Ooky Spooky Blog

Vanity Fair Proust Questionnaire: Tara

A little bit more about one of our ghosts..., Jul 14, 2026

1. What is your idea of perfect happiness?

   Peace. Sublimity with the universe. When I was a little girl, my mother asked all of her children what they most wanted. I think to see what our goals were, making sure we were ambitious people. All I said was “to not feel bad/in pain anymore.” It’s taken me a very long time to realize just how happy I can be, and deserve to be. I enjoy my privacy, I enjoy some luxuries where I can, but I think having a nice cottage in Maine, where the sky meets the sea and earth perfectly, where the people are kind, and nature is cared for, would be perfect enough for me.

2. What is your greatest fear?

   So many fears to pick from, but I think the greatest is rejection. Very insightful, I know, but whatever fears I could think of, the fear of hurting others unintentionally, fear of being a loser, fear of being perceived as a leech, fear of being perceived at all, really, all stem from a deep loneliness and sense of shame. A deep fear that I am bad, and people only tolerate me for as long as I am useful or entertaining. And that, in some way, that's all I could hope to deserve.

3. What is the trait you most deplore in yourself?

   I have a great deal of shame in my heart, in my soul, for things people closest to me do not hold against me, and yet. I had an extremely difficult childhood rife with abuse. It takes a person a very long time to realize just how tainted they are by that experience. I watch myself make mistakes in the same vein as my parents, or even find myself copying a driving trick from my sperm donor, and a wave of disgust washes over me. I am the amalgamation of some of the worst people alive, and I wonder if it’s in me forever. You catch yourself doing little things, or repeating a behavior done to you, and it’s very hard not to wonder how many years you’ll spend uncovering more trash that isn’t yours, repeating poison over and over, despite your best efforts. I think that makes me a deeply critical person, and one who has (as many have commented) impossibly high standards for herself and others. I steal my own joy, or whatever is left of *my* joy.

4. What is the trait you most deplore in others?

   I cannot tolerate many things in others, but primarily stupidity and indifference. Now let me tell you somethin folks, you can’t fix stupid. However, stupid does not have to mean cruel. I value kindness in all its forms, to those who don’t deserve it, to those beneath you, or when no one would care. I do not spend long periods of time with people who cannot see past their own noses. (Prejudice is in there too, trust)

5. Which living person do you most admire?

   I’m picking multiple because I can do whatever I want. Nyeh. Dita von Teese, Elvira, and my godfather, John. Fashion, humor, heart. That’s all you’re getting from me on that. :)

6. What is your greatest extravagance?

   I like to feel pampered. I like feeling entertained, like I have nothing that needs me, something to make myself feel like a queen. I spent a very long time without the ability to express myself, choose things for myself, etc., so I have a deep passion for all things beauty, spa, and fashion. Vanity has always opened doors for me. I will pay for full-body Korean scrubs and a day at the spa because the experience is beneficial and makes me feel on top of the world. A queen for a day.

7. What is your current state of mind?

   By the power of Vyvanse, Lexapro, the occasional edible, and an IUD, I maintain sanity.

8. What do you consider the most overrated virtue?

   Forgiveness and amnesty. I know that’s rich coming from the person who said all of the above, but I feel that people are far more preoccupied with how to fix a problem than why it’s there in the first place. I do not and likely never will forgive my parents for what they did to me. No part of my life suffers or is negatively impacted by that choice. I think people do deserve second chances. I think reform is 100% possible for someone who wants to do so. I don’t think you are indebted to anyone to witness or experience that process, if it happens. When couples break up, they always say “But we’ll still be friends, right?” and not “Do I want to be your friend? Do I want to see you at all?” because loss feels like personal failure, and thus, we cling to people who may not deserve the chance.

9. On what occasion do you lie?

   When I need to. Some things don’t need to be said, or can be satisfied with falseness much more effectively than the truth. Honesty is important, and I make a point of being as direct as possible to people I respect. The pageantry of decorum does not interest me enough to entertain it for anyone else.

10. What do you most dislike about your appearance?

    My nose and lips. Eastern European DNA does not give you a great amount of upper lip fullness or the straightest of noses. I have considered plastic surgery many times in my life, including boob enhancement, rhinoplasty, lip fillers, eyelid raising, and tummy tucks for a streamlined side profile. I follow quite a few people who regularly receive treatments and appreciate their experience, results, and input. However, I always come back to the same conclusion, that no matter how I would edit myself, it would be to reinforce a beauty standard designed by capitalists, white supremacists, and pedophiles. I don’t look like a blonde, skinny, button-nosed, hairless little girl because I am not one. I’ve survived long enough not being one, and I shall continue to do so.

