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Megan Mary: Welcome today. We have a very special episode for you. For Friday, the thirteenth.

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Megan Mary: I have a very special guest, and today it I have with me Leanna Renee Hieber. She is an actress, ghost tour guide, and award winning author. Hi! Thanks for having me here with you. Welcome Leanna.

Leanna Renee Hieber: Hi, thank you for having me here with you.
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Megan Mary: Yes, and I am so glad to have discovered your book. A Haunted History of Invisible Women, True Stories of America’s Ghosts.

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Leanna Renee Hieber: Thank you. Yes, I. This book has been

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Leanna Renee Hieber: such a labor of love. It’s Co. Authored with Andrea James, who founded New York’s Premier Ghost Tour Company Boroughs Of The Dead 10 years ago this year. So and I was her first employee.

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Leanna Renee Hieber: So when an editor came on to one of my ghost tours and said, You know I love your fiction, Leanna, but you really need to think about doing

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Leanna Renee Hieber: a book of real ghost stories, I thought, oh, well, that’s great. Let me bring in my boss into this, because

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Leanna Renee Hieber: the way I approach giving a ghost tour is very much informed by a very mutual exploration of ghosts and history that Andrea and I are very passionate about core. Our core mission is respect for the dead, first and foremost, and everything else, all the uncanny things, all of that is secondary, because respect for the dead is first and foremost, so that in line with a book about women’s history which, as we know as women, has been fraught.

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and has often been violent.

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Leanna Renee Hieber: The reason this book was created was because of this interest. In from this editor, which was merged with interest for Andrea’s Women’s Focused ghost tours. And so this book really came out of that, a mixture of just editors and authors at the right time looking and seeing if anyone had actually addressed women’s history issues and ghost lore together, and no one had done

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Leanna Renee Hieber: sort of a feminist examination of ghost stories from from the perspective of the women who who then became ghosts, and we just realized that there, you know, were so many misconceptions about some really famous ghosts, and then a whole bunch of things about not famous ghosts that we discovered along our our journey, and so I’m excited to share some of that with you, and what the very interesting paths that happen when you as the spiritualists would say, let the spirits move.

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Megan Mary: Yes, yes, I was so excited to see the compilation of all the stories that of course.

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Megan Mary: many of us have heard over the years, and and knew a little bit about the myths, but I just loved the aspect of it, putting it all together, and I also loved your introduction. There were so many things in there that you said that really resonated with me one of them was your lifelong quest to examine whispers across the veil, and if that doesn’t define me, I don’t know what does.

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Leanna Renee Hieber: So I was like, oh, yes, highlighting, highlighting.

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Megan Mary: Yes. And so I really appreciate that. A lot of people, know that. Listen to my show that I take a very spiritual take upon life.

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and that I have always been fascinated with the mystical realm and things that are unseen, and particularly Halloween, of course, was my ultimate favorite time of the year favorite holiday, and it was because

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Megan Mary: I knew that that was the one day that the veil was thinnest, and that that was the day that everyone else kind of would acknowledge that rest of the year. They don’t wanna hear about that. They don’t wanna think about spirits around us. They don’t wanna think about us being spirits. They don’t wanna think about the ability to communicate with them or any of that, because it’s destabilizing. They’ll just entertain it

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Megan Mary: that one time of year. And I really just wanted that day to be every day so

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Leanna Renee Hieber: right? Right. I mean, it’s one of the reasons why I was so drawn to Goth. I’ve been a Goth since I was a teenager, because that was a space where I could bring these aspects into conversation, and no one would

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Leanna Renee Hieber: be as surprised as they were if I wasn’t kind of letting you know right off the bat. Hi, I like to talk about things that people would consider spooky. And I wanna normalize that. And that’s kind of one of the great things about Goth has a subculture, is it really has allowed for there to be conversation, and so like this visual cue

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Leanna Renee Hieber: in some ways has opened doors that that not

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Leanna Renee Hieber: dressing all in black might be more surprising for folks, which has been an interesting aspect of of of the this work. And then, when you mentioned that you’re a ghost tour guide. No one is surprised by you talking about spirits, but you you kind of all like you’re saying it has to be sort of this caveat

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Leanna Renee Hieber: almost every time there has to be something that allows for that door to be open. because it still isn’t

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Leanna Renee Hieber: okay in average everyday conversation.

