Speaker 1: Like the fact that like I never look for parking.
Speaker 1: I don't you know what I mean. It may take
Speaker 1: me a couple of minutes, but like I always parked
Speaker 1: near my destination. It's just little things where just feel
Speaker 1: like my folks are taking care of me. You who,
Speaker 1: You got a whole squad sort of coming together to
Speaker 1: make sure that the cars move when they need to.
Speaker 1: And we all can you know what I mean, like
Speaker 1: we all looking for parking. If you talk to your ghosts,
Speaker 1: racist money, martial stuff, you can't tell me. Yep, yep, yep,
Speaker 1: there it is. There it is. Ladies and gentlemen, Welcome
Speaker 1: to another phenomenal episode of My Mama Told Me, the
Speaker 1: podcast where we dive deep deep into the pockets of
Speaker 1: black conspiracy theories and we finally work to prove that
Speaker 1: race relations in this country will never be solved until
Speaker 1: Wes Anderson exclusively starts making movies starring Clifton pal That's right.
Speaker 1: We need the whitest filmmaker and the blackest star of
Speaker 1: every b et plus film to come together and solve
Speaker 1: what is broken in this country. It's the only way, folks.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, Langston Kerman as always coming at you hig,
Speaker 1: baby coming in spry. I'm feeling good today. Baby. I
Speaker 1: got I got a nice little I got some pepper
Speaker 1: in my step, you know what I mean. I got
Speaker 1: I got some some a little hooks fun. You know,
Speaker 1: I'm I'm excited because my guest today she is a
Speaker 1: person who deserves respects. Most of the people I have
Speaker 1: on this podcast are absolute idiot their foods, they're they're
Speaker 1: clowns who just say silly things. But she's a person
Speaker 1: who says very important things and thoughtful things. She's careful
Speaker 1: with the language that she used that she's a journalist,
Speaker 1: she's a cultural critic, and more importantly, she has a
Speaker 1: podcast called Mom and Dad Are Fighting. It's a a
Speaker 1: parenting podcast. You know her, you love her? Please give
Speaker 1: it up for my guests. Ms. Jamilla Lemieux, Hey, Hey,
Speaker 1: thank you for doing this. Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1: Hell yeah, it's gonna be fun. This is uh I
Speaker 1: I you heard it in the intro. We mostly have
Speaker 1: comedians on, so it's always a beautiful treat when somebody
Speaker 1: who uh takes themselves a little more seriously is here
Speaker 1: to help enlighten us in a way that a bunch
Speaker 1: of my dumb friends can't. My career is such a
Speaker 1: great facade for how not serious I take myself, and
Speaker 1: certainly none of my friends take me very seriously. Like
Speaker 1: the fact that I would get that sort of intro
Speaker 1: in my friend's circle is like a what the moment
Speaker 1: to this day, because I really I am the joker,
Speaker 1: I'm the silly one, I'm a friend. So yeah, so
Speaker 1: I I'm hugely disappointed. Now you should be because I
Speaker 1: came adequately unprepared to I did no research. I did.
Speaker 1: Oh that's beautiful. I here. This is always my fear
Speaker 1: whenever a journalist comes on is that you guys do
Speaker 1: my My presumption of the work that you do is
Speaker 1: you're constantly doing research. And so my fear is that
Speaker 1: my my very inadequate research is only going to disappoint you.
Speaker 1: But now that I know you didn't even do anything,
Speaker 1: I feel like I'm gonna be I'm gonna be thriving
Speaker 1: throughout this episode. Hell yeah, I'm excited. So you came
Speaker 1: with a conspiracy theory that I'm super excited about because
Speaker 1: we don't touch on the paranormal. In my opinion, often enough,
Speaker 1: it doesn't come up as often as you might think
Speaker 1: in this podcast, But you said my mama told me
Speaker 1: black people don't see ghosts, So to be fair, that's
Speaker 1: not what I said. I was presented a list of
Speaker 1: conspiracy theories to consider if I didn't have one of
Speaker 1: my own. Yeah, and all the ones I had were
Speaker 1: not fun at all, you know what I mean? Like, like,
Speaker 1: I don't know that we could really I mean, I
Speaker 1: guess we could probably have a great conversation about the
Speaker 1: Popeye's causing sterilization or churches chicken causing sterilization rumor that
Speaker 1: rocks the nineties, but like, how much can we say
Speaker 1: about that? But I thought that this one was really
Speaker 1: interesting because I had never heard it before, and so
Speaker 1: I thought maybe this was something you were familiar with.
Speaker 1: So I wanted to hear from you about black people
Speaker 1: not hearing or not seeing ghosts, because I think I
Speaker 1: have a counterpoint to that. Oh, I might disprove this
Speaker 1: conspiracy that I was not familiar with until tell me
Speaker 1: about it. You're telling me that you selected this just
Speaker 1: so you could flip it on the head and tell
Speaker 1: me why I'm stupid? How dare you, ma'am? How dare you?
Speaker 1: Isn't that what cultural compensators? Yes, and I don't care
Speaker 1: for that at all. No. I I write a lot
Speaker 1: of silly things down, but I do think years ago
Speaker 1: I used to do this bit about having lived with
Speaker 1: a I lived with a white woman for a few years,
Speaker 1: and she was a like an avid believer in like
Speaker 1: ghosts and and the the fact that our apartment was haunted,
Speaker 1: and she used to tell me there was like a
Speaker 1: ghost in our apartment all the time. And we lived
Speaker 1: in fucking where were we living. We were living in
Speaker 1: Crown Heights at the time, on Eastern Parkway. So it's like, nah,
Speaker 1: you don't get to you don't get to play ghost
Speaker 1: games over here when we like are amongst all these
Speaker 1: Jamaican people, you know what I mean. Like we went
Speaker 1: there together. It was it was a joint decision. I
Speaker 1: didn't go like, let me bring this white bitch to
Speaker 1: Karen Heights and see what happens. It was we were
Speaker 1: moving from Boston. We both needed a roommate, and and
Speaker 1: we we teamed up to make that ship happen. You
Speaker 1: came from Boston and thought the safest thing for your
Speaker 1: black life that matters was to move to Crown Heights,
Speaker 1: Brooklyn with a white woman. No, No, no, I thought
Speaker 1: the cheapest thing for my black life was the move
Speaker 1: to Crown Heights. For the white woman, I didn't think
Speaker 1: it was safe. The moment we showed up, I'm glad.
Speaker 1: I'm glad you realized that you were not, in fact
Speaker 1: safe the entire time this year. Oh no, I know
Speaker 1: when I know when a McDonald dis haunted. You know
Speaker 1: what I mean. Our apartment was fine, but everything else
Speaker 1: around that community was not doing well. It's I guess
Speaker 1: better now, I don't. I mean, I lived in New
Speaker 1: York probably around the same time. I loved Crown Heights then,
Speaker 1: but I can just imagine it would have been a
Speaker 1: difficult place for the two if you are to navigame
Speaker 1: or not, I don't know. I feel like they leave
Speaker 1: white women alone. It probably might have been harder for
Speaker 1: me to walk around over there to Niggason. For her,
Speaker 1: they might have just stepped out being called the police, right.
Speaker 1: I feel like, uh, And we were like we were
Speaker 1: on like Crown Heights, we were on like Eastern Parkway
Speaker 1: and Troy, so like we were exactly we were moving
Speaker 1: into sort of like where it becomes that hasidic side
Speaker 1: of things. So I think for a white woman over there,
Speaker 1: they're like, all right, we can make sense of of
Speaker 1: why you're here, whereas like other, I look like an
Speaker 1: outsider no matter what, ain't what direction I go into.
Speaker 1: So it was just a bunch of niggas looking at
Speaker 1: me weird and mean for no reason all day. No,
Speaker 1: there's always been, but every black community has always had
Speaker 1: their guy in the cardigan. I want to be special
Speaker 1: so bad. You know that person went to college. Don't
Speaker 1: mean they like it. Motherfucker's. Motherfucker's still have opinions even
Speaker 1: though they're familiar with it. Okay. So, so that said,
Speaker 1: she was an aver believer in ghosts, and I think,
Speaker 1: and I'm curious to hear where you are with this
Speaker 1: whole thing. I think that ghost personally, I do believe
Speaker 1: that people see what they see. That like, if you
Speaker 1: believe in ghosts, you probably are going to see ghosts.
