417. Exploring Paranormal Worlds with Jacquelyn Benson and Carol Cottrell

[music]

Sarah Wendell: Hello there. Thank you for inviting me into your eardrums. I’m Sarah Wendell from Smart Podcast, Trashy Books. This is episode number 417. It is August, so thoughts are turning towards the paranormal, right? Right, of course. Today I am talking with historical fantasy author Jacquelyn Benson and psychic medium Carol Cottrell. We are going to talk about writing psychic characters, being a psychic medium, researching paranormal investigations, and doing those investigations. We talk about spirits, haunted places, experience with the paranormal, and how paranormal activity is portrayed in the media. It is perfectly seasonal, trust me. You want to have chills right now, right? If you’re in the northern hemisphere, it might be a little hot. See? Makes perfect sense.

I will have links where you can find both Jacquelyn and Carol online, and I will have links to all of the books we talk about: do not worry.

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I have a compliment. I love that. This compliment is for Cara W.

Cara: There is a song in every language that kids learn at a very young age, usually while skipping rope, and they all mention how terrific you are.

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So you ready to get some chills and talk about all things paranormal, both in literary and visual media? Let’s do this thing! On with my podcast with Jacquelyn Benson and Carol Cottrell.

[music]

Jacquelyn Benson: My name is Jacquelyn Benson, and I am a writer of smart, strange, historical fantasy novels with strong romantic tendencies.

Sarah: [Whispers] I like all those words!

[Laughter]

Jacquelyn: Thank you!

Sarah: Carol, can you introduce yourself?

Carol Cottrell: Yes, I’m Carol Cottrell, and I am a psychic medium, and what that means, basically, is I help people connect to loved ones who have passed in the spirit world, and I also help them connect to their own souls so that they can get some guidance in life.

Sarah: So when you introduce yourself, Carol, is it, and you tell people what you do, is it like when I call the bank and I have to confirm my business name is in fact Smart Bitches Trashy Books, LLC?

Carol: [Laughs]

Sarah: There’s like this ten seconds of solid silence where the person just sort of absorbs what they just heard? Does that happen to you?

Carol: Oh yes! All the time!

[Laughter]

Carol: It helps if I put the word psychic medium in front of it, ‘cause it helps them understand it a little bit. I used to not like to use the word psychic, and I would just say I’m a medium, and that would definitely cause the long pause, and I’d say, do you know what that is?

[Laughter]

Carol: And I would explain it to them, and sometimes they’d act like, oh yeah, no big deal! And other times they’d be like, hmm. So.

Sarah: I can understand not wanting to use the, the word psychic, but we’re going to use it a lot in this interview, so I’m really sorry. [Laughs]

Carol: No, it’s okay. I’ve gotten more open to it, so.

Sarah: So I wanted to start – Jacquelyn, you emailed me and were like, hey, we’d like to be on the podcast, to which I was like, oh heck yeah!

Jacquelyn: [Laughs]

Sarah: Your latest book is a historical fantasy. There is a clairvoyant heroine, and I had to google how to say, it’s, it’s psychometry, right?

Jacquelyn: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: All right, I, ‘cause I was like, psychometry? It’s one of those words that I’ve only ever read and not talked about, so I’m really excited to talk about? What led you into this story about a clairvoyant heroine and a hero with psychometry?

Jacquelyn: I think I’m probably going to have to go back to the early ‘90s and to the –

Sarah: Why not?

Jacquelyn: – the – why not? – to the, the X-Men animated series. I don’t know if any of you were familiar with that. I, I was a kid who got into my comic books through TV. And that series has depicted one of the epic romances of all comic books, which is the Rogue and Gambit connection. My – are either of you comic book nerds?

Sarah: Little bit.

Jacquelyn: Okay, so –

Carol: No.

Jacquelyn: – Rogue’s superpower is, you know, she touches people and she basically is like this vampire that sucks up their powers away from them, and it’s a very horrible experience for whoever she’s touching. So obviously, her romance situation is very complicated, and I just loved this when I was a kid. I loved the idea of, superpowers are just awesome, right? But it’s so much more fun when you can also see how incredibly complicated they would be emotionally? So the idea of a relationship between somebody who can see the future and knows what’s coming down the pipeline and somebody who, every time they touch you, knows exactly what you’re thinking and all of your darkest secrets just sounded in-, it’s just deliciously complex. I, that’s, I couldn’t resist the, the chance to explore what a relationship like that would look like.

Sarah: So if you have a hero who is, has psychometry, they can’t touch people or things without getting involved with them on a –

Jacquelyn: Well, I mean, it’s –

Sarah: – mental and, and historical level.

Jacquelyn: So this is where we get into some of the fun of, like, what is it like in real life if you ki-, if you have an ability like this? – and this is something where Carol is just a fabulous resource on this stuff – and also, how do we play with it in fiction? So in the book that I wrote, The Fire in the Glass, I wanted to root the powers that the characters have in all of this rich – there’s this huge, rich story of human psychic ability and how varied it is, and, and there are documented cases and, and people who are able to share their stories about, about having these powers or having experienced them with you, and, and to use that, to make this feel as real as I possibly could, instead of just drawing off kind of the tropes that are out there in the ether.

Sarah: Mm-hmm?

Jacquelyn: So I wanted to do that, but it is also a novel, and so you have to have a little bit of fun, so I took the, based everything as much as I could in real life and then pushed it a little to the extreme. So the character of Lord Strangford in the book, who is a psychometric, he, he does have the issue where his power triggers kind of triggers really easily. He, he, pretty much anyone he touches, any object that he comes into skin-to-skin contact with, he, his power will pick up on some of its history. He doesn’t have a lot of control over what he sees. I think in real life it would be a little less overwhelming than that, would you say, Carol?

