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Psychology of the Strange: Daily Summaries Delivered
by Tara Perreault
Folklore. Fear. Dark Psychology. Psychology of the Strange is a narrative psychology podcast that explores the eerie, the uncanny, and the deeply human. Every episode begins with an original atmospheric story rooted in dark folklore, superstition, or real events and then shifts into a psychological analysis that unpacks why these tales grip the human mind. From winter-born omens and skeletal visitors to fearlessness, moral ambiguity, and the monsters we create to explain uncertainty, this show lives in the spaces where folklore and psychology overlap. If you like stories that linger… and explanations that cut deeper… you’re in the right place. Hosted by Tara Perreault, a doctoral student in psychology at the University of South Florida. Her research focuses on the darker edges of human nature: fearlessness, Dark Triad traits, moral ambiguity, recreational fear, and the meanings people draw from the strange and the supernatural. Tara blends academic insight with myth, atmosphere, and psychological storytelling. Her approach is part folklore study, part dark psychology, part narrative experiment. She has presented research at multiple conferences, published empirical work, and spent years studying how people make sense of fear — in haunted houses, on screen, and in the stories we pass down through generations. Psychology of the Strange is her creative extension of that work: a place where the uncanny becomes meaningful, and where every monster is really a metaphor for something we haven’t faced yet.
Latest Episodes
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- 3 days ago25 min
Lucid Journeys, Epic Realities, and the New Science of the Dreaming Mind
What happens to your brain when the lights go out? Every night, our minds spin up a hyper-realistic, 100% immersive reality simulator. For decades, science viewed dreaming as minor background maintenance, just the brain clearing out its digital trash. But a groundbreaking new study has completely shattered that theory, revealing that our most vivid dreams actually form a protective internal scaffold that seals us off from the waking world. In this episode of Psychology of the Strange, we dive headfirst into the far edges of dream worlds. We explore the grueling, relentless phenomenon of Epic Dreaming (where sleepers endure endless night shifts of mental labor), crack open the matrix of Lucid Dreaming, and map the stunning neurological intersections between modern neuroscience, ancient Tibetan Dream Yoga, and Out-of-Body Experiences (OBEs). Are we naturally wired to experience alternate dimensions of reality every time we hit the pillow? Featured Research & Resources The Study: Bernardi, G., et al. (2026). The structural role of dream immersiveness in NREM2 sleep architecture.Published in PLOS Biology. Historical Reference: Dr. Stephen LaBerge’s pioneering lucidity research at Stanford University (The Lucidity Institute). Spiritual Tradition: The Tibetan Yogas of Dream and Sleep by Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche. Connect With Me! If this episode made you question your waking reality, don't keep it to yourself! Subscribe to Psychology of the Strange on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your audio fix. Substack: If you love the show, then check out the substack that goes a long with the episodes substack.com/@psychstrangepod Support: If you enjoy the show consider buying me a coffee to help fund all the research that goes into each episode
- 1 weeks ago27 min
Of Mushrooms and Little People
In this episode, I enter one of the strangest corners of mycology, folklore, and consciousness research I've encountered: Lanmaoa asiatica, a mushroom with no identified psychoactive compound that nonetheless causes ninety-six percent of people who eat it undercooked to hallucinate the same thing. Small humanoid figures, marching through their real-world environment. Climbing furniture. Slipping under doors. Exactly two centimeters tall. And then I pull back to ask why, across every inhabited continent, human cultures with no contact and no shared history have been building folklore about small beings living just beyond the threshold of ordinary perception for thousands of years. In this episode: Lanmaoa asiatica, the "Lilliputian mushroom" of Yunnan province and what researcher Colin Domnauer found when he followed it to the Philippines The 3rd-century Daoist text that described this mushroom seventeen hundred years before modern science confirmed it Fairy rings, the Aos Sí, and why the folklore was structurally accurate all along The fly agaric (Amanita muscaria), the Koryak shamans of Siberia, and the surprisingly dark origin story of Santa Claus Lilliputian hallucinations as a clinical phenomenon and why their cross-cultural consistency is the strange part Aldous Huxley's reducing valve, the default mode network, and what modern neuroscience says about how psychedelics change what we're able to perceive Theoretical physics, extra dimensions, and the oldest question in shamanic tradition: what if ordinary perception is the filter, not the truth?
- 2 weeks ago27 min
Analog Horror Manufacturing Dread
Analog horror, psychology of fear, and the neuroscience of dread. In this episode of Psychology of the Strange, I'm breaking down what the analog horror genre is actually doing to your brain and why it works so precisely on modern audiences. Analog horror is a subgenre of found footage horror that emerged on YouTube in the mid-to-late 2010s. It uses the visual grammar of VHS tapes, emergency broadcast systems, public access television, and educational films to manufacture a specific kind of psychological dread. One that bypasses rational thought entirely and lands somewhere older and harder to name. I'm looking at the neuroscience behind why corrupted signals trigger threat detection, how the uncanny valley extends beyond faces and bodies into institutional formats, and what liminal space does to a nervous system that can't locate the threat. I'm also asking why this genre has exploded right now, at a moment when the government has confirmed UAP phenomena it spent decades denying, the Epstein files are still unfolding, and AI-generated video has made provenance verification a skill most people don't have. The comment sections of analog horror videos are full of people asking "is this real?" and that question is more complicated than it used to be. Series covered include Local 58, The Mandela Catalogue, and Gemini Home Entertainment. Psychology of the Strange is hosted by Tara Perreault, doctoral researcher at the University of South Florida, and is part of the Dark Cast Network. New episodes every Tuesday If you enjoy the show, you can support it here: buymeacoffee.com/psychstrangepod Find me on Instagram and TikTok at @psychstrangepod.