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Leanna Renee Hieber: It’s we’re still. This country is really difficult with its discussion of death. And yes, we’re making progress. Things like the order of the Good Death and in death positivity as a movement is making strides on being able to talk about these things. But then, when you start

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Leanna Renee Hieber: actually talking about ghosts.

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Leanna Renee Hieber: People are either afraid, or they wanna be entertained, or both. They wanna be scared and or entertain. But what about actually the positive ghost stories. What about the ghost stories of your loved ones that when they appear to you are comforted by them. That’s the stuff

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Leanna Renee Hieber: that gets to me.

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Leanna Renee Hieber: That was my first ghost story. When I was 6 years old, the ghost of my great grandmother, who I am named for

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Leanna Renee Hieber: she came to me

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Leanna Renee Hieber: spoke through me at the time of her passing, when she was hundreds of miles away. So I went into a rapsotic ode, a trance.

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Leanna Renee Hieber: using words I’ve never been taught.

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Leanna Renee Hieber: and I’d had a horrible fever and my fever broke as I went into this kind of

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Leanna Renee Hieber: state and and that was the time that my great grandmother had passed. So this is one of those things where this this work

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Leanna Renee Hieber: chose me. And and I’ve just been trying to honor it ever since. It’s been definitely been a meandering path as as working with spirit. I know you know this as working with spirit at all is is always a wandering path.

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Leanna Renee Hieber: And and sometimes we fought. We fought it along the way. How much I wanna be open to it or not? Not really dependent.

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Leanna Renee Hieber: Everybody will come into it at their own time if they want to.

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Megan Mary: Yep. And the other thing that you said in your introduction that I liked was they are of us, and we all may someday become them. And that’s really.

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Megan Mary: I think the part of

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Megan Mary: talking about that that people don’t want to accept right. And I have always been. I don’t know if it’s because I’m a Scorpio or an introvert, or what it is. But I’ve always been just like asking those big, existential questions, loving to have those deep, dark discussions loving to delve into the things that a lot of people don’t want to talk about.

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Megan Mary: And I pretty much live in that shadow inner world. That’s where I dwell. Yeah. As a cancer. I really feel you.

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Leanna Renee Hieber: So yeah, as as a cancer right on the cusp of Gemini. Yeah, yeah, there you go. Yeah. You mentioned my favorite 2 words existential questions. So that’s that’s actually the mentioning my introduction. And it’s and it really is like that for me has been my animating force

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Leanna Renee Hieber: since I can remember, it’s there are those things. And I really feel like

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Leanna Renee Hieber: working in

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Leanna Renee Hieber: the edges of what would be considered the paranormal is is the way in which we can actually continue to have these kinds of discussions rather than it just being a philosophical prompt. What if it’s actually a human prompt? And what if we actually use real people to talk about it.

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Megan Mary: Yes.

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Megan Mary: yes. So in your I love to hear about how it your ghost tours are. Really.

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Megan Mary: so unique from other ghost tours. And how that really led to this book.

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Megan Mary: So talk a little bit about how, when you do the ghost tours and tell the stories of the women how it’s different.

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Leanna Renee Hieber: Honestly, the company was founded because Andrea had been taking some other ghost tours around the country and just noticed how sloppy people’s history was about things that are easily verifiable.

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Leanna Renee Hieber: And and she sort of asked the question, Why, why are people less concerned about the facts when it’s a ghost tour. The history is still the history. And if you’re not really sharing the actual history, why are you even talking about it at all. It’s easy to know when the date of this building is. It’s it’s in public record. So there’s a lot about the ghost tours that we tried. We just tried to make sure people have real facts. And and rather than just

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Leanna Renee Hieber: discuss hearsay, we really wanted to try to find the most sort of

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Leanna Renee Hieber: literary paper trail we could find about a given ghost. There’s a lot of historic ghost stories that have been frequently picked up in historic texts. And so for us, sort of the more

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Leanna Renee Hieber: the more we could find that been put out into print about a certain

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Leanna Renee Hieber: place. Then we thought, Alright, there’s something to this, and and of course, you know, stories would vary, and sometimes it would be a sort of game of telephone that you could definitely see, oh, well, this person is picking up on these things, but if we could get we could, if we could try to get to the source text.