Carol: Yeah. In real life, we learn how to turn it on and turn it off. So he probably would have learned that skill and applied it when he needed to.

Sarah: Sort of like turning a volume button up and down.

Carol: Yes.

Sarah: Oh, interesting.

Carol: Yeah.

Sarah: Now, I know you’ve worked together, and you’re both involved in various areas of psychic phenomena. Can you tell me, how did you each begin your, your relationship with, with paranormal and psychic phenomena? ‘Cause you both have very long histories with this whole world.

Carol: I’ll try to not make it too long of a story, but for me, even though I didn’t really understand it until I was well into adulthood, which I mean like forties? [Laughs] I was experiencing things as a young child: seeing spirits, seeing sometimes the actual physical form of a spirit, but most of the time seeing energy that was spirit; communicating with spirit, getting information from my mom’s pop, father, who had passed when she was a teenager, so I’d never met him; or just being able to tell, you know, people, oh, you know, your loved one came to me last night and wanted to say good-bye to you, and then, you know, that loved one literally would have passed during that night, even though I might have known who they were. So different things happening.

In my early twenties, my, I was going through something difficult. My dad said, I’m going to read your cards for you, and I said, you’re going to what?! Had no idea that my dad knew how to read cards and that his grandmother was quite a well known, in her area, psychic. Not worldwide, but was, you know, people traveled to, to come to her for psychic readings, and I didn’t know that about her. So he read my cards for me, and everything came to be as it was.

Now, these weren’t tarot cards, they were just a regular deck, so I said, show me how you do that. When he showed me, I wasn’t really paying attention – I guess I wasn’t a great student back then – but I would still doing readings for friends and get information, and people would say, oh my gosh! You got all that right! How did you know that? Or they’d come back to me later and say, everything you told me came true! How did you know? At that point, I didn’t, I had that prove-it mind too, so I was like, hmm, I think it’s just coincidence, you know, and I would tell people that before we did readings: this is just for fun! Don’t believe what I’m telling you. But more and more people were coming back to tell me how accurate it was.

So, you know, this kind of went on for me. I, I did go with a paranormal group in my early thirties to explore some places in Savannah, Georgia, which was a really great experience. I was able to tell them things that their scientific equipment could not tell them, and, you know, after doing research afterwards, it was shown that the information I provided was accurate. And, but it wasn’t until I left the corporate world at forty that things really started to grow for me.

Sarah: And now you give readings and you teach classes on mediumship; is that right?

Carol: Yes. Yeah. So, like I said, it was about forty when, when I left my corporate world. Things started to happen for me, and in that year I decided, okay, I need to find out more about this and do my own self-healing work too. So I’m fifty-one now, so I’ve been doing it, the, the work to develop it and everything, for about eleven years. I’ve been teaching it for about five or six years now I think it’s been. So I was doing it too, giving readings for a few years before that.

Sarah: I just love the idea of going to Savannah like, there’s no ghosts there! Not at all!

Carol: [Laughs]

Sarah: I went to college in Columbia, South Carolina, so I’ve been to Savannah a bunch of times, and I’m –

Carol: Mm-hmm?

Sarah: – I’m very much Yankee, I’m from Pittsburgh, but I was like, wow, this place is, it’s like the humidity is ghosts and ghosts are the humidity, and they’re the same thing!

Carol: Mm-hmm. Yes. It’s such an eccentric town, Savannah? [Laughs]

Sarah: Yes.

Carol: I grew up in northern New York as well, but I’ve lived in Charleston since ’96, so –

Sarah: No ghosts there, either. None at all.

Carol: No, none, none at all there!

[Laughter]

Carol: So, but I’ve learned a lot, really, about what ghosts really are. I don’t even really use the word ghost anymore? Just spirit. Yeah.

Sarah: Oh, interesting! Interesting!

Carol: Yeah, and I’ve learned a lot, the difference between what is really a ghost versus what is a psychic impression, which is energy that is still holding on in that area, and what is a true spirit that can communicate with us.

Sarah: Because there are some hauntings that are just a repeated pattern, right?

Carol: Exactly! That would be a psychic impression.

Sarah: So it’s somebody walking down the hall or walking through a room or constantly stuck in the same pattern. They’re not –

Carol: Yeah.

Sarah: – interacting. They are –

Carol: Right.

Sarah: – they are stuck on repeat.

Carol: Well, they’re not even actually really what I would call a spirit, because they’re not intelligent; they can’t communicate with us. It’s really just, you know, the – we all have psychic ability, whether we know it or not, and we can pick up the energy that is still there and repeating that over and over. It’s the energy, but it’s not a true spirit that can communicate.

Jacquelyn: Think of it, Sarah –

Sarah: Wow.

Jacquelyn: – like a, like a film reel, like a, like a snippet of a film reel that’s just playing over and over again –

Sarah: Mm-hmm. Right.

Jacquelyn: – you know.

Sarah: Like it’s being projected on the wall, and it’s on loop.

Carol: Right.

Jacquelyn: It’s, it’s almost like it’s in the wall. [Laughs] And you’re, and you’re –

Carol: Yeah. [Laughs]

Jacquelyn: – picking up on it, yeah.

Sarah: Whoa! Now – I have so many questions. Jacquelyn, you, you did a, you did your master’s thesis on the social lives of paranormal investigators, for real.

Jacquelyn: Yeah.

Sarah: For really, really real, that was your thesis.

