Sense of Soul - Haunted History with Paranormal Investigator Dr. Kate Cherrell

Episode Date: October 31, 2025

Happy Halloween! Today on Sense of Soul we have Dr Kate Cherrell, she is a writer and broadcaster specialising in paranormal history, 19th-century Spiritualism and British folklore. She is the author of the gothic novel Begotten (2025) and a forthcoming work of non-fiction, Buried England (2026). She writes commercially on supernatural history and has worked with museum and cemetery trusts nationwide. As a paranormal historian, she has co-hosted Haunted Homecoming with Jack Osbourne and Jonathan Ross, Unexplained: Caught on Camera, The Yorkshire Exorcist II and has provided historical expertise on Paranormal: Britain’s Last Witch, Weird Britain and Spectre or Spectacle. She received the GPN Top Investigator award in May 2025 for her work in paranormal investigation. She has blogged under the name Burials and Beyond since 2017 and – when not exploring cemeteries or haunted locations – she can usually be found in some dark, dusty corner with a big glass of wine and a good book. She is the author of ‘Begotten’ a neo-Victorian novel set in the fictional county of Duncain, spiritualism impacts an Anglo-Irish family. Following the death of her father, Alice Crofton returns to her family's crumbling house, believing she will settle the estate and leave. But nothing in Duncain ever truly leaves. In her absence, spiritualism has gripped the rural county and charismatic mediums have encroached into the household, setting their sights on Alice's family - and her inheritance. Alice tries to hold on to her family and her sanity as hysteria and hauntings take over all she once knew. Written in gothic and ghost story traditions, Begotten's dark - and sometimes humorous - narrative raises questions about the trustworthiness of one's senses and the very nature of ghosts. https://katecherrell.com https://burialsandbeyond.com https://www.facebook.com/burialsandbeyond/ www.instagram.com/burialsandbeyond www.twitter.com/burialsbeyond Book Link: https://www.collectiveinkbooks.com/roundfire-books/our-books/begotten-gothic-novel Visit: www.senseofsoulpodcast.com

Sense of Soul. Hey Soul Seekers, it's Shanna. Journey with me to discover how people around the world awaken to their true sense of soul. Now go grab your coffee and open your mind, heart, and soul. It's time to awaken. Happy Halloween. Today on Sense of Soul, I have Dr. K. Cheryl. She is a writer and broadcaster specializing in paranormal history of the 19th century,

spiritualism, and British folklore. She is the author of the Gothic novel, Begotten, written in Gothic and ghost story traditions, begotten's dark and sometimes humorous narratives, racist questions about the trustworthiness of one's senses and the very nature of ghosts. And you can watch Dr. Kate, she has hosted Haunted Homecoming with Jack Osborne and Jonathan Ross unexplained, caught on camera, the Yorkshire

Exorcist 2, just to name a few. She has received the GPN Top Investigator Award in May of 2025 for her work in paranormal investigation and the very nature of ghosts. Dr. Kate is joining us today

to share with us her paranormal expertise. Please welcome. I'm excited to hear about your book and about all the things you're doing. And how did you get into this? Like, you know, tell me about your journey. What led you here? Yeah. I really keep thinking I should have some very neat little snappy, sound-bitey way of describing things. But I think my journey, as I understand it now, has been delightfully messy. And I'm very grateful for that mess. I think things that are linear are often not really worth pursuing, I suppose. But when it comes to, let's say broadly the paranormal, the supernatural things that are

rather more left field, I think like many of us, I had a childhood interest in things that are a little bit spooky, things like the paranormal and particularly ghosts, psychics, even aliens, It was the 90s, I think you couldn't leave the house before you were hit in the face with an X-Files advertisement. So, you know, that was kind of inevitable. But I was very fortunate to be raised partially by my grandparents. And my granddad was a very ordinary man, real northern working class, but with this amazing little hidden spiritual side to him.

And while everyone else was just, you know, going about their business, this was Grimsby, it's Fishing Town. And he was nurturing this kind of secret interest in the spiritual and particularly in the idea of like guardian spirits and things like that. So he very much nurtured those things in me, the whole gamut of things that are completely ridiculous through to quite pleasant ideas of having ancestors watching over you. And So it was really through him that I was able to continue the sort of interest that ordinarily would have stopped when I was, when I was a child. So I'd go to the local cemetery with him to visit my deceased ancestors twice a week, every week. Understandably, I wasn't very popular at school.

How shocking. I was shocking with her. You were like Wednesday and. Oh, completely, but way before it was cool. But yeah, then from that, I had some strange experiences that I couldn't explain. I still can't explain when I was spending a lot of time at my sister's house. I'd now say that that was traditionally, we'd call it haunted, I suppose. And then after that, everything sort of combined and I started pursuing an interest in it, not just for personal growth, but academically.

And so that's when I started looking into the spiritualist movement and certainly how the Victorians or in the long 19th century we interacted with death memorialization, ideas of the afterlife and how our ideas of magic and metaphysics started to really change around that era. And I pursued that through the academic route. I went and got my BA. I got about to have two. which is everyone needs a hobby. Mine just seems to be more ridiculous than most. And then I got a PhD a couple of years ago. And fortunately, I'm now a full-time writer about the paranormal. So I write for magazines, for different publishers. I've just published my first novel. And I've done a lot of TV as well, a lot of television shows relating to the paranormal. I've done the traditional ghost

hunting, screaming at mirrors kind of routine. So I'm very fortunate that a childhood interest has bloomed into something that's all consuming in a very, in a very delightful way, in a very enjoyable way. And I'm continuing to grow and learn in that. And through my work in books, in magazines, and TV and all the rest of it, I'm able to share that with other people. So I'm in a very fortunate position, I feel. Gosh, I love a good ghost story, right? When you're little with all the girls sitting around just trying to scare the shit out of each other which is

you know I guess there is that excitement kind of that you get from it but there's also adrenaline I guess absolutely yeah I've described paranormal investigation before a little bit like being an adrenaline junkie so it's that same thing

it's the same reason why we get rushes from from ghost stories like you see it's like a safe risk because we're still sat still we're not going cave diving or anything too crazy like that but it still could be real we still could be inviting it in so we get that little that little rush and I think when whether you're reading ghost stories but you're telling ghost stories or if you're out in the field trying to see if there's anything there you're all chasing that same that same thrill obviously overarching there's the nice idea that

we're all going to to learn more about how we interact with the world but I think a lot of it is just we we want a quick kick. So I'm originally from Louisiana. I'm from New Orleans, which is known to be a very, it's historically known to be very haunted. In fact, when you're walking around the French quarter, often you'll see like for sale and it'll say like haunted or not haunted on the first sale sign because it is so known for being so active. And I mean, there's many ghosts tours and so many stories of.

