PODCAST · society
OPEN GRAVES
by Vesta Vaingloria & Heather Noel
Open your graves to us. As self-identified adult goths, Vesta and Heather dig into the lives of adult goths and goth-adjacent friends. We get into the psychological and sociological experience of living in this subculture when it’s not a phase, mom (but on that note, tell me about your mother). You will not find music reviews or makeup tutorials here, but music, aesthetics, and club gossip will inevitably bleed into the conversation. Let us dig up the deeply human remains: Religion. Sex stuff. Gatekeeping. Substance abuse. Family. Being in the same clubs with all of your exes until you die.
Episodes
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74 - On Dissonance and Resonance
Recorded from Jake’s white linen adorned home in his absence, Heather and Vesta discuss amongst many things, the recent convergence of so many goth events on one weekend, showing that what can seem like a cohesive community easily factions off into sub-groups, pulled between Thrill Kill Kult,...
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73 - Existential Dread (but you can dance to it) In conversation with returning guest DAVEY HAVOK
The Black Sun is Bleeding Silver! As Davey himself put it, AFI's newest album, "Silver Bleeds The Black Sun," is a litany of sonic flares honoring and signaling the Goth community. Or as Heather put it, "Shots Fired." If you listen to our podcast as a fellow lover of that "Dark, Gothy shit," (TM)...
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72 - Memento Mori, Carpe Noctem
Happy-ish new year. This was recorded in November 2025, and due to late publishing has become a bit of a time capsule, as things have changed since this recording. We revisit the topic of “memento mori” and the end of life, finding light in the darkness, relationship struggles and attachment, and...
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71 - On Fashion, but Not Really with Mimi Sosa-Delcampo and Michelle Morales
We are joined by an iconic duo, Mimi Sosa-Delcampo and Michelle Morales to focus on a topic that we have deftly avoided leaning too hard into: the role of fashion in the goth identity. We come at it from an angle that feels meaningful, questioning whether or not the subject of fashion is shallow…
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70 - “I Didn’t Even Drink My Bra”
You’re in for a twofer! We are late to the publishing game of talking about Cruel World, so this is a download about Kite, Chelsea Wolf, Actors, Mareaux, Clan of Xymox, of course Nick Cave, the divisive topic of Garbage vs. Devo, the infamous wine-bra, and then some embarrassing feeling about...
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69 - False Praise for the Abandonment Wound: Revisiting Relationships in the Goth Community
Well, Open Graves is now a pop-psychology podcast. We revisit a topic from one of our earliest episodes: dating in the goth community, and how we handle it when it falls apart. This iteration is less about the goth community specifically, and more about the experience of being a person in…
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68 - Party Under the Blood Moon with Team Obelisk: Tenebrae, Jak Syn, and Vodkahouse
To commemorate Obelisk’s two year anniversary in March, we have assembled the team to download about the journey from day one to year two, which began with a power outage! Now that the infamous back room is opened, our little event seems suddenly to have sprung from a makeshift bar party to an...
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67 - Ass! Nipples! Lips! Balls! with Arkonn
We are joined by the enthusiastic, self-described late-blooming goth Arkonn, who is totally not going through a midlife crisis. We learn about his not-goth partner of 21 years (100 years in gay time), the dichotomy of his sensible daywalking life, complex family dynamics and trauma, and how…
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66 - The Room Is Tired and Also on Fire: Election and Halloween Comedown
In the early weeks after the election and Halloween, Heather and Vesta try to process these two disparate events. On brand as ever, we open with the darkness of the dystopia in the first half, and then claw toward recovery by downloading about Halloween in the second. How does the political…
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65 - My Jay Byrd Brings All the Vestas to the Yard with Rocky Slaughter Pt. 2
Welcome to Open Graves After Midnight, in which we are still in Rocky’s house getting into the cliffhangers from part one (and some whiskey and wine). This includes a graphic encounter with Rozz Williams, empathy as a sleeper cell word, and The Other Gargoyle, aka the fraught origin of Rocky and...
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64 - I Love People Who Don’t Like People with Rocky Slaughter Pt. 1
Welcome to Open Graves After Dark with Rocky Slaughter, an alleged recovering goth who keeps getting pulled back in. We jump right into the darkness with discussion of growing up a feral latchkey child and loving it, family tragedy turning metalhead anger into goth depression, and a deep desire…
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63 - Summergoths Sail the Medium Seas
We apologize for literally talking about the weather, but we are on the porch talking #summergoth and what this time of year means for us. Between kayaking, beach and lake bathing, and all of the goth pool parties, this time of year brings some behaviors that might seem incongruous with our usual...