Jacquelyn: For really, really – yes, it was. And so I, my master’s is in Anthropology, and it’s really, it’s a pretty scintillating read. The actual title of the thesis is “Tuning into Alternative Frequencies: Perception, Interpretation, and Knowledge in Paranormal Investigation.” I mean, it’s really catchy; it’s a catchy title. So I worked with twelve different paranormal investigation groups throughout New England – I live in New Hampshire – and followed them on investigations, interviewed them, just tried to kind of immerse myself in their world, and was, I was studying, you know, for the anthropological purposes, how they came together as social groups and how the way that they perceived the world changed when you became a part of this group, you know.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Jacquelyn: How did you learn how to pick up on different things in your environment and notice – and this is something that Carol and I were geeking out about when we were talking the other day – just being, learning how to pay attention to different aspects of your environment and, and different senses in your own body that our culture just kind of ignores. You know, you, it’s, it’s not something that we’re taught to notice, but when you’re around a lot of people who are in this world where they’re looking for spirits or they’re looking for those echoes in a particular location, you know, you, you, they teach you! They teach you how to do it; they teach you how to pay attention to things like the air temperature or your own emotional state or that, that kind of deeper and instinctive awareness that you have of, for want of a better word, I guess, spookiness going on around you.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Jacquelyn: So yes, that’s what the thesis was about, but it also just gave me an opportunity to, I’ve been fascinated by psychic phenomena and the paranormal forever, so this, this was just a perfect excuse for me to play in that pool for a while. And I did a, I did catch a ghost on tape while I was doing the research for it.

Sarah: What happened?

Jacquelyn: So I had, one of my sources invited me to stay at her house. She was a single mom, she lived in western Mass, and she –

Sarah: No ghosts there, either. Nope, none.

Jacquelyn: The house was this old, spooky house. So I’m staying overnight with her in this place, and you know, we’re, we’re watching some movie at one point, and all of a sudden this box fan in her window just turns on high, and, and I’m like, okay, I think you, I think you’ve got a short there, and she’s like, nope! And we went over, and we’re looking at this fan, and there was just, there’s no way that the dial could have just twisted. It was, it was one of these things like, how did this thing just turn all of a sudden? And, and as we’re sitting there a minute later we hear footsteps upstairs, and I say to this, this woman, you know, I think one of your kids is out of bed. She says, well, that’s, their bedroom’s on the other side of the house, which could, maybe the kid was wandering upstairs. I’m, I’m, I was always, you’re always looking for the rational explanation for these things. But the next day I sat down with her, and I was recording her, you know, interviewing her about her experiences, and a few weeks later I’m back in Belfast in Northern Ireland, which is where I was going to school, listening to these tapes, and I’m asking her, it’s the two of us in this kitchen, I’m asking her, what would it take to convince a skeptic that the paranormal is real? That it actually exists? And she pauses before she answers, and you hear, clear as a bell on this tape, this voice in the background going, I’m here! [Laughs]

Sarah: Whoooa!

Jacquelyn: Just boom! Right, clear as anything. Yeah. So.

[Laughter]

Sarah: I’m just imagining this ghost, like, rolling – or the spirit – rolling its eyes like, oh my gosh, people! I’m right here! Come on!

Jacquelyn: Like, you want to know how you get convinced? We’ll fricking show up and, you know?

[Laughter]

Jacquelyn: And tell you about it, right?

Sarah: It’s like the, it’s like the spirit equivalent of when my, when my, my sons are looking for something in the fridge and it’s right in front of you! The milk is right there!

[Laughter]

Jacquelyn: Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

Carol: Exactly, yep.

Sarah: I love the stories of, of spirits that interact with electric things?

Carol: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: Like, like, electricity for a, for a spirit that’s, may have lived several hundred years ago? Oh, no big deal! It’s just electricity! What’s with the electricity? I once had a ghost mess – or, excuse me, a spirit – mess with my cell phone?

Jacquelyn: Oh, interesting!

Carol: Yeah, and so, I mean, electricity is an easy for them to be able to manipulate, because they’re energy, right? But –

Sarah: Makes sense.

Carol: – one of the things that I always say is, a lot of times, you know, when people call me and say, I have a spirit in my house, and a lot of times they think it’s an evil spirit because there’s loud noises, they hear footsteps. Those kind of things, our immediate reaction just as a physical human being is to be scared, right? But I, I often tell them, like, you know, more than likely, it’s a loved one that’s there, and they’ve done the subtle things to get your attention, you know, but you’re not noticing it.

[Laughter]

Carol: So, you know, they’re going to, they’re like a child who sits next to you who says, Mommy, Mommy, Mommy, and you keep ignoring them, so suddenly they’re screaming and pounding and, you know, stomping their feet to get your attention. So, you know, if flicking the lights is going to get your attention or –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Carol: – playing with your cell phone is going to get your attention, then that’s what they’re going to do! [Laughs]

Sarah: And that was weird! The, the spirit was, my, my phone woke me up because it was making that, doo-doo-doo, the number you have reached is no longer in service noise?

Carol: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: So my phone had been dialing out and then was not reaching someone, and I thought, well, that’s annoying. So I went back to sleep, and then it happened again, and then I was like, well, fine, I’ll just get up, and I got up, and I like to think that the spirit wanted me to meet – I was in a bed and breakfast owned by Nora Roberts in Boonsboro, Maryland, and the –

Carol: Mmm!

Sarah: – and the innkeepers there have said there’s absolutely a ghost; her name is Elizabeth. And I was in the Elizabeth and Darcy room, so that’s clearly where this spirit likes to hang out.

Jacquelyn: Obviously.

Sarah: So I got up, showered, went downstairs, and I didn’t feel, like, that creepy, cold, back-of-my-neck, something weird is watching me. It was like, fine, I’m up, and I go downstairs, and I met a, a woman and her mom, and we had breakfast together, and it was really, really lovely, and I ended up having dinner with them and had spent most of the day with these two people I’d never met before, and I figured the spirit wanted me to get up and meet these lovely people and have a really lovely dinner and have this wonderful, wonderful day, but I didn’t put it together until later when I was speaking to the innkeeper, and I said, well, my phone kept going off, and now that I look, there’s no outgoing calls, but my phone definitely woke me up with this, you know, your call cannot be completed as dialed number, and she went, oh yeah, that’s just Elizabeth. She likes phones!

