: Exactly. And we also learn a lot of lessons from these women, too, even if they are problematic. So you're right. They're still a part of the story, and they're still part of that stepping stone. And I do address the problematic issues about them, at least with the ones that I know, they don't have family still alive. Lorraine's chapter was handled a little bit differently because I know she still has family that's alive. And actually, her grandson reviewed the chapter as well, because I wanted to make sure she was properly represented. And Lorraine went through her own share of pushback when she was doing all of her work with Ed. I noticed in the papers, and I read a lot of newspaper articles on Lorraine from the when she and Ed were becoming famous, because I was trying to find an angle to go with the chapter. But I did find that the media treated Lorraine incredibly different than they treated Ed. By the time they really became famous, their daughter Judy was pretty much grown. She was grown up. But Lorraine was getting criticized for doing what she was doing because you're a wife and mother, like, what are you doing? And I'm sitting here. They wouldn't say that to Ed, but Ed was a husband and father. Why wasn't Ed getting that same pushback? So I did find that even though Lorraine did become famous, she became very vulnerable to some pretty vicious backlash. That and this was even before the warrants, were being accused of being problematic. I mean, this was just the media going after Lorraine just for being a wife and mother and not being at home and raising a kid. So I found that really interesting and also heartbreaking to see that. But then after Ed passed, lorraine did get a bit of her autonomy back where she became Lorraine Warren. That was her, like, not tied with Ed. And I would argue that after the Conjuring movies came out, she fell back into becoming Ed and Lorraine Warren becoming the half again, and not just her. And I don't know if I would call that a step backwards for Lorraine, because I know the conjuring brought a lot of exposure to the work that she and her husband did. But I would say in the early 2000s, after Ed passed and she was still doing the work, she found her own footing, and she was very much still an independent investigator, still doing something out there. So I think even with the criticisms that we have about Lorraine and I would say legit concerns, not just you're a wife and mother, go back into the kitchen, I think she really did do something positive for women in the field, where she would look at that adversity and just keep going.

Speaker A: Absolutely. And again, without that body of work, however you feel about what she was doing and what they were presenting and the information they were giving and so on and so forth, with all those questions and concerns that someone might have, again, without it, where would we be? And we are very critical, I think of others, and we can pull apart things that others have done. But actually, if we just look at it as a body of work and examine it as a body of work, it's okay that there are things that we can find fault in that we would do differently or we think differently. But actually, where can we go from what they've done? How can we springboard from what they've done? And I think that's the more logical thing as a next step, rather than just completely dismissing it, what can we learn from it? How can we move on from something positive or negative? Where do we want to go next? Is the next important question. And I kind of have that view of today, what are we trying to do to better what is happening today? How do we want to go forward? How do we want to move forward? What do we want to try and answer? How can we answer that? And those were all very legitimate questions, and you can't have that question without looking at what somebody has done and what they've achieved. And they're prime examples of people who are problematic, but they were bringing something that deserves looking at and seeing what those next steps are. So, yeah, I'm I'm glad they're in there, to be honest.

Speaker C: Yeah, I appreciate that. So far, I haven't gotten a lot of really hard pushback about Lorraine, Helena, Belavatsky, the Fox sisters. I haven't gotten a lot of pushback yet, so I'm ready for it, though. I'm ready for it.

Speaker A: So in terms of research, again coming back to the book, and as you were kind of looking at and uncovering these women and what they were bringing to the table, did you have any kind of discoveries yourself in? Terms of I really wasn't aware of this person and what they were doing and what they were bringing that you were glad that you found more out about. Really? Yeah.

