Podcast Episode Summary

Bigfoot Collectors Club: "I Was a Teenage Vampire" w/ Celeste Mott

Host: Wood Elf Media
Air Date: February 11, 2026
Guests: Celeste Mott (Writer, Psychic, Initiated Witch)
Co-hosts: Michael McMillian and Riley Bray

Episode Overview

This engaging episode of Bigfoot Collectors Club features writer and psychic Celeste Mott. The hosts and Celeste journey through her paranormal history, including her experience with high strangeness, witchcraft, psychic phenomena, and, notably, being swept up in a vampire cult inspired by Anne Rice’s novels as a teenager. The conversation is candid, humorous, and consistently curious, blending personal anecdotes with explorations of occult theory, dream spaces, and the power of belief.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Celeste’s Background and Paranormal Beginnings

[03:45]

• Born in the UK, grew up in the rural Cotswolds, then moved to Australia at age 10.
• Felt isolated in Perth, Australia, and disconnected from its spiritual landscape:

  “Perth felt very spiritually dead for me in a lot of ways. I think that’s a big part of what motivated me to try and leave.” —Celeste [10:03]

• Deeply interested in folklore, witchcraft, and the supernatural from a young age, influenced by exposure to fairy rings, historic sites, and British mythos.
• Considered her initiation into the occult as “initiation by spirit”—experiences she couldn’t explain or categorize, including lucid dreams, shadow figures, and an encounter with a "light being":

  "I was seeing, you know, lights very frequently ... an almost cookie cutter of a man shape, you know, but very, very tall ... full of light.” —Celeste [15:49]

2. The Vampire Cult of Online Anne Rice Fandom

[24:45] — Major Section

• As a teenager in Perth, Celeste joined an Anne Rice-inspired vampire cult online—an international community on early-2000s “Y2K” internet forums.
• The forum drew boundary lines by insisting it wasn’t a roleplay but a gateway for “real vampires,” based around the lore of Rice’s novels but expanding into its own mythos incorporating tulpas and egregores:

  “Why are they talking about tulpas? ... Is this entire thing a narrative magic experiment? Is it a psyop? Like, what are we doing here? It got very strange.” —Celeste [30:51]

• Cult activities became experiential: members reported real-world phenomena, meetups in New Orleans, and even physical marks allegedly from vampire encounters.
• The "high strangeness" intensified at these meetups, with claims of group visions, sightings, and shared paranormal events, blurring the lines between fiction and lived experience.
• The leadership manipulated members (“leaders” were revealed to be sock puppets run by an adult who never appeared in person, revealed years later through IP tracing):

  “Turns out ... that the girl around my age who was very clearly Lisette and Armand was a 48 year old ex-Canadian military veteran.” —Celeste [40:28]

• The cult discouraged medical care in favor of supernatural explanations—a red flag for Celeste and the point at which she began to extricate herself.

3. High Strangeness and Psychic Development

[44:49]

• Upon leaving the cult, Celeste struggled with the trauma of having her genuine psychic and magical experiences co-opted for someone else’s agenda:

  “Thinking about magic or high strangeness or the paranormal was kind of activating. It didn’t feel safe.” —Celeste [45:03]

• A significant milestone was a reading by another psychic, who independently described a being Celeste had seen in her dreams for years—validating her experiences as something real and distinct from the cult narrative.
• Return to witchcraft practice—and engagement with the wider high strangeness community (e.g., Hellier, Somerset, Kentucky investigations) gave Celeste both personal validation and a sense of collective exploration.

4. Dreams, Shared Unconscious, and Mall World

[63:21]

• Celeste described her involvement in “Mall World,” a term for a shared dreamscape resembling retro malls, airports, and other liminal spaces that many people have reportedly visited in dreams.
• Notably, this shared dream phenomenon is particularly prevalent among people who participated in gifted "Gate" programs.
• Celeste spearheaded a group experiment—over 650 people attempting to meet in Mall World via intention, meditation, and shared sigils. The results:

  “Like, 75% of people who responded [said] they have had an increase in lucidity and dream recall and dream vividness.” —Celeste [66:19]

• A synchronistic experiment involved using a butterfly as a mutual dream sign—members reported seeing butterfly imagery, including a participant who hadn’t received that instruction.