[Laughter]

Sarah: I’m like, what, does she want, does Elizabeth play Candy Crush? Does, could she, like, win me some money? Like, what? She’s not going to go on my PayPal, right? Like, nope, nope, she likes phones.

[Laughter]

Carol: Yep! It’s a good way to get your attention, and you know, I have never met a spirit that’s evil or doing things to harm people. It’s, it’s all love in the spirit side. There’s no rea-, reason for them to have evil, you know, personalities or be or act evil in any way. But you know, you’re right! Like, she was trying to get your attention; she was trying to give you the opportunity to meet people who would be a positive experience for you, so she was helping you!

Sarah: For sure!

Carol: Yeah!

Sarah: Little freaky. Little bit scary –

Carol: Yeah. [Laughs]

Sarah: – but, but definitely a, a net positive.

Carol: Mm-hmm!

Sarah: So how do you two work together? What is your working relationship like? ‘Cause I know you’re, you’re friends and you, and you talk. What do you, what do you do together?

Jacquelyn: Carol and I are actually new friends. So Car-, so we met through my sister. I’m one of three sisters, and we all, you know, these three sisters who grew up in a big, spooky, haunted house in New Hampshire together, and –

Sarah: No ghosts there either!

Jacquelyn: It was just –

Sarah: And, and Belfast either: completely devoid of ghosts.

Jacquelyn: No, no ghosts there.

Sarah: Sorry, spirits, beg your pardon, beg your pardon.

Jacquelyn: Well, there was, yeah, there was, there were spirits involved; it was college. But –

[Laughter]

Jacquelyn: But my two sisters are both, my two younger sisters are both very sensitive to this stuff? You know, I’ve, I’m usually the intellectual one here, kind of analyzing and researching everything, and meanwhile they would be, you know, kind of having these experiences in the house while we were growing up. So Kate and Carol have met because Kate took one of Carol’s mediumship classes, my sister Kate. So that’s how they met, and then when Kate – Kate obviously, my sister’s aware of the writing that I’m doing and she knew about this story and about my, you know, desire to create these psychic characters that were based in real life and create a really fun story around them, and so she connected me with Carol. You know, it was after the book was actually written that we connected, but the two of us have, we’ve had some opportunities to geek out since then, and I’m, I’m definitely –

Carol: Mm-hmm.

Jacquelyn: – looking forward to learning more from Carol as I keep on writing.

Sarah: Carol, what are the most common reactions when you tell people what you do, and what are the common reactions when you do a reading? Are there people who are, who are most of the time skeptical about what, what you, what you present?

Carol: You know, I think when people meet me there’s a lot of curiosity about what I do, and I very much welcome that. I believe that me being shown that I’m supposed to do this work was not only to give readings but to help people learn about it, whether it’s learning about their own ability or just learning what mediumship really is –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Carol: – and that it’s not working with evil, scary spirits. That it’s about healing and love and, and, and so I feel like people – you know, I love it when people ask me questions about it, you know, and people will say, can I ask you a question? I’m like, absolutely, please do! You know, because I want people to understand it and not have that belief of it’s scary, it’s evil, stay away from it, you know? Because the way I use it in my work is not for entertainment purposes, but it’s for healing. So for people to understand it as more of a healing thing and not an entertainment thing is really important, and so that’s why I welcome the questions, for sure.

I do have people that’ll come sit that are skeptics, and that’s okay. I think that’s healthy, because I was a skeptic for a long time. Even though I had this ability, I was always discounting it, always saying, that’s a coincidence, or you know, I was raised Catholic, so I used the word god, and I’d say, God, if you, if this is for real, give me a sign! You know? And, you know, sign after sign after sign would come, and I’d just say, oh, that must be a coincidence. So I very much was a skeptic as well! I had to just finally turn to faith and say, I have to believe that there’s something greater that, even if I can’t see it, even if I can’t, you know, like, have scientific proof of it, it’s happening, and it’s bringing healing to people. But the more questions people ask me about it, the happier I am. [Laughs] And I think Jacquelyn can tell you that I will not shut up about it if you, if you ask me questions.

Jacquelyn: Yeah, what were we, what were we yapping the other day, Carol? It was like, I think we were on, on Skype for like two hours. [Laughs]

Carol: Yeah. Yes.

Jacquelyn: Yeah.

Carol: [Laughs] And I just get so excited about it, I can’t stop talking about it!

Jacquelyn: Well, and I’m, I’m a sponge over here just soaking it all up, and you know, and my brain’s going, okay, how can I use this in the next book? [Laughs]

Carol: Yeah.

Sarah: Now, I definitely want to ask about using your, your experience with psychic phenomena in writing, but I also want to ask Carol, what happens when you, when you communicate? What, what’s that like?

Carol: You know, it’s such a peaceful and loving feeling. I think that’s why I’m so grateful for it, because every time I do connect with somebody in the spirit world, I get to feel that love that they want to give to their loved one who’s sitting with me in the physical side? So I get to be a part of that experience, and also all the things that they taught me! You know, that, that’s been amazing, and, like, wow, they, they teach me so much, and you know, some of those have been the beliefs that I had back when I was doing some paranormal stuff, research stuff, or, you know, going into homes that were, you know, supposedly haunted – I hate to use that word because, you know, I haven’t, like I said, I haven’t run into any evil spirits. So, and they taught me so much about us not being stuck, of us just, like, returning back to the source of what we are, which is love. And so I have found that very amazing.