It's like, yeah, yeah, scary stories, you know. And there is kind of, it is kind of from an era, right? Yeah. You know, in New Orleans is one of the oldest places here on our side of the pond. And my family has been rooted back into the late 1600s, early 1700s. And when I was doing my ancestry, which I'm an ancestral genealogist, when I was doing mine, mine was so just full of ghost stories and interesting. Oh, amazing.

Yeah. But, I mean, it was like the stories of vampires. How that started in New Orleans was in my tree. I mean, it goes back to real historical events that are kind of told over time and get a little darker and darker, right? And, you know, Anne Rice, who lived in the French Quarter, who lived right across the street from where my mom went to school. You know, she must have heard these stories as well, writing all of her books on vampires in New Orleans. And one of them was about when the first

settlers went there, most of them were men. And they needed some women if they were going to populate this new land. And so they sent over, which is in French, it was called something else, but it was the king's daughters is what they called him. Yes. Yeah. Her women. They put them on a boat, which would take two months to get across the transatlantic, and they're going to stay in the Ursuline convent, which is where my mom actually went to school there. It was St. Mary's Italian when she was younger, right in the heart of the French Quarter, and these girls show up at night. They'd been on this boat for two months, sickly. The nuns give them fresh white gowns, and all of their belongings are all on. the levy or off the Mississippi River and they're in these long pine boxes and they didn't they were so

excited they wanted to venture out even though it was the middle of the night so all of a sudden there's all these pale looking women walking in their white gowns you know down the street of the French Quarter they say where the big you know where the story is rooted from um of vampires yeah yeah certainly um vampires in i really struggled to say new orleans because obviously being being english i'm like new orleans it's new or not new orleans um yeah what they called like the something like the casket princesses or something like that girls or the casket girls yeah yeah well i certainly grew up with a lot of anne rice books and really idolizing louisiana as this amazing hub of vampiric activity. And certainly I got into a lot of poppies-y brights novels

like Lost Souls is there in New Orleans as well. And honestly, I don't know who I'd be without that novel. I'd be a lot less of a cliche if I hadn't spent my teenage years obsessing over that. But I love places like that, places like New Orleans and the French Quarter where there's so many layers of history that are interwoven with folklore that, that the whole town becomes indivisible from this, from this oral history, whether it's ghosts, whether it's vampires, whether it's, whether it's voodoo, whether it's different kinds of folk beliefs that have been imported or homegrown. I think it just makes for the most rich and exciting landscape.

So I can imagine growing up in an area like that. It must have been, yeah, something else compared to certainly where I grew up, where it was kind of a fish and death. That were your two options, really. Well, and I also have Marie Laveau in my ancestral tree twice, actually, as an aunt. And so, but growing up, I thought, you know, she was the boogeyman, you know, but doing real research, historical research, you know, reading her obituaries and learning and following her trail. You know, I mean, actually was her grandmother actually bought them out of slavery under the Spanish rule. I mean, just seeing how very powerful that feminine energy, you know, but it wasn't really told to me.

So it was something that I rediscovered and I love her story. And, you know, she was really nothing more than an herbalist who, you know, would sit with the sick and pray with prisoners and was actually probably feared, which was pretty amazing to a woman of color feared. Absolutely. And I think it's so amazing when you look back on. Like you say, these characters, these lived experiences, these women that we see traditionally as monsters or boogeyman. And then you look back and think, oh, no, these are just very powerful women that have essentially subverted male authority in some capacity. And if it's anything spiritual, if there's anything to do with healing, anything physical, it's seen as they're lesser women, they're other women because they've subverted this power from the men around them. and therefore they're, ironically, they're a threat.

And so, yeah, that leads to a really uncomfortable legacy that I love seeing that we're deconstructing now, that we're reassessing these women's places in paranormal history, supernatural history and folk history, certainly, yeah, yeah. Look at all of the witches, right, and the witch trials. You know, really going through ancestry and working with hundreds of trees, you know, my perception on, you know, a lot of the hauntings and the scary stories of witches and all these things have changed so much

because I've learned true history, but I see how the story is like the fish tale that grows and grows and grows. And, you know, I have an idea that if the majority of us think something, well, then it will be, you know, kind of like COVID. that was like a perfect example of how very powerful as like a whole as a collective we had all this fear and it was almost like we were feeding this virus that got bigger and bigger I feel the same way about like the story of the baffamit which was originally created just to be a being that was equal showing equal sides but then Arthur Waite used it as the devil cart in the Trow. So this now became the devil. And so I think that it's interesting to hear about stories, you know, and how like what was the historical truth of that story and how much have we manifested

it to actually be this monster. And I have actually had paranormal investigators on from Gavin before who talked about, I think it was in Canada where they made up a ghost story and it actually was created. Oh, like the Philip experiment. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. It's amazing. I think, like you say, the power of collective thought and the power of collective belief can't be underestimated because as much as it can, it can cause hysteria, it can cause collective fear and then that reverberates generationally, reverberates culturally. At the same time, with experiments like the Philip experiment, which arguably was flawed, if it was recreated under the same university conditions, I'd be far more interested to see what happened there.

But essentially, yeah, it was a load of people that were repeatedly brought back to the same place. They said, I think it was a 16th century Englishman. Yeah, and they were meant to be traumatized story. Yeah, they created this full background. And then they found themselves being able to communicate with him. But that's so interesting. It's, It's are we creating a consciousness? Are we communicating with something that is intelligent, something that can send responses? Or can group delusion be that powerful and that strong

that we can all align on the same wavelength and give exactly the same answers? It's kind of terrifying. The power of the mind and certainly the power of the paranormal, even if we accept that it's entirely just happening in our own minds and there's absolutely nothing to it, it's still such a powerful tool. And yeah, I think it definitely can't be, can't be underestimated.