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Leanna Renee Hieber: Then we could really talk about someone’s personal experiences. In the case of the one building

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Leanna Renee Hieber: that is the most harrowing chapter I wrote, called Unreli, an unreliable narrator about Jan Bryant Bartel, living in 14 West Tenth Street, which is Manhattan’s most haunted house. She wrote a book about living in that address

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Leanna Renee Hieber: and that kind of first hand experience which is which was written

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7

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Leanna Renee Hieber: 6 years before. A very violent murder took place in that building. Kind of like a real life shining those kinds of things where where it starts to not be coincidences. So you you you put those things forward and say, this person wrote about this building being messed up.

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Leanna Renee Hieber: and then, later this person comes into this building and and murders a little girl.

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Leanna Renee Hieber: and people say he changed when he moved in that building. Those to us. It’s like that’s not necessarily hearsay. That’s some other thing where it goes beyond a coincidence. Because Jan Bryant Bartel, when she wrote Spindrift, could never have predicted what was gonna happen after she passed away after finishing that book, just you know these uncanny things. So we’re we’re trying to find the spaces where

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Leanna Renee Hieber: history juts up against stuff that’s wondrous and strange without without making things salacious. We are very interested in again, first and foremost, respect for the dead. That’s the core mission. Because if we make a spectacle out of that murder. Then we are.

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Leanna Renee Hieber: We are just complicit in recycling trauma.

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Leanna Renee Hieber: and I’m not interested in doing that. And people ask, Will you go into haunted asylums or haunted prisons and things like that. And I’m like, I don’t personally have an interest in going into those spaces that are full of of energetic misery. Personally, as a bit of an energy sensitive myself, I’m very careful about

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Leanna Renee Hieber: what kind of spaces I will allow myself to be put into. I can. I can get a read on a building from outside of it. I don’t necessarily need to go in. I will research it. I will learn its history. Yes, I’m I’m not a paranormal investigator. I’m not interested in the ghost hunt.

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Leanna Renee Hieber: I don’t actually like the term ghost hunt. That sounds very

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Leanna Renee Hieber: It sounds cruel. And it’s also not respecting that those are people, you we don’t hunt people.

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Leanna Renee Hieber: So the the language even of some of the stuff around the ghost tour Industry is very disrespectful to the dead, so we’re very careful about letting people have fun and letting people enjoy a fall atmosphere and allowing for there to be the atmospheric tingles.

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Leanna Renee Hieber: But and we want people to feel in the mood of these various spaces, and and delight in the uncanny nature of some of these things. But when it comes to the stuff that’s actual trauma, we’re very serious about that. So when it came when it came to

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Leanna Renee Hieber: talking about women’s history with this, the same rules that apply of like, wow! There’s a lot of trauma here to unpack, but we also were interested in the ways in which some of the ghosts

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Leanna Renee Hieber: end up being kind of defying stereotypes by the way in which their ghosts have perpetuated through through the years. I really love that Gertrude Treadwell, who’s one of our one of Andrea and my favorite ghosts. She haunts the merchants house in on Fourth Street, in Manhattan, and she was a spinster her whole life lived 93 years in the same house. Ghost stories were told about her before she even passed away.

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And

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Leanna Renee Hieber: all of the

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Leanna Renee Hieber: all of the ghost stories about her are of her still persisting, of her showing up, opening a door when someone didn’t know that that was her later on saw a

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Leanna Renee Hieber: photograph or yes, it was at this point. It was a photograph of her

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Leanna Renee Hieber: and just went deadly pale, and like that was the woman that had opened the door. So you know these things, and here she is. She’s famous now because she’s lingering on in her house, and and she would not have been famous had she not lived kind of quirky life, and kept her house like a Victorian time capsule.