- 3 weeks ago25 min
The Fashion Sense of Ghosts & Woman in White Lore
Every ghost sighting follows the same dress code, the long dress, pale, timeless, and tragic. Almost nobody is reporting the apparition in low rise flare jeans and butterfly clips. It is a window into how the human brain constructs, maintains, and inherits its fear of the dead. In this episode, I trace the Woman in White across cultures, like La Llorona, the White Lady of Balete Drive, the Bean Nighe, Resurrection Mary, to ask why the most universal ghost story in the world belongs to a figure deliberately unanchored in time. From there we get into the cognitive psychology of ghost sightings: schema theory, the brain as a prediction machine, and how a seventh century pope's decision to weaponize ghost stories as theology quietly wrote the template your brain still reaches for in the dark. We close with Schopenhauer's afterglow of consciousness, Ryle's category mistake, and the question of whether the cultural script around ghosts is genuinely self-sealing, and what that means for the girl from 2007 who is probably still in purgatory. Pray for her. Maybe she'll be haunting you soon too. Topics covered: ghost lore, Woman in White folklore, La Llorona, Resurrection Mary, Bean Nighe, schema theory, cognitive psychology of perception, Pope Gregory I, Victorian death culture, Schopenhauer, Gilbert Ryle, Cartesian dualism, purgatory If you enjoy the show, you can support it here: buymeacoffee.com/psychstrangepod Psychology of the Strange is part of the Dark Cast Network. Find me on Instagram and TikTok at @psychstrangepod.
- May 5, 202628 min
Voodoo Dolls, Marie Laveau, and the Psychology of Magical Thinking
The voodoo doll you picture (small cloth figure, colorful pins) has almost nothing to do with Voodoo. That image is a Western invention, laundered through Hollywood until the real story got lost entirely. In this episode, I'm tracing where the object actually comes from, why versions of it appear across cultures with no contact with each other, and what the psychology underneath it tells us about the human need for control. From the wax effigies used in a plot against Pharaoh Ramesses III in 1100 BCE, to the Kongo Nkondi figures misread by Western colonizers, to the European poppet tradition, the logic is always the same: embed intention into an object, connect it to a person, and trust that the distance between you just collapsed. Then there's Marie Laveau. Born in New Orleans in 1801 as a free woman of color, she built one of the most documented and least fully understood power bases in American history, a hairdresser with an intelligence network, a devout Catholic who built altars in death row cells, a Voodoo queen whose practice centered on exactly this kind of object-based magic. Her gris-gris bags operated on identical principles to every effigy and poppet we've been talking about. Personal objects. Embedded intention. The belief that a physical item can carry something across the distance between you and the person you're trying to reach. Whether it works in the causal sense is almost beside the point. Rotter's locus of control, Rozin and Nemeroff's laws of sympathetic magic, and the confirmation bias that closes the loop, the psychology here suggests the doll does work. Just not the way the instruction card says it does. And if that makes you think of vision boards and manifestation culture, you're already seeing the connection I want to talk about. Grad school doesn't fund itself, and neither does late-night research into the rugarou, demonic mirrors, and the psychology of cults. If an episode got under your skin, sent you down your own rabbit hole, or made you text someone "you need to hear this", buying me a coffee keeps the strange alive. https://buymeacoffee.com/psychstrangepod Psychology of the Strange is part of the Dark Cast Network. Find me on Instagram and TikTok at @psychstrangepod.