But you, you have to, you know, like Jacquelyn was explaining, you have to use all your senses. You have to, like, just recognize, you know, what they’re trying to give you, whether they’re trying to show it to you, make you feel it. They might speak to you if you can hear it or give you their thoughts, so you’re sharing thoughts back and forth, but we have all these different senses that we can use to communicate with them, and, you know, some mediums are better at using some senses than others, and spirits are better! You know, if somebody was a really, like, visual person here in their physical life, they may be much better at using clairvoyance with the medium than they are at using clairaudience, which would be the speaking, you know?

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Carol: So it depends a lot on the spirit too. Every interaction is different depending on what the spirit’s comfortable using, as well as what the medium is capable of using.

But, you know, I thought that Jacquelyn did a really great job. There’s a line that Estelle says in the book; she says that you have to put it out there that you’re here and that you’ll listen, and then be absolutely open to anything that comes into your head, no matter how absurd. And that’s so true!

Like, we cannot judge the information that comes through, and that’s one of the big things that I try to teach people is, like, don’t judge it! Like, don’t be like, oh, that’s crazy! You know, that person couldn’t have possibly been a hockey player; they’re way too small! Or, you know, if, if – and I use that, that example because I’m a hockey player. I grew up playing hockey, but I’m not a big person, and nobody would ever know that, looking at me, that I’m a hockey player, but after I pass, if I come through to a medium, I’m most definitely going to talk about hockey, ‘cause it’s one of my passions.

[Laughter]

Carol: And, but if the medium is saying there’s no way this woman is a hockey player, like, I’m not going to say that; that’s crazy! You know, well, she’d miss a big part of who I am! So, you know, trying to just realize that we can’t judge any information that the spirits give us, and we’re just here to be the vessel and give what we get.

Sarah: Wow.

Carol: That’s, that’s the hardest part for mediums is learning to just surrender, not judge it, and trust it.

Sarah: How do you know when you’re, when you’re communicating with a spirit? Is it always a different sense, or is there a, a set of recognizable signals that you usually experience?

Carol: For me, it’s, I can feel them very, very strongly, which is my clairsentience, and, you know, there are times that I’m communicating with them and I don’t feel them as strongly as others, but that’s my big indication is, you know, I know that there’s a spirit here communicating ‘cause I feel them.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Carol: You know, a lot of people believe that mediums, they, they call all mediums clairvoyant. Well, that’s only one of the senses that we’ll use to communicate, and if somebody only relies on that ability, on clairvoyance, they’re going to miss so much more that the spirit could be sharing, and I think in the feeling them and feeling their emotions and feeling their love is so powerful. So that for me is the key. Like, when I can feel ‘em, I’m like, yeah, I’ve got a good connection here.

Sarah: Now, Jacquelyn, you mentioned that your sister had taken a class with, with Carol. Are you also working on building your sensitivity to spiritual connection?

Jacquelyn: Hmm. [Sighs] I’ve never –

Carol: You should!

[Laughter]

Jacquelyn: I haven’t, I haven’t gone down that road yet, Sarah, and I’m, it’s not, I’m not closed off to it, but I’ve always, like I said, I’ve always been the intellectual and the researcher –

Sarah: Right.

Jacquelyn: – and so to, to step out of that and become a participant is a big change in mindset. But, you know, there may come a time in my life where I – so I do, I dabble in it a little bit in that I read tarot cards. So I, I do read cards. You, I, I just, it’s something I just do for friends, friends or family, and there’s a lot of the same principles that Carol’s describing about trusting instincts and being able to, just opening yourself up to accepting these things that come into your head that don’t necessarily make a lot of sense and having that leap of faith that you need to take –

Sarah: Mm-hmm?

Jacquelyn: – which I’m still learning how to do that in that context, but I believe that that’s, it, it, that’s a skill that would apply to some of this other world, so there, there may be, there may be a path for me in that in the future, but at the moment I’m pretty focused on learning and storytelling, so.

Carol: I can tell you that with reading her, her book, though, I thought, she’s got to have had experiences herself. There’s no way she could be describing this like this if she hasn’t experienced this herself. So I knew there was some ability there.

[Laughter]

Sarah: Well, it also sounds like when you’re interacting in that way, some of the language overlaps the, the language that I’ve read about learning meditation: that you don’t judge your thoughts, you just observe them, and you, like, are aware that they are happening, but you don’t judge them or harshly reject them; you just accept that that’s a thing that your brain does.

Carol: Yes. Yes. Yeah. And I think that that’s a huge part of, like, learning to develop your abilities is, you know, in my class, I teach about meditation, and we talk – you know, it’s a four-week class, so each week we work on a different kind of meditation, but I try to impress on people how important meditation is, learning to meditate, because it brings so much to your, you know, developing your abilities as well.

Sarah: Of course! That makes a lot of sense.

So, Jacquelyn, how do you include and, and, how does learning about psychic phenomena influence your writing, and what kind of stories are you both looking to tell with the work that you do?

Jacquelyn: So the, I mean, part of, a big part of why I decided to write is because I, through my interest in the paranormal since I was a peanut, have had a belief that the world is a far bigger, stranger, and more fun place than we typically allow ourselves to believe, and sort of like than high culture kind of allows, because a lot of the stuff that we’re talking about right now, you know, so many people have had experiences of psychic phenomena, or they’ve encountered spirits, or they’re fascinated by this stuff, but it, there’s definitely a level of taboo, and there’s a level of seeing it as unscient-, an unscientific mindset or, you know, that maybe you’re gullible if you believe in this stuff. And the more you read about it, the more you research it, the more you hear all of these stories, you’re like, this is, this, this is bull! There’s something going on here, and through writing fiction, I’m able to play in a space where I can blur the lines between the real and the fantastic. Usually we separate things into these really firm genres: you’ve got realistic fiction and you’ve got fantasy fiction, but you can write real fiction that has elements of magic in it because they’re all around us! it’s happening all the time, you know, and, and every, you know people – you, you yourself were sharing experiences – we all know people who’ve had experiences like this, so why not, why not build that into your world when you’re telling a story? There’s something that’s just a little thrilling, I think, about being in a story that reminds you that the world that we actually live in has this, has some really cool stuff going on all around us that we don’t understand, but can come into contact with. In our own lives! Not just in a book.