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So she was quirky in that regard. And so because she left this house a Victorian time capsule, and it was in the 1920s. By the time she passed it became sort of curious museum piece, and the merchant’s house has certain things in it that only exist in the Merchants house because other people of her status and station and money

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Leanna Renee Hieber: redid things, and made them modern. And all these things. So it just is this fascinating Quirk that she wanted to keep everything in the 1870s. And it’s this wonderful little sliver of time. And so the the time slip angle of those things, and the fact that she’s still there watching over her house. There’s an empowerment in that. She made her choice to stay in that house. She made her choice

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Leanna Renee Hieber: long after her father told her she couldn’t marry this one guy she might have married. She stayed single. She could have married somebody after he’d passed away. but she didn’t. She lived life on her own terms. And so there’s a way in which even the spinster narrative that has been lobbied at, you know a lot of times a lot of women ghosts through the years that we love. We love when there can be something that that you know. Maybe maybe we can let these women live their own lives and let their ghosts kind of be living large in a way that their lives were made to feel like they should have been smaller.

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Megan Mary: Hmm! Do you ever feel that? Or what are your thoughts on

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Megan Mary: ghosts that are part of your your tour? Do they ever pass on, or are they always dwelling there? And if they’re dwelling there, do they need assistance to pass on? Or are they

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Leanna Renee Hieber: in the cases of the ladies of the house that we specifically mentioned in a haunted history of invisible women? Those women

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Leanna Renee Hieber: love their houses, and they are not

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Leanna Renee Hieber: unsettled ghosts. They are

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Leanna Renee Hieber: watching over their domain, and there’s nothing about their energy that is sad or malevolent, or in any other way other than than they are connected to the house, and in some ways I mean, as I, as I always say when I’m standing in front of the Merchants House. I say, I don’t know if it’s the house remembering her or her remembering the house. It’s I do believe that sometimes place Memory is really what is also

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Leanna Renee Hieber: taking place, that all of those 93 years of Gertrude’s energy in that house. Maybe she’s a bit of a projection sometimes from that energy, you know, and so I don’t. I don’t claim to know, other than I know that that energy I can feel that that energy is not

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Leanna Renee Hieber: disturbed or distressed. It sometimes doesn’t want to be disturbed. That’s why. Sometimes it sometimes Gertrude has actually closed the door on people. But that just that doesn’t mean that there’s anything violent or unhappy there. It’s just that. That that’s just not a time that she wants to

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Leanna Renee Hieber: to talk, and I was overnight in the Morris Jamel Mansion, Eliza Jumel, very present at that haunted house the only Colonial mansion still in Manhattan. She’s uptown.

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Leanna Renee Hieber: and there’s a whole bunch of people who were trying to get her to communicate via a a flashlight that was unscrewed towards the end and the directive from from someone doing doing a paranormal investigation. In this case I don’t go on

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Leanna Renee Hieber: paranormal investigations except in this case. This was a specific fundraiser for the Historic Museum. And so I thought, Okay, I’ll spend the night in this haunted house as a way to raise money for the museum, and then you’ve brought your sleeping bag and you rolled out. And it was really fun. And the and the person who is leading this investigation was one of the events managers of the house. And so so just, you know, in this regard, this felt very much like this is being a part of a patronage of this museum in a way that

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Leanna Renee Hieber: is relevant to the rest of my work for sure. So so we unscrewed this. this flashlight And the directive was.

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Leanna Renee Hieber: we were in Eliza Jumel’s bedroom, and we were asking questions. And if it was going to be a a yes

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Leanna Renee Hieber: 2 blinks on the flashlight. And if it was gonna be a no, one blink on the flashlight, and again. It was just a regular flashlight, just barely barely touching at the end, so that it wasn’t on. And there was this prompt, for there to be a conduit.

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Leanna Renee Hieber: and we were 20 min asking questions, and nothing was happening, and I finally said to to the gentleman running it, This is a Victorian lady.