- Apr 28, 202633 min
The Psychology of the Final Girl in Horror Movies
Why do we cheer when the final girl fights back in horror movies? From Laurie Strode in Halloween to Sidney Prescott in Scream to Sienna Shaw in Terrifier 2, slasher films give us vulnerable protagonists who survive brutal violence, and we love watching them become ruthless. This episode explores the psychological mechanism behind the final girl trope and why vulnerability licenses extreme violence. Drawing on recent horror research on the imbalance between a weak protagonist and powerful antagonist triggers something deeper than fear. It changes how your brain judges violence. Through film analysis of classic and contemporary horror movies including A Nightmare on Elm Street and Terrifier 2, I examine how moral typecasting theory explains why we grant final girls permission to do things we'd condemn in any other context. What separates horror from action? Why does Alien feel terrifying while Predator feels like an action movie, even with nearly identical threats? The answer lies in protagonist vulnerability and how your brain categorizes victims versus aggressors. I also explore how this same psychological pattern shows up in true crime cases, self-defense trials, and real-world moral judgments about violence. If you've ever wondered why slasher movie violence feels justified when the final girl does it, this episode reveals the cognitive mechanisms at work. Vulnerability decides who gets to fight back. Grad school doesn't fund itself, and neither does late-night research into the rugarou, demonic mirrors, and the psychology of cults. If an episode got under your skin, sent you down your own rabbit hole, or made you text someone "you need to hear this", buying me a coffee keeps the strange alive. https://buymeacoffee.com/psychstrangepod Psychology of the Strange is part of the Dark Cast Network. Find me on Instagram and TikTok at @psychstrangepod. Papers referenced in this episode Edgard Dubourg & Coltan Scrivner. (2026). Vulnerability and the computational logic of fear: insights from the horror genre. Evolution & Human Behavior, 47, 106813. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S109051382500162X Gray, K., & Wegner, D. M. (2009). Moral typecasting: Divergent perceptions of moral agents and moral patients. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 96(3), 505–520. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0013748
- Apr 21, 202627 min
Kali, Enlightenment through Destruction
Kali. Hindu goddess, destroyer, mother, liberator. She is one of the most misunderstood figures in Hindu mythology, and today we're pulling back the curtain on who she actually is. From the dark psychology of her origins to the real history of the Thuggee cult, the hereditary stranglers who killed up to two million people in her name. This episode explores what happens when people think they understand a force that cannot be controlled, negotiated with, or appealed to. We also get into the tantric symbolism hiding in plain sight in her iconography: the sword that represents higher knowledge, the severed head that represents the human ego, and what it actually means that she's smiling through all of it. Along the way: Jungian shadow theory, moral disengagement, the Aghori monks of Varanasi who meditate on corpses, and a female Tantric sect so obscure they barely left a historical record. Kali is not a demon. She is not a goddess of death for death's sake. She is a force that moves toward truth and annihilates the false and she has been trying to tell us that through her iconography for over two thousand years. Grad school doesn't fund itself, and neither does late-night research into the rugarou, demonic mirrors, and the psychology of cults. If an episode got under your skin, sent you down your own rabbit hole, or made you text someone "you need to hear this", buying me a coffee keeps the strange alive. https://buymeacoffee.com/psychstrangepod Psychology of the Strange is part of the Dark Cast Network. Find me on Instagram and TikTok at @psychstrangepod.
- Apr 14, 202630 min
Rugaru Legend in the Bayou
Deep in the Louisiana bayou, something moves through the cypress trees after dark. The rougarou (aka rugaru or rougaroux) is Louisiana's legendary swamp werewolf. It has haunted Cajun folklore for centuries, born from the French loup-garou legend and shaped by the fears of a displaced people trying to hold their world together in the dark. In this episode of Psychology of the Strange, we trace the rougarou from its roots in medieval French werewolf mythology through the Acadian exile of 1755 and into the swamps of southern Louisiana, where it became something far more specific than a monster. We dig into the Catholic guilt and excommunication architecture baked into the curse, the psychology of folklore as social control, and why breaking your Lenten fast for seven consecutive years might be the last mistake you ever make. We explore terror management theory, moral disengagement, and institutional betrayal and why the only escape from a Church-built curse runs straight through Louisiana voodoo. Plus: why the rougarou can't count to thirteen, what that has to do with Judas, and how a creature built to punish sinners became an unlikely guardian of the Louisiana wetlands and maybe something of a cryptid antihero for our current moment. Grad school doesn't fund itself, and neither does late-night research into the rugarou, demonic mirrors, and the psychology of cults. If an episode got under your skin, sent you down your own rabbit hole, or made you text someone "you need to hear this", buying me a coffee keeps the strange alive. https://buymeacoffee.com/psychstrangepod Psychology of the Strange is part of the Dark Cast Network. Find me on Instagram and TikTok at @psychstrangepod.
About Psychology of the Strange
Folklore. Fear. Dark Psychology. Psychology of the Strange is a narrative psychology podcast that explores the eerie, the uncanny, and the deeply human. Every episode begins with an original atmospheric story rooted in dark folklore, superstition, or real events and then shifts into a psychological analysis that unpacks why these tales grip the human mind. From winter-born omens and skeletal visitors to fearlessness, moral ambiguity, and the monsters we create to explain uncertainty, this show lives in the spaces where folklore and psychology overlap. If you like stories that linger… and explanations that cut deeper… you’re in the right place. Hosted by Tara Perreault, a doctoral student in psychology at the University of South Florida. Her research focuses on the darker edges of human nature: fearlessness, Dark Triad traits, moral ambiguity, recreational fear, and the meanings people draw from the strange and the supernatural. Tara blends academic insight with myth, atmosphere, and psychological storytelling. Her approach is part folklore study, part dark psychology, part narrative experiment. She has presented research at multiple conferences, published empirical work, and spent years studying how people make sense of fear — in haunted houses, on screen, and in the stories we pass down through generations. Psychology of the Strange is her creative extension of that work: a place where the uncanny becomes meaningful, and where every monster is really a metaphor for something we haven’t faced yet.
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