Sarah: And it also strikes me that, Carol, you mentioned that the, the fundamental message of all of the spirits that you interact with is love.

Carol: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: That there is great love and, and warmth coming from the spirit world that you experience, and for, for the genre that I spend most of my time in, with romance, the fundamental message is, of each book, is that you, the characters are worthy of love exactly as you are.

Carol: Mm-hmm!

Sarah: And that the –

Carol: Yeah.

Sarah: – the message of the romance genre is one of empathy and affection and connection and courtship and love fundamentally, so it seems like to me it makes perfect sense that if you include this sort of phenomenon in your writing, you’re also still communicating that, that essential message that you are loved and worthy of love.

Carol: Yeah! Yeah. I mean, I think that self-worth and being worthy of love is a big thing that a lot of people struggle with, and that message coming from the spirit world, I struggled with it in the beginning. You know, not only was I a skeptic and, you know, wanted to blow everything off as, as a coincidence, but also my feeling was like, why? Why would I be able to do this? Why would I be able to help people? I’m not worthy of being able to help other people. I mean, I was, you know, needed a lot of my own work on myself in the beginning. And, and, you know, we always do, we still do, but, you know, I did, I have done a lot of healing work and everything to, you know, and the spirit world’s been a huge part of that for me, of helping me understand that I am worthy of love and that I am worthy of sharing this with other people.

Sarah: How, what do you guys think of how psychic phenomenon is shown in the media, especially in fiction? Are you sort of adjusted to the way that it’s presented? Because, I mean, of course in, in, in dramatic media, you have to have conflict, and, and often that conflict is evil or malevolence or some sort of negative –

Jacquelyn: Right.

Sarah: – energy, and it sounds like that’s not really your experiences.

Jacquelyn: No, not at all. I, it, it was important to me when I was putting this story together that this was not going to be about a conflict between good and some kind of supernatural evil. It’s very handy for a writer that humans are capable of doing plenty of evil things ourselves without any kind of supernatural influence, so if you’re looking to make a bad guy in your story, you really don’t need to go into, like, demonology to make it happen. I wanted the psychic powers in the book to be, if anything, to, to just be there! They’re, they’re, they’re not inherently good, they’re not inherently evil, or if, if anything, they are, you know, they’re a gift that you don’t necessarily know quite why you have and that isn’t always easy or comfortable to have, but there’s a reason for it, and it’s, and it, and there isn’t a dark counterpoint that you have to fight against, you know. So my characters are up against a, very much a human, a human evil in the story. And I think that you don’t, you don’t see that as much when people are talking about the, the psychic world in fiction. It is often, like you said, tied into this kind of horror trope. Or, or else it’s just put into a world that’s completely fantastic, where, like, everything is, everything is magical, and it’s not, there’s no grounding in reality to it, because it’s considered just another element of the things that humans make up to entertain themselves. And it’s more than that!

Sarah: Carol, what about you? What is your reaction to a lot of the portrayal of psychic phenomena in, in the media?

Carol: Well, I think it’s changed a lot, and I think that there are some mediums that have their shows that have really helped to show that it’s a positive thing, that, you know, there’s a lot of healing that comes from the mediumistic side of it. You know, I knew, for, for a long time I kind of stayed away from watching – as a kid I loved horror movies, but for a while, you know, I stayed away from it because I, I was so upset by the, the darkness that they were bringing from it, and then I would realize that people when, you know, when they first met me, about what I did, they’d, there’s a fear! You know, like –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Carol: – oh my God, are you going to tell me something scary? Don’t! You know? Or can you read my mind? You know, I don’t want to be around you because you might know what I’m thinking, you know. And, you know, I’ve actually written an article about that, but I’m just like, yeah, I can read your mind, but I don’t really want to! [Laughs] You know, so I’m not going to!

[Laughter]

Carol: So a lot of stuff brings about a fear connected to what I do, so that’s why I feel like part of my work is, you know, turning that around and helping people understand that what I do is a very healing, loving thing.

Sarah: So when you, when you interact with people who – both of you, when you interact with people and you talk about what you do, do you get a lot of questions?

Carol: I do. [Laughs]

Sarah: I imagine, yes.

Jacquelyn: I get less questions, and I get more people who immediately start telling me their story. They jump right into the time, to their psychic experience or their ghost story or the story of a grandparent or somebody that they knew, and I, I, very rarely will I bring this stuff up and the conversation doesn’t go into four hours of, of sharing stories about people’s experiences.

Sarah: There’s sort of a, a, a connection over what I think sociologists would call a, a societal deviance? Like, you’re accepting something that is, like you said, taboo. You’re, you’re accepting and welcoming and engaging with something that we’re not supposed to do. We’re not supposed to talk about that! We’re not supposed to deal with that! So because you’re so welcoming of this alternative, it, it gives people a safe space to say, oh my gosh, I want to tell you about this, this story. Have you heard, her, have you ever heard or encountered stories that just absolutely surprised you? Or at this point are you kind of like, yep, yep, uh-huh, yep, spirits, that’s how they are?

Carol: I don’t think I’ve been surprised very often.

[Laughter]

Jacquelyn: I was going to say, for me it’s more like being constantly, I’m surprised in that I’m delighted by variety of stories that I hear and just, you know, that, that so many people have had these experiences, and every one of them has its own, you know, fascinating elements or its own charm or, you know, or some intriguing side to it that just made you want to dig in and, and try to uncover more. So yeah.