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and there is mixed company of men and women, strangers in her room, and

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Leanna Renee Hieber: that just would not happen in her era, and so I think she might be reluctant to talk with strange men in the room.

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Leanna Renee Hieber: Blink. The flashlight goes on so so then it was very clear she did not stutter. You know. So just this really great moment of. And so you know, the the the director was like, would you?

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Leanna Renee Hieber: Would you like us to leave? And the yeah. She blinked. Yes, again. And so for the next 20 min the girls sat around a circle, asking Eliza if she enjoyed having people in her house, and yes, blinking. Yes, she did. Does she?

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Leanna Renee Hieber: Does she have limits of what she will, and she won’t talk about? Yes, that was very clear as that there were. So we learned from that that there was certain things where. Don’t ask

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Leanna Renee Hieber: a lady something that you wouldn’t ask a lady in her era.

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Leanna Renee Hieber: So that was really really fascinating to me. I can’t explain it like I just can’t. You know all there are all these witnesses, you know, another author, friend of mine we’re we’re just like, Are you really believing this? And and we just

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Leanna Renee Hieber: we just wrote her her. Her her presence is so palpable in that place. And so I you know I did a lot of book launches for several of my books at the mansion. And I would always have this freezing cold. My left side would be freezing cold, because anytime I would do reading. She would be at my left side. She used to be an actress so she wanted to be on stage. I’d be on her front porch talking to the crowd. And in Washington Heights.

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you know, looking at.

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Leanna Renee Hieber: named for where General Washington surveyed the American Revolution, you know. So all this incredible history all around us. But she’s just. She’s a potent force there. We do have stories that are very old, and I do not get the sense that those entities are still there. There’s some definitely some places in Greenwich Village where where the the latest ghost story we have is maybe around the 1920s

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and and and there’s and we cannot pin it to a specific person. But the reason why we tell some of the stories at at

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Leanna Renee Hieber: 16 Gay Street is that the several different people who happened to end up being famous. All corroborated the same ghost stories from different time periods of not not knowing each other, and they weren’t published accounts. So it later came out, like, you know, in the early twentieth century, that

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Leanna Renee Hieber: Several of these people had lived here, and they all had these different experiences, but they all mirrored one another. So in those cases it’s like, there’s something to be said for that. But those stories have not necessarily persisted. And so we’re not sure. I do have a feeling that unless you are still participant in the energy of a place, I think it might really dissipate

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Leanna Renee Hieber: after some time, I think there’s a certain amount of feedback loop that happens. People have interactions with Gertrude and Eliza. So she stays interacting. So I really think that that the aband, the the less traveled spaces or the spaces where a private owner takes over

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Leanna Renee Hieber: or makes it something It’s not you know, in some pace, in in some spaces might be capitalizing on the haunted location in a way that’s disrespectful. Then you’re gonna have some disconnect there. I yeah, I think that

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Leanna Renee Hieber: I think that axe throwing at Lizzie Borden’s house is a big gauche. So but that’s a thing. So yeah.

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Leanna Renee Hieber: so yeah, well, you had shared that. You are going to be releasing an article next month called between the Dreaming and the Dead.

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and I was thrilled to hear that, because

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Megan Mary: I wanna hear your take on dreams and the spirit world

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Leanna Renee Hieber: absolutely well, as I’m sure your listeners know dreams in the spirit world have been closely connected going back to like the dawn of time. Really, I mean, we use. There’s so many ancient stories. The Greeks in particular, really had a lot of of parallels between the dream world and the spirit world.

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and that

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Leanna Renee Hieber: is a great foundation and sometimes some of it kind of made it into to Greek literature and plays when you think about there’s so many quotes from Shakespeare, that especially from Hamlet, that are directly linking to to sleep per chance to dream. And then all of the spirit stuff that comes after all, of that as he’s contemplating like that to be or to not to be, to, to be or not to be speech is the ultimate existential question, discussion.

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Leanna Renee Hieber: and and really is there that those precipices of life and death, that when you are in a dream state you are as close to death without dying as possible. You are. Still, you are unconscious.