Speaker 1: That said, I do think that there's a weird conflation
Speaker 1: that white people do sometimes with scary sounds and and
Speaker 1: sort of like odd objects or experiences with what is
Speaker 1: probably a human experience outside of their their cultural norm,
Speaker 1: if that makes sense. Okay, So I'm gonna sound super
Speaker 1: hotep hat Okay, hold on, that's how they get you.
Speaker 1: But that's how they get you. This is seriously how
Speaker 1: white people try to get you, for real. But she
Speaker 1: has one of my favorite podcasts, a little Bit of
Speaker 1: Juju and the host Juju Bay, because she articulated this
Speaker 1: in a way to really kind of helped me to
Speaker 1: make sense of it. So what are ghosts? Right? Those
Speaker 1: are dead people, right, people that used to be dead.
Speaker 1: So that's your grandparents, that might be one of your
Speaker 1: you know friends, we're grown friends, you know what I mean?
Speaker 1: Like people we've known, Were they cars? Were they monsters?
Speaker 1: So why do we have this negative idea when we
Speaker 1: think of ghosts? You know, we think of people or
Speaker 1: spirits have been here before, you know. And I get
Speaker 1: part of it is just popular culture has glamorized or
Speaker 1: you know, there's been a lot of movies and TV
Speaker 1: shows and books that since her around the idea of
Speaker 1: haunting or somebody coming back with a bad you know,
Speaker 1: intention or not wanting to do something good. And then
Speaker 1: there's you know, videos and and books and you know,
Speaker 1: even when you're a little kid about ghosts coming back
Speaker 1: to do good things. But it's still kind of like
Speaker 1: this weird being that's outside of you. It's not aspirational.
Speaker 1: In fact, it's usually kind of portrayed as if these
Speaker 1: spirits are stuck, you know, like they shouldn't be able
Speaker 1: to talk to you, they shouldn't be in the house, right.
Speaker 1: Even Casper is a boy who wishes he wasn't dead.
Speaker 1: He's nice, but he's like, funk, I wish I was
Speaker 1: still kicking it, right, And so when are in some
Speaker 1: of the African traditions that we were stolen from, our
Speaker 1: ancestors communicated with ancestors, right, with people who had gone
Speaker 1: on to the other side. You saw it depicted in
Speaker 1: Black Panther right on some level, and I guess that's
Speaker 1: most people's kind of mainstream introduction to to that level
Speaker 1: of ancestral veneration, right, the idea that like I respect
Speaker 1: and I care for and I talked to my ancestors,
Speaker 1: so like so to me, when I think of ghosts,
Speaker 1: are people that were here, Like those are my ancestors,
Speaker 1: and like I do have a communication with them because
Speaker 1: I talked to them and I set out food for them.
Speaker 1: I have an altar set up in my house. I've
Speaker 1: gone full California bioble girl in the past two years,
Speaker 1: but It's like the most powerful thing that I've ever done.
Speaker 1: And I think it's something that black people need to
Speaker 1: tap into and white people need to tappen and other
Speaker 1: folks who haven't find out what your ancestors did and
Speaker 1: t happened that I have a lot of white blood
Speaker 1: and me I'm here. At some point I'm going to
Speaker 1: figure out, like, Okay, well what did my ancestors on
Speaker 1: that side? What were their spiritual rituals. I hope it
Speaker 1: wasn't killing black people, you know what I mean, Like
Speaker 1: it probably was in you know, but like what were
Speaker 1: the things they did to honor their ancestors and they're dead?
Speaker 1: And like, I think that that's something that we should
Speaker 1: as as African Americans. We have not been taught that,
Speaker 1: you know, like in church, you're taught the spirits are bad,
Speaker 1: and the movies you're taught they're scary. These are your
Speaker 1: people set out, you know, your grandma's favorite candy bar
Speaker 1: and a glass of water and a white candle for her. Wow,
Speaker 1: it doesn't have to be something super involved or crazy.
Speaker 1: Start small, but start talking to your ghosts. Start talking
Speaker 1: to your ghosts, is what you're telling me. But I
Speaker 1: have so many questions because this is a completely new
Speaker 1: idea to me. Right, I've never I've never once been
Speaker 1: encouraged to talk to any ghosts. In fact, I think
Speaker 1: I've always functioned of the presumption that if I do
Speaker 1: not talk to them, they will not bother me. We
Speaker 1: we can, we can live at peace amongst each other. Right,
Speaker 1: So what am I meant? What is this candle meant
Speaker 1: to do? Like it? Is this just a way of
Speaker 1: initiating the conversation at the point that I've initiated it.
Speaker 1: Are they coming to me like themselves as they were living,
Speaker 1: or is it like some weird dementia version of that
Speaker 1: that person who was gonna say, some weird scary ship
Speaker 1: that I gotta process. So that depends what your level
Speaker 1: of communication is and right, And there are people who
Speaker 1: have powers where they can really communicate beyond what the
Speaker 1: average person can write. I am, not, to my knowledge,
Speaker 1: one of those people. And I'm certainly not a guide
Speaker 1: or a teacher or you know, I'm still relatively new
Speaker 1: to you know, ancestral veneration myself. But as I understand it,
Speaker 1: when you light a candle and you make the offering
Speaker 1: of water food, you know, maybe some of their something
Speaker 1: that reminds you of them. Maybe if you these are
Speaker 1: people that you know and you have to have, you
Speaker 1: should have a separate all ste for your relatives from
Speaker 1: your friends. You know, you can do something for friends
Speaker 1: and other people you admire too, but for your family,
Speaker 1: you want to have a place where it's like here's
Speaker 1: big Mama, here's Granddaddy. You know, like here's my cousin
Speaker 1: passed away. Like you don't talk to the same ship
Speaker 1: with your with your grandma that you talk with your
Speaker 1: your ghost homies exactly. That would be different, you know,
Speaker 1: and like you know, you can go to that space.
Speaker 1: I go twice today. Some people go a few times
Speaker 1: a week. Some people go as they feel compelled to
Speaker 1: do so, you know, and you can talk to them,
Speaker 1: you know, I kind of talk to them as a group,
Speaker 1: you know. I just say I'm thankful that they're part
Speaker 1: of my life, that they care for me, that I'm
Speaker 1: I'm part of this family that I come from, you know,
Speaker 1: and that that I hope they're well, and that I
Speaker 1: hope they accept my offering. You know, it's usually a
Speaker 1: plate of whatever food. I don't eat breakfast, but I
Speaker 1: make them breakfast. But like I when I eat dinner
Speaker 1: at night, I set out a plate for food for them.
Speaker 1: Like if I don't cook, then if I go to
Speaker 1: popye as a good tupopeye chicken sandwich. You know, I
Speaker 1: went out from my you know, my big hobies and
Speaker 1: the sky and you know it in terms of communication,
Speaker 1: and I won't share everything because it's personal, but like
Speaker 1: I haven't really openly talked to me about any of
Speaker 1: this before. You know, sometimes there's messages, right sometimes like
Speaker 1: there's something you were trying to see clarity on, you know,
Speaker 1: maybe the that you were working on that just figures
Speaker 1: itself out and you're like, oh, this is how I ended.
Speaker 1: You know. For me, it could be something that I'm
Speaker 1: writing and you know, or or just material that i'm
Speaker 1: you know, something that I've been noodling on, like an
Speaker 1: essay just kind of starts and and spills out of
Speaker 1: my you know, brain and I just got to pull
Speaker 1: over and put it in my notes app So it's
Speaker 1: not that it always happens like when I'm at the alter,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, But just these little things
Speaker 1: that have been unlocked. I got you. So let me
Speaker 1: ask you a little bit about this food because this
Speaker 1: is I WoT, I'm dumb and I loved it. So
Speaker 1: you put out some Popeye's, right you have you ever
Speaker 1: seen a bite taken out of that bad boy? No,
Speaker 1: nobody's gonna eat the food. Nobody's gonna eat the food,
Speaker 1: and you don't have to do Some people will do
Speaker 1: a part, like if they're eating a sandwich, they just
Speaker 1: cut off piece of the sand you know what I mean,
Speaker 1: Like I, if it's a meal, I usually they'll usually
Speaker 1: get a smaller portion than what I feed us. But
Speaker 1: sometimes it's kind of like, you know, I'm gonna give
Speaker 1: you the big piece of chicken. I gotta for a
Speaker 1: piece of the big piece of chicken out. And to me,
Speaker 1: it's just this kind of like sign of respect and acknowledgement.