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62 - In the Cemetery with Philomene M. Jaeger & Mabel H. Silent
In our most literal Open Graves yet, we are recording a mini-sode in the cemetery. Heather and Vesta catch up after what we will politely call a hiatus, due to chaotic personal lives. Chill with us until we get kicked out of the cemetery. Please bear with some wind interference sounds around…
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61 - A Prescription for Los Angeles with Randy LeoDragon
After a brief recap of Obelisk’s one year anniversary party, we are joined by fellow valley-goth DJ, Randy LeoDragon. He discusses wrangling goths for the film industry through the Bat Pack and being an ethical goth consultant to oblivious casting directors, he shares what songs he won’t play…
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60 - Hautism Pt. 2: Everything Is Everything and Goth Is Just Neurodivergent Death Drag
We are back to talk about the neurodivergence of it all: the prevalence of ADHD, Autism Spectrum, synesthesia, and “hautism” in the goth community. People who are drawn to subculture seem to be having the human experience a little differently, but what exactly is that difference? We talk about…
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59 - Hautism Pt. 1: Masking Neurodivergence in the Goth Community
Depression gets all the stereotyped attention when it comes to diagnosing the goth community, but it is not news that we have higher than average proportion of neuro-spicy members, specifically Autism Spectrum and ADHD (your hosts have a bit of both!) We discuss why people whose brains experience...
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58 - The Art of Hanging Out with Matthew Setzer Pt. 2
As we get deeper into the hospitality rider’s worth of wine, Matthew Setzer tells us more about getting into flesh hook suspension, playing a Skinny Puppy show right after getting his vasectomy, balls in general, and not over-identifying with the label of goth. We also discuss making music with...
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57 - Guitar Culture Is Stupid with Matthew Setzer Pt. 1
We are honored to be joined by Matthew Setzer, who you may recognize from such projects as Skinny Puppy, London After Midnight, and most recently Front Line Assembly, but also from around LA nightlife. He talks with us about growing up a small-town outcast, finding goth and industrial music…
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56 - Void Adjacent or Void Avoidant? Mental Health in the Goth Community
After a holiday hiatus, we’re back in the graves! This topic comes up in some capacity in almost every episode, so we decided to focus on it intentionally: mental health in the goth community. Depression, anxiety, substance use - our community is full of these, but are they actually more…
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55 - You Can’t Squeegee the Mind’s Eye with Bob Gardner Pt. 2
Trauma takes a front seat in part two of our conversation with Bob Gardner, and from there it’s a whole journey (content warning: the darkness circles back at 1:01:40 - 1:03:20 with discussion of childhood sexual abuse). Darkness as our copilot, we also hear empowering stories about the 7 hour...
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54 - “Please Play Something More Upbeat, I Need to Stay Awake”
Deep into the so-called spooky season, Heather and Vesta have a one-on-one that takes turns all over, from our Obelisk Halloween party (Night of the Mamushka!) to goth music being vetoed by a hipper than thou afterhours bartender, to a stalker coming out of the woodwork. We also discuss the…
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53 - A Fixture in Five Months with Bob Gardner Pt. 1
New to Los Angeles but not at all new to goth, Bob Gardner joins us to talk about being adopted into our community and all of the strange detours that led him here. As you may be able to tell, Bob is from northeastern England, has a gregarious ADHD charm, and a lot to say. We talk gothcest,...
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52 - Goth Butts in Fishnets: A Dialectical of Neo-Dystopian Aesthetics with L Faunt
From tarot reading, to a 16 year career in dance, L Faunt is a wildly multifaceted goth, queer, Jew-witch comedian, and today they share their insights with us. They discuss being raised in a Romanian interfaith household and rejecting both religions in favor of “skeptical agnostic jewish…
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51 - But I Feel Like a Cryptid Every Day: A Post-Marc Discussion of Otherness
It starts with a chat about a goth pool party and ocean report, but ends with a full therapy session and a cliffhanger. This is a followup to our two-part recording with Marc Heuck, because he gave us a lot to dwell on. As goths, what is the consensus about the intersection between horror…
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50 - The Others Are Our Friends: The Passive Normalization of Goth and Monster Culture with Marc Heuck Pt. 2
Having left off with Night of the Living Dead becoming public domain, we continue our discussion with Marc about how mainstream media set the stage for goth. We also question how the influence of worldwide collective trauma set us up to embrace feelings of otherness, how monster narratives…
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49 -The Passive Normalization of Goth and Monster Culture with Marc Heuck Pt.1
Marc Heuck, Vesta’s first employer, friend of 20 years, and self-proclaimed goth-adjacent film nerd, might be our first guest to show up with pages of notes, and is definitely our first guest to lead to a two parter. This dissertation-level discussion is about the media that set the stage in the...
