Dead Girls Talking

Granny witches, folk healing, mountain magic, whatever name you may know it by, these practices have been swirling around the Appalachian mountains  for centuries.  Minda and Jenna sit down with North Carolina folk healer Nikki Chester to discuss her family's legacy of mountain magic and how it interplays with current culture, how she turned her knowledge of natural healing into a business and of course, her 10 cats! Nikki was recently featured in Smithsonian's Folklife Magazine: https://folklife.si.edu/magazine/appalachian-folk-magic?fbclid=IwAR2vC2Q2YhxbG4ZtlvGAUtdKOPwUL13KY9V0kydysgpA72WME6sxgEYldNE

If you want to explore Nikki's healing products, her shop can be found here: https://www.facebook.com/NikkisNourishedByNature?mibextid=nW3QTL

Pictured: Nikki at 9 days old with her Great Grandmother

Find Nancy's grief group : https://www.facebook.com/groups/hopeafterheartache

And The Laugh Academy : http://www.thelaughacademy.com/

The Dead Girls bring in Nancy Weil, an expert on using laughter to combat grief and loss. Recently, Jenna lost her mother after a lengthy battle with cancer. Nancy shares ways to deal that level of grieving with unconventional methods.    

Part 2 of our interview with Gerry and Barbara. The story continues to unfold with the addition of Philomena Lee and her dear son Michael/Anthony.

Pictured: the baby burial site or Angel Plot at Sean Ross Abbey 

Illegal adoptions. Mass infant graves. Sadistic nuns.  Such are the tales from one of Ireland's 18 infamous mother baby homes, in operation from 1920 through 1970, the Sean Ross Abbey. With the discovery of 796 children believed to be buried in a former septic tank on the grounds of the Tuam mother and baby home, investigations have been launched to discover the truth behind these mother baby homes. Minda & Jenna sit down with Gerry and Barbara, both born to mothers in Ireland during this era and survived to tell the tale.  

Cover Image: Barbara's Irish Passport Photo, age 2 years old 

Trigger warning: Rape, Incest,  Nuns 

Chosen as a Messenger from above, Jarred is a world renowned exorcist and haunted house specialist, natural born shaman, medium and clairvoyant. He is also an author of a book titled Jarred Heaven’s Messenger which has a 5 star rating on Amazon, as well as an actor.

https://www.jarredheavensmessenger.com/ 
 

Chosen as a Messenger from above, Jarred is a world renowned exorcist and haunted house specialist, natural born shaman, medium and clairvoyant. He is also an author of a book titled Jarred Heaven’s Messenger which has a 5 star rating on Amazon, as well as an actor.

Minda & Jenna chat with the enormously talented and wickedly funny Apple Brown Betty about Hoodoo (not to be confused with Voodoo), comedy and hearing from family beyond T he Veil.  Brown Betty will make you laugh out loud and think deep thoughts, check her out: https://linktr.ee/applebrownbetty?fbclid=IwAR1yyZaTYPiK6ndDG45ljjGulHVD8y9SoP6vgYEMktM7PfiLUj71jH536_w

https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100077974801929

Part 2 of Minda & Jenna's powerful interview with Chad Nance and Carissa Joines, the filmmaking team behind the upcoming docuseries Hometown America.  We continue to unravel the hidden depths of the opioid crisis and it's effects on America's favorite small town, Mt. Airy, NC.  One mother's journey to shed light on the devastation that is being wrought on families touched by addiction, and her brave stand against being silenced.  We also uncover why you never, ever buy a used mixer.  

   Check out the sizzle reel for "Hometown America" :

https://vimeo.com/730348279

Check out the sizzle reel for "Hometown America" :

Hometown America - Sizzle Reel from Calico Bonnet Productions on Vimeo.

Glowing eyes, impressive wingspan, possible lover of lamps.......... Mothfans rejoice! Minda and Jenna chat with Mothman expert Steve Ward about his theories on Point Pleasant, WV's most elusive resident. Bizarre apex predator or interdementional time traveler? Why not both!