11. Which living person do you most despise?

    A very long list indeed, and I have no desire to be subpoenaed. But fuck you specifically, Damien Hirst and JK Rowling, you know what you did.

12. What is the quality you most like in a man?

    Respect, compassion, and intelligence.

13. What is the quality you most like in a woman?

    Confidence, intelligence, and defiance.

14. Which words or phrases do you most overuse?

    I swear entirely too much. Supposedly a sign of intelligence, but I won’t toot my own horn on that account. (Not my fault fuck, piss, shit, and damn are fun to say)

15. What or who is the greatest love of your life?

    Secrets for another time.

16. When and where were you happiest?

    When I went to Maine for the first time at age 14. One of the few trips I took without my mother, and I felt the weight of my life lift from my shoulders for the first time. Whether because I was so far away or because where we were in Bath was so beautiful, I felt free. Truly, that area of Maine is stunning; everywhere you look is like a landscape painting. I spent a few days exploring lighthouses and rocky beaches, and enjoying excellent food. (Witch Spring Hill Ice Cream goes hard) I learned a lot of things about myself there, and I hope to return permanently some day.

17. Which talent would you most like to have?

    The ability to do math would be nice, but I would settle for being able to play the piano/violin. Ballet would also have been nice. I wasn’t allowed to take it as a child, as my mother did not want me to invest in a career in which I would retire at age 30. I have always been an ardent servant of the arts, whether it’s my work or anyone else’s.

18. If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?

    I think I would have liked to have been spared my past experiences, but I don’t think I would be who I am without them. Maybe a happier person, maybe someone who never had to learn to live without love. But I think I would just make myself a little more athletic. Helps you take better care of yourself if you actually like going to the gym.

19. What do you consider your greatest achievement?

    My freedom. I was kicked out of the house at age 18 after being held in a crisis center for 8 hours for trying to commit suicide several times. I had nothing but my step-father, the clothes on my back, and school in the morning. I slept on the floor of a one-bedroom apartment in the living room for a year. This is also when COVID hit, and when I was graduating high school. My mother let me grab my things eventually, and she tried to get me to come back to her to quarantine. I said no. That year was one of the happiest of my life. I had nothing, and she couldn’t place me back into her grasp once she dropped me. I had almost no one, but for a few months, it was just me, my twin brother, and my Dad. The silence, the stillness, gave me my first moments of fresh air, my first free thoughts. However many years it's been since, I am poor. I am tired. I live in a small room with my Dad and my dog. I graduated from college, which I paid for myself on my own back. I was spat out of my dream industry. I learned I hate clubbing. I love tank tops. I met people who loved me back, and I found the world was so much bigger and more magical than I could have ever known. At last, the lotus left the mud for the light and never went back.

20. If you were to die and come back as a person or a thing, what would it be?

    I’d like to be the moon. Specifically, the Cold Moon, the fullest, brightest moon in the dead of winter, freezing fucking cold, and yet the clearest and most beautiful she can be. Sometimes it was just her and me. She always listens, and who has a better view? Otherwise, a bat would be nice. A bat in a desert of Queen of the Night cacti in full bloom.

21. Where would you most like to live?

    I think I’ve answered this one, but someday, Maine. Right now, if I could have even a tiny apartment with a single window near the shop and the garden center, with a nice south-facing window, I would be happy.

22. What is your most treasured possession?

    My Bunny. I have a deep attachment to some of my stuffed animals, and Bunny is the most important to me. I have had that stuffed toy since I was seven years old, and I slept with it every night of my life until this year, when I just couldn’t sew it up anymore. I cried for an hour just clinging to her, a dusty white rabbit that was once a soft pink plush. As that one trend goes, to be loved is to be changed. She now sleeps wrapped up in a wolf pelt next to my ancestor altar. I lost her sister toy, a blue elephant named Ellie (I know, the pinnacle of creativity) in a motel room in Arizona when I was 13/14. I hope someone found her and treasures her. I begged my sperm donor for hours to turn back for her, but he didn’t. I assumed it was because he felt I was too old for toys, or that it was embarrassing to him that I was so attached to it. Bunny never left my home after that, and I have learned not to trust others with what I love.

23. What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery?

    In my experience, you can die far before your body does. When you refuse to listen or change. Or when your life holds no value or hope. When I was in my lowest and most intense periods of suicidal ideation/depression/anxiety, I felt that I had already died, and I was waiting for the rest of me to catch up. I was rotting from the inside, and no one could see it. I drew it, I wrote about it. I would spend entire class periods in agony, feeling like I was having a heart attack, and no one noticed. You drag yourself along, home, school, work, sleep. You watch the sky a lot, watching the world pass you by. You long to die right there, to rot into nothingness, to feed flowers that stare up at the sky, too. You don’t care what you eat, if you eat. You sit on bathtub floors naked to hope you get a lethal infection. You walk past a dead deer, roadkill to everyone else to pick away at. You look at it disappear, bit by bit, day after day, jealous and pitying. You linger on bridges, on the banks of rivers. You don’t even remember what it feels like to not be in pain. You’re not sure that you care. It’s real if it’s making me miserable. It’s real to me.