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48 - Too Goth for Depeche Mode with Laura Coldheart
Today on zoom we have one of Heather’s gothmothers, Laura Coldheart. She discusses coming to the goth side through experiencing death in the family and the cultural influence of Dia de los Muertos, finding music through working at Sam Goody, and feeling that the goth community used to offer more...
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47 - You Don’t Have to Be Rich to Be a Weirdo, but… An Addams Exploration Pt. 2
After a preamble about lingering Covid, summergoth pool parties, vasectomies, and laser hair removal, we revisit the ever-surfacing topic of The Addams Family in their many incarnations, this time prompted not by Netflix’s Wednesday, but by a recently discovered Pluto channel that plays only the...
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46 - Your Favorite Song That You Don’t Know Yet with Jared Eakin (define.human)
We are joined today in some stereotypically bisexual and neurodivergent seating positions by Jared Eakin aka define.human, to talk about how they skipped right over goth to get to industrial, how health trauma in the family coincided with their introduction to goth and industrial, growing up in…
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45 - Convenience vs Artistry with Robin Thomas
We open with Robin graciously and unexpectedly offering us sacrificial vinyl: The Glove’s Blue Sunshine for Heather and Bowie’s Loving the Alien for Vesta. DJ Robin Thomas discusses his history with KROQ and DJing nightclubs all over southern California, the inclusivity of the goth community as...
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44 - From Joseph Smith to Robert Smith with Virginia Jones
Goth, feminism, and comedy do coexist, and our guest Virginia Jones is living (and undead) proof. We talk about how refining her art allowed her to become more herself, having her own album title mansplained to her, and growing up as a Texas punk fascinated with California deathrock. We know that...
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43 - Jauntily Macabre: Netflix’s Wednesday and the Cultural Integrity of the Addams Family Pt. 1
Since day one we have intended to do an episode (or episodes) focusing on The Addams Family, their many incarnations, and cultural and subcultural importance, but now it is impossible to do so without first addressing Netflix’s Wednesday series. Unsurprisingly, we have a lot of feelings. In...
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42 - Goodbye, Cruel World: A Summary and Recovery from Gothchella
It’s live music season, and this is an intimate recovery zoom after the chaos of the Cruel World festival weekend. Heather was fully prepared and committed with a wine bra and a She-Wee, while Vesta…is not a festival person. We discuss the overwhelming(ly positive) experience of the triple-stage...
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41 - For Strength, Eat a Spider with BattyKat Weed
After reuniting by sharing a tattoo artist, we have one of Vesta’s first goth friends and a day-one listener, BattyKat Weed. She tells us about being into Edward Gorey and Stephen King as a child, growing up with some unspoken parental mysteries, finding her way to goth through an interest in...
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40 - The Goth/Industrial Costume Change with Darrick Walker
Lovingly referred to as the mayor of the LA goth community, Darrick Walker welcomes us off of the dance floor and to his kitchen table. He opens up about his decades long commitment to dance, how it can take years to talk to people even when you go out every night, growing up in Florida dancing…
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39 - The Red Rooster Is Dead with Pollyanne Hornbeck
We are joined by self-proclaimed Elder Goth Pollyanne Hornbeck, as she tells us about getting into old-school LA clubs underage and hearing Bauhaus for the first time, working for the LAWeekly right out of college and interviewing Nick Cave, living in the Hollywood Hills with Courtney Love, and…
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38 - Post-Mortem: Obelisk & Chamber
After a truly crazy week, we have a pun-intended post-mortem download about the opening of Obelisk for Vesta’s birthday and Heather’s DJ debuts both there and at Chamber. Guess what, it is overwhelmingly and sincerely positive! We both experience an outpouring of support over competition in both...
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37 - We’re All Just Little Lobsters with Jak Syn
Over homemade vegan queso and wine, we chat with Jak Syn about his DJ career and love of synthwave, starting a band and finding his way to the goth scene in high school, having to grow up quickly with mental illness in the family, how when clubbing became an escape that enabled destructive...
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36 - Obelisk, Chamber, and Nihil: A Shameless Self-Promotion Minisode
We’re on zoom today to lure you out to our first club night, Obelisk at Risky Business on Thursday, March 9th, which also happens to be Vesta’s birthday party and Heather’s DJ debut. Obelisk will be every 2nd Thursday, no cover. We also want to cross-promote within the community, and plug Nihil…
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35 - Flyers Before Friends with Natasha Boyer
We are joined on the “rough couch” by Heather’s dancefloor girlfriend, Natasha Boyer. She shares her experience of growing up as an anxious kid in a strict Catholic home, finding goth by way of 80s clubs, and how the importance of getting out of her comfort zone led to becoming a gogo dancer. She...