Carol: Yeah.

Jacquelyn: Surpri-, there’s some surprise.

Carol: I, I agree with that, Jacquelyn, that I’m, that I’m fascinated by every story and, and delighted by it. There are still things that when a spirit gives me and I give it to the loved one who’s sitting with me on the physical side and they confirm that, I’m like, wow! Really? Like, how did they give that to me? How do they do that, you know?

Jacquelyn: [Laughs] Yes!

Carol: So, you know, they, they did, the spirit, people in the spirit world really amaze me all the time. But nothing would make me be like, there’s no way that could have happened, you know? [Laughs]

Sarah: At, at this point, you’re sort of like, yep! That’s just how it is.

Carol: Yeah.

Jacquelyn: Mm-hmm!

Carol: Yep.

Sarah: Wow!

Carol: Yep.

Sarah: Now, before we started recording, and I think a little bit before you logged in, Jacquelyn, before we started recording, Carol, you and I were talking about how when you communicate with pets.

Carol: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: How common is that?

Carol: It’s very common for me. As a medium, you know, I, I, I work with a lot of other mediums, and, and I can tell you almost every event, live event I do, I will have at least one animal come through? I’ve had dogs, cats, frogs, birds, monkeys, horses that come through, and I think a lot of that is because I’m an animal person? You know, my dogs are my babies, and my children sometimes say, I think you love the dog more than you love me!

[Laughter]

Carol: But, and I think that’s a big reason why animals show up so much to me, ‘cause they know that I can understand them. But, you know, I don’t know if that happens a lot for other mediums. There’s a couple other mediums that I do events with regularly, and, you know, I, I haven’t seen them get animals with the frequency that I get ‘em, but I, I definitely know that they could.

Sarah: For each of you, what do you wish more people knew about the, the psychic world and the world of the, the paranormal? From Jacquelyn, I know you do research and you’ve interacted considerably with paranormal researchers. What do you wish more people knew about that community and that world?

Jacquelyn: I wish they knew how, how serious and intelligent the people that do that work are? I mean, there’s, there is this trope of them being crackpots or, or people who are twisting their experiences to support what they believe, and that is not how they approach the work that they do. I, I think that the, there’s been a mis-, the research I did was like, this was twenty years ago, and e-, and since then there’s been so much more awareness coming out. I mean, it’s, it is somewhat sensationalized, but the television programs that they’ve done on hauntings at least, particularly Ghost Hunters – I actually worked with TAPS, the group that was in the Ghost Hunters show, and they had such a scientific approach to what they did, and they were rigorous about, you know, looking for alternative explanations for phenomena that they would encounter, and, and if people understood that, I think there’d be, there’d be more respect for the fact that, you know, these are, these are intelligent people thoughtfully approaching these situations, and they are –

Carol: Mm-hmm.

Jacquelyn: – coming up with places where they’re like, we don’t have an explanation for these things that we’re encountering, and it’s not just a one-off here or one-off there; it’s stuff that’s happening all the time. Because I think it would help people to trust their own experiences a little more –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Jacquelyn: – and to be more comfortable with, with those experiences? Because I think, again, there, there can be some, some shame or, or a feeling that you have to laugh it off instead of being able to sit back and just go, wow! [Laughs] This is so cool!

Sarah: Yeah.

Jacquelyn: You know?

Sarah: Absolutely. One of my writers, Carrie, did an interview with an author named Connie Willis. This was years and years and years ago, but Willis said something that really stuck with me? That cultures throughout history who had absolutely no way of contacting each other, who had no interactions that we know of, all had ghost stories, all had stories about being communicated with people who had passed on and, and interacting with worlds that weren’t the present one in front of them, and if they all had that experience, then there’s something of import there that we have to listen to.

Carol: Mm-hmm.

Jacquelyn: The anthropologist over here would concur with that.

Sarah: Yeah. [Laughs]

Carol, what about you? What do you wish people would, would know more or understand about what you do and the work that you do?

Carol: I, I wish that people understood the amount of work that goes into developing your abilities? I think people think, oh, you’re just born with it, and you, so you just are a medium. Now, I do believe that it’s an ability that people are born with. I believe everybody can notice the signs of spirits connecting with us. Not everybody might be able to have that strong connection where they can, you know, give back, you know, all the information that the spirit’s trying to share.

But it’s not something that happens overnight. It takes years and years of development, and you really have to put everything into it. You know, I believe that a medium never stops developing. You know, I’ve been doing this now, like I said, I, I started taking it seriously at forty, and I’m fifty-one now, so for eleven years, I still practice with a group of mediums once a week. They’re from, you know, across the country. We get together every week and still practice. Even though I’m doing private readings and events and teaching, it’s just there’s always more to learn, and, you know, for somebody to just wake up and say, you know, oh, I think I’m a medium! I’m going to, you know, start giving readings! It just doesn’t happen like that, and I think that’s a big misperception? That there’s no need to develop it, because that’s such a huge part of it, and really devout – putting every part of their life into it. You know, I even used to decide what to wear based on what kind of energy, ‘cause colors give energy and, you know, what color do I need to wear today if I’m going to be doing readings to bring up a certain energy that I’m going to need for today? You know, so, like, all these, studying all these different things to see how everything affects you as a person and, and as a medium.

Jacquelyn: Well, and I think the counterpoint to what Carol’s saying here is there are probably a lot of people out there who are like, no way. There’s just no way that I, that I could be open to that, that I could experience that side of things. You know, I just, I don’t have that mojo, wasn’t born with it, and you know, Carol, I think your point here is like a lot of, that you could, you could, but it won’t happen –

Carol: Mm-hmm.

Jacquelyn: – in an instant, but if you, if you really feel called to this or even just want to try, you know, you can start down that path and see what happens, you know.

