For Rachel Dratch, Halloween is a take-it-or-leave it kind of holiday.
“Because I get to dress up for a living,” says the comic actor, Tony nominee, and former “Saturday Night Live” cast member, “when Halloween rolls around, I’m like, ‘OK, I don’t need to go find the sushi outfit.’ ”
She does, however, enjoy a good ghost story. That’s the premise behind “Woo Woo with Rachel Dratch,” a new podcast that explores unexplained mysteries, psychic disturbances, and other encounters with the supernatural.
Co-hosted by comedian Irene Bremis, a fellow Lexington native, “Woo Woo” features conversations with Dratch’s friends from stage (Kevin Cahoon, Christopher Firtzgerald) and screen (Amy Poehler, Ana Gasteyer, Nia Vardalos) about premonitions, weird dreams, malevolent spirits, and other eerie experiences.
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Dratch, who earned a Tony nomination for her gonzo Broadway debut in last year’s “POTUS: Or, Behind Every Great Dumbass Are Seven Women Trying to Keep Him Alive,” says she doesn’t consider herself a particularly “woo woo” person. She says that a lot on the podcast.
“I’m not, like, ‘I see ghosts everywhere I go!’ ” she explains. “I think we want to be seen as a rational, sane person. We’re not supposed to believe anything that isn’t provable by science.
“But then when I hear one of these stories it’s like, ‘Well, maybe we don’t know everything.’ ”
Some of the co-hosts’ guests tell stories of seeing ghosts — or, in one case, being pushed down some stairs by one in Provincetown. Others, such as Poehler, don’t think of themselves as true believers, but they do have some proclivities. It turns out that Poehler is a staunch advocate of the Enneagram, a personality test that she uses to help make casting decisions and run her production company.
“She really uses those as a guide to life,” says “Dratchy,” as Poehler calls her.
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In the first episode, Dratch tells the story of her visit to a psychic reader in Los Angeles who predicted that she would meet a husband within “three to six months” and they would have one child together. Four months later, she met the man who would become the father to her son, Eli, who is now 13. (“Hooligan age,” Dratch jokes.)
Some upcoming guests are not from the world of show business but are everyday people Dratch has met over the years. They’re ordinary folks with extraordinary stories about phenomena such as time travel and astral projection.
When she first began pitching the idea for the show, she had no idea just how many podcasts deal with the supernatural.
“Some people are really serious about it,” she says. “They do all this investigative stuff.”
Her approach with Bremis is much more chatty and light-hearted.
“There’s room for all the ghosts,” she says with a laugh.
James Sullivan can be reached at jamesgsullivan@gmail.com. Follow him @sullivanjames.