Speaker C: I think the person that really stands out to me is Rosemary Ellen guyly. I knew she had written a lot of books. I did have the pleasure of meeting her once at an event, and I found she was a very delightful human being. And this is actually towards the end of her life, so right about when she was getting sick. So her energy was a bit limited. So I had a decent understanding of her. I mean, I knew she wrote like, 65 books, and I was like, okay, well, what are we really looking at here? But I did research on her life, and I found a lot of similarities between her life and mine. And then I decided, at least with the more recent people in the book, like Lorraine, rosemary Ellen guy, linda Godfrey, I decided to interview people about them because I was like, okay, they're still alive. So with Rosemary Ellen Guyli. I interviewed her husband. I also interviewed Kevin Paul, Lisa Crick and John Zaffis. And I got this really beautiful picture of rosemary and how intelligent she was, for one, how smart she was, how deeply she would go into the research, how much time she would dedicate to her work. I honestly didn't even realize how much work she really did put into this field and how much of her time and how much of her life she invested into the field and willing to become like this human encyclopedia so that it could benefit the community. And she was very much dedicated to breaking that glass ceiling for women, and she was really trying to push for more representation on television. And one of the things that actually broke my heart the most was this was when I was talking to John Zafis. Rosemary had finally gotten her TV opportunity for paranormal caught on camera, but that's also the same time that she got sick. And I was talking to John Zaffis, and John Zaffis was telling me how she was heartbroken that she finally got her chance, but then she became too sick to do it, and she passed away not too long after that. And that broke my heart. She fought so hard throughout her life to have that representation, and she was more than qualified. She was more qualified than probably anybody that's on TV today. But because of the dynamic and of the climate of the paranormal entertainment industry, they weren't interested in her. And by the time they were, it was too late. But she laid that groundwork so that the other women who come up after her hopefully don't have to work so hard to at least just to be seen. But she did lay a foundation for us. She left the breadcrumbs behind for the rest of us to follow. But she was one that I had a decent idea of what she did and how much work she put into it. But I did not know just how much she did until I talked to her friends. And loved ones and really got to know Rosemary as a person.

Speaker A: Yeah. And again, I think there's something quite heartwarming that that is something that you do bring to what you're doing with this book. It's not just about hitting the facts in terms of this is what they were doing, like an Itinerary type thing. It's this rounded spotlight, if that makes sense. You get a sense of who they were as a person. And I think there's something empowering about that because you see them as someone you can recognize yourself in or who you might want to recognize yourself in. You see that person in others that you know. And again, I think there's something really quite empowering about seeing those connections that we have with people who have gone before us in this field, who are interested in the same areas that we are, to see that we're not too different. And they had this really important part to play in what we're doing now, why we're so interested in this now, and to do it in the way that you did, I think really kind of helps enable that to happen. Really? Yeah.

Speaker C: And I figured with the more contemporary women, since I do have access to people who know them or who knew them then it's like, why not? Let's work it out.

Speaker A: I can't say I've ever really heard other people's perspective from people that knew them either. Do you know what I mean? In terms of things that I've researched or seen online, and bearing in mind, obviously I'm not in the States, so I don't necessarily have access to some of that in the same way. But even still, I can't think of anybody here in the UK where you have that kind of information readily available with other people who talk about them. Again, it kind of comes back to what we were saying. In some ways, so many people just do get overlooked and forgotten. So again, the fact that you were able to do that and bring that in, I think speaks volumes. What do you kind of hope that people will take away in terms of knowledge and experience that you think that they could learn from some of these women that you've researched and you've written about for the book?

Speaker C: Yeah, I hope the people that read this book, regardless of gender, can see themselves in these women, and they can see that they too have a place in the paranormal research field, the paranormal community. There's a seat at the table for them and they can get more involved if they want to. And there are people like them in this field. And you could be a housewife with several children who had to take a break, but you can always come back thinking about Luisa E. Rhine. You can be a Broadway actress who started the Actor Studio, but then go through a career change and run the parapsychology lab at UCLA Salma moss you can be a newspaper reporter looking to make some sort of a big break in the art world, but then become one of the most famous cryptid researchers in history. Linda Godfrey regardless of where you are in your life, you have a place here, and there's a seat for you waiting at the table.

