Celebrating Paranormal Women with Allison Jornlin
Pardon me while I have a strange interlude. But there is nothing else. Life is an obscure oboe bumming a ride on the omnibus of art. Among the misty corridors of pine, and in those corridors I see figures, strange figures. Welcome back, my friends, to the AP Strange Show.
AP Strange:I am your host, AP Strange. This is my show, and today's show is brought to you by doppelganger brand, double maker. So if you ever need a double of yourself to hang around temporarily, maybe you don't wanna go to work and you wanna send someone in your stead that can fool your boss, maybe you just wanna play a prank on your friends or your family. Doppelganger Doublemaker is the brand for you. So check that out.
AP Strange:And today on the show, I have a wonderful guest. We're gonna be celebrating some of the women in paranormal history today with Alison Jornlin. She's a writer and investigator, a tour guide and the woman behind paranormalwomen.com. I think, right? Did I get that right?
AP Strange:Yep.
Allison Jornlin:That's correct. Yes. And you know, full disclosure, I I have a family business with my brother, American Ghost Walks and and so yeah that's how I make my money these days. And I write tours. I seldom guide them these days except around Halloween sometimes I'm reluctantly pulled back into service.
Allison Jornlin:Not usually as a tour guide, although sometimes that happens, but libraries find me somehow. Yeah. And you know, call me to do public speaking, which I'm loath to do, but you know, I do my duty during spooky season.
AP Strange:Yeah. Yep. And you're based in Wisconsin, right?
Allison Jornlin:Yes. I'm I'm in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
AP Strange:Nice. Nice. Yeah. I mean, the the ghost tour company does sound like a lot of fun. And and, you know, as you said, you you can you can make money doing it.
AP Strange:So
Allison Jornlin:Yeah. Yeah. It is great to, you know, to be able to work at something that you love. And I love looking into history, especially spooky history. And I get to do that as a job and write about it.
Allison Jornlin:So I'm, you know, I'm very fortunate. It's not like, you know, I'm a multimillionaire because of it or even just 1,000,000. But Yeah. But it's, you know, it's a good gig if you can get it. So you know I'm very fortunate.
AP Strange:Right well when you're happy and you can do what you love being a thousand dare isn't all that bad. But in in juxtaposition to the the ghost tours, it seems paranormal women is more a labor of love for you because this is a free resource you have online. So Oh, yeah. Yeah. So I guess I wanted to get into a little bit of I saw that you also identify as a 14 and a Crowian, so I know that relates to Catherine Crow, but if you wanna get into a little bit of the impetus for paranormalwomen.com and maybe what inspired you towards that.
Allison Jornlin:Yeah, it it wasn't Katherine, it was, sorry, it was when I first really found out who Catherine Crow was, was I think about 2017. So we had been talking offline about a podcast that I used to have with my brother and his bad mate called See You on the Other Side. And so we interviewed Jeff Holder, who I don't know if you know who he is, but he's a funny guy. And you know, not just a funny guy. I mean, he's a paranormal researcher.
Allison Jornlin:I think he's funny because one of his books is like something like 101 Things to Do in a Stone Circle or something like that. A funny, witty title. And but we we interviewed him because of his poltergeist work, and I just love reading about poltergeists because, you know, they seem to defy defy, you know, some of those expectations we have about the paranormal and and the extremes that that they can seem to go and affecting our world and the people in it. So we were interviewing him and he mentioned Catherine Crowe as the first English speaking person. She was an English woman who brought the term poltergeist into English usage.
Allison Jornlin:And this was in 1848 in her book The Nightside of Nature, where she wrote a whole chapter on it in this book, The Nightside of Nature, which was a book in response to her studies. She was multilingual, and so she had been carefully watching what German researchers were doing at that time and just before her time, and how they were making such incredible discoveries on many fronts, but also in the paranormal.
AP Strange:And
Allison Jornlin:so she wrote a book about these discoveries, but then also brought in whatever stories she could collect from her English and social circle. So she was from England, but then she moved to Edinburgh in later life. And she was a prominent social figure. And so she was able to talk to some of the upper classes and get their stories that kind of corresponded to these findings that German researchers and physicians were making. And that's why she talks about she's the first in the English language to talk about poltergeist.
Allison Jornlin:And if you her up, if you look the word poltergeist up in the Oxford English Dictionary, you will find that she is indeed the first writer to use the English writer to use Poltergeist in her work. So when Jeff Holder mentioned that, I was I was like, I feel like I've heard something about her before. And then, you know, I started looking into her a little bit more, and I just found out she was almost uniformly maligned by writers of the paranormal themselves. Supposedly, in 1854, she became insane because of ghosts and was walking around naked in the streets of Edinburgh. It was a whole scandal thing.
Allison Jornlin:And, I was quick to find out though, when I dug a little deeper that what happened there was not insanity. And in fact, you know, she went on to, you know, almost two decades more of of fruitful writing. So I just wondered why there was a kind of this knee jerk reaction by people in the paranormal towards Katherine Crowe to just, you know, almost immediate dismissal. And to his credit, author Colin Wilson, wrote a lot of books about a lot of things, but he is known paranormal circles. He came out with his own edition of the Night Side of Nature and you know talked about how was, you know, before, you know, she was the godmother of the, you know, she was the mother of the paranormal, and then did give her that credit and talked about, you know, how he had panned her in the past and, you know, that that was from a lack of knowing.
Allison Jornlin:And, you know, now he embraced her as, you know, somebody who preceded the the other people that went into psychical studies later that she was quite a trailblazer who never really got her due.
AP Strange:Yeah I mean because she wasn't just collecting stories too she was kind of coming up with theories around it and that's very formative for how we've come to characterize things like poltergeists and doppelganger was the other word she was credited for bringing in from German as well. Right?
Allison Jornlin:That's correct. That's correct. So yeah, I mean, there's so much that she did in the Night Sight of Nature from 1848 that it's hard to crystallize it to just one thing. But I just think that you know people are so familiar in paranormal circles with the concept of the poltergeist that every time that word comes out of their mouth they should think about Kadzyn Kruel because she's the one who brought it to their attention and and why don't they know that.
AP Strange:Yeah. Yeah. I mean, usually if you see any explanation for it, it's just a translation or the where the word comes from in German, the noisy ghost. Yeah. But that you never really see attribution to her for using it.
Allison Jornlin:Right. And and it's it's it's interesting that that chapter was also about demonic possession, which you don't hear of, you don't seldom think of those two things together. I mean, I guess some people do, but it was interesting that her take on it, which you know, was a mirror of the German take on it, was that, you know, mesmerism, you know, hypnosis for all intents and purposes, you know, for our practical usage. Hypnosis could be used and was used by German researchers to reverse possession. That was one of the things I was really wowed about.
Allison Jornlin:You know, when you're reading older texts, you know, like nineteenth century text, eighteenth century text, the further you go back, you know, the more stilted the language is. And so it can be hard to comprehend or really grasp the significance. But these, things that Catherine wrote in the nineteenth century are available freely online, and you can plug them into voice readers, so that you don't have to get lost on the page. You can listen to it again and again and frankly to be honest that's what I did. I've listened to her books over and over again.
Allison Jornlin:So and she's she was a mystery writer, but her works that that should be significant to us in the paranormal are first eighteen forty five, her translation of Justinus Kerner's work, which is called The Serest of Prevost. I hope I'm saying that right. I don't really I'm not a great person at pronunciations. Let's just be honest and lay it all out. And then the nineteenth the Night Side of Nature was 1848 and then Ghosts and Family Legends and then Spiritualism and the Age We Live In, both came out around 1859.
