Episode 199 – On Michael Jackson, with Shannon Taggart

Weird Studies

Photographer and paranormal researcher Shannon Taggart joins JF and Phil to explore the phenomenon that was Michael Jackson. One of the most brilliant and successful musicians of the modern era, Jackson was also a liminal figure sans pareil, a shapeshifter who defied the binary categories through which we order the human world. His art and persona together enacted a transformation that can only be called shamanic.

About Our Guest:

Shannon Taggart is a photographer and author based in St. Paul, Minnesota. Her photographs have appeared in Newsweek, The New York Times Magazine, and The Wall Street Journal, and have been recognized by Magnum, Nikon, and the Alexia Foundation. Her monograph Séance was first published by Fulgur Press (2019) and reissued in a second edition by Atelier Éditions. Shannon is currently developing an illustrated history of SORRAT (the Society for Research on Rapport and Telekinesis) and hosts an annual symposium on the weird and the paranormal in Lily Dale, New York.

Image by Daniele Dalledonne, via Wikimedia Commons.

References

George Hanson, The Trickster and the Paranormal

Robert Chambers, The King in Yellow

Rogan Taylor, The Death and Resurrection Show

Pier Paolo Pasolini (dir.), Teorema

Phil Ford, “The View from the Cheap Seats at the UFO Show”

Michael Jackson, Moonwalker: A Memoir

J. M. Barrie, Peter Pan

Ursula K. Le Guin, A Wizard of Earthsea

Miguel Connor, The Occult Elvis

Tim Powers, Last Call

Weird Studies, Episode 186 on The Wedge

Raymond Moody, Elvis After Life

Sub Rosa, Spectra Ex Machina: A Sound Anthology of Occult Phenomena 1920-2017 Vol.2

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