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You guys weren’t as excited as I was about Kesha’s new ghost show, Conjuring Kesha. Maybe I enjoy chaos more than the next person. Although, according to Kesha, it could be that I didn’t sell it correctly. As we discussed in the previous post, Kesha’s reasoning for the show came about during the height of Covid, when she was struggling with lockdown and all the events in her life were collapsing in on themselves. On Seth Meyers show, she presented it in a really funny way, but in her Yahoo interview, Kesha’s answers are much deeper. She said her connection to the spiritual word began young with a foundation in church. But even as a kid she couldn’t agree with the Christian church’s homophobic stance so her idea of spirituality broadened which eventually led to understanding or accepting the supernatural. And that’s why Kesha thinks ghosts reach out to her the way they do. Because she’s not chasing after them, she just giving them a safe space to get whatever they want off their ghostly chests.

Don’t call her a ghost hunter: I put myself in the ghost’s shoes: Like, if I’m hanging out in my haunted opera house that I built and some people come trumping in there… I just want to go in with respect, in all areas of my life. Because when you have aggressive energy, you might get aggressive energy back. I want to go in with curious and open-hearted energy, and hopefully get that energy back now in life. It doesn’t always work like that, unfortunately, but this being my first foray into ghost-hunting… and you know, “hunting” sounds so mean! I’m not hunting; like, they’re already dead. It’s “ghost communications.” Anyway, I wanted to be safe and gentle. Maybe it’s just spillover from how I live my life, but I always want be a safe, gentle place — even for ghosts.

On visiting Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum where women and LGBTQ people were locked up: Me and Big Freedia went to Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum, which was so gnarly. A lot of women and a lot of gay people ended up in here for things like premenstrual “psychosis.” I think being a “bitch” when you’re premenstrual… You could get lobotomy for that. And so this place had over 10,000 lobotomies in this one building. Oh, God. Me and Big Freedia both kind of realized that had [the asylum] still been open and had we lived in that town, we for sure would’ve been in this place. I know myself, I probably would’ve had like 10 lobotomies at this point. Because if you’re a “hysterical” woman, I mean – guilty! Yeah, this place was really f***ing haunted. Like, if you watched the episode, things happen that are truly unexplainable. We’re talking demons. Things happened in front of my eyes that I cannot explain — and I’m an executive producer on the show! … Some crazy shit happened. I think that was probably the most insane episode of the entire season.

On history repeating itself: Well, it made us both really sit and think about how people were treating mental illness. Instead of having any sort of compassion or help, it was like, “Just give them a lobotomy against their will.” It was really heartbreaking, and a good wake-up call that we need to pay attention to what we’re doing, because [the Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum] closed not that long ago, in the ‘90s. That’s not that long ago! It’s just good to keep tabs on what we are doing in society. I think in hindsight, giving people lobotomies against their will is, um, not a great idea.

[From Yahoo]

Obviously, you need to be willing to accept the idea of ghosts to walk this path with me, but what Kesha is talking about is becoming more common in ghost-based reality shows. Before, they always had a skeptic who was disproving things so when something odd happened, we’d be wowed because the disbeliever couldn’t explain it. More shows now are taking the approach of telling the ghosts they’re in a safe environment. Again, if you accept the notion of spirits occupying a space, I could see how this would be preferable to a ghost. I’d rather chat with a human that be hunted by one. Of course, that doesn’t account for the demons, lemures, phantoms and other nefarious spirits who don’t actually want to vibe with you. They’ll show up to your little circle of trust, but they’ll mess that mood up properly once they’re there. Either way, it’ll make for a good show.

As you can see, Kesha talked at length about her and Big Freedia’s experience at the Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum. Kesha is a LGBTQ ally and an advocate for women’s rights who, unfortunately, has a story of being mistreated in a male dominated industry. The fact that the episode would become so relevant by the time it airs maybe isn’t a shock, but still impactful. As Kesha said, the place only shut down in the 90s. But what’s even more frightening is how close we are to places like that opening back up.

The interview also talked about Kesha’s Pride performance at Stonewall on June 24th, the day the Dobbs decision came down from the Supreme Court. Her answer was both insightful and heartbreaking.

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