Allison Jornlin:So, yes, 1859, she was still writing. She was even writing after that about scientific discoveries about seaweed. She had a varied interest. But it's important, you know, that I state that because after 1854, a lot of people seem to dismiss her as, oh, she must have gone to an insane asylum. Not true.
Allison Jornlin:Not true. She just kept on writing. And what happened there was really a baseless scandal. And there's a lot of reasons behind that. I did a whole video about it, but she contributed a lot, and then if you just go to Paranormal Women and you click on her, can just scroll down to the bottom, and if you want to click, you'll be able to download those texts right from those links and see for yourself if you don't believe me.
AP Strange:Yeah. Yeah. And that's the beauty of the technological age we live in is that you can PDFs are are a thing. You can grab those. Yeah.
AP Strange:Instantly have a new book in your library, which is
Allison Jornlin:pretty And even like project project Gutenberg. See pronunciation's totally off for me today. Project Gutenberg.
AP Strange:Just need to get away from the German names and words like that.
Allison Jornlin:I know. Just like too many German things. And then but but, hey, I'm German. So I'm not trying to bash the Germans at all. But I just don't want to do any of the pronunciation anymore.
Allison Jornlin:And I've also heard there'd be no math today, so I'm gonna count on that. No math and no hard pronunciations. But in addition to Project Gutenberg, there's archive.org, which is a A tremendous lot of these books that have been written by female researchers that I profile on paranormalwomen.com are freely available. And, you know, I think think we if we really care about the these mysteries that we collectively call the paranormal or parapsychology, we should be looking into the findings of these women. And it it only disadvantages us to dismiss them.
AP Strange:Well, I agree with you. And, you know, not to bring down the room at all, but for prior to our recording, I was thinking I was kind of we were talking about how, at least for my part, when I was exploring a lot of these paranormal mysteries, it seemed to me that a lot of it has to do with, human experience and the broad range of human experience, know. And I would think that you would need kind of an egalitarian approach to be inclusive of all the different kinds of experience to understand the phenomenon. So Yeah,
Allison Jornlin:why would you wanna limit yourself to just 50% of the experiences out there? Why would you be like, oh no, only what males say is a valid expression. I
AP Strange:mean Right.
Allison Jornlin:That doesn't make sense as a researcher. As a researcher, you want all the data that you can get your hands on.
AP Strange:Right. And beyond that, like good work is good work. It's a Yeah. And Catherine Crow goes to show that in at least modern paranormal writing, women have been there behind the scenes or front and center since the beginning.
Allison Jornlin:Yeah, and 've said that Catherine Crow is the first paranormal investigator, and I think people might push back on that, but let me clarify in saying that you know, in 1854, she conducted an investigation of a haunted house in Edinburgh, and she conducted it in a way that we would most would more clearly understand today than others that might be credited with paranormal investigation of the past, which were very religion based. Whereas Catharine Troll was trying to do this as scientific researcher. So she wasn't, you know, although if you read her works, you know, you can argue that she certainly was very influenced by Christianity, but that wasn't her foundation for this research. Whereas in the past, you know, people who have researched the paranormal have been doing so because they they thought that these ghosties and ghoulies were of the devil that they needed to be purged. I mean, I think a distinction needs to be made there and it's not like nobody ever looked around the corner and said what's that?
Allison Jornlin:And you know before Katherine Crowe or before other people on TV show like sure of course people were wondering what goes bump in the night but that's different than what we would today classify as a paranormal investigation. So it's in the details we have to focus on. So that's why when I say she was she was the first to conduct a paranormal investigation, I mean, that's where I'm coming from. That's what I mean.
AP Strange:Right, in the modern sense, something that we would recognize as such now. Yeah, and that was prior to the Society for Psychical Research even being around, right?
Allison Jornlin:That's right. And I think, you know, we so we're talking quite a bit before the recording, so I can't remember if I mentioned Colin Wilson during the recording or
AP Strange:You did, but that's fine. We love Colin Wilson here.
Allison Jornlin:Yes. Yes. Colin Wilson in his special edition of The Night Side of Nature, he called out that he gave Katherine Crow credit for being a progenitor for the Society for Psychical Research that he preceded her.
AP Strange:Right.
Allison Jornlin:I mean, she Yeah. Preceded
AP Strange:There wouldn't be an STR without a caption.
Allison Jornlin:Yes. Right. Exactly. Thank you for restating it in a clear way.
AP Strange:It's all good. Yeah. No. I do love Colin Wilson. I know that you wrote an article about him at one point too and I was thrilled because I'm like, man, he's one of my favorites.
AP Strange:I love that guy.
Allison Jornlin:Oh, did I? I don't even remember, but I I do like him.
AP Strange:So that
Allison Jornlin:makes sense. I'm like, I did what now? I've been a little distracted. We talked offline about, you know, the possibility at this time of recording that women could effectively lose their right to vote. And that's been occupying probably about 98% of my thoughts So I'm in a bit of a haze right now so and it's not like a purple haze or anything good like that so thank you for pulling pulling me out of it I appreciate that
AP Strange:right well I mean this is a timely conversation and of course I'm happy to to help you know because there's a lot of stuff that needs to be said and and women that need to be recognized but also just to help you out of a funk for a moment while we can discuss Yeah. I Google that you're enthusiastic about. Yeah.
Allison Jornlin:And then we have, in March, we have, we have the the month that recognize America's is women coming out. So I do plan some updates to the site for that. One of the things that has come clear in our conversation is, you know, I'm not the only woman who cares about women and the paranormal. Mean, it's been a growing movement. And before me, there were a lot of women in parapsychology, you know, like decades before, who had had been working on this.
Allison Jornlin:And so I'm going to make sure to include those resources in March, you know, so so people can, you know, really look back and really have all the resources at their disposal. But, you know, we one pair of psychologists that I'm I'm friends with is Nancy Zangroni, and she and her husband Carlos Alvarado really did have done a lot of work in the past in mainly parapsychology circles. So, it might not be not might not be well known in the paranormal because there's kind of like there's two silos, you know, and there's there's a paranormal and they don't, they don't like meet usually, but you know, hopefully we can break down those walls because there's a lot of people over on the parapsychology side that have been doing a lot of work to get the contributions of women recognized in the field. And so I'm gonna add some more pages to reflect that.
AP Strange:Right. And I guess they're part of you had mentioned before we started recording para was it para mooc or paranormal?
Allison Jornlin:Oh, yes. Okay. So maybe in your show notes, I can provide you some links for that. But yeah, Paramook is just a great general resource if you're interested in the state of parapsychology. MOOC, I know it sounds crazy, it's M O O C.
Allison Jornlin:MOOC is something that makes sense to people who are educators. So I was an elementary school teacher for thirteen years and but Nancy Zangroni, who was the founder of the Para MOOC, she still to this day teaches college courses. So she's very and she's been very involved in learning technologies for a long time. So MOOC is like something like massively open online classroom or something like that. And so she had the idea, like, about fifteen or so years ago, to found something called Paramook, which is every year she would have this free lecture series that anybody in the world could log on to.
Allison Jornlin:Yeah, was, know, when I'm from, you know, two, three weeks and there would be different lecture lectures from people in the international parapsychology community. So not only do you get to hear from women, but you're not just listening to Americans all the time. Not just people from The US, you're getting perspectives from Japanese researchers and South American researchers and of course, The UK and people from all around the world, anybody that she could find that was active in the field. So this was completely free and is not well known. So, yeah, if I I'll get you a link because because these old lectures are still available online.
Allison Jornlin:There's many of them on on YouTube and I'll search and I'll ask Nancy to make sure I get you the most up to date links but if you're really interested in parapsychology, I mean, this is a college lecture format. So, it's not going to be like, oh, giddy boogity like, you know, I love stuff like that. I'm a big Buffy the Vampire Slayer Stuff like that. And I love horror movies. And I, you know, but that's not this.