Speaker 1: You know. Also it's it sounds similar to like in
Speaker 1: the Bible when you like cut a goat, like you
Speaker 1: you chop a goat head off, and you know like, yeah,
Speaker 1: this goats for you God, and then the other goat
Speaker 1: is for us, and we eat that goat. But this
Speaker 1: no essentially yeah, like we we don't eat this one.
Speaker 1: And so you can do that with Popeyes. I didn't
Speaker 1: know that I do it with if I have a
Speaker 1: milkshake or Starbucks or something, I don't finish it, you
Speaker 1: know what I mean? Like I say, if I don't
Speaker 1: pour some out, usually if I have an alcoholic spe
Speaker 1: or drink, I usually pour some out, you know. But
Speaker 1: if I'm out in public, I can always pour my
Speaker 1: drink out, So I just leave some you know. Okay,
Speaker 1: I got you, So let me ask you. This is
Speaker 1: this a practice that you grew up with in like
Speaker 1: your childhood home or is this something you then? I
Speaker 1: know you said you you've really gotten into it later
Speaker 1: in life, but like, is that something that that you
Speaker 1: created for yourself or were you being taught that by
Speaker 1: by your parents, by the people before you whatever. No,
Speaker 1: I didn't get any of this growing up. Interestingly enough,
Speaker 1: my father practices or practice or religious tradition that involves
Speaker 1: some of these kind of rituals. But we were kind
Speaker 1: of allowed to make our own decisions. I didn't live
Speaker 1: in the house with him, and we were all kind
Speaker 1: of like allowed to make our own decisions about like
Speaker 1: how we wanted to engage virtuality. So I explored a
Speaker 1: few things. But now, this is something I discovered quite
Speaker 1: recently in the past two years, and what motivated that
Speaker 1: transition into welcoming spirits in this way because you know,
Speaker 1: like you said, if we live in a in a
Speaker 1: society that teaches us that ghosts are scary, and so
Speaker 1: for me, as a person who treats them like some
Speaker 1: scary motherfucker's, I think I would feel hesitant to start
Speaker 1: to treat ghosts differently. So was there something in your
Speaker 1: life beyond I know you said you you listen to
Speaker 1: that podcast, but like, is there anything that prompted you deciding, like, Yo,
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna be scared of them anymore, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: welcome them in a different way. I was never scared
Speaker 1: of ghosts, you know, Like I hadn't thought, like I
Speaker 1: kind of always thought, to what extent I thought about
Speaker 1: it that if people were communicating with me, it was
Speaker 1: usually in my best interests, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: Like I hadn't crossed anybody, so like nobody should be
Speaker 1: coming back mad at me, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: Like if anybody, if somebody's on the other side, and
Speaker 1: if they've got of all the people in the world
Speaker 1: they have access to there trying to talk to me,
Speaker 1: they're probably trying to have it back, you know. But
Speaker 1: like I can't remember the inciting moment. I just remember
Speaker 1: that that I noticed. And I was living in Brooklyn
Speaker 1: at the time where I first started really kind of
Speaker 1: noodling around this stuff. But I noticed that a lot
Speaker 1: of the women around me were doing these things when
Speaker 1: I really admired, and that they would talk about, you know,
Speaker 1: their ancestors, and they were talking about their ancestors in
Speaker 1: a way that I wasn't, because when I talked about
Speaker 1: my ancestors, I might as well have been talking about
Speaker 1: like Malcolm X and Harriet Up, you know what I mean,
Speaker 1: like we would say ancestors or you know, probably at
Speaker 1: some in an event or a dinner where people were
Speaker 1: pouring libations for their you know, I was thinking of
Speaker 1: those people like more still than I was my own family,
Speaker 1: and you know, it kind of started me doing some
Speaker 1: just kind of thinking about how it was disconnected from
Speaker 1: most of my you know, my the people when you
Speaker 1: think of your your folks, like your grandparents, you know,
Speaker 1: like how I was, you know, my past. Most of
Speaker 1: mine passed away when I was pretty young, so I
Speaker 1: didn't get to know them, you know, and so we
Speaker 1: didn't really have a relationship. And how I had some
Speaker 1: resentment about some things that happened before I was born,
Speaker 1: and just some stuff I need to work through, and
Speaker 1: so kind of send me on a journey of thinking
Speaker 1: about them. And over time, you know, I became aware
Speaker 1: of ultra building and the idea of like trying to
Speaker 1: actually communicate with them, and so you know, I picked
Speaker 1: up some books, listen to some podcasts and some Instagram streams,
Speaker 1: and you know, again like I'm not an expert, but
Speaker 1: you know, I would say to that my ancestors are
Speaker 1: my religion at this point. You know, this is kind
Speaker 1: of what my spiritual practice like primarily is, and I
Speaker 1: feel very good about it. You know. I talked to
Speaker 1: them and then I pray, and I just I've never praised,
Speaker 1: so I said day in my life. You know, like
Speaker 1: I've just never been that consistent spiritually, and this is
Speaker 1: just I don't know, I just feel like my life
Speaker 1: has been going well. Like things have been good, you know,
Speaker 1: They've been It's it's a pandemic, like I'm suffering like
Speaker 1: everybody else. I definitely have sometimes the past two years.
Speaker 1: But you know what I mean, like in general, my
Speaker 1: ability to deal with it has been improved. Like you
Speaker 1: hit your our own stride in sort of like accepting
Speaker 1: of I guess, uh, these new rituals in your life.
Speaker 1: It's fascinating to me because I think the way you're
Speaker 1: articulating this I've never thought of. But I do think
Speaker 1: that is something really important in sort of taking ancestors
Speaker 1: as a word, from like this generic space of like
Speaker 1: the you know, the people we find in a in
Speaker 1: a high school textbook, to people that are literally people
Speaker 1: who were connected to what becomes your day to day
Speaker 1: the experiences that are right in front of you. And
Speaker 1: I would argue there's probably a level of like intentionality
Speaker 1: right that, Like for black people especially, we are trained
Speaker 1: to not see our our own people as valuable and
Speaker 1: just to be like, well, you know these big, hyperbolic,
Speaker 1: extreme names, those are the ones you should you should
Speaker 1: look up to. But your grandma and ship and I
Speaker 1: gotta ever think about her as a valuable human on
Speaker 1: the planet whatever. And it's like, Malcolm X is not
Speaker 1: the reason you're alive, what I mean, like like that
Speaker 1: was not his walk. I didn't say that, but you
Speaker 1: know what I mean, Like your your grandparents met and
Speaker 1: and made a serious of decisions that led to your
Speaker 1: you know, one of your parents being here and unlessie
Speaker 1: you're being here, and like that alone is something to honor,
Speaker 1: and like you can have a complicated relationship with these people,
Speaker 1: you know, for some unfortunate that I don't have abuse
Speaker 1: or or trauma related to any of my ancestors, you
Speaker 1: know what I mean, that I know of or anything
Speaker 1: like that. But I know that you know, there are
Speaker 1: people who do you know what I mean, And that's
Speaker 1: to work through that. And what I've heard about it,
Speaker 1: and again I'm not the expert, is that you know,
Speaker 1: the people who may have harmed you on this side
Speaker 1: might be the ones working the hardest to help you
Speaker 1: out on the other side. You know, perhaps the grandparent
Speaker 1: who was very miserly and unkind, you know, becomes the
Speaker 1: generous parent, you know figure on the other side. But
Speaker 1: the one thing I want to make sure I connected
Speaker 1: is like the music you played or the little hotep
Speaker 1: sound bite thing that our ancestors who were enslaved, you know,
Speaker 1: came with these practices and were prohibited from practicing openly,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, and so they began to,
Speaker 1: depending on where they were located, hide their religious practices
Speaker 1: and their ways of showing reverence to ancestors and staying
Speaker 1: connects them in other things, and certain parts of the
Speaker 1: world that was Africans hiding their spiritual practices and Catholicism, right, So,
Speaker 1: which is why if you go to certain parts of
Speaker 1: New York and you see all these you know, black
Speaker 1: Spanish speaking people, you know with Catholic you know all around,
Speaker 1: and they're not Catholic, you know what I mean, it's
Speaker 1: really really fascinating, Like we've always figured out ways to
Speaker 1: do what we've always done. And you know, from every
Speaker 1: history of Africa that I've I've come across, like something
Speaker 1: we've always done has been talking to our ancestors. So
Speaker 1: I think it's just a great opportunity that African Americans
Speaker 1: have that most of us have been scared out of
Speaker 1: participating it or just have never heard somebody talk about
Speaker 1: it like this before. Yeah, and I think you you
