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All right, on with the show.

I'm Melissa Swayze.

And I'm Nate Reisman and this is you can see me in the dark. You can see me in the dark. There are few things better than spending an evening in New Orleans, especially when it's with friends. I was very fortunate to take a trip down to the Crescent City and reconnect with my friend Belinda. Belinda is a wedding and event planner, but to say event planner doesn't begin to cover the artistry, her vision. She is also the creator of the most sumptuous, debauched, masquerade ball that occurs every October at the Elms Mansion, the Queen's Labyrinth. And like following Belinda's Labyrinth, it led me to Lady Midnight. Lady Midnight, also known as Robin, is a consummate performer, actress and storyteller, and she had some stories to tell. I went into this story cold. I had two haunted locations, France and Germany, nothing more. She talked of the light and a medieval village in France, and then we got to Germany. I'm not gonna lie, this was a very difficult story to process due to the subject matter. This is a show about ghost stories and we love sharing the range of feelings and emotions that come with them. But when it comes to evil, that's something different. We are living in very dark times and this story shares an echo of that very recent past, a very recent past, that we are in danger of repeating. I have complicated feelings about content warnings, but this is an occasion I feel deserves it. This is a story set in Germany in the past, so I think you know where we are headed. There is implied torture toward the end of the story. So if you would rather focus on the lighter aspects of Lady Midnight's amazing ghost stories, just dip out before the end. For the woo-woo of us here, and I can feel Nate's eyes rolling back into his skull, as I say this, know that we put a lot of love and care into these episodes and send these stories out into

the world with the best energy we can muster.

So all that said, you can see me many people know me as Lady Midnight at this point, which is my producer and stage name. I think living in New Orleans changes you. I think you can't live here full time. I mean, I guess you could. I don't know how that goes. I always say to people, be aware of your energy, be aware of what you're putting out. Be careful what you're asking, because this city is listening all the time, all the time, and she hears you, and she will absolutely give you what you ask for. I'm at the Youth Ballast here at the Always Cabaret Club, which is a famous queer gay cabaret lounge. We do everything. Ballast, drag, erotic storytelling, theatre, musicals, probably most excitingly are our biggest venture is I've been working on the Queen's Labyrinths, which is a crazy immersive masquerable that takes part at the unsmatched on Central's at the end of October. We build a Labyrinths and I create a with my co-producer and writer Stanley Roy, we wrote the sort of story of the labyrinth.

It was amazing. Blender and Stacey were like, we have this idea, we know what we want it to look like, we know what we want it to be. It's called the Queen's Labyrinth. Can you do something I said yes. So obviously my love of history and leading into ghosts being European lots of

old buildings my love of history and leading into ghosts, being European, lots of old buildings, my love of history and all of that comes from my mother. She has a way of bringing history to life and maybe it's a European gift, but you know on holiday she'd say, what are we doing today? She's well you know I think if someone says we're going to see a church, I think, as a teenager, you'd have been like great.

But she would, and she'd say, well, let me tell you a story. 400, and she'd, you know, thought, I mean, I was obsessed with Joan of Arc before I'd even been to Ruohl and seen, I already knew her story. And she did that for every place that we were going to. she would tell us the history story in such a way that we're like,

Oh yes!

Maybe we'll see ghosts!

Always the hope. So yes, she also gave me a love of literature, the two often are intertwined. So ghost stories and Greek mythology. Obviously every country has its own stories of ghosts and things and I thought this one might, you might enjoy this one. I spent a year teaching at the International School on Puket as the head of drama. So I had a previous life, I spent 15 years as a secondary school teacher. So teaching 11 to 18-year-olds drama and theatre studies. And I was lucky enough to spend a year in Thailand at the International School. And I have ADHD, just being diagnosed, but I had visual quirks. And one of my things is I cannot look at a painting or a picture that's hanging on the wall crooked. It's just, the minute I see it, my brain can't see anything else until it's been straightened. So I arrive at the entire land and all the new teachers were taking out to a restaurant and I'm sat in the restaurant and I look across and every single picture on the wall opposite me is crooked. And that was the end of the story from Adamson. So I think I lasted about 10 minutes before I had to stand up and straighten all the pictures. I thought no more of it. I did notice that the ties were not exactly pleased. I was straightening their photos. Anyway, to progress. It took me about six months to realize that when I walked around the school, I had a little shadow. They had assigned a Thai person to follow me specifically. And the reason why I feel air is, I think, the Thai's believe that if you hang something straight on the wall, that straightness captures the spirit or a ghost. If you photos, pictures, whatever, the ties believe it has to be, not as it has to be off kilter. So yes, I spent a year walking around Thailand trapping ghosts. And then they also have these incredible all over the island of Puket. I thought they were initially, you know, you apply your Western eyes to something and you know, are these very fancy mailboxes that are beautiful like all night miniature houses, beautifully painted on posts and poles. And then I was like, no, they're definitely not mailboxes. And basically, they're spirit houses. Because the ties believe, if we give the spirits that are inevitably going to try and move into our house, if we give them a beautiful house of their own, then they won't move into ours. So yes, go to a very real in Thailand. I own a very, very haunted house in France. I'm talking or being a luckiest person I know. My mum's been living in France for over 20 years and two years ago, she's getting on, she's in her 80s, and I would love to be nearer to her for longer periods of time without her having to put up with me or am I a stepfather as well? He doesn't have to put up with me. So we're very, very lucky, we bought a house. It's just been given a Michelin star, the village, as one of the preserved medieval towns in Europe. And it's a medieval covered market town, and we are privileged enough to own a house that is 800 years old and very haunted, as I discovered when we moved in. The house had not been lived in for about a year by anyone. And prior to that it has been rented by people, but it hadn't actually had owners living in it for about 15 years. So people who actually, you know, are the current caretakers of this incredible space.