And certainly in any seance environment or any environment where you feel like you're messing with. And I say messing, because that phrase always comes into it. You're messing with things you don't understand. You're messing with things you don't, you can't control. I think whenever you're fed that narrative, there's always the chance that something more insidious will come out of that. Whether or not that's the reality or not, but the very thought that you're, you're, out of your depth can weadle into yourself and have more long lasting consequences, I think. Well, I would also say that I know that in real life, I kind of attract people like me,

kind of like this resonance with energy, right? You attract like energy. Yeah. So I've always had this thought that, and I've heard this before, you know, like if there's a lot of fighting in a household, right, this can cause like a lot of energy or if you're in a good place or bad place maybe these are the kind of energies that you're going to be presented with but yeah yeah i i do think like attracts like and i think not necessarily in in the best way i know i personally wish i was a far more optimistic person i'm trying i want to be the brady bunch i want to be skipping through the woods wearing flower crowns and saying everything's okay but i think

it's it's in my blood to be quite pessimistic and quite defeatist which is horrible I don't want to be that person, but I don't know, I'll blame some ancestor somewhere down the line. It's probably them being glum. But certainly when I'm going through life thinking, oh, nothing's happening. I'm not getting this. I'm not getting this. This isn't going my way. I'm almost putting that out there.

So even subconsciously, then I won't be attracting positive things because why an earth would positive things be attracted to someone who's already failed before they've even got out of bed? Because mentally, it's, I think the power of the mind of what you put out there, whether that's through energy, whether that's through something else, some of the kind of energy, of electricity that you're putting out there. I think it's something to be very, very mindful of. And while I'm not especially a full signed-up member of the, of ideas of manifestation, like if I think of something long enough, it'll happen. I do think there's something in there in that if you leave yourself open,

and open to possibilities and don't get in your head too much. Don't over, say, overthink. I think there's different ways of doing it. I think if you're open to opportunities, if you're open to meeting people and to having yourself changed, it's that openness to change and to having yourself questioned that brings the most exciting and the most fulfilling interactions. So I don't necessarily think that we have.

have to be happy, happy, skipping rainbow's people, but certainly being open to being changed, I think. Are you a good witch or you're a bad witch? Yeah. Or are you just present? Right. Yeah. You know, I've also heard a lot over the years that location can be a big deal, right? And I'm here in Colorado. So I've been living in Colorado most of my life, actually. My family moved here when I was younger. And we have the Stanley Hotel, which, the shining was right red ram but just yeah that one's scary to me and it's on top of though quartz i've heard this about other places um i want to say Gettysburg on top of Gettysburg is like on top of limestone or something like that so it seems to be that a lot of hot spots that are like

holding this residual energy or these lost souls or however you look at it what do you think Yeah. I think I'm very interested in that. I'd separate it into the what we'd call kind of the place memory hypothesis. I think a lot of both of those things, the idea that places can hold memories or energies and that particular stones can hold memories and energies. Personally, I'd separate them into kind of like place memory hypothesis, which is often just called the stone tape theory after the Nigel Neal film of the 70s, which is. fabulous but oh my god so much screaming um but there's the idea that places that are heavy with quartz and quartz in particular i find really really interesting because there was it's in the late 70s in northumberland a place called hexam in northumberland there were two small stone heads they look like Celtic stone heads really rudimentary carved little just yeah these these little heads were found in at the end of someone's garden. And I feel like this encapsulates all the arguments

around places and rocks holding memories. So these heads were found. And obviously local newspapers were saying, oh, there's this an amazing archaeological find. But then when they brought the heads into the house, they were saying that these really strange things are happening. We're having things being thrown around, like typical poltergeist activity.

Then they ended up saying, well, there was this like half man, half beast thing that started roaming around the local town that people started seeing these werewolves. It escalated so quickly. And then the heads were taken to ownership by this professor of Celtic studies. And her and her daughter reported having these strange poltergeist experiences and werewolf experiences in the house. So there was a lot of strange animalistic things happening, a lot of very destructive things happening because of these heads. Now at the time they thought they were ancient stone heads. So the more esoteric side of things were thinking, well, perhaps there is some kind of ancient force attached to it. Some kind

of ancient force, some kind of ancient evil. But then someone else came to the newspaper and said, they're not ancient heads. I made those for my daughter. I work at a concrete firm and I carved them for my daughter I can show you because there were three and she lost one in the garden the other two have just been kicking around there let me show you I'll make another one and this this was the craigy family this was I think it's Donald craigy and so he went to the papers when this story of werewolves and poltergeist was getting to a national level that this guy just said this is going silly now this is what happened but that didn't stop the story and it didn't stop the reports of experiences

and so there's a lot that you can unpack there because Hexham itself has this really rich history of not only Celtic heads but of reports of beasts a bit like black shook type things big black dogs that

hellhounds things like that and so could these heads have been carved by this man if we accept that he didn't while they were in the ground could they have absorbed some kind of latent power of the

surrounding area and although they were facsimiles of Celtic heads, could they then be these powerful supernatural objects? Is it just by association? But also when they went into the house and all this phenomena was said to happen, was that

was it fake? Was it projected? Did they become haunted? Because this was expected. Right? Yeah. I actually have a werewolf story in my ancestry. He was known as the Lugaroo. So family was from right at the bottom of the now Gulf of America.

Yeah, okay. And right there on the Gulf and they were a little fishing community and they'd been there from the beginning. And it was said that this priest had hurt one of the children in their community. and the parents got together and they killed the priest. This is the story that was passed down. And then it said that he turned into some werewolf and they called him the Lou Garoo and he would in the night scare little children. And so I thought that was really interesting because, you know, it was the only story.