Speaker 1: made a really interesting point that that I think helps
Speaker 1: to sort of ease someone into this experience or at
Speaker 1: least considering an experience like this, which is the fact
Speaker 1: that like your grandparents and you may have a complicated
Speaker 1: relationship or your ancestors and you may may have a
Speaker 1: complicated relationship and that's okay. I think ghosts for for
Speaker 1: the average consumer are are sort of treated as like
Speaker 1: the scary entities because they themselves are just bad people
Speaker 1: or complicated people, or people that still needed to solve
Speaker 1: a problem that got left behind. And in a lot
Speaker 1: of ways, the human experience is that. So there is
Speaker 1: no good ghosts and bad ghosts. It's just complicated individuals
Speaker 1: who can either lift you up or help you answer
Speaker 1: questions that maybe you you couldn't answer yourself, or help
Speaker 1: you find free parking wherever that can exist. But one
Speaker 1: way or the other are there for for resolve more
Speaker 1: than adding conflict. As you're you're sort of putting it,
Speaker 1: I think, yeah, we just you know, we don't. And
Speaker 1: that's not to say that you know, there aren't spirits
Speaker 1: that may have bad intentions, but like that's not our
Speaker 1: definitive history of engaging with ghosts, you know, like as
Speaker 1: the people for us, engaging with ghosts means talking to
Speaker 1: our dead and and speaking to them with respects or
Speaker 1: just thinking about how black people do funerals, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean, Like just that there's a level of
Speaker 1: performance for a lot of them, you know, the ritual
Speaker 1: of the repast and kind of like who cooks and
Speaker 1: what they cook or or you know, just the amount
Speaker 1: of time that we spend together. I think, you know,
Speaker 1: on those occasions is and how it's spent is on
Speaker 1: some level, I think, a nod to how we used
Speaker 1: to feneralize I did, you know what I mean? I
Speaker 1: think the thing that was missing is that for a
Speaker 1: lot of people, the communication of the conversation stops there,
Speaker 1: you know. But but but I've always throughout my life
Speaker 1: heard people talk about you know, it may just be
Speaker 1: posting an Instagram picture and they're writing it to the
Speaker 1: dead homie, you know what I mean, or people talking
Speaker 1: about you know, sometimes I feel my mother's presence and
Speaker 1: I just talked to her, you know. Like I think
Speaker 1: a lot of people are engaging in their day to
Speaker 1: day life without calling it anything in particular. Do you
Speaker 1: think that the hesitancy to call it something in particular
Speaker 1: or to to directly align it with what you're describing
Speaker 1: with like an altar and sort of like this active
Speaker 1: effort to place food in front of the altar towards
Speaker 1: your your ancestors is connected to black people's relationship with
Speaker 1: religion in this country that like you know, we we
Speaker 1: got a heavy hand of Christianity like slapped on top
Speaker 1: of us. Do you think that that is in any
Speaker 1: way in obstruction to what we're moving towards in your
Speaker 1: your description of ghosts. Absolutely, And there are people far
Speaker 1: smarter than me who can really make the connection between
Speaker 1: what goes down and and you know a lot of
Speaker 1: our average Black churches and some of our traditional stuff
Speaker 1: and how there's a through line, you know what I mean,
Speaker 1: like how it's not all brand new and native to America.
Speaker 1: Some of this is our traditional spiritual practice. It's just
Speaker 1: showing up with this other religion that we've been you know,
Speaker 1: introduced to. But like, yeah, I mean there's a deep
Speaker 1: fear of African spirituality and Africans that lives in a
Speaker 1: whole lot of African American people, and uh, you know,
Speaker 1: fear of I mean we've been made to feel infeori
Speaker 1: and the inferiority complex is not limited to like what
Speaker 1: we think of African Americans on some levels, what we
Speaker 1: think of who we were before we got here, you know,
Speaker 1: like not thinking of us as industrial. I mean there
Speaker 1: are some people that only can think of us as
Speaker 1: kings and queens before you know, slavery. And then there
Speaker 1: are people that can't think of us as having a
Speaker 1: society and having ristules and things that matter, you know,
Speaker 1: that just kind of thinks of us as these our ancestors.
Speaker 1: Is these folks that were just kind of there until
Speaker 1: they were uprooted, you know, but that they don't have
Speaker 1: any real imagination or curiosity around who they were before.
Speaker 1: But like also as a means of survival, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean, Like on the plantation, you had to
Speaker 1: hide these things. And so for some people the hiding
Speaker 1: was how do I get creative and and figure out
Speaker 1: a way to stay true to myself? And for others
Speaker 1: it was how do I, you know, assimilate into something
Speaker 1: that you know, it is safer and easier for me
Speaker 1: to deal with, you know, how do I survive my circumstances,
Speaker 1: which I think connects really nicely back to what you
Speaker 1: were saying about, like the this adopting of like Catholic
Speaker 1: candles for non Catholic not services, but experiences. It's just
Speaker 1: we are using what is placed in front of us
Speaker 1: to express ourselves however we can. And it doesn't necessarily
Speaker 1: matter if this is the right equipment for the job.
Speaker 1: The job is just getting done however we needed to
Speaker 1: get done. That's essentially the story of our lives as
Speaker 1: black people, right, Like, we don't always have the quote
Speaker 1: unquote right equipment, but somehow we have to figure out
Speaker 1: how to get through. And that's what we've done, you know.
Speaker 1: And a big part of the reason that we've gotten
Speaker 1: through is our relationship to religion, both our traditional religion
Speaker 1: and our relationships Christianity. But it's also in some ways
Speaker 1: held us back because there are things that we don't
Speaker 1: challenge and things that we don't interrogate or you know,
Speaker 1: attitudes that are incredibly detrimental that are funnel through the
Speaker 1: church that you know, are a lot of our people
Speaker 1: are successful to. It's tricky. Yeah, White Jesus, uh, he ain't.
Speaker 1: He ain't done the best for us. I think there
Speaker 1: are times, right, I love White Jesus, but he's not
Speaker 1: always the best. There there's a bunch of hurt that
Speaker 1: comes along with at least the representation of him. For sure.
Speaker 1: There's there's the hurt of the representation. There's the way
Speaker 1: that black queer people have been made to hide, you know,
Speaker 1: in the music ministry, right, hide in the dance ministry,
Speaker 1: hide you know, with their little friends and and you
Speaker 1: know at gatherings. There's the ways that black women, you
Speaker 1: know a lot of black women are in these deeply
Speaker 1: emotional and on some level unhealthy relationships with their pastors,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. It becomes the man of
Speaker 1: the household, even though he's not the man of the household,
Speaker 1: and they're tithing money that they don't have and making
Speaker 1: sure that he's getting a new Cadillac or his mortgage
Speaker 1: paid off for his anniversary. But they're struggling to make
Speaker 1: ends meet, and so, you know, contorting to some ideas
Speaker 1: about gender that that don't really work necessarily for us,
Speaker 1: but that have been funneled to us through religion. You know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: let me ask you this last question before we go
Speaker 1: to break you are you are a mother, and I'm
Speaker 1: curious to know how this newer practice in your life
Speaker 1: now relates with your daughter. It's this something that you
Speaker 1: are teaching her as well. Are you at all worried
Speaker 1: that she's gonna like bring this up at school and
Speaker 1: then people are gonna be like, get your weird ass
Speaker 1: out of here. With the ancestors and the altars and
Speaker 1: all that is this is this something you're worried about,
Speaker 1: are you like? Hell yeah, this is an exciting let's
Speaker 1: dig in. You know what I thought, Hell yeah, this
Speaker 1: is exciting. Let's dig in. And I brought her into it,
Speaker 1: you know, after not very long. You know, I have
Speaker 1: told her that the altar is among the number of
Speaker 1: things that happened in our household that might be different
Speaker 1: than what other people doing their households. And so our
Speaker 1: household business is our business. So you don't need to
Speaker 1: tell anybody everything. We eat, what we what I put
Speaker 1: out for home. Who comes through here? Like you know,
Speaker 1: I think the traditional the tradition of a black mama's
Speaker 1: business is her business is something that I have managed
Speaker 1: to indoctrinate. It's her that's very smart. You stack tradition
Speaker 1: on tradition, and it sort of protects the tradition from
Speaker 1: being damaging for both you and hers as she's navigating
Speaker 1: the world as a young person. Hell yeah, all right,
Speaker 1: we're gonna take a break. We'll be back with more
Speaker 1: than me, a little new and more. My mama told me.