Allison Jornlin:This is something else you could love, which is like a college lecture. But, you know, they're talking about things that you might be interested in. If you can, you know, just get yourself ready for like an academic view of these phenomena. And then the cool thing is when Parent Mood comes around again, then when you're at a live lecture, there's like a chat on the side and then you can see people chiming in from all around the world and discussing these topics on the chat board and then also after the lecture is done you can have access and ask the lecturer questions live so it's just really a great free resource that is available to everybody. So, I'm all about that and I'll get you a link but yeah, I mean, we should be pushing towards more of these things.
Allison Jornlin:I mean, I make my living in the paranormal, so I understand the need to make money. But, you know, if you really love it, there's other other things that you wanna see, offered, and you want to make them as accessible as possible to improve the field. And that's what Paranormal Women is all about, is just to to tell you about these women and you know, give you links to their work so that you can read them yourself. That's it. It's pretty Yeah.
AP Strange:I'm all about the free resources online. It's amazing how much you can get for free out there people. So like.
Allison Jornlin:Right, yeah take advantage, take advantage of these opportunities to learn more about it. Because I can see that, you know, maybe get started as I did, you know, really, well, I think I started going to ghost tours and listening to Richard Crow, the Chicagoland's ghost hunter back when I was a little kid. My mom
AP Strange:No relation to Catherine, I assume.
Allison Jornlin:No, no. But funny that the names are are, you know, the same spelling and everything. But Richard Crow, he started haunted history tours back in 1973. He was one of the first, although there was a woman down south who preceded him by a few years. I forget her name, unfortunately.
Allison Jornlin:But but anyway, the one that was near me was Richard Crowe. And then my mom would gather me and my brother around the radio of Halloween because they would have Richard Crowe, Chicago's Ghost Hunter on WGN. And it's, I mean, thinking of consuming radio in that way makes me seem like I'm from the 40s or something, but I assure you this was the 80s when this was happening. Or, you know, the late 70s, early 80s, I think. Anyway so I think it really got into our blood because you know now my brother and I are running a haunted history tour company just because we loved it so much.
Allison Jornlin:So that's how I think I got started and then, of course, you know, all those and and then when I was an adult person going on a vacation, taking haunted history tours in places like New Orleans. And and then of course the ghost shows came on and I I you know I did like them for a brief time. But you know I think it's really easy to get burnt out on that stuff. And think that there's nothing more to this. There's no there's no substance there and that that's really there's nothing that could be further than the truth.
Allison Jornlin:I mean, there is a deep, deep well of knowledge that is available. If you know where to take your bucket and one of the places you can take your bucket, it is paranormalwomen.com and fill it up with, you know, all kinds of of life giving waters of knowledge.
AP Strange:Yeah.
Allison Jornlin:See, I'm trying to be fun. I'm I'm trying to like shrug off this you know, depression of the and be fun again because this is fun to me finding these resources that not many people are talking about and sharing them with people and making my own discoveries discoveries about you know what these women learned in their lives. Yeah. You know it's amazing to think about that.
AP Strange:Yeah and well that's one thing I've always enjoyed about your work is like you do present very cheerful and
Allison Jornlin:just Renee, go in. You should've heard us offline. Oh my god.
AP Strange:Yeah. Well, I'm trying to uphold your image here. You're just knocking it down.
Allison Jornlin:I know I get dark sometimes I go dark.
AP Strange:Don't want to
Allison Jornlin:be dark though.
AP Strange:But your enthusiasm comes through and your love of the subject matter always comes through when I hear you talk and I love that because that's what I try to put out in the world as well is like I get giddy reading about like paranormal history and stuff. Yeah. Because I just find it fun I mean it's super fun to learn about and as you said, there's kind of like a distinction between the parapsychological and like the paranormal where ones were more based on research methods and I feel like I kind of I was the opposite. I experienced paranormal activity as a kid and my free resource was my mother's copy of Mysteries of the Unexplained by Reader's Digest And that's where I first discovered the names JB and Louisa Ryan. And I was like, wow, like there's actual scientists that study this.
AP Strange:This is really cool.
Allison Jornlin:Yeah, is that the same as the Time Life series? I have
AP Strange:No. This is yeah. My I got the Time Life series too eventually, but Reader's Digest put out, like, a single volume that was all just an anthology. It it was just all excerpts, mostly. Little clippings and stuff from different I
Allison Jornlin:don't have that one. I'm glad you mentioned that I gotta add that to my collection.
AP Strange:It's so cool because I mean I start I read it the first time when I was maybe like I don't know 10 or younger and I've read it over and over cover to cover all my life and gone through several copies of it because they disappear sometimes. Reader's Digest eventually put out a couple more that were never quite as good as that one volume. But the Time Life books are great too. But Yeah.
Allison Jornlin:And then, there's also that, I think it's Osborne series That's from the somewhere on the shelf too. But it's, you know, getting that in later life and looking through it was really an amazing experience. The ghost one. There were, there were a couple other ones. There was one in UFOs that I think I have now and maybe one in monsters.
Allison Jornlin:I'm not sure, but I, vividly still have memories of the ghost one where I was paging through it and I saw some of the pictures in there the illustrations let's say the illustrations in there And it was such an eerie connection to my younger fourth grade self. To be able to see those illustrations and have it awaken something in me, like this memory of seeing them when I was, you know, nine years old or whatever. It's just Yeah. Thank you for helping me find the fun. I've been been that today.
Allison Jornlin:I appreciate. I appreciate that so so much.
AP Strange:Yeah. Well, of course. But I mean, for me that book, it was just like some of the pictures scared the hell out of me. And other ones, I always just was intrigued by, the first time I saw the picture, the sketch of the Flatwoods monster or like the surgeon's photo of Nessie, those just kind of like hit a sweet spot for me as a kid. The ones that scared me were like the spontaneous combustion photos and
Allison Jornlin:Oh, yeah.
AP Strange:Demonic possession. Those ones freaked me out.
Allison Jornlin:Yeah. Or in the Osborn ghost book, one of the photos was, I think, of the black shark, you know, like this big dog, and I think they they
AP Strange:They made him a cyclops for some reason in the.
Allison Jornlin:Yeah. Cyclops kind of figure and I just you know that that illustration really made an impact and the other one is there's a bear and and it talks about native American beliefs, spiritualist beliefs, and, they have a bear with, you know, gifts, you know, a hunted bear with gifts to it. And so that really, really had an impression on me as well wondering about that. Not the fear of the cycloption black shuck. It was another kind of thing, know, another kind of wondering that that brought on to me.
AP Strange:Yeah, yeah. I mean, sometimes they're just so bizarre. You can't stop thinking about it, know? Yeah,
Allison Jornlin:but it's just, you know, I'm 56 now. So it's like looking back to, you know, having any kind of connection to, you know, when you were nine is just amazing Right. To me as as an experience.
AP Strange:Yeah. Well, I was I was also very influenced by Ghostbusters when that came out. But Oh, yeah. And that's funny, it's just like I definitely had a moment as a youngster where I wanted to become a parapsychologist someday and then I was like, but you have to like have a degree in something. I don't know that I could actually do it.
AP Strange:Like I kind of downplayed myself. I didn't think that I was smart enough to go to school and get those degrees.
Allison Jornlin:Yeah, same here. Yeah, same here. I mean, that's why my brother and I didn't grow up to be a parapsychologist. Know, when we went into climate history, entertainment. Although I like to think of it more as like edutainment.
AP Strange:Yeah.
Allison Jornlin:Don't tell anybody.
AP Strange:Right.