For 117 years, Key West, Florida has been home to one of America's most haunted objects: Robert the Doll.  An extensive history filled with terrifying and unexplained phenomenon's, alleged curses and Ozzy Osbourne, Robert the Doll has drawn  many a curious traveler south to witness the unexplained.  On this episode, Minda and Jenna sit down with author David L. Sloan, curator of Sloan's Ghost Fort Adventures and keeper of Robert the Doll.  Check our Dead Girls Talking Facebook and Instagram page for your chance to win a Robert the Doll Prize Pack!

The Dead Girls talk with NYC drag king and professional death doula Cas aka Vigor Mortis about embracing mortality, voicing final wishes, and navigating the death industry as a minority. A death doula (also sometimes called end-of-life doula, or death midwife) is a trained nonmedical professional who provides emotional, physical, and educational support for someone nearing death.  Cas explains how important representation is for LBGTQ folks can be during end of life planning. 

Minda and Jenna sit down with comic, actor, filmmaker, and possible Freddy Krueger apologist Zac Amico. Strap in for musings on representation in horror, stories of life on the road, and a proprietary recipe for stage poop.

#pride #horror #filmmaking #comedy

Minda and Jenna chat with the Feral Hogs Comedy Team, Hilliary Begley and Bridgette Martin. You may recognize Hilliary as Aunt Lucy from the Netflix smash hit “ Dumplin’” with Jennifer Aniston. It’s a wild ride with comedy, body positivity and movie making!

Hilliary Begley's southern charm combined with her sass make for an unforgettable night of storytelling. From tales of her religious upbringing to those of adulthood, Hilliary will share her life story with you one laugh at a time.

Hilliary has opened for Jon Reep, Judah  Friedlander, Chanel Ali, and Fortune Feimster. She has toured the United States as the star of the Feral Hogs Comedy Tour.

She made her film debut in the Netflix original Dumplin' as Aunt Lucy, or "Jennifer Anniston's fat sister," as Hilliary explains it.

She can also be seen in the Austin Film Festival winning movie When We Last Spoke with Cloris Leachman, now streaming on Amazon Prime.

Did you know tucked away in Maryland there is a museum devoted entirely to Urology? Jenna did! Minda and Jenna are joined by Tupper Stevens, an expert and guide for the Urology Museum. In the not to distant past, a bladder stone removal was much more serious than it is now, oftentimes the treatment was a kill or cure situation.  Tupper guides us through the history of urology, the more unusual exhibits in the museum and answers all our inappropriate questions! 
 

Creatative credit: Elic Thomas 

Minda & Jenna sit down with the incredible Bruce Goldfarb, author of 18 Tiny Deaths: The Untold Story of the Woman Who Invented Modern Forensics and the executive assistant to the OCME of Baltimore, MA.  Bruce tell us about Frances Glessner Lee (1878-1962) who crafted her extraordinary “Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death”—exquisitely detailed miniature crime scenes—to train homicide investigators to “convict the guilty, clear the innocent, and find the truth in a nutshell.” These dollhouse-sized dioramas of true crimes, created in the first half of the 20th century and still used in forensic training today, helped to revolutionize the emerging field of homicide investigation. - via https://americanart.si.edu. Her story is nothing short of incredible, a woman in as man’s world, inventing an entire new method to solve crime during a time when women’s voices were seldom heard.

Trigger warning: sensitive subjects, death, miscarriage 
 

Lauren Polli is a pathologists’ assistant from North Carolina trained in surgical pathology, autopsy, and making people laugh. You can find her in the hospital laboratory dissecting human body parts by day and on stage at a comedy club telling jokes by night.

Isabelle Drake is the fiction alias of Melissa Ford Lucken. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Boston College’s program at Pine Manor College and an MA in Special Education from Eastern Michigan University. She teaches creative writing and composition at Lansing Community College.

Minda and Jenna welcome Dr. Ben Alexander to the show to talk about man's best friend, dead or alive.  Everything you never knew about cadaver dogs, search and rescue and fraud in the body recovery industry.