We are hanging out IN PERSON and drinking wine with Amy Hateley, and it’s a giggly one due to the depth of our friendship. We discuss how we all came together through the goth community, modern witchery and spirituality vs religion, being raised pseudo-Christian with “your own decorative Jesus” and youth group trauma, the goofiest domme and the healthiest pre-game ever, and the goth sport of drinking and judging. Welcome to the coven.

This is our first crossover episode, originally published on Breaking Spirits! Vesta and Sofonisba cohost a podcast that explores the cultural histories that spirits, liquors, distillers, and cocktails carry with them and into our own imbibing experiences. With Heather as our guest, we delve into the intersection of goth and the Gothic with cocktail culture, from shrouded monasteries imagined by Victorian novelists, to the clubs and bars in our subculture today. You’ll also get Sofi’s original cocktail recipes for The Udolpho and The Black Cat; grab a drink and enter the abyss.

Through the lens of a rosary shroud, we welcome Ray Baron, DJ of Noctis, Chamber, Ruin Hollywood, DiskoNekro, and many more nights close to our hearts, to discuss our happiness in the darkness. Ray discusses his unique relationship to music and dance, how that relates to his background in Michelin star kitchens, what we all first danced to, and what makes a community and not a cult, all with a soothing background of face-based rosary wind chimes.

Heather and Vesta get into a topic even more awkward than the dating episode: the varying states of friendships in the goth community (and the human experience in general). Romantic relationships get all the attention, but the emotional impact of changing friendships can take an even larger and unspoken emotional toll. There is even more verbal gymnastics to avoid violating anyone’s privacy, and be warned, there is poetry.

Today we are joined by Dave Bats, founder and DJ of Release the Bats, Long Beach’s deathrock club of 20 years. We get into how the goth community dealt with the pandemic through Twitch, the separation of identity from day jobs, learning to daywalk, and being drawn to the dark from a young age. And apparently once upon a time, Heather thought that Release the Bats involved literally and not figuratively releasing bats from the Que Sera.

Did you know Heather worked at Knott’s Scary Farm and Vesta worked at Haunted Hayride? This brings us to our first not-goth guest, Pops 3:16, Knott’s Scary Farm "Dark Entities" maze manager, joins us to discuss the overlap of the goth subculture and the drive to work as a Scare Actor, the need for empathy, and different types of fear responses, some of which involve the human butthole.

This is an awkward one, we’re discussing dating in the goth community - and also the experience of having relationships outside of the subculture. We are a deeply incestuous community; Vesta leans toward embracing the gross goth web, while Heather generally prefers to outsource and have some separation between subculture and relationships. We discuss how the incestuous web leads to a sometimes useful and sometimes problematic vetting system, the need to stay friends with exes, the spectrum of monogamous and poly folks in our community, and the phenomenon of gothic deception. Witness the verbal gymnastics we do in order to avoid sounding gossipy or violating anyone’s privacy!

Well that was fast, we’re already talking religion and disagreeing: Is Catholic, Christian, and Satanic iconography in the gothic aesthetic offensive? We discuss Christian witchery, secular Judaism, appropriation, problematic ethics of the left hand path, social justice, and the phenomenon of the goth letterman jacket, all with a Nazi dagger cliffhanger.

Our guest today is Vesta’s Magenta Mother, Marilynn Hendrie. We discuss the goth gateway drug that is Rocky Horror, seemingly age-inappropriate friendships, extreme empathy, witchy spirituality, how we process sadness, and women supporting women in the community. Please pardon the snorting and scream-laughing.

Bats Day founder Noah Korda joins us to talk about the inception of Bats Day 24 years ago, the experience of coming from an artistically and musically inclined family, being a goth parent, and more on why California death rock bleeds into Disneyland, all while dodging our “darkness” question to claim he is “normal” (we’re not convinced). Bats Day is back for 2022 on Sunday May 8th, we’ll be there!