Learning Day: The Not So Scary Guide To Ghosts (Patreon)

I’m worried that ghosts might not like my vibe. I find ghosts frightening, and that’s my fault, honestly. The idea of waking up to a ghostly specter in the room makes me say unkind things like “uh, oh,” and “zoinks,” and even sometimes, “BE GONE DEMON,” which ghosts don’t like, and that’s why they seem scary to me. Fortunately, I’ve found a way to fix my bad ghost vibes.

All of the good psychics are on TikTok these days. Most of them are failed actors and writers who’ve transitioned into psychic employment. It seems really easy to go from acting into mediumship for some reason. In her website bio, Rebekah “The Ghost Guide” Carmichael says she used to be a “performer of the stage and small screen,” who made appearances on the ID Channel. Then she became a haunted tour guide in North Carolina, which helped her realize her psychic powers. As we all know, with great power comes great income, so Rebekah took hers directly to TikTok, where she could cash in.

Rebekah does enactment skits of her ghost encounters. She plays all of the characters and does all of the accents! And boy are there accents, and boy are none of them good. You can immediately see why the acting thing didn’t work out, and also why the ghosts thing did work out because her spiritual philosophy is fascinating. Basically, Rebekah says that people carry “psychic biases,” so if your house is haunted by an elevator-full-of-blood ghost, that’s entirely your fault. The right attitude will make that dog costume fellatio guy from The Shining into Casper the Friendly Ghost. It turns out you’re not seeing ghosts right, idiot.

So, how can you correct your psychic biases? By buying her book! If you’ve got a bad ghost roommate, maybe you just have a bad attitude, and Rebekah can fix that with this book that she boldly dedicated first and foremost to herself.

Rebekah’s explanation for psychic bias is that if you’re expecting to see a scary ghost in a haunted house, you will, when in most cases a ghost is a friendly little guy. She says ghosts exist at different weights and frequencies, and just because it has a heavier weight or a higher frequency doesn’t necessarily mean it’s scary. It’s covered in blood because it’s a GWAR fan, not to scare you!

However, Rebekah also made a downright chipper TikTok reenactment video of the time she went to hell. Can we really trust a woman to tell us what’s scary and what isn’t when she’s doing a get-ready-with-me before her battle with Gorthaleon The Impaler? It’s possible Rebekah is simply fearless.

If all spooky things are adorable given the right attitude, is hell just a big warm cuddle pile? I’m so curious. At this point in my illustrious career, I’ve read a lot of books by psychic mediums, and they’re all pretty open to anything paranormal. It’s rare that someone believes in ghosts but thinks Bigfoot isn’t real. In fact, normally they will yes-and Bigfoot allegations with something even crazier and weirdly specific like, “yes Bigfoot is real, and he’s actually the ghost of an alien who died in the year 4BC.” This is very much Rebekah’s vibe. She believes in aliens, the Greek pantheon of Gods, demons, a hybrid ghost deer tree man, all of it.

So, if you are in the forest and you come across a hybrid ghost deer tree man, how can you make it the Disney cartoon version of that terrifying abomination? It’s largely based on your vibes. If you have good spiritual energy, ghosts will be cool to you, and if you have bad spiritual energy, blood elevator. Rebekah is the ghost prom queen. Her energy is so clean and good that ghosts are obsessed with her, which she learned during her time as a ghost tour guide.

Rebekah cannot stop finding ghosts. Once she met Blackbeard on a whim. She was so shocked she almost called that ghost a liar, but then she realized the ghost couldn’t help that – she’s just that good.

She prepares her spiritual energy by watching movies like The Others and Disney’s Coco. She keeps her spiritual energy clean and grounded by doing things like gazing out a window, spending time in nature, and listening to music. All things ghosts can do. It feels like she’s getting into the mindset of a ghost. That’s not what she says, but I’m wondering if ghosts like her so much because they think she’s one of them.

If all I have to do to see only friendly ghosts is gaze out of a window and wear comfortable socks, I’m in. I thought this would be way harder. Although the advice in this book might feel so simple because it’s for beginners. She’s not explaining how to make visiting Christian hell not scary, or how to remain calm while projecting her soul outside of her body for a stroll. That stuff is still scary, probably.

The book has little sections called Ghostly Go-To’s with fun little mediumship “facts,” one of which is that the placebo effect is the body healing itself with belief. Your vibes can be so blessed that you get Wolverine powers. That’s a Ghostly Go-To.

The advice on cleansing your energy is padded out with stories of Rebekah’s various ghost interactions. These are similar to the stories that she “recreates” on TikTok, but better because you don’t have to deal with the accent attempts. She lives in Wilmington, North Carolina, but a lot of the ghosts that she meets are Irish. They’re also mostly not as famous as Blackbeard. Her big observation about ghosts is that ghosts are just people who happen to be dead, which is just a medical complication. The ADA should cover ghosts.

Sometimes these stories get pretty scary for a book called the not so scary guide to ghosts. For instance, she tells a story about bringing a negative entity home with her by accident when she was working as a ghost tour guide. The ghost, or demon, or tree/ghost hybrid gave everyone in her house nightmares until a friendly ghost named Gertie set off the smoke alarm and woke them all up.

Rebekah takes the blame for this one. She says that she didn’t shield herself well enough and had a lot of bad energy that day because she was exhausted and fighting with her family, which caused the negative entity to latch onto her. So remember kids, if you get sad, ghosts will attack you. It’s called the Grim’s Fairytales approach to psychic interactions. If only you weren’t a sad little girl, the demons wouldn’t have paralyzed you with fright.

If you take home one piece of advice from this book, Rebekah would probably want it to be: leave the ghosts alone. She has a series where she makes fun of “toxic ghost hunting bros” for disturbing the ghosts and “asking them about their trauma.” If you meet a dead person, “How did you die?” seems like a pretty standard first question, but apparently it should not be. First, ask their favorite sports team; they’ll say, “I don’t know what sports are. I'm an Irish ghost who died in Wilmington, North Carolina in 1792.” Then the conversation is done!

Without asking about their trauma, Rebekah tries to negotiate with the ghosts she meets to see if they can comfortably coexist with the humans around them. She’s a very hands-off ghost specialist most of the time, leaving a bunch of happy ghosts still haunting the shit out of people in her wake. A ghost loves to see this psychic girl coming.

I now know how to protect energy, and if I see a spooky ghost, I will simply think, “what if it wasn’t a spooky ghost?” Then it will become not spooky to me. Sure, it might be a paralyzing demon that gives me nightmares, BUT it can be kept at bay by my toxic positivity. Play Carly Rae Jepsen until no ghost can kill you. Your vibes will be immaculate and your body indestructible.*

*On the astral plane.

This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme: Rhiannon, who does basically this entire thing but on LinkedIn instead of TikTok. It works, but their posts are mostly about raising team spirits and fostering radical transparency.

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