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Leanna Renee Hieber: and I truly do believe your mind opens up to things. The most, the most common thing I get. So I use the phrase in in the in my introduction of Haunted History of Invisible Women, I use the phrase

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Leanna Renee Hieber: that I’ve become a sort of paranormal chaplain, where I’m sort of in a almost a pseudo religious capacity, because I’m seen as an authority on something that is, in fact, a spectral spiritual matter, and people will tell me their ghost stories between stops as we’re walking along, and sometimes they tell them with delight, sometimes they tell them with

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Leanna Renee Hieber: trepidation. Sometimes they tell them with hoping I will tell them They’re not crazy, any of these various things, and they they all different reasons, and they all come with different energies attached, and I try to just be very open and just receive them with love in my heart, because I am called by the spirit world to do this work. I really have been since I was a kid, and it’s an honor when somebody shares something personal about a loved one with me, that is, that is an offering brought to a temple.

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Leanna Renee Hieber: And so with

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Leanna Renee Hieber: with this, I’ve started to get a certain amount of empirical data, of how many people through the years thousands of people that I’ve talked to about spectral things. More often than not the people who share a ghost story with me will talk about a dream, a loved one coming to them in a dream

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and saying something very specific.

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Leanna Renee Hieber: It is one of the most common ways that loved ones will say goodbye, and it doesn’t necessarily make for a ghost story, but it is outside of their normal purview, because it is because, generally speaking.

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Leanna Renee Hieber: the it happens in a way that’s not like a usual dream.

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Leanna Renee Hieber: It is usually very brief, specific. There’s almost a time clock sometimes, and it is, does not have any of the fantastical narratives.

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Leanna Renee Hieber: or any of the really crazy stuff that our brain likes to do in all of its neural firings. When when the visitations happen.

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Leanna Renee Hieber: it’s generally pretty straightforward.

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Leanna Renee Hieber: and that to me is really interesting. So so whenever people bring me something about that someone visited them in a dream.

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Leanna Renee Hieber: And does that count as a ghost story? I ask them, well, well, do you do you want it to count as a ghost story because it can if you want it to like. It depends on how, if you have some kind of issue about that or if you don’t want it to be seen as trivial and as trivialized because a lot of ghost stories can become trivialized if we don’t honor the dead properly. But if they but I say the whole, the whole word paranormal is something that’s outside of your normal, that

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Leanna Renee Hieber: these things, when something like this happens, and you get some kind of message from a loved one who’s passed on that is outside of your normal day. So thusly it kind of goes into that realm if you want it to.

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Leanna Renee Hieber: If people want a scientific explanation for it, then I will allude to all of the various things in theoretical physics

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Leanna Renee Hieber: that sound a lot like a ghost story.

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And it’s true, you know. I don’t think that science and the paranormal, or at all antithetical. I don’t think they’re at all at odds. I don’t think they’re at war. I just think that

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Leanna Renee Hieber: part of the spectral

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Leanna Renee Hieber: field is something that science just can’t quite quantify yet.

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Leanna Renee Hieber: And it may it may it may never! It may just decide it whenever wants to be pinned down, and that’s totally fine. I don’t mind existential questions.

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I actually really revel in them. But a lot of people get very upset about not having answers, and I have every empathy for that. But I just don’t know how that brain works, because I’ve always been okay with the existential mystery and the divine mystery. I’m okay with that it’s a great comfort for me, but I understand it’s actually something that not everyone is very comfortable with, and I totally respect that, so I’ll meet them where they are.

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Leanna Renee Hieber: and try to give them something that they can hold on to. If they want something to grasp onto. I’ll work with them to get to that point without lying to them. I can’t prove anything to them. so I’m not going to lie to them. But I’m going to be in conversation with them in communion with them as

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Leanna Renee Hieber: this in this job and this role as a paranormal chaplain.

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Megan Mary: Yes, and I love that title, and I love that that bleeds into the work that you do, because it, of course, in the work that I do. I I’m off very often asked that. And of course, I mean, I’ve had that experience. So yes, that is possible, and I always bring that up. I always say, you know, look.