Speaker 1: And we are that. No, no, yep, yep, we're back.
Speaker 1: We're back. We're still here with more, Jamila Lemieux, more
Speaker 1: and my mama told me, we're still talking about the
Speaker 1: possibility that goes do in fact exists and that black
Speaker 1: people can see them again. I was I was bamboozled
Speaker 1: with this episode. I was presented this as if Jamila
Speaker 1: believe this or at least considered this, And it turns
Speaker 1: out this was just a character study. This was just
Speaker 1: her chance to make me feel shame at uh at
Speaker 1: presenting this very dumb idea in the first place. Do
Speaker 1: you feel like, and this is I guess maybe a
Speaker 1: good question to lead us into some of the research
Speaker 1: that I did, do you feel like in relation to this,
Speaker 1: this con this this conversation around the ancestral uh plane,
Speaker 1: around these these ancestors that you're experiencing things with, do
Speaker 1: you feel like they've ever presented themselves in an actual,
Speaker 1: like physical form. Have you seen one of your ancestors before? No,
Speaker 1: I have not. Are you at all concerned that that
Speaker 1: might happen and that changes your relationship with them? It
Speaker 1: might change the relationship. I'm not concerned about it. You know,
Speaker 1: That's that's something I worry over. Okay, You're like, if
Speaker 1: it happens, we'll figure it out. Things. It's just not
Speaker 1: a thing to SIW my mind. It's not like what
Speaker 1: if they walked through. I'm like, nobody's gonna bite the sandwich,
Speaker 1: you know, and just that that would be the part
Speaker 1: that sucks me up. I could not handle somebody biting
Speaker 1: the sandwich. And still I don't think I can handle
Speaker 1: that either. But it's not gonna happen. I feel confident
Speaker 1: the sandwich won't be bidden unless my child decides to
Speaker 1: violate what I've explicitly instructed her, which is that we
Speaker 1: don't eat the altru food. Don't you dare eat that sandwich?
Speaker 1: Al right? Well, fair enough, you have much more faith
Speaker 1: than I do that, Uh, people are gonna be reasonable
Speaker 1: about not eating those sandwiches. Let's dig into some of
Speaker 1: this research, because I think some of this might I
Speaker 1: don't know what it does anymore, actually, because I think
Speaker 1: you've you've spoken so eloquently about some of like what
Speaker 1: you consider to be ghosts. But I'd be curious to
Speaker 1: hear what you think about what the standard beliefs of
Speaker 1: ghosts are sort of being communicated as through like I guess,
Speaker 1: research and science, if we want to call some of
Speaker 1: this that. So, a study from this company you give
Speaker 1: shows that forty one percent of Americans believe in ghosts,
Speaker 1: and only twenty percent of those people actually claim to
Speaker 1: have seen a ghost. So almost half of us think
Speaker 1: ghosts are real. Only about of us actually feel like
Speaker 1: we've we've encountered some sort of paranormal spirit. That's interesting.
Speaker 1: I mean I'm not surprised that those numbers, you know.
Speaker 1: I I also think, like, I don't know, like we're
Speaker 1: obviously from something very vast and complicated, right, Like, so
Speaker 1: the idea that it just ends at death, it's easy
Speaker 1: to believe otherwise, because like what a just fascinating thing
Speaker 1: that the world is, you know what I mean, Like,
Speaker 1: you know, we don't know what the other side looks like,
Speaker 1: so I think why not believe in something else? I mean,
Speaker 1: we could be I could be completely Ryan, could just
Speaker 1: die and that's the end. But like I feel good,
Speaker 1: you know, thinking otherwise, Like it it feels nice. It
Speaker 1: feels like you're a part of something. So I don't
Speaker 1: really see the harm. And you know, people just kind
Speaker 1: of blindly, you know, the majority of us who have
Speaker 1: not seen a ghost believing that there is some sort
Speaker 1: of spiritual matter. Yeah, what's especially fascinating if in this
Speaker 1: um this sort of like research study that they did
Speaker 1: is that forty percent of Americans believe that ghosts exists,
Speaker 1: but forty three percent of Americans believe that demons exists.
Speaker 1: The number actually like spikes a little bit when you
Speaker 1: start putting this in a different context. And I'd be
Speaker 1: curious to hear your thoughts on why you think that
Speaker 1: might be. Why are we more Keep in mind, they've
Speaker 1: only eleven percent of those people actually think they've seen
Speaker 1: a demon or encountered a demon, but they are much
Speaker 1: more faithful, much more. They're more faithful regarding demons than
Speaker 1: they are regarding ghosts. Why is that. I think it's
Speaker 1: because of the the desire to believe that there's some
Speaker 1: evil force responsible for some of the things that happened
Speaker 1: in the world, as opposed to recognizing the evil of
Speaker 1: human beings, you know, to like the idea that a
Speaker 1: devil figure is responsible for our problems, as opposed to like,
Speaker 1: no students an asshole and he shut up at school.
Speaker 1: You know, everybody looked the other way like he was
Speaker 1: an asshole for a very long time. You know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like BL's above, didn't get him. That's that's him.
Speaker 1: That's always was, you know. And so if spirits come
Speaker 1: from humans or if spirits you know, become humans, I
Speaker 1: guess depending on how you look at that process. But like,
Speaker 1: ultimately I can't imagine that they're all good, you know,
Speaker 1: like I don't believe that like just because somebody's dead,
Speaker 1: like now you know, they're they're on the winning's team,
Speaker 1: or they just want everybody to live, right, I think
Speaker 1: that's an ideal outcome for most people. And and and
Speaker 1: I think that perhaps that might be the outcome for
Speaker 1: most people that they're trying to do something, you know,
Speaker 1: like that you get to go in the good direction
Speaker 1: when you're done. But you know, I also would suspect
Speaker 1: that a lot of the people who said they've seen
Speaker 1: a demon like I would be dying to know the
Speaker 1: percentage of them that were like talking about their like
Speaker 1: ex spouse, you know what I mean. I'll show you
Speaker 1: a Facebook you know, like a bitch live on third God. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I I do think these terms right there so vast
Speaker 1: when you when you really break them down, a demon,
Speaker 1: a ghost, whatever it is that it it has the
Speaker 1: potential for me to just apply it as I see fit,
Speaker 1: or or to put it on someone or something that
Speaker 1: may not in fact be that, but in my life,
Speaker 1: in my very subjective experience, they represented something frustrating or
Speaker 1: sad or evil as it were enough that I was like,
Speaker 1: that thing is ungodly, that thing is is undead or
Speaker 1: whatever it is that that sort of motivates you calling
Speaker 1: someone a demon or something demonic. Yeah, I definitely think
Speaker 1: you know, it's going to make the distinction between dead
Speaker 1: and evil. Yeah, everything that's dead is not even that
Speaker 1: kind of the bad guy because you're you know, you're dead.
Speaker 1: But it's something you said earlier, Like there are so
Speaker 1: many movies like even Casper, you know, like the dad
Speaker 1: wants to be still here and so everything that they're
Speaker 1: doing is motivated by that. But like as I would
Speaker 1: imagine it, and the dead are aware of their circumstances
Speaker 1: and that they are not you know, up for renewal.
Speaker 1: Like that's some movie stuff, you know, where it's like, well,
Speaker 1: if you do this, then the third you can go
Speaker 1: back and and and be alive again. So like they're
Speaker 1: not trying to come back, they're not trying to take
Speaker 1: over your body, they're not trying to take over your life,
Speaker 1: you know, because they can't. Yeah, we've had this conversation
Speaker 1: a few times on the podcasts regarding like aliens, right,
Speaker 1: that there's like this weird instinct on the part of
Speaker 1: human beings to presume that aliens have human motivations, right,
Speaker 1: And it's the same I think applies for for spirits.
Speaker 1: There's no reason that a spirit that has made it
Speaker 1: past this mortal plane to show back up and be
Speaker 1: like still desiring fucking sneakers and Bodega sandwiches or whatever
Speaker 1: it is, Like, Oh, I've seen the other side. Now,
Speaker 1: I want to go to the d m V. I
Speaker 1: know all the mystery of the universe. I want to
Speaker 1: get on the train sitting next to somebody who's no,
Speaker 1: they got better shipped to do I think, I hope.