24. What is your favorite occupation?

    For myself, I am lucky enough to say I have it. It’s certainly not a lucrative position, but I had a fascination for the occult and magic from the very beginning. I love my work, helping people with their practice, and having the flexibility to do what I want, including making this show for you guys.

25. What is your most marked characteristic?

    My hair, red as leaf rot, I like to say. I don’t honestly enjoy that, I feel like an exotic animal, someone’s weird fetish rather than special. All anyone tells you is how beautiful it is, how lovely the color is, how much they love redheads, how people pay “hundreds” to be redheads, and yet in the same vein, redheads, especially men, are slowly going extinct because we are statistically less attractive to other (white) people. I hate the term ginger, I don’t like it when anyone nicknames me based on my hair. I am more than my appearance, something I didn’t pick. I do love my hair, I wouldn’t take two hours washing it if I didn’t, but I am not a novelty or a unicorn. I dyed my hair black for a year, and it was a nice period in my life, to be uninteresting. To hide. I love black hair, and I’d have it more often if it weren’t a bitch to maintain.

26. What do you most value in your friends?

    Communication and loyalty. I am very much like the mob in the sense that if someone hurts my friend, they are dead to me. I believe people. I just do. I expect the same from my friends with me, if you think someone is no good, tell me. You need something, I’m there. I stand with you, and anyone I truly trust I expect to stand alongside me. I can tolerate a great deal of things, and no one knows better than I how hard it is to keep and make friends. I faced a lot of rejection when I was younger, and I couldn’t have the social life other kids got to, because they lived in houses; I had to arrange visitation hours with the warden. I am very choosy with who I trust, and once earned, you have it for life, if you can keep it. When I need help, I want to know I have an army.

27. Who are your favorite writers?

    F. Scott Fitzgerald - The Great Gatsby, All Quiet on the Western Front - Erich Maria Remarque, Mary Shelley - Frankenstein, and Rick Riordan for keeping me reading when no one else could.

28. Who is your hero of fiction?

    I don’t know that she’s a hero, but I have always identified with Carmilla Karnstein of the eponymous Carmilla by Sheridan le Fanu. I love vampires, anything vampire-related. I loved that she was the first woman, a veritable queen of vampires. I love all of her interpretations, whether she is melancholic and yearning for love from Laura, or exacting her design upon the world of made, cruel, old men. I also deeply identify with Fenris’ story in Dragon Age 2. Amazing game for those who have never played, and his story is also one of liberation and finding out how to find oneself. Play it ya nerds, or watch the cutscenes on YouTube, I don’t care. (Gideon Emery’s voice also just suits him so perfectly)

29. Which historical figure do you most identify with?

    As someone with an art history degree, there are many of whom I identify with. Basic as it is, I would probably cite Queen Elizabeth I. She had less-than-stellar parents and rose to control her own destiny and world, shaping history to her desires. She became greater than her parents ever were, stronger than her peers ever could be or understand. With Elizabeth specifically, there is a deep respect I have for a woman who, as a last act of defiance and spite, perhaps, ended the dynasty her father and grandfathers had built with blood and cruelty by simply refusing to continue it. All the scrambling of King Henry VIII to get male heirs, no matter how women he destroyed, killing Elizabeth’s own mother, shunning his daughters, all for nothing. Rendered moot by the daughter cared for the least, expected the least from. I also love Cate Blanchett/Minnie Driver’s Elizabeth. (I am aware neither of these representations are accurate)

30. Who are your heroes in real life?

    After the Epstein Files, I don’t think having IRL heroes is a good investment. I used to look up to David Bowie a great deal. I admired his vision, his creative aesthetic, the ever-changing personas, and, of course, the music. Learning more about him, unfortunately, my opinion tanked.

31. What are your favorite names?

    I assume this means person-names. I enjoy names with elegance, presence, and refinement. Lucrezia, Sophronia, Euphemia, Akane, Chandra, Ronghao, Nhkosana, the list goes on. Give things names that befit and dignify them. Stop naming animals after adjectives and foods.

32. What is it that you most dislike?

    AI.

33. What is your greatest regret?

    Treating others poorly because I wanted to make someone hurt as much as I did. Amongst others.

34. How would you like to die?

    When it’s my time. Hopefully not alone.

35. What is your motto?

    “Don’t hate the player, hate the game,” or “Don’t accept scraps like they’re steak.”