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Megan Mary: time and space. Dreams are outside of time and space. And so anything, in my view that’s metaphysical, or mystical, or magical, or spiritual or mysterious, can happen there

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Megan Mary:: because it’s not. It doesn’t go by those rules.

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Megan Mary: And so we we can meet other spirits. We can travel to other places. We can see people we don’t know in this life we can experience things that we haven’t experienced. And it’s all possible. And that’s why it’s so amazing and why it’s so mysterious and quantum physics tells us that time might not be the linear thing that we think it is. It’s very well an illusion.

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and that is so destabilizing to people when they think, okay. It’s one thing for me to like, maybe listen to my dreams. It’s one thing for me to maybe consider that they’re not just nonsense. But now you want me to consider that maybe

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Megan Mary: time and space isn’t what I thought it was, and that this reality might not be what I thought it was. And so it’s really a path that I lead people down to open their minds and blow their minds, and.

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Megan Mary: you know, guide them in this, hey? What if right exploration of the inner world, but also the world beyond what we perceive or beyond what we

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Megan Mary are told, what we think it is, yeah, right?
Leanna Renee Hieber: Right? Totally. And I think it. I personally find it really freeing

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Leanna Renee Hieber: that I don’t have to have all the answers. because the answers cannot yet as

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Leanna Renee Hieber: cannot yet be proven by science, they just can’t.

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Leanna Renee Hieber: so

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Leanna Renee Hieber: that to me, sort of feels like it’s a nonstarter. So we might again, we might. We may yet get there. And so, if if science is comfort, if if pinning this stuff down to a scientific thing is is comforting for you, then I think that there there is this pro progress and process towards

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Leanna Renee Hieber: finding

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Leanna Renee Hieber: finding what the god particle might be, or any of these various things. You know that all of that’s possible, and that work is being done. So so, leaning into that’s great but for me, personally, I just I find the not knowing to actually be a freedom. But again, II can’t.

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Leanna Renee Hieber: I can’t force someone to see that perspective. II will work with them to get there if they want to. But it’s really like where we how open and closed is your mind at a given point, because sometimes folks have to close their mind to things, because that’s just they need to just get through their next day. They can’t actually be.

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Leanna Renee Hieber: you know, we have to be empathetic, for wherever folks are on their journey.

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Leanna Renee Hieber: and sometimes it’s not a time to up, uproot and up end. And I also respect that too.

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Megan Mary: Yes, very true. Yes, you have to be open and willing to explore, and already be in that

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seeking state, I call it. You have to be willing to want to

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Megan Mary: have your world kind of cracked open

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Megan Mary: because it’s it. Then it’s gonna be in a dramatic, amazing shift. But you have to be willing to do that

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Leanna Renee Hieber: And also to the point on the alignement of dreaming in the spirit world, in addition to loved ones coming through in dreams, waking up to a ghost or a spectral event is also common. So

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Leanna Renee Hieber: wherever you are in that sleep state, and if you wake and there’s something, whether it’s whether it’s a sleep paralysis thing or whether it’s something else that is woken you. And you see something that you’re not sure you’re how or what you’re seeing.

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That’s definitely happened to me where I’ve had spectral experiences that I’ve been woken. I’ve been awoken. And then there is something that’s happening.

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Leanna Renee Hieber: and I do really believe that the dream state is a liminal state. And so I really feel like that’s you know, for that’s a place that we are also. Our spirits are vulnerable in that moment. And so, you know, for anyone who gets really scared about those kinds of things, then I just talk to them about psychic shielding. Which you know is, we always have to kind of protect ourselves and think about

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Leanna Renee Hieber: that. You know nothing No entity or no energy has the right to encroach upon us if we do not allow that. So so just a certain amount of like boundaries, I have to say to people who are if they’re in a I’ve actually given advice to people in haunted places where they have felt kind of beset by things that they get it. They get to establish their own boundaries with the spirit world and just, and to tell the spirits what is and what is not okay.