Speaker 1: And if they don't, God damn, that's sad. That. Uh,
Speaker 1: that's that's where we stopped. That's the case. Let me
Speaker 1: come back then, Yeah, I'm gonna come back. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: come back cool as funck. If this is as good
Speaker 1: as it is. Uh, I think I'll have it all
Speaker 1: figured out once I die. So the other thing that
Speaker 1: I think actually might be very helpful in our conversation
Speaker 1: around like the ancestors and spirituality is I wanted to
Speaker 1: the question that sort of kept popping up because there
Speaker 1: were all these statistics about who believes in ghosts. Republicans
Speaker 1: apparently believe much more commonly than Democrats, women tend to believe.
Speaker 1: In fact, four year to women with four year degrees
Speaker 1: are sort of like the the biggest advocates of ghosts existing,
Speaker 1: I guess, in the country. But then education, in almost
Speaker 1: an opposite direction, says that the more educated you are,
Speaker 1: you tend to believe less. Right, there's all these statistics,
Speaker 1: but the question that kept popping up in my head
Speaker 1: is why do we believe in ghosts in the first place,
Speaker 1: Like what is the motivation behind that? And one of
Speaker 1: the main things that seem to keep popping up was
Speaker 1: this idea that it is the human mind trying to
Speaker 1: make sense of things that we can't explain. That like
Speaker 1: there's a bunch of ship in the universe that that
Speaker 1: doesn't make sense to us, and the best thing we
Speaker 1: can do is try to add logic to the unexplained,
Speaker 1: and sometimes the easiest way to do that is to
Speaker 1: call it a spirit or a ghost or an ancestor
Speaker 1: whatever it is. Absolutely, I mean, so much of what
Speaker 1: we say and think is us trying to make sense
Speaker 1: of our circumstances in the world around us, you know.
Speaker 1: And again like especially because the way you know, the
Speaker 1: bad goes through the demon idea is used, I think
Speaker 1: looking for excuses to explain things as opposed to really
Speaker 1: get into the core of what happened and and and
Speaker 1: is what something that a lot of people are just
Speaker 1: prone to do. And this again not disparaging the presence
Speaker 1: of spirits, but I think that the reasons that people
Speaker 1: believe in spirits and and goes, they're not always connected
Speaker 1: to what I believe, you know, continual spirit presence. To
Speaker 1: be right, that we all sort of find our own motivations,
Speaker 1: good and bad for our belief and some of those
Speaker 1: motivations are just uh, making patterns, and some of them
Speaker 1: are like I am seeking a way to to sort
Speaker 1: of like feel good and feel present in the world.
Speaker 1: And some of that comes through talking to these ancestors.
Speaker 1: So one of the things that that they talked about
Speaker 1: in one of the articles I read is this idea
Speaker 1: of creating logical patterns. Right, Like, there's this this term
Speaker 1: that they used, uh paranoia paranno leia. Is that what
Speaker 1: how you say it? I don't know. I'm not to
Speaker 1: learn mid Man, but it basically explains that, like the
Speaker 1: human brain has this tendency when we see blurred images
Speaker 1: or when we hear like weird muffled sounds, to want
Speaker 1: to add human words or images to that to make
Speaker 1: sense of it. So it sort of explains like why
Speaker 1: when we when they have those haunted house shows, right
Speaker 1: and they walk through the haunted house and you hear
Speaker 1: a weird sound and they go, do that's that ghost?
Speaker 1: Just say suck my dick, and then you they play
Speaker 1: it back and you're like, you did say it's like
Speaker 1: my dick. It's because of how easily suggestible our brains
Speaker 1: are when it comes to creating those those rhythms and
Speaker 1: patterns when it comes to these sounds. Yeah, it made
Speaker 1: me feel like, in a way, the suggestion of this
Speaker 1: existence doesn't it doesn't eliminate the possibility of these sounds
Speaker 1: coming from a source that we didn't expect them to,
Speaker 1: but it does tell you that we decide what we
Speaker 1: can receive from it. If that makes sense that, like,
Speaker 1: if somebody decides to tell me that the ghost is
Speaker 1: mad at me, I will interpret the ghost as being
Speaker 1: mad at me. Whereas if I just listened to the
Speaker 1: sound on my own, maybe I could hear something more
Speaker 1: peaceful or friendly inside of that ghost noise. Hell yeah.
Speaker 1: So the other thing that I thought was really interesting
Speaker 1: and some of this research was like the idea of
Speaker 1: people summoning spirits, and I think this connects a little
Speaker 1: bit to what you were talking about in terms of
Speaker 1: summoning spirits as a means of coping with trauma, especially
Speaker 1: like the pain of losing a loved one, And you
Speaker 1: sort of talked about that earlier, with like people writing
Speaker 1: messages on like Instagram, Facebook, whatever, saying like we miss you,
Speaker 1: We've been thinking about you, remember when this happened. All
Speaker 1: of that, and that being while we see that's a
Speaker 1: public connection that we're seeing, they suggest that some of
Speaker 1: the reasons that people claim to see a ghost in
Speaker 1: their home is sort of a more physical I guess
Speaker 1: outpouring of that exact same feeling. That makes sense, you know,
Speaker 1: and again back to the idea of us trying to
Speaker 1: cope with the set of circumstances around us, it would
Speaker 1: make sense that as a response to trauma, you know,
Speaker 1: the way that we're engaging with that idea is oftentimes
Speaker 1: one that's designed to bring us comfort. Yeah, and interesting
Speaker 1: sort of in a nice way. In terms of the
Speaker 1: percentage of people who who claim to see ghosts of
Speaker 1: them and this surprised me. Percent of the people who
Speaker 1: said that they had a ghostly encounter said that that
Speaker 1: encounter had at least one upside to it, such as
Speaker 1: like a sense of connecting to others, So like they're
Speaker 1: seeing more often than not, the people who are seeing
Speaker 1: ghosts are not having a bad time afterwards. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: know what, I had been curious. I wonder how many
Speaker 1: of those like I saw a ghost are literally like
Speaker 1: I saw something that looked like a ghost or a figure,
Speaker 1: or you know, like I stumbled across a copy of
Speaker 1: my father's high school yearbook in the middle of the
Speaker 1: living room, you know what I mean, and it felt
Speaker 1: like he was there some ship, meaning that like you
Speaker 1: didn't actually see your father, but it was just you
Speaker 1: saw this picture and you had a feeling as if
Speaker 1: your father was there because of like the feelings that
Speaker 1: came up and looking through the book something like that,
Speaker 1: or like, you know, maybe feeling like a picture fell
Speaker 1: off the wall and it was your grandmother trying to
Speaker 1: tell you something. You know, like that kind of like encounter.
Speaker 1: I wonder how many of those would be counted him
Speaker 1: on the like you know, I saw a ghost moments. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, I think again. It sort of goes nicely
Speaker 1: back to that idea of like patterns, right that, like
Speaker 1: if if I am having an emotional day, or if
Speaker 1: I am thinking about a person that I'm missing, and
Speaker 1: then something big enough happens around me or small enough,
Speaker 1: and that might be enough for me to feel like
Speaker 1: that was them trying to communicate to me, when in fact,
Speaker 1: I don't know if it's them trying to communicate to me,
Speaker 1: But the communication it maybe doesn't matter. Maybe it's just
Speaker 1: the feeling that it brings it legitimacy. Yeah, it's kind
Speaker 1: of nice in that way where this doesn't have to
Speaker 1: be scary or traumatic if you don't want it to be,
Speaker 1: and if you do, I don't know, you're a sick fuck.
Speaker 1: Enjoy yourself. There's also a fair amount of evidence, it
Speaker 1: seems like, of people blaming ghosts, and I'm curious to
Speaker 1: hear your thoughts on this. There are lots of people
Speaker 1: who claim that that some of these ghost sightings might
Speaker 1: be connected to mental illness or at least schizophrenia, unchecked
Speaker 1: sleep paralysis, over use of l s D are all
Speaker 1: things that they're saying essentially can lead a person to
Speaker 1: feel like they're having a paranormal experience when in fact
Speaker 1: is it's just all in their head. People hallucinate. But
Speaker 1: does that make it real? Does that make it less? Like?