Speaker A: And I think it's important to say that what you're doing isn't to the detriment. You're not saying that men haven't contributed incredible things, incredible bodies of information and research and done fantastic things. But what you've got here is something that reflects stories and history and people and what they've done that doesn't get that same kind of attention. And something that you just said is so important because I think we as human beings like to try and make connections with other people, to see ourselves in other people, think about babies, how they look at faces. It's all about recognition and understanding and trying to find their place and having that connection. And when you don't see people who represent you, when you aren't able to see that connection, it's very hard to actually feel like you belong. And here you've got something that I think helps to kind of shine a spotlight in terms of these forgotten bits of research, that maybe people have no concept of the hard work that they were doing, what they were bringing to the table, who they were, their voices, their names. You're doing all of that. But I also think you are giving a representation of people today doing incredible things and saying you're not alone. There are so many people who've been here before. Don't give up. And I think there's something really, again, beautiful and empowering and connective about that, because I think we can all feel like what we're doing isn't what we should be doing. It's not enough, or we're not. We kind of have that impostor syndrome, I think, sometimes.

Speaker C: Oh, absolutely. Impostor syndrome is like that leech or the thorn in my side that will not go away. I still deal with it all the time. And I will say that writing this book was not only difficult research wise, but it was also an emotional experience for me just to read these stories of these women and what they went through in their life and how many of them found solace in psychical research. And that's where they found their belonging and their acceptance. And I was a mess when I wrote the conclusion. I was a mess because I was trying to figure out, how do I close out this book that's more than likely going to become one of many, but how do I really get people motivated to, a become more involved, b tell the stories of these women? And really, I use the metaphor of torch. These women have lit they've lit the pyres, they've lit the torches, and they've been standing there holding the torches, waiting for us to take them for all these years and it's time for us to take it. And I say these women's legacies are like a spark. These sparks have been going off all these years and it's finally time that we start to notice them and let the spark of these legacies turn into a blazing fire that can no longer be ignored.

Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. And again, I just think anybody who is interested in this should be interested in what you have put together. Because from that, I hope that people come away with someone that they think I really want to find out more about that person, because that's a really interesting aspect of what they were doing that kind of fits with something that I'm interested in, that I want to find out what they were doing before and see how it connects with what I'm doing, see what I can learn from them. I hope there are so many people who have moments like that. And I imagine they will. Because like we've said over and over again, there is so much work, so much body of work that is sat. Sat in kind of these places that we don't know about, we've not heard of, they're not spoken about, and they have been forgotten. And it is time to resurrect some of that so that we can learn from them, so that we can then carry on and see, like you mentioned, this growing legacy, see how we can be part of that, because I do think we all are. We don't work in isolation in the paranormal field, however much it feels like sometimes that is what happens. That's not how it should be. It should be this very large process of learning and moving on from where we've been, where we are now, and where we want to go, what we want to do next. I highly recommend this book, and I'm sure the other volumes will be just as incredible. So thank you for coming and talking about it with me today and sharing it with people listening so that they can hopefully come and find you and your book and take up that challenge. Really? I hope they do.

Speaker C: Yeah, of course. Thanks for having me. This was a pleasure. And anytime I get a chance to talk about some amazing women in the paranormal, I'm game.

Speaker A: And it's a topic that is so important, I think, to not be forgotten and simply because I as we said before, I think it's so important to not let these voices, the things that have happened, be completely and utterly left to these darkened spaces in libraries. That's such a sacrilegious thing, I think, to have it there and to not know it exists and to not know anything about it. And yeah, I think it's wonderful what you're doing to bring that to people and to share that understanding. So thank you so much and I will make sure to put all of your information on the website and on the podcast description so that people can easily find you and your book and your other books. Because, as I mentioned at the top of the podcast, this isn't your first book. You've written so many great things. And yeah, thank you so much for coming in and chatting with me today.

Speaker C: Yeah, thanks for having me. Thank you so much.

Speaker A: And I will say goodbye to everybody listening. Bye, everybody.