Paranormal Pajama Party

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What do the White Witch of Jamaica’s Rose Hall and New Orleans tour staple Madame LaLaurie have in common? They're both infamous female figures in ghost lore, accused of monstrous violence during the era of slavery. But dig a little deeper, and a more disturbing truth emerges. Annie Palmer – the so-called White Witch – never existed, and Delphine LaLaurie’s real crimes were reshaped into gothic horror for public consumption. In this episode, we unpack how gendered narratives helped white societies displace guilt over slavery onto individual women.

Using the monstrous-feminine as a lens, we explore how these legends reflect colonial anxieties, racial taboos, and the fear of women wielding power. Why are Annie and Delphine the most famous symbols of slave-owning cruelty, while male perpetrators fade into obscurity?

Join Paranormal Pajama Party as we look past the ghost stories and uncover the systems that wrote these women into history as convenient villains.

Key moments

• 0:42 – A dutiful wife... and a murderess?
• 13:31 – From torture chamber to wedding venue
• 14:50 – The White Witch who never lived
• 18:26 – No villains needed – slavery was hell
• 22:53 – Delphine LaLaurie: monstrous and real
• 25:58 – When women become symbols
• 31:37 – The lady becomes a monster
  

If you’re enjoying the show, don’t forget to subscribe, rate and review Paranormal Pajama Party to help others discover it!
View all my sources for each episode and read the episode transcript here.
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Hillary Clinton and the Lizard People | 27

Put on your tinfoil hat and grab your favourite pantsuit – “Paranormal Pajama Party” is back! In the Season 3 premiere, Steph connects the dots between confused Victorian lemur scientists and modern-day conspiracy theories about lizard people running the world. (It makes more sense than you'd think.)

Join us for a wild ride through the peculiar world of reptilian conspiracies, where we discover how theories about shape-shifting aliens somehow wound up tangled with gender politics and presidential pantsuits. Steph digs into why powerful women like Hillary Clinton keep getting cast as everything from robots to reptiles – and what our monster-making tendencies reveal about society's complicated relationship with female leadership.

From David Icke's cosmic energy smoothies to Hollywood's hangup on sinister women in power suits, this episode unpacks how conspiracy theories reflect our deepest anxieties about changing power structures. It turns out that when marginalised people start climbing the political ladder, our collective imagination gets pretty creative.

Listen now for a fascinating exploration of gender, power, and why some people think our world leaders might need a heat lamp to survive.
Key moments

• 1:16 – The Lizard King
• 8:56 – Where the reptilian conspiracy theory came from
• 19:47 – Real-world consequences of the reptilian theory
• 30:15 – Examining Hillary Clinton's complicated feminist legacy
• 39:45 – Female politicians and the double bind
• 42:09 – Politics, gender, and pop culture

If you’re enjoying the show, don’t forget to subscribe, rate and review Paranormal Pajama Party to help others discover it!
View all my sources for each episode and read the episode transcript here.
Follow @ParanormalPJParty on Instagram or subscribe to the podcast's newsletter, Lights Out!

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This episode is the long-promised part two of our exploration of “The Fall of the House of Usher” by Edgar Allan Poe.

Poe was doing his thing In 19th-century America, at a time middle- and upper-class white women were being encouraged to join the "Cult of True Womanhood", which idealised women as pious, pure, submissive, and domestic, confining them to the private sphere while men dominated public life. It’s all very tradwife.

Tonight on the podcast, we’ll examine how this cultural ideal influenced Poe's portrayal of women in his stories, often reducing them to beautiful, passive reflections of male characters. Madeline Usher from "The Fall of the House of Usher" is a prime example of this characterisation.

This is particularly ironic because while Poe's fictional women were often two-dimensional, he was surrounded by and attracted to strong, independent women in real life. Make it make sense!

I’ve got bad news for the tradwives who aren’t allowed to listen to this blasphemous podcast: The constraints of True Womanhood paradoxically led to the rise of the “New Woman” and first-wave feminism.

Unfortunately, if you think female characters being used as set decoration for male characters isn’t still happening, you haven’t watched television, seen a movie or read a book recently.

We’ll wrap up tonight’s chat with a conversation about the ways women are still often used as plot devices or mirrors for male characters in contemporary horror and other genres.