Allison Jornlin:You might see that in the reviews though. This wasn't scary enough.
AP Strange:It was too educational. Yes.
Allison Jornlin:Oh, well, I'm sorry. That's what you get.
AP Strange:Do give people a pop quiz at the end of the tour?
Allison Jornlin:No, no, no, nothing like that. But it's like you said, there's certain things that fascinate you that you hope are fascinating for other people. And certainly there's blood and guts in there. You know, these primal things that bother us, but you know, there's also other things in there that are important.
AP Strange:Yeah.
Allison Jornlin:And I kind of maybe lean into those things a little bit more and looking, you know, in my my ghost tour writing work into more of like understanding and incorporating the spiritual and paranormal beliefs of other cultures and seeing what that teaches about us about ourselves. Yeah. Right. The woke tour. I know.
Allison Jornlin:They're really doing they get a lot of comments like that. So
AP Strange:Oh, jeez. Yeah. Okay.
Allison Jornlin:But yeah. But that's honestly what does it for me. Right?
AP Strange:Ghosts are pretty woke, man.
Allison Jornlin:The other. The other. Like, what is I want to understand the other. And especially if it's in these essential questions, these eternal mysteries, and what other cultures have thought about them in the past, and what answers we might find. Like what we were talking about before, why would you cut yourself off from knowledge?
Allison Jornlin:Okay, it's from a female. Okay, it's from another culture. Who cares? You want data. This is what we want if we wanna know the truth.
AP Strange:Yeah, yeah. And that's I've been ambling my way towards the person I wanted to talk about with this, but this is actually a good segue because you're right about Louisa Ryan
Allison Jornlin:Yes.
AP Strange:And all of the data that she compiled. Now for people that maybe don't aren't familiar, the Ryan Institute now came from programs at Duke University that JB and Eliza Ryan founded. And it's been my experience that JB gets a lot of attention and Eliza less so, but she was very accomplished and I'm happy to see her featured on your page. Yeah. And guess to what you were just saying where JB was more focused on the laboratory and what could be repeated in the laboratory setting, but she was collecting and collating data, huge dreams of data from out in the world.
Allison Jornlin:Yes. And this was not unusual for women to have that role. Know, there's also a page that I have about the Society for Psychical Research. And, you know, you hear about Eleanor Sedgwick's husband a lot. You don't hear about Eleanor Sedgwick, which, okay, I said there'd be no math, but I'm not gonna actually do math.
Allison Jornlin:I'm just gonna say that she was a mathematician. And in addition to being a psycho researcher. And, you know, her, it was her acumen in this area that helped them parse all the data that they collected. So, you know, you could you could say similar things about Louisa that she amassed the largest collection of spontaneous side cases ever gathered at the time. So, you know, she were where JB was more about, you know, being in the lab, you know, she helped bridge the gap between laboratory research and real life psychic experiences.
Allison Jornlin:So yeah, if you look at that page, you know, she wrote several books that are available going on to the bottom. You don't have to read all the other gobbledygooks. Like maybe just want to read what she wrote. So there's four books there. And I think they're
AP Strange:I all think I have physical copies of all of those, but I'm not sure. There might be one I don't have, but
Allison Jornlin:But these are all on archive.org. You can just read them for free and then you'll know all the details.
AP Strange:Yeah.
Allison Jornlin:So so if you if you wanna see some amazing details, you know, you can you can do that using free resources that are out there.
AP Strange:Right. Yeah. I like a sigh. What is it? That that that's
Allison Jornlin:Oh, sigh. What is it? The story of ESP and k 1976. Yeah.
AP Strange:Yep. Yep.
Allison Jornlin:Yeah. So a lot of this, you know, it's like I do it and then like you were saying, you wrote an article by Colin Wilson, did I? I don't know. But anyway, so I'm like looking over these women and, yeah, there's some I remember more than others. Like, you know, Rose Macinburg, who you mentioned online, she has some amazing adventures that she had.
Allison Jornlin:So Louisa is more of, she helped back up her husband, but also ground him in in real world psychic experiences.
AP Strange:Yeah. Well, it seemed to me more of a true partnership where I feel like it sometimes gets characterized as, like, she was there more for moral support or something. Like, she's just Yeah. Yeah.
Allison Jornlin:And you'll you'll find this a lot, you know, like with with Eleanor Sedgwick and where her husband see, now I'm doing it because I'm like,
AP Strange:what's her
Allison Jornlin:name again? Henry, right? I hope it's Henry. But anyway, you know, you'll yes, Henry Sedgwick. Okay, so you always hear about him and then there Eleanor.
Allison Jornlin:You know
AP Strange:Well back in those days That
Allison Jornlin:was true partnership.
AP Strange:Right. Back in those days they would have presented her as Mrs. Eleanor or Mrs. Henry Sedgwick. Know like that thing that they used to do back in the day where yes.
Allison Jornlin:Where you just zoomed into your husband, but I mean, it's still happening today. Like a female led podcast will, you know, know about like Henry, but not about Nora, for example, or know about JV and not about Louisa. But know, you talk to people who knew them, like some friends of mine, I mean Louisa was where it was at. People found JB to be brusque let's just say that and so it but they really resonated with Louisa and you know could relate to her.
AP Strange:Yeah, yeah and I mean as a pair they're foundational for our modern understanding of things like psy and psychokinesis and ESP and all kinds of parapsychological testable stuff.
Allison Jornlin:So yeah,
AP Strange:owe them a debt. But those were names that stuck in my head from childhood because I was, it inspired me. I'm like, that's something you can do as a scientist.
Allison Jornlin:Yeah, absolutely.
AP Strange:Yeah.
Allison Jornlin:So, but I wanna talk a little bit about some of these other figures like Rose Macinburg, because you said you had a local connection.
AP Strange:I did, yeah. Well, Rose Macinburg is a fun one and I wanted to throw this out there too. Like the the variety that you cover on Perinola women is really cool because Rose Macinburg falls more into like the debunker skeptical end of things.
Allison Jornlin:Yes.
AP Strange:But that's important too because that's part of the history. That's all part of it. So you can't like a lot of people get really upset about or dismissive of skeptics and debunkers and the more materialist thinkers. And it's like, well, you might consider their perspective, though. I mean, even if you don't agree with them, it's good that they're Yeah.
Allison Jornlin:Yeah. And and, you know, that's that's the other thing too is is I know this is harder because it's like, you know, sometimes the skeptical people are not that nice.
AP Strange:Let's just say. Oh, that's absolutely true.
Allison Jornlin:Yes. I just mean and treat you like you're stupid. But there are there are people in that movement like like Blake and Karen from from Monster Talk who are just have always been really kind to me. And then I think it's important, you know, for us to open up those lines of communication when you have people that really want to talk to you. And they are people from the other side of the aisle, I guess you would say, who want to actually talk about it.
Allison Jornlin:And I am able to see a lot of the criticisms they have are valid. And, you know, if you're really somebody who's interested in the serious study of the paranormal, then you see that it is important for us to police the field in that way. You know?
AP Strange:Yeah, mean, people that can eliminate fraud are doing us a favor, you know, saving us a lot of trouble, you know.
Allison Jornlin:Absolutely. So if
AP Strange:they're right about it, you know, that's
Allison Jornlin:the way that I try to look at it. Yeah. It's hard though, because, you know, you can see whichever side you're on. You can, you know, you can look at our political situation. You know, you give certain people the the you give certain people a lot of rope and the benefit of the doubt.