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34 - From Lotion and Lollipops to Bats Against Trump with Jenn Bats
Zooming in from Long Beach is the other half of the Release the Bats duo, Jenn Bats! Jenn shares with us a bit about her pre-Bats life going back to separating from her off-grid parents and moving in with her metalhead boyfriend at 16, how hippies and goths can relate to each other despite their...
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33 - I Didn’t Realize There Were Any Rules with Jolie
We are joined tonight by the soft and soothing voice of Jolie, a breathtaking staple of the LA dance floors. She shares her experience of cathartic expression through dance, a palm reader directing her from the rock scene to the hip hop scene before finding her way to goth, and the support and...
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32 - Night Creatures in a Daywalker’s World: Circadian Anti-Rhythms and Late-Phase Chronotypes in the Goth Community
As more studies come out about chronotypes and the variables in circadian rhythm, we have a deep desire to express our unprofessional medical opinions about how late-phase chronotypes might be disproportionately more common in the goth scene, how hard it can be to fit into a world designed for...
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31 - A Salute to Swishy Bitches with Michael Tenebrae
After overcoming some technical difficulties, we are honored to have a very special guest, designer of our show logo, Vesta’s longest term ex-partner and the father of the infamous Umbra, Michael Tenebrae. While drinking Boneyard Old Fashioneds, we discuss how Vampire the Masquerade turned this…
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30 - Dark Tsunami, a Wave of Winter Bullshit
After a bit of a holiday hiatus, catch up with us for a casual hang on Heather’s couch, in which we touch on the experience of being goth in Kauai, Hawaiian Christmas water grannies, the winter Covid resurgence, Gothanukkah (yes, it’s a thing, more on that later), Icelandic introvert Christmas…
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29 - Catchy Dark Shit: 50 Best Goth Songs Pt. 2
We’re back to discuss the second half of Rolling Stone’s “The 50 Best Goth Songs of All Time,” now opining about selections 25-1. Heather and Vesta become more likely to agree with each other and the article’s author in the second half…until we get to number one. Also featuring a She Wants…
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28 - Get Off My Lawn: The 50 Best Goth Songs Pt. 1
Rolling Stone recently published an article entitled “The 50 Best Goth Songs of All Time” written by Andi Harriman, and of course we have opinions. The list is an interesting combinations of basic staples and odd deep cuts, and we in no way claim authority in this divisive and subjective topic…
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27 - No More Songs About Shadows with Davey Ferchow
One musician named Davey was simply not enough, so we now welcome Davey Ferchow of the bands Dry Wedding and Swampland, zooming in from Portland. After airing some SoCal grievances, this pod full of poets gets into discussing how a sense of self can emerge from trauma, healthily and wholesomely...
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26 - Pumpkin Spice Shame Minisode
We’re here with our first minisode, in honor of Halloween! Vesta and Heather chat about how the goth community embraces the Halloween season, the time when the rest of society meets us where we already live. We air some grumpy vibes about haunts, conventions, costumes, and amateur nights, but…
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25 - Charlotte’s Goth Sometimes with Charlotte Anderson
Charlotte Anderson is Vesta’s fairygothchild, and also affectionately known as Charlotte’s Goth Sometimes, Normcore Charlotte, and an “inside goth.” Our bubbly Canadian discusses neurodivergence and being bullied in school, a traumatic death in the family that led her away from the Anglican…
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ABOUT THIS SHOW
Open your graves to us. As self-identified adult goths, Vesta and Heather dig into the lives of adult goths and goth-adjacent friends. We get into the psychological and sociological experience of living in this subculture when it’s not a phase, mom (but on that note, tell me about your mother). You will not find music reviews or makeup tutorials here, but music, aesthetics, and club gossip will inevitably bleed into the conversation. Let us dig up the deeply human remains: Religion. Sex stuff. Gatekeeping. Substance abuse. Family. Being in the same clubs with all of your exes until you die.
HOSTED BY
Vesta Vaingloria & Heather Noel
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Frequently Asked Questions
How many episodes does OPEN GRAVES have?
OPEN GRAVES currently has 74 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
What is OPEN GRAVES about?
Open your graves to us. As self-identified adult goths, Vesta and Heather dig into the lives of adult goths and goth-adjacent friends. We get into the psychological and sociological experience of living in this subculture when it’s not a phase, mom (but on that note, tell me about your mother). You...
How often does OPEN GRAVES release new episodes?
OPEN GRAVES has 74 episodes. Check the episode list to see recent publication dates and frequency.
Where can I listen to OPEN GRAVES?
You can listen to OPEN GRAVES on PodParley by clicking any episode. We provide an embedded audio player for direct listening, and you can also subscribe via your preferred podcast app using the RSS feed.
Who hosts OPEN GRAVES?
OPEN GRAVES is created and hosted by Vesta Vaingloria & Heather Noel.
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