Hello everyone, and Happy Halloween/Samhain season to you all. I am honored to have Allison Jornlin on our podcast episode 48, kicking off season 5!

FEMALE PARANORMAL INVESTIGATORS

Allison Jornlin has been investigating strange phenomena for more than 20 years. Inspired by Chicago’s Richard Crowe, one of the pioneers of U.S. ghost tourism, she developed Milwaukee’s first haunted history tour in 2008. Allison currently works as a self-proclaimed "professional weirdo," speaking throughout the U.S., writing for a variety of publications, and developing haunted history tours for American Ghost Walks. Her lifetime passion project is paranormalwomen.com, where she sets the record straight about the unsung female trailblazers of paranormal investigation, parapsychology, and psychical research.

I think it’s particularly timely that I was able to book Author and American Ghost Walk’s Allison Jornlin this month on our “Women Who Howl at the Moon,” podcast. Not only are paranormal studies and ghosts totally apropos for October, Halloween, and Samhain, but as everyone is painfully aware, we are hot on the heels of arguably the most fright-inducing general election we’ve ever faced as a country. Allison hosts a YouTube channel entitled, paranormalwomen.com. In one of the episodes, she features prominent writer and spiritualist Catherine Crowe. She researches and shares a sad tale of a pair of jealous men (one of them revered scribe Charles Dickens!) who seek to tarnish and destroy a woman’s reputation, livelihood, and good standing in her community. Why? Sheer jealously, spite, feeling threatened by her doing well for herself and being ahead of her time. Sound like a familiar tale? Well, it’s one it is high time that we broke the cycle on, dear readers.

Way past due time to shatter and obliterate that fabled glass ceiling until it is nothing but smithereens on the American landscape. I am through being silent or polite about this. When the stakes are this high and the politics so dark, dirty, patriarchal, bigoted, oppressive, and toxically misogynist, something needs to shift. Whether the majority of people want it in our country or not, we now need a woman lead us, heal us, and yes, nurture us. It is possible to have compassion with wisdom, thoughtfulness with strength, and toughness tempered with tenderness, when needed.

QUEEN OF SWORDS

Vice President Kamala Harris is that woman. She is our Queen of Swords, and this is her moment. This is our moment, too. Make no mistake–taking us decades backward on progress, civil rights, and individual freedoms remains the top agenda of the far MAGA right. This along with forcing their particular religious ideologies down our throats, with no regard for our differing personal belief systems that work just fine, thank you very much. They like to crow constantly that they know what’s best for us, but they don’t know us, and don’t care to. In many cases, they never will. I maintain, if you’ve never been a woman, and experienced what it’s like to have a woman’s body and go through all of the stages of what that really entails–whether you choose or are able to bring new life into this world or not–you have absolutely NO BUSINESS passing judgement, pretending that you have any clue what it’s like, or acting like you have the right to determine what’s best for the women of the world. I personally cannot think of a concept more terrifying than the likes of the orange dictator and the self-righteously pompous “House Speaker” taking over total control of the United States of America, at this juncture. I’d much rather enjoy the chills and thrills of fictitious and mythical monsters in books, film, and TV than the all too real manmade ones who would mean to do harm to so many of their fellow Americans for folly, sport, or spite.

MAKE YOUR HOWL HEARD

As my friend and fellow activist Phyllis Curott likes to remind us, “the world needs her witches.” Now more than ever. We cannot afford to sit this one out. It is imperative that we all exercise our right to vote, into one amazing rallying cry. A howl, if you will. Thank you to all of the men that really do have strong hearts and minds, and understand respectfully, that it is our turn. I want to continue being able to create this thought-provoking monthly podcast for you, that always promotes “reclaiming women’s political and personal power.” I’d rather not be burned at the stake for it, in this lifetime. We cannot let those who would seek to keep us down take our wills and controls away from us–and we won’t go back. It’s time to rise up, my sisters. The new moon will be waxing on our side on Election Night. Let’s all make a point to work our magic toward positive, forward momentum. The kind that will truly lift all of us up–and oppress no one. Blessed be.