A Higher Education: Meet Anastacia, The Spiritual Goth
The former English teacher brings an educator's perspective to spiritual practice, inviting a more thoughtful conversation about tarot and personal growth
By: Amanda Albert
The endlessly curious have a talent for finding new subjects worthy of their fascination. Anastacia Anastascio, The Spiritual Goth, has three Master's degrees and a voracious appetite for exploration that eventually led her beyond the classroom and into the realm of the metaphysical. Her professional journey began teaching English, but a spiritual awakening during the pandemic inspired an unexpected change of course. What started as a personal pursuit soon became a new vocation, giving her academic training fresh purpose in spiritual education.
Today, Anastacia brings an educator's perspective to a subject often surrounded by misconceptions. She encourages people to examine their inner lives with greater honesty, even when the discoveries are uncomfortable. She's also setting the record straight on a few tarot myths, challenging long-held assumptions about the cards and what it actually means to read them.
We caught up with Anastacia to revisit the turning points that shaped her career and explore the philosophy behind her teachings.
The Fine Art of Farewell: Insights From Funeral Director and Embalmer Emily Murman
Known on social as @theautisticmortician, Emily shares a compassionate account of the customs and care surrounding death in the USA
By: The Lace Ledger Staff
Even the most articulate among us can find ourselves searching for words when confronted with death and grief. Perhaps our discomfort with the unknown explains why we're often reluctant to ask what happens behind the doors of a funeral home.
Emily Murman, the licensed funeral director and embalmer known on social media as @theautisticmortician, is helping make those conversations a little easier. Her candour offers a compassionate introduction to a profession many of us know surprisingly little about, revealing the meticulous attention given to those in its care. Emily also brings the perspective of an autistic woman who has experienced profound personal loss, giving her an intimate understanding of what grieving families may be facing. Her advice on supporting someone through bereavement is especially thoughtful, acknowledging that grief follows no prescribed course.
Emily's creative pursuits extend well beyond the funeral home. An accomplished poet, she explores the complicated relationship between our physical bodies and our understanding of mortality. She's also collaborating with professional workwear brand MEA, advocating for clothing that accommodates the physical demands of funeral service.
We spoke with Emily about the experiences that drew her to mortuary science, the importance of honouring individuality and how working with the dead has encouraged her to live more authentically.
Raising Hell: The Alternative Music Class of 2026
From metal royalty to rising renegades, meet the goth-coded musicians dominating the airwaves
By: The Lace Ledger Staff
Alternative music fans have been spoiled for choice this year. Our playlists have barely kept pace with the steady stream of releases, spanning everything from industrial metal to Southern gothic rock. Familiar names have returned with fresh material, while a new generation of artists has been making plenty of noise of its own. Between full-length albums, EPs and standalone singles, there's been no shortage of reasons to turn up the volume.
We've rounded up our standouts from 2026, featuring established acts with gothic household-name status alongside breakout talent you might still have the chance to catch in an intimate venue before they're selling out arenas.
Where the Wild Things Wither: Max Madly's Garden of Neglect
Meet the genre-defying musician bringing an affection for horror to her haunting debut album
By: The Lace Ledger Staff
A guitar riff creeps in like an ominous apparition. Somewhere in the distance, a voice rises, beautiful... and vaguely threatening. The atmosphere grows heavier, and before long, the haunting melody begins to sound like a warning.
Enter the symphonic garden of Max Madly, where flora, fauna and decay make for intimate companions. Over a decade of classical training meets a rebellious affection for punk in her distinctive take on alternative rock, with compositions that wouldn't sound out of place in a horror film.
Madly's debut studio album, Garden of Neglect, arrived October 2, inviting listeners into a strange musical landscape where life flourishes alongside the rot. “Bones of Ours” is a personal favourite, its magnetic intensity making it difficult to resist another listen.
We had the pleasure of stepping into Max's studio to explore the influences behind her music and discover where her imagination might wander beyond the garden gate.
Before My Time: My Past-Life Regression Experience With The Spiritual Goth
What happened when I explored a past life under Anastacia's guidance
By: Amanda Albert
I step into the kitchen. It's a small room, sparsely furnished, yet somehow it feels empty. A pot of salty porridge sits on an old-fashioned coal stove, left over from breakfast, but something inside me knows better than to throw it away. We'll need what's left tomorrow.
Faded blues and greens lend this farmhouse a dreary disposition, their colours softened by the grey light filtering through a weathered window above the sink. An old metal milk container stands beside the door. A wooden table occupies the centre of the room, surrounded by five chairs, although only four match. The air smells of damp earth, and my leather work boots feel heavy against the floor.
My body aches and I'm hungry, though neither sensation is unfamiliar. There's a persistent anxiety sitting in the pit of my empty stomach, accompanied by an equally familiar understanding that I must keep it to myself. Lunch needs preparing, and I have five mouths to feed: my husband, our son and two grandsons. There's barely enough food for two.
A calendar hangs on the wall, its lettering written in a language I cannot, today, understand. The illustration tells me it's May, although the chill in the air suggests otherwise. I seem to be somewhere in Eastern Europe, sometime during the 1800s.
I've never seen this kitchen before. I don't recognize the food or understand the language on the calendar. Yet, in this moment, I carry the weight of a life I don't recognize.
Somewhere beyond this farmhouse, in another time and place, Anastacia Anastascio The Spiritual Goth is guiding me through a past-life regression.
Grave Expectations: An Evening Among the Living and Dead at Ruthven Park
Victorian superstitions meet historic grandeur during a lantern-lit cemetery tour at one of Ontario's most intriguing estates
By: The Lace Ledger Staff
The road to Ruthven Park is almost worth the journey alone. Winding lanes carry us through the Ontario countryside, where autumn leaves burn copper and gold against the crisp sky. A grand 19th-century mansion awaits beyond the gatehouse, surrounded by the sprawling grounds of a historic family estate.
Just before Halloween, we visited Ruthven Park National Historic Site in Cayuga, Ontario, for The Mansion in Mourning: Séances, Superstitions & Haunted Cemetery Tour. The evening promised an introduction to Victorian funeral traditions, followed by a lantern-lit excursion among the headstones of the Thompson family cemetery.
Excellent plans for an October evening, if you ask us.