Speaker 1: Where where do you think that that that falls in
Speaker 1: terms of its legitimacy on the hallucination scale? Like you know,
Speaker 1: I mean, I think the legitimacy will be for them,
Speaker 1: like to what ability are they able to reckon or
Speaker 1: or to parts like I thought I saw something because
Speaker 1: I had a bad trip, you know, or because I
Speaker 1: was off my meds versus No, I know for a
Speaker 1: fact that I had this encounter. And that's not to
Speaker 1: say the people that are you know, dealing with the
Speaker 1: psychological emergency or drug dependency can't have a legitimate encounter too.
Speaker 1: But you know, I think we definitely would be careful
Speaker 1: between you know, lining up somebody maybe having a passing moment,
Speaker 1: what a spirit and somebody you know, thinking that the
Speaker 1: wall is talking to them because they're on LSB. Okay,
Speaker 1: So so if I'm understanding you correctly, then it that
Speaker 1: would mean that if it feels real to me, it
Speaker 1: is real, and the justification for that afterwards doesn't that's
Speaker 1: a a thing that that needs to be parsed out personally.
Speaker 1: It isn't necessarily something for us to decide for them,
Speaker 1: not that it's real, but that it's a valid experience
Speaker 1: that you had. You know, like during this period of time,
Speaker 1: you felt like the toaster was talking to you, So
Speaker 1: like what kind of lasting impact does that have on you?
Speaker 1: Do you understand now that it didn't really talk to you?
Speaker 1: Do you? Are you able to use this toaster anymore?
Speaker 1: Is it like off limits? Now? We gotta get at
Speaker 1: the house, you know. I think it's a thing to
Speaker 1: be dealt with as opposed to lack a truth to
Speaker 1: be accepted. I got you. Yeah, Okay, there's a subjective
Speaker 1: nature to this, but that doesn't mean that you didn't
Speaker 1: objectively have an experience. The experience is real, even if
Speaker 1: the the byproduct of that experience is something that we should, uh,
Speaker 1: we should have more conversations about if nothing else that's fair.
Speaker 1: There is also sort of like what they call paranormal
Speaker 1: uh side effects that happened in our brain. Like, for example,
Speaker 1: there was a scientist. This this dude who basically thought
Speaker 1: that he like, while working really late at night in
Speaker 1: a lab, thought that he could hear a ghost or
Speaker 1: see a ghost moving next to him. And he was
Speaker 1: a super skeptic, hated the idea of of sort of
Speaker 1: paranormal activity being a real thing, and he decided to
Speaker 1: sort of like try to dig through to see if
Speaker 1: he can make sense of of what this thing was,
Speaker 1: and ended up finding out that there was a fan
Speaker 1: nearby him that was basically spinning out of frequency something
Speaker 1: they called the fear frequency, which was like eighteen point
Speaker 1: nine hurts, that was spinning at such a slow pattern
Speaker 1: he couldn't pick it up. The human ear isn't able
Speaker 1: to pick up stuff below twenty hurts, but it was
Speaker 1: enough for our brain to start to try to make
Speaker 1: sense of things, thus creating the illusion of ghostly sounds
Speaker 1: and ghostly movement. And so he says that that maybe
Speaker 1: the justification for a lot of our ghostly experiences is
Speaker 1: the stuff around us moving in a way or or
Speaker 1: making noises in a way that aren't perceptible to our
Speaker 1: human ears and eyes, but are in fact happening in
Speaker 1: the real world independent of any spiritual bodies. He did
Speaker 1: a lot of research. I just read stuff and then
Speaker 1: repeat it back. I don't know. Do you think that
Speaker 1: the fear of frequency in any way bumps against any
Speaker 1: of your your beliefs, the stuff that you've been practicing
Speaker 1: with your your altar and scestral sort of like prayers
Speaker 1: and whatnot. I don't think so, just because fear is
Speaker 1: just completely devoid, like just not present in that relationship.
Speaker 1: Like I just don't have any fear around the practice
Speaker 1: I got you. So it's it doesn't matter, because I
Speaker 1: think the fear frequency, even the language around it, does
Speaker 1: suggest that ghosts or whatever we're seeing hearing blah blah
Speaker 1: blah is scary, and to your point, we shouldn't be
Speaker 1: or you're not treating this as a scary thing, So
Speaker 1: it doesn't really matter. That's fair. Okay, this is the
Speaker 1: last thing that I'll bring up to you before we
Speaker 1: go to break. The one thing that's sort of like
Speaker 1: really started to ring out to me in terms of
Speaker 1: this conversation around like all of these these illusions of
Speaker 1: the mind, be it be a mental illness to be
Speaker 1: at the fear frequency. All of these things are the
Speaker 1: the idea that they are in some ways terms and
Speaker 1: and sort of like connotations I guess that are created
Speaker 1: by white people, that white people sort of like create
Speaker 1: the language and logic around these things. And so our
Speaker 1: understanding of ghosts, and I think you've spoken to this
Speaker 1: pretty well so far, it seems like our understanding of
Speaker 1: ghosts is largely limited to what white people want us
Speaker 1: to understand ghosts to be in a lot of ways.
Speaker 1: That is, so long as like the media and the
Speaker 1: things that we read are connected to fear and to
Speaker 1: sort of like ghosts being people in in fucking you know,
Speaker 1: colonial outfits, then we are always going to understand them
Speaker 1: as like this scary, dangerous thing and not, as you said,
Speaker 1: something a little more peaceful or helpful in your life.
Speaker 1: Yes physically, yes, Like I don't really even have much
Speaker 1: asked that I just said, like, there's been I think
Speaker 1: in recent years of movement of people, you know, I
Speaker 1: say young people in the broadest sense, because I'm still
Speaker 1: including myself, but you know, millennials on down that have
Speaker 1: been exploring spirituality and who have been tapping into some
Speaker 1: of the things that people came before us did. And
Speaker 1: you know, I think that I will continue to hear
Speaker 1: more about folks doing that, you know, and you'll see
Speaker 1: more of an influence of this sort of thinking in
Speaker 1: pop culture with black folks here and there, and hopefully
Speaker 1: that'll influence, um, you know, a reconsideration of what white
Speaker 1: folks have told us about ghosts and about our dead. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we can we can reconsider the white stories. We can
Speaker 1: make this a new if we if we all built
Speaker 1: altars in our in our homes. Is it like in
Speaker 1: the front of your house or is this like in
Speaker 1: a private, quieter spot. It's in my living room. There's
Speaker 1: a divider, a role, Irish screens, so it's like it's
Speaker 1: kind of obscure, you know. And sometimes if I'm gonna
Speaker 1: have people in the house, I don't really want, you know,
Speaker 1: all eyes on my stuff. I can close it up.
Speaker 1: Hell yeah, So you don't have to make this a
Speaker 1: public experience. But we can all build altars and and
Speaker 1: and privately start to break some of these, uh, these
Speaker 1: white teachings as it were. Okay, we're gonna take one
Speaker 1: more break. We'll be back with more to me, a
Speaker 1: little mill and more. My mama told me, we need
Speaker 1: a back. Yeah, We're back here with more, Jamille, little more.
Speaker 1: My mama told me, we're still talking about ghosts, the
Speaker 1: ancestral plane and breaking white habits. I guess breaking our
Speaker 1: are white beliefs out in the world. Let's play a
Speaker 1: quick game, and we we have one last game that
Speaker 1: we love to play on the podcast. This is a
Speaker 1: new game. It's a brand new game that I cooked
Speaker 1: up special for this episode. It's called I'm Dreaming of
Speaker 1: a White Spirit. I'm Dreaming of a White Spirit. It's
Speaker 1: a it's a fun game where Jamila, I am going
Speaker 1: to introduce to you a few stories of white celebrities
Speaker 1: because I tried to look up black celebrities who said
Speaker 1: that they saw ghosts, and truly, there were very few
Speaker 1: who would even talk about it. I think Rihanna at
Speaker 1: one point had like a quote where she was like,
Speaker 1: I don't eat at that restaurant no more. I get
Speaker 1: eerie vibes there. But like that was kind of the
Speaker 1: extent of it. So there aren't a lot of like
Speaker 1: ghost stories from famous black people. But well, yeah, you
Speaker 1: probably can't afford to to talk to in the media
Speaker 1: about whatever you're you're experiencing in your home. But there
Speaker 1: are lots of white celebrities who are like bugging I'll
Speaker 1: tell you about it. So I just would love to
Speaker 1: read you some of these stories and get your thoughts
Speaker 1: on them. Hell yeah, So let's let's start with a
Speaker 1: fun one. This is a nice one. Let's start with
Speaker 1: my boy, Matthew McConaughey. Matthew McConaughey. In two thousand nine,
Speaker 1: he shared a story that his his home was haunted
Speaker 1: by his spirit name Madame Blue. He says, I was
Speaker 1: not even under the influence, and she was there. She
Speaker 1: wasn't that happy. It didn't seem like she was going
Speaker 1: to be much fun to hang around or have in
Speaker 1: my house. So I went ahead and stood my ground.