I mean, I literally have it all in my tree when it comes to. You do. You're just ticking off that bingo card, aren't you? Like, everything. But there you go. though. I mean, you know, it's a story, but I, when I was little, and I never heard the story before. I didn't hear the story until I did my ancestry. And I, one of my very first dreams as a child that was a reoccurring dream was of this huge werewolf. And he was purple and it would scare me. I was like about seven, seven, eight years old. I thought, oh my gosh. Like, is it in our DNA? Like, do old, you know, some of the, the memories and stories that have been told. Yeah, yeah, it's pause for thought, isn't it?

It really is. Yeah, I think the ways in which memories can be stored or energy can be stored is very interesting. I don't really have any thoughts on how they would remain within families. I wish I had, again, a very neat theory. But I do find it interesting how we find commonalities from deep, deep in our histories. But yeah, I think certainly with place and place memory, I do think that like an extreme fear, like a fear of a werewolf, can be imprinted as an energy. And whether or not that means that people can tap into it and people can communicate with it.

And that's another thing. But I certainly feel like if you have an extreme experience, generally of fear, maybe of joy, but I think fear is the more common of the extreme emotions. Then I feel like you can, almost like stamping a passport, you can leave an impression unwillingly and that exists separate from yourself. Like your consciousness can go on in your body and go on and do whatever it is you need to want to do in your life. But a part of you has been almost like copied, like a blueprint and it's just added to the scrapbook of that place. And I find that very interesting. I've certainly come across a lot of experiences. and reports of those sort of phenomena in my years of looking at the paranormal and visiting

haunted sites and things like that is that sometimes these these extreme feelings these extreme fears that are said to leave impressions on the place aren't always the result of someone dying there or something really bloody and great they're they're they're kind of just people passing passing through so i find i find that interesting i think we want things to be far more Hollywood and far more cut and drive than they are in reality be really dramatic or something yeah you know um so i actually my house is definitely you know it has it's it goes through like these ebb and flows of activity and so i've actually had a paranormal investigation here at my house before it's pretty amazing i i used to do it at night by the way yeah yeah it's actually i i mean

It was on my podcast like Halloween, but it was like maybe four or five years ago. And I had Gavin on for Halloween, probably the year before that. Oh, lovely. When he talked about Harvest, that book is terrifying. But, you know, on the land that I live on, definitely was Native Americans. And I always think back to poltergeist when they're like, why would they build a neighborhood on top of a burial ground? Yeah. My best friend, when she purchased her house, they were building in her neighborhood.

I mean, they found like a thousand-year-old skull of a native. Wow. I mean, they were so prominent here. There's been a lot of discourse around that, not just building houses on top of burial grounds, but building like train lines and different types of infrastructure through burial grounds. Because in the UK over the last few years, there's been this absolute barth of a train line called HS2, which is high speed two it's this high speed train that was supposed to connect the north and the south and then obviously it's billions of pounds over budget the usual the usual it's not happening

yeah and the tracks getting shorter and shorter and shorter but in the preparation for for digging hs2 from london they they leveled a lot of buildings a lot of houses have been bought up and demolished but for no real reason now a lot of things have got shorter but in order to lay these new tracks and lay the new foundations for HS2. A lot of large portions of central London have been, they've had these big archaeological sites set up, they've had these big archaeological sites set up on them, rather. And they've discovered several old graveyards, pre-cemetry, cemeteries, these large burial grounds, with intact coffins, with intact coffin plates. And so it's brought up a lot of discourse around what respect means and what burial in perpetuity means and kind of directly addressing the different belief systems that have gone into each of those burials.

So like you say, when like native burials, like Native American burials, would have very different ceremonies to say a lot of these I think were like 18th, 17th century, English C of E burials in London. And so when you're talking about digging through these places and disinterring people or building on top of burial spaces, I think there are far greater conversations that we need to be having about that because it seems to always just boil down to the practicalities of what do we do with the bodies, what is a, quote, respectful way to rebury these people whose identities have been lost because more often they're not the burial market. are long gone. There were wood. They rotted away if they ever existed. And so I think we're kind of losing a healthy interaction with the dead and the way we interact with burial spaces,

even if they are ones that we're going to develop onto. So I think most places that report hauntings that say, oh, I'm on burial sites, I'm on this. That's something they kind of add in after the fact the burial site may have been cleared, it may very rarely in the UK, it may still be present unless you're in a city. But I think a lot of the time when it comes to places being haunted in a poltergeist, why would they build this house on a burial ground sort of thing. They're more of a rarity, they're more of a horror trope, whereas it's more of just quite a grim process of how houses are generally built and redevelop now of these people that were buried in a certain way are now an inconvenience. And their beliefs, the way in which they

wanted to be buried and undisturbed is just another bit of red tape that councils have to kind of cut through. And I have trouble. I'm very troubled with that. And yeah, the idea of what's appropriate. I think respect is a very, very dangerous word because it can be weaponised so easily, especially when we talk about the dead and when we talk about the afterlife, because it's filled with inherent bias, the way that we interact with burial sites, the way we interact with, um, religion, with graves with, yeah, with religion. It's, it all comes front loaded with our own life experiences and with our own ideas of how we'd want ourselves or our living loved ones to be to be treated.

So I think it's a really problematic discussion that then when you introduce things like deviant burials, as we'd know them, as like non-standard burials, pre-19th century non-standard burials, or burials from people from marginalised communities of different religions, it's kind of the enemy of the modern world that wants everything to be neatly homogenised. so we just treat everyone the same and whack them in a field and they should be happy that they're being re-buried at all. So I think the bones under your house would be absolutely fine because you're not going at them with a digger.

But I think as soon as you start trying to re-burry them, then you have to start having those really difficult conversations about, I've just picked up someone's femur, am I going to be haunted? Because I'd be far more inclined personally to mess about with someone when I'm dead if they were chucking my foot into a tray to be moved somewhere rather than if they built a bungalow on top of me.

They do actually call out the natives. They do a ceremony, you know, they do. And I think that that's beautiful, that they still hold space for that. And their descendants are coming to honour them and that means something to them. Yeah, I think absolutely having that space and having that openness to listen to people's that we, really do matter is really important and I feel like I can only really speak for the UK obviously

I'm not I'm not super hot on what's happening with like tribal repatriations and things like that in in the states but certainly in the museum sector there's a lot of really complicated and overdue conversations that are being had about the repatriation and the appropriate display of native ritual objects, human remains, things like that. And so while they're very, very complicated, because obviously being British, we've had centuries to go, I like that, I'm having that. So there's a lot of independent.

