Monster House Presents.

This week for our summer flashback tour, we returned to December of 2013.

My co-host, Dr. Karen Stalsallano, had two books out at the time,

the ghost-themed book, Haunting America,

and the religious-focused work, God Bless America.

In this episode, she discusses her research into zombies, cults, and demons for her latter volume.

It's actually quite unlike anything we've ever seen before.

A giant hairy creature, part ape, part mass.

In Larkness, a 24-mile long bottomless lake in the highlands of Scotland.

It's a creature known as the Loch Ness Monster.

Yeah. Monster Talk. Welcome to Monster Talk, the science show about monsters. I'm Blake Smith.

And I'm Karen Stolznor. All right, so Monster Talk welcomes back Karen Stolzno, who's recently published two great books. First, Haunting America, which is available on the Kindle from Amazon, and the brand new work, God Bless America, strange and unusual religious beliefs and practices in the United States, which is also available as an e-book, but it's also a very attractive, tangible edition.

You can check the show notes for a link on that. Welcome back, Karen.

Thank you, Blake. Typically, on Monster Truck, we've tried to steer away from religion, but I think... you can check the show notes for a link on that welcome back karen thank you blake

typically on monster talk we've tried to steer away from religion but i think uh karen's new book

does cover some topics that will be near and dear to monster lovers hearts it's got voodoo

and exorcism and even a chapter on the church of satan and how it compares to the allegations

of satanic cults in America.

So this should be fun.

Yeah, and I think there's a lot of overlapping with skepticism and humanism as well.

Absolutely.

So first of all, how did a linguist like yourself come to write a book about unusual religions?

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