Allison Jornlin:That's what I was searching for there. Benefit of the doubt because they're more aligned with your opinions. You know, we gotta be careful and see when we're we're actually doing that. And and one thing I wanted to mention, you know, so so now and and I don't I don't think I have a page up about her yet, and I'm hoping that I won't be able to talk with her at some point, but Sally Rhein Feather is involved with the with the Rhein Institute these days, and she's the daughter of JB and Louisa. So Cool.
Allison Jornlin:And and she's had she's had influence on the The Rhine. So, it so if I don't have a page up about her, I need to have a page up about her. So, that's another person who, you know, in that lineage is who carried on the work that that we should look into or maybe just we look into and then we can come and read it or whatever but somebody's got to look into it is the point that you know these are these are people that are making valid discoveries and you know, we should know about them, not just know about the, you know, popular names who, you know, are more in the cult of personality than sometimes they are researchers. Rosa Magenberg, you know, I love Houdini. He did live here for three years in Milwaukee.
Allison Jornlin:And so I've done a little, like, local research on the addresses where he lived and stuff like that and stuff he did in town. And I really hope that one day he'll
AP Strange:have a step. He grew up in Appleton, right?
Allison Jornlin:Yes, he did. But he got his professional start in Milwaukee and so we should be as a city talking more about that and putting a statue up where Jacob Witt had his theater or what where it was probably, know, Houdini's first exhibition, although, you know, he was more of a of a acrobat at that time. So still, I mean it's important to talk about his stage beginnings. And I'm not trying to take anything away from Appleton. They have a
AP Strange:great
Allison Jornlin:museum that has a lot of stuff provided at Houdini, but I'm just saying there is a history there in Milwaukee that was pivotal as well. He was
AP Strange:an escape artist and he often said that his greatest escape act was getting out of Appleton, Wisconsin.
Allison Jornlin:Yes, and he didn't like to talk about Milwaukee because that was after his dad lost his job and they were in terrible poverty in Milwaukee for a few years. Lived at three different addresses. But anyway, he was an interesting guy, but you know the wind beneath Zippettini's wings was Rose McEnberg and people don't usually talk about her.
AP Strange:Right. I'm a big fan, so like I was familiar with her prior to reading your website. I remember findings of her on there and I'm like excellent. I love Rose Nachenberg, what a character, you know?
Allison Jornlin:Yeah, you know that she would dress up and there's some great old newspaper articles out there. And that's another thing I try to do. I don't know if I did that here, but but oh, no. I I do have
AP Strange:You have some photos anyway.
Allison Jornlin:Yeah. I have some photos, and I try to link to the sources as well. Like here I have, there's an interview with Rose McEnberg in the American magazine from 1937. And that's actually on archive.org. So I'd link that.
Allison Jornlin:But then another thing that I've been adding, because it's another resource that I have access to is newspapers.com, which I have to pay a subscription. And then there's other newspaper, lesser known, newspaper archives that have subscriptions to as well. And then, like a couple of them, including newspapers.com, will allow you to share the articles publicly. So if you drill down into some of these profiles, you'll be able to read more than just whatever my slapdash writing has to offer. But, know, really what I want you to read about is is what these people wrote when when possible.
Allison Jornlin:So that's usually at the bottom, but then sometimes throughout the articles, you'll find links to newspaper articles about these women. So that you can actually read the exact newspaper article that I read when I was writing this and get a little bit more information because I I have access to that and can I pay the subscription, but I can provide it to everyone for for free? That that was like, what? I can do that? And so that was, you know, I I should be I know there's a few of these women on there that have a lot of articles, and I should be searching around on those archives and putting a lot more links in.
Allison Jornlin:That's another thing for my to do list.
AP Strange:Yeah. Well, there you go. You'll get there. Yeah. There was one great article I found about her where she had exposed a medium that had like spirits would play a drum and she found out that they employed like a little person that would hide inside the bass drum.
AP Strange:Wow. There's a whole newspaper article about this and it had an illustration like showing how the secret compartment in the bass drum worked.
Allison Jornlin:Yeah, she had a lot of fascinating adventures and it's interesting to see what you know what the tricks of the frauds were. That's not to say that everybody in spiritualism was a fraud because you know if you look into the history of spiritualism it will amaze you how progressive the bulk of these people were and how things that we take for granted today like votes for women which hopefully will we will be able to maintain into November and forevermore and you know they were abolitionists they were really progressive people and you know we tend to dismiss them as idiots like well how could they think that this you know spirit in this photograph was real and and we're writing off for less substantial things so I mean I'm
AP Strange:not sure. Andrea Jackson Davis I think was an early one that was like a huge hugely for women's rights
Allison Jornlin:and Yeah. Yeah. So and and there's there's a a whole whole book on that. Can't remember the title right now, but it might come to me. But but
AP Strange:Yeah. So it's not like there were always bad people, but there certainly were bad actors in there, and some of them were just frauds trying
Allison Jornlin:to Radical Spirits is the name of the book that I would recommend. It's about women's women's rights and spiritualism. But but but anyway, so I'm not not trying to say that they're all frauds. You know, there were some really good people and they're probably on to something. Mhmm.
Allison Jornlin:But then, you know, there's always this urge of people to make money on something and you know there are a lot of people that don't care how they do it they just got to make the money so this is this is where the fraud enters in and we have to get that cleaned out and that's what Rose was active in but you said that she did something that might be characterized as a little bit underhanded.
AP Strange:To be fair, fraud is a great word because that was one of her pseudonyms. So for listeners like Houdini would debunk spiritualists and he often had to be in disguise when he showed up at their performances or seances because people would recognize him and they would just kick him out. So he had spies and Rose was one of them. But she would also wear disguises and use fake names. So in Worcestershire, she went by the name Francis Rod.
AP Strange:And it was like, so that her if you just use her first initial, it'd be f r a u d.
Allison Jornlin:Right. She has a lot of those plays on words.
AP Strange:So she was doing like spy stuff and being kind of obvious about it, but like people never picked up on it. And she she would go town to town and take courses, basically like a brief seminary course on how to be a spiritualist reverend. And then she would attain ordination from whatever spiritualist church, and then she would debunk them, and then like publicly. So in the case of my hometown, she bought the charter for the church. And I spent forever trying to figure out where the spiritualist church in Worcester, Massachusetts was, because I was thinking of a specific building, but they didn't seem to have a home really.
AP Strange:Like they had a charter and they had a congregation that would meet wherever they happen to have meetings. But she bought the charter for like $13 which was financed by Houdini and basically in the last two years of Houdini's life, was bogged down and embroiled in a legal battle with the spiritualist church of Worcester to get their charter back. And they never did. So, yeah.
Allison Jornlin:Yeah, so I'm not sure how to think about that. Too soon to be impeding them in a way that maybe was warranted, maybe not. It's hard to tell because we we weren't there. And, you know, certainly there there are people in spiritualism too, even from my home state of Wisconsin. Mary Hayes, China with another pronunciation obstacle.
Allison Jornlin:But anyway, Mary Hayes was, she's classified as a spiritualist, although she's not profiled on paranormal women because what I'm looking to do there, although I love to tell Mary Hayes story and I'm about to tell you it, why isn't she on there? She's not on there because she is someone to be studied. She's not, she's not the studier. So, I, what I'm trying to do with paranormalwomen.com is not muddy the waters here because a lot of times, the role of women, it's not that we weren't in the paranormal, mean we were, but we were the subject to be studied by the men. I'm looking for who are the women who are like I'm gonna do that you know like they weren't gifted they weren't psychics they weren't ghosts themselves there's no you know there's nothing spooky about them they're just they're interested in researching the researchers.