Do you feel like this is one of the conversations that would collectively heal some of these lost souls as well? Because I feel like for myself, learn true history, telling the stories and giving them voice and awareness has healed so much within my body that I can imagine it would on the earth as well. Absolutely. I feel that with the paranormal especially, so when we're having discussions about,

oh, a haunted skeleton or oh, let me hold this, you know, when we're talking about human remains or when we're talking about lost souls or even curses. curses are so loaded with cultural bias that we completely lose the personhood, which is kind of necessary to just be human. And I think that in certainly in the paranormal world and in the world of paranormal investigation, it's something that is so frequently lost, whether they're objects in museums or objects in personal collections or if they're in burial spaces.

things related to the dead and important ritual objects are just distilled down now to their usefulness towards and the usefulness visually in investigations. I've seen countless live-streamed through social media paranormal investigations where they're entering burial sites or they're entering museums or collections where there are human remains, there are tribal objects, ritual objects, that are completely removed from their context and just held within cases

or just within pseudo-public spaces, but are then seen as just fair game. They're seen as public objects for whatever usage. And it's that usage that is incredibly dehumanising. And I think that while that might make an excellent paranormal investigation, because you think, oh, I'm getting a lot of activity from this it's never within the context of I'm getting a lot of activity from this person, this object, because this person doesn't belong here, this object doesn't belong here, there's a lot of trauma here,

and what are we going to do about that? There's no proactivity. We like the fear, we like the old school Hollywood, or this is an evil totem pole, or this is a, this is a shrunken head, shrunken heads especially, so many of them were in the UK until a few years ago. And it takes so much to even acknowledge that we might have personal problems with the way that we interact with marginalised communities and indigenous populations that to then even have a wider public discussion about well why do we feel entitled to treat these things in this way and it almost seems too too complicated but certainly in the in the paranormal field in the field of paranormal investigation there's a lot of very i don't know overstate it and start fights or anything but i i i

think there's there's a real lack of personhood and a real lack of acknowledgement of the personhood of the dead and um while it's nice to have all your devices going off and saying oh i'm talking to this ancient tribal leader this you know this great hindoo figure who died in the uk well let's let's let's imagine they were a person let's imagine that they were a real person stood in front of us what a shocking thing that would have been and I think having that conversation with ourselves certainly in the field of paranormal would revolutionise the way not only we talk to spirits and the way we approach spirits but also the way we interact with one another because I do think the the internet age and certainly the social media age of the, God, there's a really popular phrase, isn't that?

The main character syndrome. The idea that everything we do is bios for us and centered around us is just endemic. You see it everywhere. And when you take that mentality and you place it within a field where you're talking about souls, you're talking about burial, you're talking about grief, the most extreme feelings that anyone could encounter. So then still center it around. around you and your experiences and what you can gain from that, publicly, financially, reputational, I think is, it's a bit of a cancer, really, in the spiritual world and the

other worlds that are adjacent to that. And I do have a few problems. Yeah, me too. With those ways that the interactions have changed, especially in burial spaces. I really get on my soapbox about burial spaces. I am so glad that I, that you're speaking about that, because I hate that. I hate that picking at, you know, let's just pick at this energy and see if we could get it to get angry enough so that we can get a reaction or pick at it so we get, you know, something.

I just think that's so disturbing, actually, because like you said, can we just imagine that maybe this soul is so traumatized and so stuck in this moment that it's reliving, you know, can you have some compassion for what once was? I mean, I just can't even imagine. See, I think that's being an impasse, right? We connect with the energy of what's happening around you and to be able to sense that and then have an appropriate reaction towards what you're sensing. And I know for myself, I grew up, you know, as a child having to go into a room and reading the room is this going to be a good day for me a bad day for me what's everybody in almost like hyper aware yeah right that we're able to then connect with the other side

yeah no i i absolutely get that that same mentality of entering a room and going right you almost brace yourself right okay okay let the wave come and then we'll make an assessment of how this day's going to go. Yeah, especially when you're in a room full of people, regardless of what the situation is. Right. It often feels like, you know, if someone leaves a TV on in the background and there's like that static, it's like an untuned TV and you just have to kind of see how that static's working with you in that moment. I certainly feel like I enter a lot of social situations like that and I certainly find it incredibly exhausting a lot of times and in spaces as well where you're entering with under paranormal investigative circumstances if you feel like oh no

this I am dead as a door now there's just absolutely nothing happening here and you feel like you've let people down you've let people down with you're not going along with it you're not running along with the same vibe whereas when things conversely when things feel kind of like full TV of static, it can kind of be overwhelming to just be, to just be a person, to be a bystander. I'm not a practising medium. I describe myself as, I describe myself as an empath, and I describe myself as a sensitive. And I've, certainly over the last couple of years, I've got the most from paranormal investigation and going into unusual spaces, shall we say, as if I'm going to an airport and I'm going to people watch.

I'm just going to sit down with my bag of duty free and I'm going to people watch and I'm going to see what happens because once you take a step back from being in that centred space, from being in the limelight, you can often get a far more nuanced and rich of you spiritually of what's happening around you and often pick up on things that people miss because they're so focused on being active, on pushing things forward. I think like you said when people want to just poke and poke and be really aggressive to a spirit to get any kind of interaction because generally you're on a time limit, you've booked a space for seven hours, you need something because people have paid a lot of money to be there.

