MonsterTalk

Blake and Karen welcome historian Dr. Amy Laurel Fluker of Youngstown State University to discuss Haunted by Memory, an annotated anthology of ghost stories drawn from the newspapers, veterans' papers, and periodicals of the Civil War generation. The project began with her late mentor, Dr. John R. Neff, who stumbled onto his first Civil War ghost story while reading veterans' obituaries. When Neff died in 2020, his family asked Fluker to carry his work to the finish line.These aren't the ghost lights and phantom hitchhikers of modern battlefield tours. They're stories that ran alongside battle reports and stock prices, told by the people who lived through the war. What did these ghosts want? Why did a Union veterans' newspaper print a tale of soldiers burying their enemy? And how did ghost lore become a weapon after the war ended?Extended notes at Monstertalk.orgBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/monstertalk--6267523/support.Some product links may be affiliated with Amazon revenue sharing.

In this episode, Blake and Karen welcome Dr. Kristin LaFollette, Associate Professor of English at the University of Southern Indiana, to discuss her new book, *Rehumanizing People of the Past: Bioarchaeology, Medical Museums and Archives, and the Human Remains Trade* (SUNY Press, 2026). The book illustrates how technical communication frequently dehumanizes the people represented by human remains, and offers guidance for adopting rehumanizing language to return dignity to these individuals. The conversation is not strictly paranormal, but overlaps meaningfully with MonsterTalk themes around science, storytelling, folklore, and how language shapes perception.Extended notes at MonsterTalk.orgBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/monstertalk--6267523/support.Some product links may be affiliated with Amazon revenue sharing.

Into the Field: A Conversation with Daniel Alan Jones, Part 1Blake and Karen welcome Daniel Alan Jones, an investigative reporter, founder of the Texas Cryptozoology Network, and the creator and host of The Vortex, for the first half of a two-part conversation. Blake met Jones at the Gods and Monsters Conference at Texas State in March of 2026, where an after-dinner conversation outside a restaurant, joined partway through by Jeb Card, led to the interview you are about to hear.Jones is part of the Texas Cryptozoology scene, hanging with (the late) Jim Marrs, Ken Gerhard, Nick Redfern, Craig Woolheater and Lyle Blackburn (among others). He approaches the subject ethnographically: the people who chase monsters interest him as much as the monsters do. This first half of our interview covers the Piney Woods and its tangle of local Bigfoot names, a salamander hunt in the PNW, a failed search for giants in Death Valley, pluys a night camped out in Mothman country. Part two takes up the state of the Cryptozoology today, which will be S05E49 dropping next week.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/monstertalk--6267523/support.Some product links may be affiliated with Amazon revenue sharing.