Allison Jornlin:So, I'm interested in profiling the researchers. That's why Mary Hayes isn't on there but I do need to mention her because she was a person who's been classified as a spiritualist. Although, what she really did is she believed she was in contact with the Holy Spirit, which I know people are dismissing it already. And I might have as well, except that she got tips from this this Holy Spirit that she called the power and this led her to invest in iron mines in part of the state and so from that she made a huge fortune and she actually moved eventually to California and spent a lot of money there and Sunsweet, Sunsweet, you know, the prudent people was established by one of her sons anyway she made all this money so people always say oh you know if they were really psychic they'd run the lottery well you can say that when it comes to Mary Hayes because she did like make this make this huge fortune and it wasn't in any way clear. In fact, she bought land where other prospectors had, you know, been through there and had given up like you know, inches away from the huge load of ore that she found.
Allison Jornlin:Anyway, she I'm mentioning her because she started a city here, Hurley, Wisconsin and she put like six of her minors through college so I mean and she was a healer too and she never took money because she didn't need to take money she got the money from the power. It gave her these tips, and then she gave this guy, Morris Pratt, a tip, and and but she made him promise that he'd give back to spiritualism, and then he created the spiritualist college in Whitewater called the Morris Pratt Institute. My point is, there is some there there when we're talking about spiritualism that, know, don't don't dismiss that so easily. Yeah, there's fraud, but there's always a little some real stuff there that, you know, has has yet to be explained. And that's another fascinating story, but I don't tell it on paranormalwomen.com.
Allison Jornlin:But she was an extraordinary extraordinary and a very generous woman.
AP Strange:Right. Well, mean, in Rose's case though, I mean, I think it was pretty fair with some of the people that she swindled generally you could buy a reverend ship. Wasn't really a training that went into it or a testing of your powers and sometimes you would be trained on slights and tricks and stuff so she could expose that the training itself was how to do the magic trick to make it look like you're doing a seance.
Allison Jornlin:Yes. You know?
AP Strange:And some of those people are really problematic too. I mean, there's descriptions of leaders of certain churches just kind of, you know, basically sexually harassing her during the training as it were or vetting her for the position, you know.
Allison Jornlin:Right, so this is one of the situations in life where it's very complicated.
AP Strange:Right.
Allison Jornlin:Know, Everything's not complicated. Black and it's not black and white for sure. There's bad actors on both sides.
AP Strange:Yeah, because I love Houdini, but I also believe it's possible to talk to spirits. You know, I'm not like, I'm not such a fan that I think that he was right about everything. I tend to believe that Houdini even believed it was possible, but he just had never seen an example where it was true, right?
Allison Jornlin:Yeah, and he had really bad experiences. And this can happen to any of us when we're dealing with the other is we have these bad experiences which become very formative for us. And that for the rest of our lives colors sometimes very unfairly what we think about the other.
AP Strange:Right.
Allison Jornlin:So we gotta keep that in mind that there, you know, there is no clear cut lines it's all very very muddy and complicated and there's stuff to be appreciated from all of these perspectives
AP Strange:yeah and sometimes being brokenhearted about something or disillusioned or having a bad experience with an individual or a subject will it's a matter of what you do with it. It can be pretty formative to how you how you approach things later. Know, you realize these things are very complicated and sometimes you have to be a little bit forgiving. Right.
Allison Jornlin:And then, you know, in my, know, I'm not gonna go in detail, but in my own investigations, you know, I've run into some bad actors and, but I was saved from going completely the other way, like running into the arms of Richard Dawkins or whatever.
AP Strange:Right.
Allison Jornlin:Because, I had had my own experiences which I cannot to this day explain and I can't just like write them off you know there they were enough of an experience of that happened in regular waking life you know, and I altered in any way and the weird stuff happened, know, there were experiences like that, that I had that I still, you know, there's no way that you could be honest and dismiss them as a mistake or nope. There's something mysterious there. I don't know what it is, but it ain't right. It ain't normal. It ain't something that happens every day.
Allison Jornlin:Right? So we gotta be honest with ourselves, you know, about that. Yes, there is fraud. There are bad actors but there is also something real there that you can discover but you know, it's gonna take a lot of patience. You might not have any experiences for like, let's say, twenty five years and then you finally have another one.
Allison Jornlin:You know, it it's, that's how long you can take.
AP Strange:Yeah. And it's not, it's not, it's not on demand, unfortunately. So
Allison Jornlin:No. Yeah. I'm gonna I would subscribe to that streaming service if I could get on demand psychic experiences. That would be great.
AP Strange:Oh, I I smell I smell a future big sponsor for the show. So
Allison Jornlin:That's right. Yeah. Like, we should probably talk about too, you know, something that I've struggled with. It's really hard to find researchers who are from other cultures and, you know, just aren't white women. Mean, you know, so, okay, Rose was Jewish and but, you know, there's Zora Neale Hurston, there's Laheyenae, a gay from Hawaii, but you know, I'd really like to mention it because, you know, maybe there's somebody out there that has more names of people that I could look into.
Allison Jornlin:Right. Because I don't want it to be all white women is my point.
AP Strange:Well, Zora Neale Hurston is a really fascinating person. You do cover her. So
Allison Jornlin:Yeah. Yeah. And then Lahey, she she's was fascinating fascinating too. Too. She's more of a recent figure and she actually did a lot to try to improve indigenous people's rights and was brutally executed for it in 1999.
Allison Jornlin:So, you know, she's she's not well known and, you know, I've been to the Bishop Museum in Oahu to, you know, get some information about her and, you know, there there's only so much that I can share until I go back to the Big Island. We were talking about that earlier with, you know, go visit Jeremy, but then also her husband, still lives there. And, he's offered to, let me see her collection and stuff like that. Her unpublished manuscript, although I was able to get a copy of it from the Bishop Museum, they don't allow me to share it. So okay well how am I going to be able to share her work you know like I do for for others so that that's one where I have like a bunch of articles about her at the end
AP Strange:So what kinds of paranormal subjects did she cover?
Allison Jornlin:Well, she covered mostly Pohaku, which are the sacred stones of Hawaii. So in Hawaii, there's something called the Amakua, which is a ghost essentially. We don't, we don't like, Westerners don't recognize it as Amakua as that right away, but it's an ancestor. So it's a ghost. And then the ancestors in Hawaii can choose how they want to come back and then some people choose to come back as stones and protect the land.
Allison Jornlin:And then so she went around first had a seven year quest where she went around to try to document all of Hawaii's sacred stones on film. And she had she had, you know, photography exhibit, her husband still has that material. And she wrote a book about it, and she wrote she wrote an article in an anthropology journal as well about it. So I shared what I could. She's somebody that's important to talk about because, you know, she was unfortunately murdered when you know, in South America when she went to help with the situation.
Allison Jornlin:She was executed by rebels. Maybe. It's
AP Strange:very hard.
Allison Jornlin:The oil companies were involved. But anyway, so that that's one where there's a lot of there's a lot to be said there. Not sure how well I can say it today, but it's a it's a person that I'd like people to to know about.
AP Strange:Yeah, for sure. I'm
Allison Jornlin:sorry. Go ahead.
AP Strange:It goes to show how high the stakes are, especially for women and especially at different points in history. I mean, I was gonna say about Macinburg is that she was also kind of, I think, did investigative reporting and private investigation outside of spiritualist stuff. And that's like, you know, she's putting herself in danger. And like, Alexandra David Neal, who you cover as well, is like a world traveler and climbing up Himalayas, you know.
Allison Jornlin:Yeah. And eating like boot leather and stuff.
AP Strange:Right. Being totally immersed in the mountain life and Yeah. Tibetan culture. But But yeah, I mean, some of them do actually die for it too. They die for the colleagues that they're fighting for.
AP Strange:Absolutely.
Allison Jornlin:Yeah. So we don't have to talk extensively about these people, but I might wanna mention them to just encourage people to go to the website, see more about this person.