And when you watch that from a slightly removed standpoint and you just see this poking, this poking, this aggression. And I've been in situations, one of my first ever paranormal investigations was someone who wasn't. getting what they wanted and started shouting and being really aggressive to this to this male spirit who was said to hate women so that that felt great that felt really nice to be seen in that environment but as soon as that time's up people put down the shutters and leave and I'd struggle with that a bit that you've you've picked and picked and you've pushed and pushed things are blown up you've got what you wanted and then you can just put that away in its little box and go home. I struggle. I struggle with that. And I think that comes back to

wanting to be a little, well, I suppose being an empath and just wanting everyone and everything to be in a positive space. And I think that's conversely one of the most draining aspects of of being involved in the paranormal is this constant churning headspace afterwards of well who was that how do they feel about that could I have done more should I have been doing that oh god I feel awful

should I be doing this and it's just this constant cycle afterwards of almost like mental self-harm and self-destruction and then yeah you know but you can't necessarily turn these these impulses off so easily I think yeah

I love I love your perspective on this completely and I 100% respect it and agree. I mean, I just feel like whenever I do confront any sort of paranormal anything, like my first instinct is to just be curious and investigate what's wrong, but more like what's the history here? Oh, absolutely. Yeah. I think the history is so important. I know that you're very attracted to the Victorian history and I'm curious about that. I feel like we're all kind of like, well, not all of us, but a lot of people are sometimes, like, really, really, like, attracted to, like, a certain era. Like, I love medieval times a lot. And actually, that's very interesting.

I don't think, oh, no, I did. You know, I've had a lot of past life regressions. And so that's what I was going to say. Do you sometimes feel like, or have you had a past life regression? Or do you know that maybe you had a past life during that time? Is that why you're so connected to it? Well, I've had one as part of a group in past life regression, and I'm due to have another one in a month or two. So I'm with someone who I think is absolutely wonderful.

You have to let me know. Yes, yeah, I shall do. But yeah, in that first regression, naturally there was a half a dozen Cleopatra's because there always is. You can't move for ancient Egyptian leaders in regressions. but yeah, when I was regressed, it was the most depressing regression. I was expecting maybe, you know, a Victorian lady of the house or something maybe a bit further back. Maybe I was a landowner.

But no, when I was regressed, I saw myself as this woman in a very rural part of the UK. I feel like Norfolk sort of area and this big field of wheat. and I was the wife of a miller I think about early 19th century and I was on my own in the fields and I'd had several children and all of them had been wiped out by disease and I was just left with nothing

except my husband who was a miller called Isaac and just desolation, just empty fields there was nothing else for miles and miles that was it was what i have too very similar really 1836 or something like that i was in vienna which was interesting i always felt like i had a huge connection there and i had tons of children and only like two of them survived because they all died of disease and it was very depressing so it's fun but yeah that makes sense right i've never talked to anyone that's ever

a life during that time. And so I think that's very interesting. It's like that vibe. Yeah, it's, it's, it's a weird sign of vast emptiness. I was, I was really expecting something more, anxious or exciting like, oh yes, I was also in Egypt, but no, no, I was still in the UK. I was still in the UK and I was incredibly depressed. One of mine I was a reptilian, so maybe I'll have a really fun one. It's open. I'll report back. I'll report back if I do. Absolutely. Yeah. By the way, I was a werewolf in Louisiana. Oh, my God. It all makes sense.

Yeah. Right. Exactly. Right. Same place. Yeah. That's so interesting. You know, your book, it's called Begarten. I love that. And I would love to know, you know, why you chose that title. Maybe that I'll help explain a little bit about the book. Also, it's addressing kind of what we were talking about before, like women, right? And rising. Yeah. Yeah. voice, which I have a mini-series about my ancestry that's called Untangled Roots. And really, it's about those forgotten voices.

So I was thinking, like, begotten is almost like, almost like a better word than forgotten. So please tell me about begotten. Well, Begotten is, it's a Gothic novel. It's a Gothic novel. And I've tried to subvert a lot of the. the Gothic traditions. So women's voices are really important to me and centering female characters

as not these weak little waifs that are simply waiting to house. Exactly. And within like the Victorian Gothic tradition, the key things were the explained supernatural. So everything in the end was all very neatly wrapped up as, oh well, after all, it wasn't supernatural. And now you've got a nice young husband

to take you out of all of this nonsense. There were kind of the traditions to everything. And I thought, well, that's, although we've got this idea of a Gothic heroine, she's not really playing a great role in it. She's sort of a passenger in her own story, and she's foolish and credulous. But what if you were a woman, a modern woman in that environment? And so begotten, kind of questions that can you ever trust your senses, are things predestined?

can you ever have ownership over yourself? And it tells the story of a young woman returning home to this very isolated big house after she'd had quite a taste of a fabulous new life. And returning to that space after a death, she finds that she doesn't have control over the household anymore. And some spiritualists have come in and have said that they can help with grief. They can contact her deceased father. and they can kind of unite the household,

but things aren't what they seem, and it plays a lot with the trustworthiness of one's senses, of one's place and role, and also of corruptive spaces. Like we said earlier, if you're in a space that's rotting, that's negative, that's grim, it just eats into everything, and it messes with your senses,

and it messes with the way you interact with the world. And so begotten's that story. It's the story of one woman's journey home and whether or not ghosts are real, if what she's seeing is real, if her whole family has fallen apart in her absence. And it's not some great deep, thinky, thinky, oh, this will take 60 years to dive through it.

It's very accessible. It's very accessible, but it was very important to me to elevate women's voices that were very much suppressed in the 19th century and in contemporary versions, I suppose, of neo-Gothic novels. There's no pathetic women here at all. There's just a lot of questions and a lot of, a lot of pace, a lot of pace to all.

My God, that sounds so good. Well, I'd rather be a Fiona than Cinderella any day. Yes, absolutely. And sometimes, you know, your Prince Charming isn't what, he says he is. No, he's like this far quad. Exactly. Exactly.