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Leanna Renee Hieber: and to draw that sort of line in the sand, in whatever ways that they that they want. I am, I am not. I am not a priest. I do not, I do not have. I do not conduct cleansings or rituals, or any of those kinds of things. I do not, that is, above my pay grade, but but I will, and I can’t encourage people to find their boundaries with the spirit world, for sure, because

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just because it’s out there doesn’t mean you have to be communicating with it just in the same way. If a person is being disrespectful to you and disrespecting your boundaries, a living person. You can tell them, and re-establish your boundaries that way, too.

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Megan Mary: That’s really important to share. So I’m glad you mentioned that, and I think that if we can empower ourselves that way. Maybe we become. We can allow our curiosity to blossom about the other world and feel that we’re not so

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Megan Mary: wide open and unprotected in doing so. So it’s nice to know that you can still explore while still protecting yourself,

Leanna Renee Hieber: You’ve got to have a sense of where your energy is and where it stops and where other things begin. And just that. And I don’t know how to tell people that whatever that radar is is for you to determine. But

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Leanna Renee Hieber: but yeah, I think that a lot of times people just think! Oh, I’ve got to open myself up without any kind of filter, or without any kind of caveat like. No, Nope, that’s actually not throwing yourself into the openness is actually not healthy.

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Leanna Renee Hieber: If without a little bit of guard rails.

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Megan Mary: Well, for the people that want to maybe be in the New York City area and want to check out the ghost tour and meet you in person. Where can they find you?

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Leanna Renee Hieber: Well, I’m only giving a few tours in October. And I am grateful that I have a lot of public lectures and more book talks about Haunted History of Invisible Women that I’ll be doing around the nation.

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So so I’m only gonna be in the city for a few days. But all the tour guides at Boroughs of the Dead are fantastic. So if you wanna check out my schedule, it’s listed right now on Instagram. So my Instagram is my full name, Leanna Renee Hieber and so that’s listed there, the ones I’m doing specifically. The calendar for Boroughs of the Dead has what

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Leanna Renee Hieber: what tours are happening when it does not say which Tour guide is leading them. So if you want specifically to know, I’ve got some at the very end the last weekend in October. I’m doing 4 different tours and you should come on the one that Andrea and I are doing together because you meet the stars of a Haunted History of Invisible Women, and we take you to some of our favorite places that are noted in the book.

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So that one’s really that’s that’s very fun. And that’s happening on Saturday and Sunday, October 27 and 28

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Megan Mary: 8. No. Wait 28 and 29 of October. So yes, this this fall. So as for next year, I’ve no idea but coming up yeah, coming up, there’ll be definitely and we do our tours do

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Leanna Renee Hieber: sell out. So so go quickly. And yeah. And if anybody has questions about that, I’m on, I’m on all social medias. But I do not check my Facebook like ever Facebook stresses me out. So I have an author page there, so you can follow that to find out. II will post what events I’m doing. But I don’t have a real presence there. I’m a little more active on, on Twitter and Instagram.

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Leanna Renee Hieber: Instagram is where I’m kind of trying to focus the most of any of the various social media platforms. So, but boroughsofthedead.com sign up for their mailing list, because then you’ll find out about all the various things that both Andrea and I are doing.

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And Andrea is a particularly delightful tour, guide herself. So I really hope that you’ll support the company because it’s really been an incredible journey to to be walking these paths with her as a co-author, and the book’s done well enough that we were contracted to do another book, examining Gothic themes. So in 2025 America’s Most Gothic

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Leanna Renee Hieber: Haunted History, Stranger than Fiction, will be out with Kensington, and that’s going to be examining ways in which real life events mirror tropes from Gothic literature

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Megan Mary: amazing. Well, I definitely want to check that out as well. How exciting! Well, thank you so much, Leanna, for being here today. It was wonderful to do this special episode with you. I’m so glad to be able to speak with you. And it was just. It was a very special episode. So thank you for being part of it.

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Leanna Renee Hieber: Well, thanks for yes, for for all that you do in in this work, which I happen to think is very important work. So so here’s to those spiritual journeys. Thanks again.

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Thank you.