AP Strange:Yeah, these are teasers. Go read about Alexandra David Neal because she's great. Yeah, yeah, Well I did wanna touch on because we mentioned her prior to starting the show somebody that you actually knew and had a chance to get to know is Linda Godfrey because I always thought she was great. I love her books and I I love her drawings, the beast of Brae Road, like a lot of the creature stuff that she covered was was wonderful. So I don't know if you wanted to to discuss her a little bit and just Yeah.
AP Strange:Her influence. Because you come with her on the site as well. She's one of the more recent ones. Yeah.
Allison Jornlin:Yeah. We yeah. We can get into it. Yeah. So she was a personal friend of mine, and we used to joke that she was my agent because she would often when she saw that I'd gotten involved with investigating the Chicago Mossman situation and got some flack for it.
Allison Jornlin:She she really, like, just came to my aid. And so then, anytime she was called in to speak about the Beast of Bray Road or the Dog Man, she would say, Hey, I've got somebody else for you too.
AP Strange:Right.
Allison Jornlin:Have you heard about Allison Jornland? So we used to joke that she was my agent. So it really broke my heart to have to add her to the list. But I mean, she, of course, deserves to be on the list. But, yeah, that that's one that it's really personal for me and, like, putting her on there was like, you know, can't believe I had to do that.
Allison Jornlin:I thought that she'd be alive for a lot longer than she was.
AP Strange:Yeah. Yeah. I mean, she sadly passed away, what, three years now, three or four years ago? It feels
Allison Jornlin:like just yesterday. But but, yeah, she she had Parkinson's. And so, yeah, she she was taken too early. But, yeah, she she was a big inspiration to me. And you know, like when I was just learning, you know, how to be part of the paranormal world, know, she was out there being interviewed on TV speaking at events where I saw her talk and and so yeah I really thought like wow you know I could be doing something like that you know she really inspired me to to want do that.
Allison Jornlin:Help me to do it more than anybody else has.
AP Strange:Got you some gigs.
Allison Jornlin:And actually getting me paid gigs. Oh my god. Yeah. She was a she was a quite a quite a awesome person and she had me over, like we'd have girls night, where we'd watch spooky, like, videos and then, you know, she'd she'd make me brownies, and and I'm gluten free and vegan, so I let's just say I'm a little difficult, if you haven't already noticed. But you know she it just shows you know to what level she's able.
Allison Jornlin:She she wanted to go is to bake brownies and and and pancakes for me and stuff like that. It just meant a lot because I knew I'm a lot. And so, she was really, it's Kevin, a friend of ours, a mutual friend of ours, he called her the den mother of Wisconsin researchers. And
AP Strange:she
Allison Jornlin:was really like a kind of a paranormal mommy, if I can say that, you know, I just felt like she really cared about the people around her in the paranormal field and, you know, would go out of her way to help them and be friends to them. So, that I I you know, I don't even know what I, I mean, I know I wrote a a blog about her and then I wrote something about her for paranormalwomen.com in addition to that but yeah, I didn't, you know, I didn't think I put too many personal things in the what's on paranormalwomen.com, she deserves to be on there.
AP Strange:Oh yeah, absolutely and I think she kind of put Wisconsin on the map for some people, you know, like.
Allison Jornlin:Oh definitely, yeah.
AP Strange:A lot of people talk about weird Wisconsin now, it seems to be having a moment these days.
Allison Jornlin:Yeah, yeah.
AP Strange:She has an awful lot to do with that, so yeah.
Allison Jornlin:Yeah, so yeah, she was pivotal in that and because I think a lot of people just consider us a flyover state And then she's like, it's like not for the paranormal. We got werewolves up in here.
AP Strange:You know?
Allison Jornlin:Don't you
AP Strange:Well, it's one of my favorite one of my favorite things that's ever happened in a paranormal story was when when she was investigating the Bray Road beast and went to see the animal control officer and he pulls out a werewolf file.
Allison Jornlin:Yeah. You gotta The
AP Strange:way she would describe it where she said, you got a middle of a file and just said werewolf.
Allison Jornlin:You you mean officer officer John Friedrichsen's Right. Or Fredricksen's? Yeah. Fredricksen's werewolf folder.
AP Strange:Yeah.
Allison Jornlin:I'm recreating what I wrote because I don't remember. But anyway, yeah, that was that was she's she's like goes to uncover the story. So, yeah. When you get a folder, you know, a folder does not seem that interesting unless it has a a label like werewolf on it.
AP Strange:Well, what I love too is the animal control officer guy, Fredrickson, is that his name was? He just seemed so nonchalant about it. He's just like, oh, yeah. I got a folder on that.
Allison Jornlin:Yeah. John Fredrickson had a folder containing six credible reports of a seven foot tall bipedal canine with glowing eyes. Boy, this is fascinating. You all should get on the site, paranormalwebinar.com and read it.
AP Strange:There's so much cool stuff on there, guys. Check it out. Okay. Yeah. Yeah
Allison Jornlin:and so so we had we we had just mentioned Alexander David Neal a bit and I I don't know if it was in our recording or not but so she was she was an awesome person that you know just had this wanderlust and you know from when she was a little kid she was actually Belgian from Belgium, so Belgian French, I guess you would call her explorer. So, you know, this is somebody who took whatever resources she could to investigate the paranormal in another culture. So yes, she's European, but you know she tried just like with Catherine Crowe who tried to bring German findings into the English speakers. She spoke French and then she's got, like, 35 books. And I haven't even I don't even know if they're all translated.
Allison Jornlin:But
AP Strange:She lived to be almost 100. Right?
Allison Jornlin:She she did live to be 100. And you know, there's there's another woman on this list, a parapsychologist who also I was like, what the heck? This is a be a be a paranormal woman. That's a you could could maybe live to 100. But anyway, yeah, it looks like I need to put a link on here, which I will, because the theosophist who I said right that time so although I think I made an argument here that she was not a theosophist, she was theosophist adjacent, as a friend of mine would say.
Allison Jornlin:So there is today, one of their websites, I'm going to stop saying the word because I don't want to fall into it anymore with One of their Theosophy websites has link to one of her books, which is Magic and Mystery in Tibet. So that I would really encourage not only is it an adventure book, but there's so much paranormal stuff going on in there. And all anybody seems to talk about is the TULPA, which is important because I didn't look it up in the OED. So I don't know if she's the first one to use it in English usage, but she's probably one of the first to use this concept of the TALPA, which has been argued about even on the X Files. And so, but the point is we have this concept today in Paranormal Understanding, which it was Alexander David Neal that brought about.
Allison Jornlin:So I would really encourage people to read that book for her own stories about the but her own creation of the Talpa. But there's also amazing stories in there about other Talpas that were created by other people, you don't usually hear those stories or different stories from Tibetan culture about monks manifesting themselves after death and stuff like that. So there's just so much in there. There's something in there about this spot in your head that can bring on instant death. Or it was a sound that you make, which makes me think of dune and everything like that.
Allison Jornlin:There's a sound
AP Strange:that you
Allison Jornlin:could make that could bring on death. And I think the monks used that for humanely putting somebody out of their misery or whatever. Not clear on what it was. But anyway, read that part because that part's fascinating about them. Trying to learn to intone this death chant without killing themselves.
Allison Jornlin:There's just stuff in there that's so funny when you know give it a chance so
AP Strange:Yeah, I'm sucker for any kind of like Eastern mysticism stories of like crazy paranormal stuff because the only book that's like even close to magic and mystery in Tibet is the autobiography of a yogi by Paragavasya Yogananda because you get a lot of these like the Hindu stuff is very similar but one that you mentioned on your website that I love from magic and mystery in Tibet is like the paranormal running, I forgot what they call it but it's like almost in a sleep state and they're not even it doesn't look like they're even touching the ground but they're covering like huge distances.