He's far quad with a crystal ball. So, you know. And I'd rather donkey than a steed. Yes. So your book is her story and she's already passed and going to visit

where she lived. No, no, she's very much live, but she's, yeah, she's returning home, but there's so many questions within it because everything's from her perspective we can't trust what she's saying because things

aren't making sense the house isn't working as an ordinary house would she's saying she left and she had this wonderful life with a wonderful husband but all the people are saying that she never left the house or the people are saying she can never leave oh there's a lot of okay so yeah the ghosts are ever present but it it says a lot about whether ghosts are just people in sheets or ghosts or memories or ghosts or things that we create ourselves and how we can create our own fears and our own ghosts when, you know, when things aren't going our own way. So it messes with perception a lot. Yeah. Oh, gosh. I always feel like there's a lot of messing with perception though when you're in that space. So when I, I've traveled and I've gone to

different haunted locations, you know, that are like, this is the most haunted house in America, this and that, you know? And I mean, yeah, you know, it's always like, oh, take pictures, you know, so you might catch something kind of thing. You might feel a dog looking your ankle or, you know, see a man in a rocking chair, you know, stuff like that. Yeah. It was in Louisiana. We went to the Myrtle's plantation. And really it was very interesting because my experience actually didn't happen in the house and it didn't happen with anyone. I was walking outside in the live oaks, There's those really cool trees that are like so alive, right? And I was videotaping the trees as I walked because they were so magical.

And all of a sudden, I'm humming this tune. And I have no idea what I was humming. I never heard that tune before. I was like asking everyone if they had ever heard that before. Someone suggested it sounds a little bit like Willy Wonka, but it wasn't. It was very specific. And what was really interesting is that years after, I end up hearing that tune while I was watching a movie. I was watching the movie Cabrini, which is interesting because Mother Cabrini really was in Louisiana.

Now I should see I want to go back and do the history and see it's near the Myrtle's plantation. Yeah, it was very interesting that I received. I've never experienced, you know, receiving something like that in coming. that's amazing that i think it's so it's so fulfilling when you can continue to have so many different interactions with spaces um on a spiritual level that it's not always like you say a dog licking your ankle or yeah or something or like a cat brushing by or sometimes it's not tangible and often it's a passing thought or a tune or i think they're arguably the more human and the more the more lasting evidently you know the more the more lasting impression

we can get from from spaces and people. I think it's again, it's that opening yourself up to those possibilities and just being a blank slate wherever you go because generally I believe the universe guides you to where you need to be. And sometimes that can just be a weird looking tree and takes your life in a completely different direction. I feel like everything in my journey, even that, end up connecting to something, you know. And sometimes you don't realize that at the time, sometimes a dream ends up being.

like something 10 years later, you know, something very significant, I feel like I can always connect something to all the paranormal experiences that I have. And I think sometimes we can overlook that the importance of that experience is coming forth for you to receive as in wisdom. But I, I mean, I can tell that you're keen enough to know that there's wisdom in every experience that we have. So is that true for you? I think certainly over the last couple of years I've worked on myself so much and I've accepted that I'm on

quite an intense personal journey and I've gone down so many different avenues but I think now I'm very discerning that when I try and do anything with spirit or I'm in any kind of paranormal capacity I'm not I make sure that I'm not going through the motions that I'm not there as oh by the way I'm here to do some ghost hunting or something like that I think yeah to change your language and to change your approach is really important and that's the way you can get meaningful and very fulfilling interactions but I think it's very very easy if you're doing a large amount of paranormal investigations or events a lot of public events you can get so battered and so closed off to what's happening around you, that you're just, you walk in completely mentally, spiritually zipped up,

and you would miss a thousand messages. You'd miss a thousand nods because you're just burnt out spiritually. And I think the second that we realize that we can take a step back and we can listen to messages that are meant to be for us without putting ourselves at the forefront, without being the main character. I think that's the most exciting and the most rewarding place to be.

And I certainly feel over the last year or so that I have been steered in little directions. I would have missed that if I'd been closed off or if I've been thinking, oh, I've got to get this deadline done. I've got to do this. I've got to do this because I'm terribly. overworked at the best of times, but then put your headspace separately and say, okay, this is

happening for a reason. For example, I went to a parapsychological conference last year. It's a bit adjacent to what I do. I'm far more on the historical and the literary side of things, certainly academically. And I thought, well, I'll go. I've got a paper, but largely I'll be there. I'll listen. And I'm just going to learn. And I met someone who was saying, I know you're wearing this particular ring. I know you're wearing this ring with onyx in it because you think it gives you protection. You're not giving yourself enough protection. You're not doing, you're not doing yourself justice. Read this book and I'm going to give you something that you need to carry with you. And he had no idea what I was doing. You didn't know that I was like the next day I was going to go

and film some paranormal TV show. But he said, you're going to need this really. imminently. So read this book and keep this on you with what you're going to do next. And he gave me, it's, it's like, it's a little talisman that was blessed by a Buddhist monk. And it's like a little wooden talisman on a red rope. He said, just keep it on you because you're going to need it. Oh, sweet. And I thought that was, it was a lovely thing, generally, but also, don't insult my rings, they're fabulous. But still, but still, I thought, okay, this is, you know, normally I might have just said, I've got a lot to read. I'm not really going to do this. But I did. You know, and I kept the thing with me, a talisman with me, and I read the books. And then what I then went into was far

more extreme than what I was anticipating workwise, certainly spiritually with the whole paranormal angle. And I feel like if I hadn't have been pushed down that more magical and protective avenue, I was going to bring something really negative back with me because I didn't, I underestimated how severe that situation was that I was putting myself into. So I think listening to voices is, not voices in a crazy way, but listening to those little nudges. It's not only a way to enrich your life and to put yourself in the new places that you're supposed to be,

but there's a really strong protective voice around a lot of us that comes to us in really strange ways, and I think we'd be fools to dismiss it. It doesn't matter if you've got lots of work on. someone tells you to read the book read the damn book because it's it's for the best you know read the damn book it's called begotten yes do read the damn book i'm going to haunt you so tell me i mean i was going to watch you on the haunted homecoming you've been on a lot of things i did um two series of haunted homecoming first one was with jack osborne second one was

with Jonathan Ross. I've done unexplained caught on camera, the Yorkshire Exorcist 2. And weird Britain, paranormal on the BBC, I'm kind of just a crop up here and there going, hey, let me tell me about the history of this. Or, hey, there's probably a ghost there. I'm creeping, I'm creeping on various bits of paranormal telly. So are you like me? I hated history in high school. And like history is like the most fascinating thing i could possibly talk about now it's i yeah i yeah i i i didn't mind history at school but i never did it at a level i think i kind of when it's when it's a syllabus and it's so and it's all just trench and it's all dry and yes and most of it's not even real it's all the victories and

oh absolutely it came to town well yeah thank you doodle you're yankee doodle to our town writing out and I don't know me. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, we didn't cover the American Civil War at all in school. Nothing. Yeah, no, I didn't do it past high school. I always had an interest in it, like those documentaries or books or things like that.