5. Psychic Abilities & How They Manifest

[60:29]

• Celeste works as a professional psychic, providing readings using trance mediumship, scrying, and tarot.
• Says she can largely turn her abilities on and off, but remaining open all the time is overwhelming:

  “I don’t leave my house very much ... even if I have the switch turned off, it can be pretty overwhelming energetically.” —Celeste [61:53]

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

On Magical Initiation:

• “For me, it definitely felt like ... initiation by spirit from a really young age … rural Cotswolds. ... fairy rings and stones and stuff like that. ... It was resonant with me.” —Celeste [07:13]

Encounter with the Light Being:

• “There was just a being ... almost like a cookie cutter of a man shape ... very, very tall ... full of light ... I literally just went, nope, not dealing with that today.” —Celeste [15:49]

On High Strangeness and Belief:

• “Did we create high strangeness by the power of generative belief?” —Celeste [32:02]

On Cult Dynamics:

• “They were telling people to not go to the doctor when they were sick … told me that when I was really, really unwell, it was because I had vampire blood.” —Celeste [37:59]

Discovering the Truth:

• “The final nail in the coffin ... I traced IP addresses and found out the IP address of Armand and Lestat was the same as this supposedly girl around my age who had also been my friend.” —Celeste [40:28]

Psychic Phenomena:

• "Oftentimes ... I just kind of know things. ... Sometimes it’s future events, sometimes it’s just weird things from people’s past that I can pick up on in that trance state.” —Celeste [60:29]

On Mall World (Shared Dreaming):

• “Mall World is this term that people are using to designate shared dream space … an interconnected series of dream locations … a shopping mall... but connected to an airport, elevator, or Toilet World ... people all over the place were like, 'holy shit. I thought it was just me.'” —Celeste [63:33]

Timestamps for Key Segments

• [03:45] Celeste's international upbringing and her spiritual journey
• [10:03] Disconnect with the spiritual energy of Australia
• [13:01] Childhood experiences with sleep, shadow people, and a "light being"
• [24:45] Joining the Anne Rice vampire cult and early Internet occult subcultures
• [30:51] The cult's bizarre esoteric influences (tulpas, egregores)
• [39:22] Discovery of the cult leader’s real identity through IP tracing
• [44:49] Aftermath of the cult: healing and returning to witchcraft, psychic work
• [63:21] Mall World: shared dream experiments, the architecture of collective dreaming
• [66:19] Results from the Mall World mutual dream experiment
• [60:29] Manifestation of psychic abilities and professional practice
• [71:19] Rapid-fire "Believe It or Not" game with Celeste on paranormal phenomena

Tone and Style

The tone of the episode is playful, curious, and candid, with a touch of humor and self-deprecation. The hosts and Celeste are unafraid to dig into the psychologically complex and sometimes uncomfortable side of paranormal belief, always circling back to skepticism, mental health, and the importance of validation through community and shared experience.

Additional Highlights & Synchronicities

• [59:07] Story of “intergalactic cops” or “shadow figures” in dreams, echoed by someone Celeste met in a ritual cave at Mount Shasta who dreamt about being a shadow agent hunting her.
• [69:26] Michael shares a real-world synchronicity: a friend spontaneously recounting a dream set in a mall just before recording the episode.

Conclusion & Where to Find Celeste

Celeste can be found on:

• Instagram: @celeste.mott
• TikTok: @celestemoth
• YouTube: Celeste Mott
• Substack: celestemott.substack.com
• Website: celestemott.com

Celeste offers psychic readings, scrying sessions, tarot, and spellwork.

For Listeners

This episode is a wild ride—combining digital-age folklore, the power of belief, the hazards (and wonders) of online community, and the eternal search for meaning in the unknown. Whether you’re interested in occult practice, internet history, dreamwork, or just love a good vampire-cult story, this one’s for you.

Further Listening

• [71:19]: Don’t miss the “Believe It or Not” lightning round for a fast, funny take on classic paranormal topics.
• [63:21]: Jump here for the Mall World breakthrough—shared dreaming as an emergent social-paranormal phenomenon.

Bigfoot Collectors Club: “When you’re in the Clubhouse, no topic is too serious and no story is too strange!”