Speaker 1: I opened the door, and I said, you can move
Speaker 1: around all you want, but I'm not going anywhere. For weeks,
Speaker 1: everyone that came to the house said the same thing,
Speaker 1: that someone's down the hall. There's somebody down in that hall.
Speaker 1: He says that Madam Blue basically eventually stopped messing with
Speaker 1: him and eventually let him and his guests, uh, just
Speaker 1: enjoyed their home. Your thoughts. Just like a white man said,
Speaker 1: yell at the ghost. That's his first thought. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: yell at it. I'm gonna tell her to stop I
Speaker 1: moved into her house. She been here, who knows how
Speaker 1: long she could have been This could have been her land,
Speaker 1: and here you come. I'm a yell let her. If
Speaker 1: her name is Madame Blue, she's been there a long time,
Speaker 1: she's been there. Well, she's definitely that's her territory. And
Speaker 1: Matthew mcconaugheytes said no, I'm not leaving. And apparently Madame
Speaker 1: Blue gave up. Maybe she realized he was a decent
Speaker 1: enough dude minus the yelling at her part. Oh that
Speaker 1: she was like, I don't know, he's got his shirt off.
Speaker 1: He seems like he might have just legitimately gotten on
Speaker 1: her nerves. Like he seems like he'd be pretty chatty
Speaker 1: when he smokes. And I could see like Madame Blue
Speaker 1: being like, okay, well nothing's Matthew McConaughey has trapped you
Speaker 1: in a corner vibes, you know what I mean. And
Speaker 1: as a ghost, you don't want to be trapped in
Speaker 1: a corner. You're already you've got enough going on. We
Speaker 1: got enough going on. So okay, here's a here's another
Speaker 1: fun one. Jenna bush Hagar and you know the daughter
Speaker 1: of George bush Uh. She claims that during her time
Speaker 1: in the White House that she had a number of
Speaker 1: mysterious spirits sort of interact with her. She said, I
Speaker 1: heard ghosts. I was asleep. There was a fireplace in
Speaker 1: my room, and all of a sudden, I heard nineteen
Speaker 1: twenties music coming out. I could feel it. I freaked
Speaker 1: out and ran into my sister with room. She was like,
Speaker 1: please go back to sleep. This is ridiculous. Could have
Speaker 1: been some of those slaves have built the White House.
Speaker 1: Could have been some of them dad iraq Eas that
Speaker 1: were like slaughtered because of her daddy's stupid war. Some
Speaker 1: of the US soldiers that were killed because of her
Speaker 1: daddy's stupid war. I'm sure there were a lot of
Speaker 1: spirits that are displeased with the Bush family. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: it makes me wonder how many of these these unhappy
Speaker 1: spirits are more in your brain that like, you know
Speaker 1: what your daddy did, and maybe that's just living in
Speaker 1: in your spirit. You are articulating it in a in
Speaker 1: an odd way around your heart to look at it.
Speaker 1: I think it's a very good way to look at it. Okay,
Speaker 1: here's here's another one. We'll do two more. This is
Speaker 1: Demi Lovado. Demi Lovado. They said that they were haunted
Speaker 1: by a bad spirit. Not by a bad spirit, excuse me,
Speaker 1: but by a little girl. I think her name is Emily.
Speaker 1: I've been at had a medium come over, and and
Speaker 1: ghost hunters, and they both told me the same name, Emily.
Speaker 1: There were so many times that I saw her when
Speaker 1: I was growing up. Lovado wrote, I believe that everyone
Speaker 1: can tune into that part of their mind. I think
Speaker 1: I have a really strong connection to the afterlife. When
Speaker 1: I walk into the room I can tell if something
Speaker 1: has happened there or not, or if a hotel is haunted. Okay,
Speaker 1: you think you think Demi Lovado is connected like you? Now?
Speaker 1: I hope they're good enough to call two sets of
Speaker 1: ghostbusters that like don't communicate with each other like Okay,
Speaker 1: bat the name is Emily, you know what I mean? Like,
Speaker 1: but it's two different entities and dide I know each other,
Speaker 1: have no prior relationship. Both came up with the name Emily.
Speaker 1: It's kind of hard not to think there's something to that.
Speaker 1: Fair enough, Okay. Last one, my boy, Keanu Reeves said
Speaker 1: that he's he's had ghostly experiences. Reeves claims that he
Speaker 1: saw a ghost as a child living in New York City.
Speaker 1: I'm probably like six seven years old. He said, we'd
Speaker 1: come from Australia and nanny in the bedroom. My sister
Speaker 1: is asleep, she's sitting over there. I'm hanging out. There
Speaker 1: was a doorway and all of a sudden, this jacket
Speaker 1: comes waving through the door, this empty jacket. There's nobody,
Speaker 1: there's no legs, it's just there and then it disappears.
Speaker 1: He explains, he said, I was a little kid and
Speaker 1: I thought, okay, that's interesting. And I looked over at
Speaker 1: the nanny and she was making this terrified face and
Speaker 1: I'm like, oh wow, so that was real. It's possible.
Speaker 1: You've got enough money to have a nanny. You probably
Speaker 1: your family probably did some bad stuff. So maybe it's
Speaker 1: the same as like the bushes, just on a smaller level.
Speaker 1: You know, there might be there's bodies buried in the repace.
Speaker 1: So we're just in Australia with our nanny, Like, excuse me,
Speaker 1: Sarkian I did, like, my favorite part of this is
Speaker 1: that there he doesn't like go like And then I
Speaker 1: talked to the nanny and we figured it out together.
Speaker 1: He's just like, oh yeah, she's Serpen so it must
Speaker 1: have been real and then went to sleep like, yeah,
Speaker 1: you don't want to help her feel better, Big beast
Speaker 1: still be sitting right in that very spot. That would
Speaker 1: be the mystery of my life that I had to
Speaker 1: figure out. Dog, If a moving jacket seems so much
Speaker 1: scarier than if it's a person, I can let's talk,
Speaker 1: we can work this out. But if it's just a jacket, God,
Speaker 1: I'm sucked up forever. That's that's about a scary can get. Yeah.
Speaker 1: All right, well, Jamila, I think we did it. I
Speaker 1: think I think we nailed this episode. Thank you for
Speaker 1: doing this. Could you tell the people at home where
Speaker 1: they could find you and what cool ship you of
Speaker 1: going on? Yeah? You can find me at Jamila Lemiu
Speaker 1: dot com to learn more about my work. Um, I'm
Speaker 1: one social media at Jamie Lemiu. Depending on where this airs,
Speaker 1: I have a story coming out that I'm like terrified of.
Speaker 1: People may talk about it. I don't know when you're
Speaker 1: gonna air this, so I can't say what it. We'll
Speaker 1: keep up with me on social media. I'm a freelance writer.
Speaker 1: I have I've done stuff for The Arly Times and
Speaker 1: Playboy and The Cut, and I've got a big story
Speaker 1: coming up, and like I'm waiting for the editor to
Speaker 1: hit me with like the okay, here's when I dropped.
Speaker 1: So it's like I can't even really promote it, but
Speaker 1: like you might remember that you heard me on this
Speaker 1: podcast when you see the story. It might be a
Speaker 1: little bit of a thing. All right, Well, keep your
Speaker 1: keep your eyes and ears peeled for that big story
Speaker 1: and follow Jamila on on all of her ship and
Speaker 1: uh as always, you can follow me at like Saint
Speaker 1: Kerman and please subscribe, do whatever nonsense you're meant to
Speaker 1: do the podcast to make people care about them and yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: we did it by because I've been growing babies my
Speaker 1: crop chips in your pans Ocola bears are racist. He
Speaker 1: also players hosting the money versions de many Turkey stuff.
Speaker 1: I can't tell me nothing,