I love that. I just hated the way it was taught in school. And then when I went through the more literature-based angle of things, I started veering more towards, okay, everything I'm doing now is historical. I didn't do any history qualifications past GCSEA until I, went and just did a master's because i thought no i love this i do so much history i write history probably should get a qualification in it and then just yeah did did that angle in it it combined nicely with the literature side of things so it's but it's through the lost souls where

you were curious like what is this land what is this person what area is she from why is exactly still here what did she go through that led yeah yeah exactly how i learned history in how I became so interested was through my ancestry though it's the same it was like you know and in many ways they are still ghost and when I give them a voice is when they're healed so have you found that yeah understanding them and actually giving them that awareness giving him a voice I have I've certainly had a lot of looking deeper into my family tree there was a lot of um a lot of disharmony there are a lot of problems and um so like quite unpleasant deaths and um a lot of a lot of issues from um my family moving over from uh island to england um and so

i think learning more about them as people and digging more into their backgrounds and then almost having these conversations with them yeah felt very um it felt like conjuring I don't know about you. It often feels like, oh, no, they're here. They're here in front of me. And we're having these conversations. And we're, even though they're long dead, we're meeting on a level that's quite, yeah, you're in their head. And you know what happened.

And it's, it's been incredibly rewarding. But certainly, yeah, very recently I was looking into a family member who'd taken their own life, whose grave I visited every week, multiple times a week, as a child. And so I have this version of her. But then looking deep into it, looking at the coroner's reports, looking at, you know, the newspaper reports and more census things and how things were it was, she was real. She was real. And it felt almost like someone had finally met her where she was. And things felt a lot lighter afterwards.

I think it's, yeah, that's. it was a really quite a recent project, I suppose, looking into the ins and outs of her life. But it was incredibly rewarding. And it feels very grounding as well, feeling like, oh, no, these routes are going deeper and deeper and deeper now because we've met in a sense. Yeah.

Exactly. Yeah. And I could see how, you know, you just having the history of going around and actually, you know, visiting some of these places that it would help. you really understand where they were yeah yeah absolutely that they're not just you know oh my granny's brother he was a bit odd like no no why why was he odd let's let's get let's meet him let's see what happened and then you you meet these these amazing people and they yeah everything seems to be a bit

clearer a bit more yeah a bit lighter a bit more not short of bobble gum and rainbows again but everything seems a lot more grounded and a lot more. Girl, I had so much trauma in my, my tree. I mean, if you can, so I had both masters and slaves, you know, I had some grandmas that were just slave of my grandpa, you know, they didn't even have names. So, yeah, it was very, you can imagine, I mean, the trauma and almost like a haunting, right, that lives within your DNA, you know, that's never been told, never even,

actually was denied, right? A lot of it was denied. And so confronting the fear, right? And that's what heals it. So that's what I think is anything that you're afraid of, but especially with paranormal. I feel that way. There was a snake in my backyard, you know, a few weeks ago.

It was a giant ass six-foot snake. And I was like, dude, this is my yard. Like, you all share it with you, but I'm not going to be scared. like this is my sanctuary like we have to like share space we have to make peace i can't be afraid in my own space i mean and i think that for me that's what i do also with paranormal activity here i mean sometimes there's a lot you know things move a lot now and i'm not going to be afraid so don't pull my leg while i'm sleeping that was scary yeah oh yeah no i twice one night because at first

i thought it was a kid and then it happened again i'm like okay there's no kid okay yeah that's that's a whole you know putting down boundaries and just yeah i think that's important how do you handle stuff like that you know yeah i think i think like say valuing yourself and being confident enough and sure enough in yourself to put down those spiritual boundaries yeah it sounds so simple to say oh no well if that would happen to me i'd say stop it go away you know but when you're in the middle of it your your head can be in a completely different place but I certainly feel that on a couple of occasions, I felt like I brought something back with me

or if I was staying in a hotel somewhere afterwards, there was something else there that was trying to communicate and then to have that moment of clarity and go, no, we're not doing this, we're laying down the groundwork now, this stops now, I'm not interested, we're severed. I think having that little moment, moment of authority and clarity is really, really important because at least you're putting your intention out there and you're putting it very clearly. So I found that to be to be very,

very helpful. Even if, again, if people listen and they go, oh, this is all, it's all woo-woo. It doesn't matter because if it's happening in your own head, then that's just as important as if it's happening in a spiritual reality. Right. If it's an emotion, you're sharing around, that's you know that was from the whole situation you just went through 10 minutes ago and you're still carrying it with you it's the same thing yeah yeah what energy it looks like yeah sniffing those those tithe however however you do so i think is a really important part of protecting yourself and maintaining your your emotional and your spiritual health that's right i love that great great advice thank you so much kate i'm so glad that we connected and i can't wait to order book um is it available

to purchase now yeah yeah you can get it on amazon barns and noble waterstones everywhere where books exist you can you can you can order it in and um yeah it's a it's a fun it's a fun fast-paced spooky read so yeah yeah i hope people enjoy it well thank you so much kate um i appreciate it i really respect your work i really do i love the way you look at it um it's it's meaningful i can i can feel how much um compassion you have and respect for for the other side and i yeah i love that thank you so much thank you and um you have a website that anyone can go and check out yeah i have well my blog is burials and beyond dot com okay so that is like everything from folklore to visits to grave i do a lot of stuff with graves and um like

strange bits of curios and then my personal website if you just want to look at what I've been up to what I do is katecharyl.com so there's two options there but I'm all over social media generally under burials and beyond all right thank you so much yeah have a good one thank you for having me all right talk soon bye bye bye thanks for listening to sense of soul podcast and thanks to our special guest. If you want more of sense of soul, check out my website at sense of soulpodcast.com. It's time to awaken.