Key moments:

• Recap of "The Fall of the House of Usher"
• Roderick as the brain, Madeline as the body
• Was Madeline Usher pregnant?
• The Cult of True Womanhood
• True Women, New Women, Suffragettes and "The Feminine Mystique"
• Contemporary examples of refrigerator women like Madeline Usher

If you’re enjoying the show, don’t forget to subscribe, rate and review Paranormal Pajama Party to help others discover it!
View all my sources for each episode and read the episode transcript here.
Follow @ParanormalPJParty on Instagram or subscribe to the podcast's newsletter, Lights Out!

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In this spine-tingling episode, we watch the 1962 psychological thriller "What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?" and dive deep into the hagsploitation film subgenre it spawned. When Hollywood legends Bette Davis and Joan Crawford found themselves discarded by studios as they aged, they turned to horror – creating a film that both exploited and empowered ageing women in cinema.

We explore how society's fear of ageing women transforms them into monstrous figures on screen. From Baby Jane's disturbing childlike makeup on an elderly face to the twisted sister dynamic, this film confronts our cultural anxieties about women who dare to age visibly.

The episode also unpacks the infamous feud between Davis and Crawford, Hollywood's persistent ageism, and why these "psycho-biddy" films found devoted audiences in queer communities. We trace hagsploitation's evolution from the 1960s to contemporary examples like "X" and "The Substance," revealing how little has changed in Hollywood's treatment of women over the age of 50.

Join us as we brush the cobwebs off this terrifying tale, shedding light on what makes ageing women both feared and fascinating in horror cinema.

Key moments

• 02:40 – "What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?" plot overview
• 07:35 – The birth of hagsploitation
• 10:52 – Hollywood's war on ageing women
• 14:39 – The double-edged sword of hagsploitation
• 19:51 – Abjection and the monstrous-feminine
• 30:28 – Screen queens and drag queens
• 32:40 – Bette vs. Joan
• 34:50 – Hagsploitation makes a comeback

If you’re enjoying the show, don’t forget to subscribe, rate and review Paranormal Pajama Party to help others discover it!
View all my sources for each episode and read the episode transcript here.
Follow @ParanormalPJParty on Instagram or subscribe to the podcast's newsletter, Lights Out!

Send me a text message!

5.2.24
Paranormal Pajama Party
Bloody Mary | 3

If you've been a preteen at a slumber party, chances are you've heard the chilling tale of Bloody Mary. Today, we'll dissect the origins of Bloody Mary and the various interpretations surrounding her name.

Bloody Mary, the spectral figure said to appear in mirrors when her name is called 3-13 times (it's unclear and not a risk I'm willing to take), has been a staple of sleepovers and late-night dares. While some might dismiss it as a simple game, we're taking a closer look into the mirror tonight, and into the possible inspirations behind this eerie tale.

One theory ties the legend to Mary Tudor, Queen of England, whose tumultuous life and reign left a legacy of fear and brutality. Other contenders include an accused Salem witch and infamous Hungarian serial killer Countess Elizabeth Báthory.

Beyond Mary's identity, it's interesting to learn why this game is so appealing to the 10-13-year-old PJ-party crowd.

Is it a ritual for girls anxious about the transition into womanhood? Or might she represent a way for young girls to reclaim a sense of power in a world where they often feel powerless?

Key moments

• 3:29 Who is Bloody Mary?
• 11:02 Why do we play?
• 14:42 The history of the game

Sources

• Bloody Mary story (Snopes)
• Bloody Mary (folklore) (Wikipedia)
• Bloody Mary: The Mystery of Ritual and Myth
• Janet Langlois, Confessions of a Legend Hunter in the U.S.A
• Janet Langlois (interview transcript)
• Dundes, A. (1998). Bloody Mary in the Mirror: A Ritual Reflection of Pre-Pubescent Anxiety. Western Folklore, 57(2/3), 119–135.
• The Forgotten Halloween Games That Predict Who You'll Marry—And When You'll Die
• ‘Bloody Mary’: Is an English Queen Behind the Haunting Urban Legend?
• The True Story Of Bloody Mary, The Woman Behind The Mirror
• The Salem Witch Trials Victims: Who Were They?

If you’re enjoying the show, don’t forget to subscribe, rate and review Paranormal Pajama Party to help others discover it!
View all my sources for each episode and read the episode transcript here.
Follow @ParanormalPJParty on Instagram or subscribe to the podcast's newsletter, Lights Out!