And obviously it's not 12-19 inside it. It's had 800 years of updating and changes. One point it was two properties and it used to have an interior courtyard. So it's had all kinds of changes and things. But we moved in and the first month that I was in the house. Our ghosts were everywhere, they were very active. And I, I've never, I wouldn't say I was somebody who necessarily saw ghosts per se, but I've always, they're more, for me, they're more like shadows. But you know what, you're sat there in a room and somebody walks past and

you look up and you say oh there's no one there well I've always had that and then there's been certain occasions in my life where I was like oh no this is not just a shadow this was somebody walked past and so my we moved into a house and they were they obviously had to have the places themselves. We have a kitten that runs around and we had a visitor say one night saying, you don't have a cat, do you? And I was like, we don't, but we did. She said, I'm pretty sure she said it felt like there was a cat making donuts. Yes, that's our kitten. I'm dad, it's a so I was like it could be a rat. I can't imagine ghost rats but it's there's a kitten and it runs and it's at eye level and there's a man definitely a man because he triggers in the oldest part of the house in the front bedroom. He I know it's a man because he triggers a creek that only men are heavy enough to activate when you walk across the floor, when I walk across the floor, no creek, but when my husband walks across, he hits that creek his weight of the enough to make the house go, okay, so I'm lying in bed one night, and I think my husband's walking up and down the bedroom. Getting quite annoying, because I'm trying to sleep and he keeps walking over this creek, so I open my eyes to sort of say, what are you doing? And then I realize, oh, and then I hear the shower at the other end of the house and I was like, okay, not my husband. So I said, okay, so I closed my eyes and then this creek and then he came and this man sat on the end of my bed because my bed went down and you feel the way. And so I said, which point I sat up and said, listen, I don't mind you being here because you're obviously, because you are your part of this house. I said, but I'm trying to sleep and you're making a lot of noise. Could you stop? And he did. And then one night, about three weeks later, a watching television in the downstairs in the living room space, which is again, is part of the oldest part of the house. Right above. And my husband oh, I said oh what, he said there's an old lady stood in the corner of the room watching us. And I was like okay. So there were three that we know about for definite. I did have a friend who refused to go on the attic. She said it was party crowded up there too thick with people and things. And they kind of, they really, so that first month that we were in the house, we were seeing them all the time running around. Last year a lot less so and I think you just find that balance of living with ghosts. And I was actually on my own in the house. It's, it's, we're really lucky. It's a huge house. It's four stories and it's five bedrooms, so it's big. And you could imagine being on your own in a house that size, that you could, it could get spooky. And yet I was, I spent two months there last year on my own. And there were a lot of nights where I said good nights then and said thanks for keeping me company. Because I never felt alone and I never had moments of, who would you turn all the lights on? Which I definitely had places where I felt like, oh I don't want to have that door closed. I think for me moving into this very old

wanted house. And I see myself as the latest caretaker and a long line of caretakers.

Probably the darkest ghost sleep in counter-s've had was through my sister. My sister is an incredible, I'm the oldest of three girls and we're all very, very different and my middle sister is a left-hand colonel in the British Army. She was just mentioned in the King's New Year's Honours list. She was awarded the Royal Red Cross which is the same award that they gave to Florence Nightingale. She's the medic in the army. She's a phenomenal, phenomenal woman, but she spent eight years in Germany and the house that she was living in was purpose-built by Hitler for his panzer regiment officers. So the first occupants of the house were Nazi officers, SS and panzer. The house itself has a prison in the basement and a prison in the attic, and very clearly a prison because the locks are on the outside. And so the British now occupy the base, and so they took it over in its entirety when they liberated Bergen-Belston, which is the camp that Anne Frank died in. And in fact, actually, Bergen-Belson Liberation Day is coming up April 15th. We were lucky enough to be there. I say lucky enough. We were privileged enough to be in Germany on Liberation Day on April 15th. and the days leading up to April 15th it was it was disgusting that grey cold miserable and we've made plans that we were going to have to drive and somebody I mean we've been to visit the camp earlier that week and we said oh well and someone said hey

You need to know it's happened every year It never rains on April the 15th at Bergenbelsen and We were like yeah, I don't see how that sure enough bright blue sky all day long You can't comprehend it and you can't really describe it to people. There is no bird song. The birds know. The birds don't fly over this place. It's

silent. I'm a country girl so I'm used to and it's in the middle of the woods in the middle of nowhere. It's...it's...it's...it's...it's chilling because I feel like having been there on April 15th. So April the 15th is a very special day and obviously the further we move away from

...