Allison Jornlin:Yeah. It's a long pong runners or something like that. I'm trying to find it on But it's it's it's something akin to it's something akin to levitation. So she has a levitation section. She talks about, you know, practices to encourage levitation, and then she has these certain runners, Lumpang runners, I think, again with the pronunciations.
AP Strange:Yeah, you could see them from a long way off and it looks like they're just like skating along and running over rocky And
Allison Jornlin:you hardly hear anybody talk about that. You know? Yeah. You hear all all of the stuff about her country and her own TULPA and stuff like that. And nothing about these Lumpang runners who you know run across these vast distances and then then she's so funny and then she's like okay I'm going to stop this guy and find out what's what and then, you know, her her handlers are like, no.
AP Strange:Yeah. You'll kill him.
Allison Jornlin:You could end up killing that guy and and you know, the the thing about the when they're learning how to do it, how they have to tie themselves to a rock so they don't float away.
AP Strange:I mean,
Allison Jornlin:this is a great book and I'll I'll like I said, it looks like one of my goofs is not putting a link to that, but I will do so. So that people can read it or put it in your voice reader and have some voice read it to you. But anyway, she's fascinating. I'm sure there's a lot more there, maybe that hasn't even been translated and stuff that I'm forgetting that maybe I've talked about elsewhere. But she has a lot of amazing stories.
AP Strange:She wrote some fiction too. So, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Allison Jornlin:And then Zora Neale Hurston, another fiction writer I also profile who I would suggest people look into. Her book about mostly about Haitian voodoo was Tell My Horse. And I would just suggest you read that now. There's some just amazing stories in there, really funny stories and really terrible stuff too, you know, obviously I'm a vegan and
AP Strange:don't know about Animal sacrifices usually.
Allison Jornlin:Yeah, I'm an animal rights activist and in no way I'm like condoning animal sacrifice, but you know, it's okay for you to know about it, You know, she details it in in a excruciating yeah. To give give gives an excruciating look into animal sacrifice. So let me just warn you on that. Try to skip past that, into these extraordinary stories that she has in there, about her travels around Haiti. And also, she talks a little bit about her time in Jamaica there as well.
Allison Jornlin:She looked into voodoo practices of Zama vacation, which isn't really as paranormal as it sounds. I mean, she thought that it was a drug. And Wade Davis, wrote The Serpent and the Rainbow, in that book, credits her for her early work and trying to uncover what the recipe for zombification was. And she actually wrote for some academic folklore publications about the African diaspora and African American and other African communities use of plants and, you know, the incredible pharmacopeia that they they created and used. So there's a lot to say about her.
Allison Jornlin:I mean, she had some amazing stories about like some paranormal weirdness that happened to her. Here's one that's not as violent, which is really funny, and it's from Jamaica. So she was up in the mountainous areas of Jamaica where the Maroons had escaped slavery. Don't ever call anybody a Maroon as an insult because that's who you're insulting. Anyway, incredible people that escaped slavery and went up into the mountains and wooded regions of Jamaica, you know, she went and visited a lot of these people.
Allison Jornlin:Then there was this one guy that she what she called me? I think she calls him a witch doctor or something like that. She's And having these detailed conversations with him about the incredible pharmacopeia of the culture and what he knows about it and his uses of certain plants and everything like that. And she's really frustrated because it's at night, and there's all these jungle frogs that won't shut up. And so she can't hear them.
Allison Jornlin:And at one point, she just lets out in frustration I wish those frogs would shut up and he's like really? And she's like yeah and then he's like okay she's like what? And then he stands up and he makes a motion towards the, you know, the jungle below and they all stop, like instantly. And then they're able to have their conversation and she's like what the hell just happened here and then she you know they talk for a while longer and then it's time to go and he said okay I'm gonna leave now and you'll see me walking down the road and I'll lift up my arms or whatever and then I'll start the frogs back up again and she watched him walk down the road lift up his arm and the frogs went right back to it so
AP Strange:that's amazing
Allison Jornlin:that's to me is like worth the price of admission. Read the whole book.
AP Strange:There's
Allison Jornlin:tons more stories like that. And you know, I have to say that, you know, a lot of these people, let's just face it, on my website, are white women. Okay? Like, some of them are, you know, they're not all from The USA, you know, some of them are European, but, you know, I'd like to have a lot more cultures on there. And it's tough because, you know, there's people like Maria Sabina who ushered in our knowledge psychedelics, you know, via magic mushrooms, for instance.
Allison Jornlin:But that's not again, you know, she doesn't meet my researcher requirement. So I can't tag Mama Maria Sabina on there. I I'm looking for women who researched the paranormal in some some in some way. But, you know, I don't want them all to be, like, a certain way. You know like and you know like Shafika Karagula you know she she she was just related to George Norrie by the way but she was she's Lebanese I believe so you know they're not all white women but I need help so I'm just saying out to the public hey help me out if you know something that should be on
AP Strange:the suggestions
Allison Jornlin:along, Send suggestions along really I just want you know I want to provide the information and if that's what you want to please please you know let me know just reach out to me at infoparanormalwomen dot com and you know be glad to to research them and put them on the list.
AP Strange:No I think this is all very valuable work that you're doing and it's great to have these resources out there for free no less. And as we've been saying throughout the show, lots of interesting stuff on there people. Go check it out.
Allison Jornlin:Yeah, absolutely. Don't prevent yourself from getting all that knowledge of the paranormal into your head that you can. There's there's some incredible stories out there that you're missing out on if you don't. So, this is some paranormal FOMO coming right up in your face. Go to paranormalclubmin.com.
AP Strange:And, do you have anything else that you're working on in the near future? I know you want to expand this site and work on it some more and add some more names, but, and any other projects or public appearances or places on social media where people can find you?
Allison Jornlin:Well, you know, I do work at americangostwax.com. It's our family business where I work with my brother. And yeah, we have tours in eight states, Puerto Rico and St. Thomas and The Virgin Islands now. So I continue my work on different destinations.
Allison Jornlin:So and when I research, I go into a deep dive. And then as far as as far as appearances I try to limit those as much as possible but you might say see me locally at a library and you know if people invite me to speak at conferences, I generally comply. But I am a bit of a hermit, truth be told. But you know, I do play well with people once I actually once you actually get me out there.
AP Strange:Yeah.
Allison Jornlin:But you might need to drag me for the, you know, like just the first few miles. And then I'll be I'll be per personable after that. I I
AP Strange:Well, you'll be complaining about it on the way there, but once you're there, you you'll have fun, right?
Allison Jornlin:That's right. That's right. I usually don't hide in the hotel room too much.
AP Strange:Okay. And where can people find the are there is there any social media you'd like to direct people to or just stick to the website there?
Allison Jornlin:Oh, man. Well, my social media today are these days mostly political trying to make sure I don't lose my right to vote. So I haven't really been talking about anything fun on there as of late, but I would just say, hey, check out paranormalwomen.com and just look at the free resources. I'll be adding more and I'll be fixing what links are that need to be fixed. But anyway, just initiate conversation.
Allison Jornlin:Tell me somebody I should have on there they don't have on there. If you find a problem with the site, you know, email me infoparanormalwomen dot com. Just start a conversation and, I will respond.
AP Strange:Excellent. Sounds great. So, well, thank you very much for coming on the show, Allison. It was wonderful to finally meet you and talk to you.
Allison Jornlin:Yeah. Thanks so much for having me. I I hope this was of interest to someone and will will be helpful. This information will be helpful to somebody out there.
AP Strange:Yeah.