Carol: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there’s people that take my class that have had a lot of curiosity about it, they might have had a couple of things happen that were unusual, and so they come and they take the class, and they realize, oh wow, I do have an ability that I didn’t realize, and if I work at this I can really develop it, you know? There’s some people that I, you know, when I teach mediumship – psychic is such a huge part of it, it’s the foundation of mediumship, so I’m teaching psychic as well – some people will be like, you know what, the medium thing isn’t just, isn’t, it’s not, I’m not feeling that, but the psychic part of it, oh yeah, I really want to develop that. And, and the need to develop that is just as true as with the mediumship, is you don’t just snap your fingers or take one class and say, okay, now I’m a psychic. You know, it’s, you work at it.

Sarah: What is the difference between psychic and mediumship?

Carol: So a psychic is reading another person’s energy. So getting the information –

Sarah: Ah!

Carol: – like past, present, future from the person who’s in the physical world that’s sitting with you.

Sarah: I see.

Carol: From their energy. When we work mediumisticly, that means those in spirit are giving us the information for us to share with those who are sitting with us –

Sarah: Ah!

Carol: – in the physical side. So when you work mediumisticly, you know, for me a lot of my clients come because they want to connect to a past loved one, but I also have –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Carol: – clients that want to connect to guides, to get some more guidance – [laughs] – for what is my soul’s journey? You know, where am I supposed to be going? What can I do to open myself up more to what my purpose is here? And that one is harder to prove, so if you had a skeptic coming for something like that, you know, that, that there’s, there’s no proof there, you know, unless the guides tell me about certain incidents that have happened in their life that are significant to their purpose, but, you know, I’ve had to kind of learn too that my job is not to prove to people? It’s just to share what’s given to me from the spirit side.

Sarah: That must be a very important lesson.

Carol: Yeah. Yeah.

Sarah: Yeah.

Carol: If, if we’re trying to prove it to people, we’re really in our own ego, and to be truly connected to the spirit world, we have to step out of our ego and just let it be a soul-to-soul connection.

Sarah: Right.

Jacquelyn: Or wait for them to get a recording from a ghost on their phone or something –

Carol: [Laughs]

Jacquelyn: – then they’ll buy it. [Laughs]

Sarah: I’m right here! Holy cow!

Carol: Right. [Laughs]

Sarah: People, I’m right here!

[Laughter]

Sarah: So I always ask this question: what are you reading that you want to tell people about?

Jacquelyn: This is not necessarily tied in to what we were talking about at all, but I did just finish reading –

Sarah: Doesn’t matter!

Jacquelyn: That’s cool! I just, I just finished reading Dread Nation by Justina Ireland. It’s her sort of alternative history, Civil War era, zombie novel?

Sarah: Yep!

Jacquelyn: With a – it’s just, the book was so engrossing, I read it in a day. I just ignored my children – there were probably safety issues, but they’re alive, so it’s fine; it turned out okay. But I just, I could not put it down. The, the worldbuilding, it was so rich, and all, the characters were just fantastic. It was just, it was a great read.

Carol: I’m embarrassed to say this: I have not had a lot of time to read fiction over the years, because I put so much of my time into studying and developing, you know, my own stuff. So I was thrilled when Jacquelyn sent me her book and, and I read it, and I was like, oh my God, I forgot how much fun it is to read this stuff.

[Laughter]

Carol: So it, it reminded me that I need to bring fun into my life. [Laughs] I mean, I, I am reading a book called The Life You Were Born to Live by Dan Millman, and it’s about numerology? And I find that fascinating too, so I’m more like studying that book than I am reading it. But I actually just found this book today on one of your posts, The Year of the Witching?

Sarah: Oh yeah, that’s a, that’s a horror novel.

Carol: Yes, I know! So I was like, you know, I’ve always stayed away from those, you know, since I started getting into this work, but I did find the description of it really interesting, and I’m like, hmm! I think I want to read this! So I downloaded that today. So.

Jacquelyn: [Laughs]

Carol: Yeah –

Sarah: Oh, awesome! I hope you like it. I hope you’ll, I hope you’ll let me know what you think.

Carol: Yeah, I will. I’ll definitely let you know.

[music]

Sarah: And that brings us to the end of this week’s episode. I hope you enjoyed my conversation. I will have links as to where you can find both Jacquelyn and Carol on the website at smartbitchestrashybooks.com/podcast.

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If you have questions or suggestions or you want to give me some feedback on this interview, I’d love to hear from you. The email address for me and the podcast is [email protected]. I have received several requests for recommendation episodes with Amanda, so do not worry. They will be a regular feature, so if you would like to receive book recommendations, email sbjpodcast and tell us what you like, and then we will drone on for hours about what books you should read next. We are, as always, extremely expensive people to know.

As always, I end with a really bad joke. And I know you love the bad jokes ‘cause you email me or tweet at me and tell me how bad they are. This one is particularly terrible, and I love it a lot! You ready? And it only works when you say it out loud; it doesn’t work when you read it, so I love it even more!

Where do magicians get their money?

Where do magicians get their money?

Cash-ears.

Get it? Cash-ears, or taking quarters out of people’s ears? Cash-ears? Aah! [Laughs] I told the family that one, and the answer was, ehhh. So I rate that as, you know, a solid, solid bad joke for the podcast. [Laughs] Cash-ears. That is from /dothemagic on the Reddit, sub, the subreddit Dad Jokes, which is, as you might imagine, among my favorite places.

Thank you, as always, for hanging out with me. On behalf of everyone here, we wish you the very best of reading. Have a wonderful weekend, and we will see you back here next week.

Smart Podcast, Trashy Books – that would be this show right here – is part of the Frolic Podcast Network. You can find more outstanding podcasts to subscribe to at frolic.media/podcasts.

[end of music]