‘Living for the Dead’ Stars on Why Queer Ghost Hunter Show Stands out From the Rest
Preview
From the creators of Queer Eye comes Living for the Dead, a new ghost hunter docuseries that sees five queer people with a connection to the paranormal trekking to haunted locations to heal the beings who occupy them — dead or alive. As a paranormal researcher and former clown, Roz Hernandez gleefully declares to TV Insider, “We’re the Freaky Five!”
Kristen Stewart narrates and executive produces the series, premiering all eight episodes on Wednesday, October 18, on Hulu. Joining Hernandez in the Freaky Five are psychic Logan Taylor, tarot card reader Ken Boggle, witch and spiritual healer Juju Bae, and ghost hunter Alex LeMay.
Queerness and the supernatural seem to go hand-in-hand. Boggle says “open minds” and “a need to be understood” is why.
“The majority of what you have in the spirit world is that there is a need to be understood,” Boggle tells TV Insider. “You could have a [dead] grandmother who loves her family, and the only way she can communicate is through flipping lights off and on. She ends up terrifying the kids when all she really wants to do is say, ‘I miss you, and I love you.’ That speaks to our culture as gays, when all we want to do is love, and it seems like that’s the hardest thing to have people understand or even allow.”
Each episode features a new haunted locale, the first of which is a clown-themed motel that seems to be inhabited by a spirit whose body is buried in the graveyard nearby. Guests of this motel are known to check out in the middle of the night after saying they felt something insidious touch them in their sleep. The Freaky Five gets to the bottom of the spooky mystery by empathizing with the spirits. Along the way, they connect with the living townspeople in unexpected ways.
The cast joins together as Juju Bae attempts to convene with spirits in Episode 3 (Credit: Hulu)
In the premiere, Ken breaks down crying in a bar after meeting a mother of a nonbinary preteen who supports their child’s identity. That love and support, Ken says in the episode, was not always afforded to him in his youth.
“We were able to give a voice to the dead in a way that maybe we also needed,” Bae tells TV Insider of this and more poignant moments throughout the season. “It was nice to have that experience at the same time with the spirits. In my case, being able to bond with a ghost or a spirit or an ancestor who, like Ken said, is just trying to communicate something, I think all of us on the show were just trying to communicate something about our specific perspectives.”
“A lot of times, people just want to be heard and seen,” she continues. “Whether you’re dead or alive, everybody’s trying to be seen and wants to be heard and affirmed in that.”
Executive producer Rob Eric (who also works on Queer Eye) explains why the all-queer cast isn’t the main reason Living for the Dead is a new kind of ghost hunter series.
“Most of these shows, your ghost hunters are provoking the spirit. They’re poking it with a stick over and over again,” he explains. “Our team didn’t go into it that way. They went into it like, ‘Let’s communicate.'”
Hernandez says queer people and paranormal spirits have being outsiders are common. “I think that spirits and the spiritual realm is very misunderstood,” they explain. “I think a lot of times, people when don’t understand something they view it as scary or bad. That’s something we can relate to.”
Juju Bae, Logan Taylor, Roz Hernandez, Alex LeMay and Ken Boggle visit Waverly Hills in Episode 4 (Credit: Hulu)
Their road trip includes stops at the Copper Queen Hotel in Arizona; a desert locale in need of a cleanse; the Waverly Hills haunted house in Kentucky (also seen in Ghost Brothers: Lights Out Season 2); Broadway’s Palace Theater; Las Vegas’ oldest gentlemen’s club; and the infamous Lemp Mansion in St. Louis, Missouri. Every stop of the journey (at which they arrive in an RV with a fabulously decorated interior) will be filled with “weirdness in the best way,” Taylor says, noting that all lovers of the paranormal and supernatural will find something they enjoy in this eight-episode season.
“This show is so fresh and fun. The queer element is huge and we’re celebrating queer culture, but it’s something that really everybody can get something out of,” he shares. Viewers will also get a good history lesson out of every installment.
“I love that we dig into history that includes queer history, which I think a lot of shows haven’t done in the past,” says LeMay of their spine-chilling line of work.
Come for the ghostly frights, stay for the healing spirits.
Living for the Dead, Series Premiere, Wednesday, October 18, Hulu
