In this deeply revealing and powerful episode of Horror Heals, hosts Corey and Kendall Stulce welcome Andy Grant, creator and host of the Real Men Feel podcast, for an unflinching exploration of how horror and esoteric teachings became vital to his survival and healing journey. Andy’s path, marked by battling depression and suicide attempts, took an unexpected turn into the shadowy worlds of ancient mystery schools, unlocking tools to embrace emotional vulnerability and resilience through the symbolic power of horror.

Suicide Attempts, Mystery Schools, and Healing Via Horror

Episode Highlights:

• Surviving Through Horror: Andy courageously details his darkest moments—surviving multiple suicide attempts—and reveals how engaging with horror provided an unexpected lifeline, helping him process trauma safely and profoundly.
• Ancient Mysteries and Modern Fears: Discover how Andy's immersive experiences with esoteric mystery schools transformed his understanding of fear and darkness, aligning seamlessly with horror’s potent symbols to provide genuine emotional catharsis.
• Breaking Free from Toxic Masculinity: Corey, Kendall, and Andy passionately explore how horror subverts harmful stereotypes about masculinity, empowering men to feel deeply, share authentically, and reject society’s emotional limitations.
• Transformative Tools for the Horror Fan: Learn how Andy incorporates mindfulness, gratitude rituals, and creative self-expression as practical healing methods—demonstrating how horror fandom and spiritual practices intersect powerfully to promote mental wellness.
• Finding Family in the Shadows: Andy reflects on the supportive, judgment-free embrace he found within the horror community, offering meaningful connection, empathy, and understanding for those who navigate mental health struggles.

About Andy Grant:

Andy Grant is the compelling voice and heart behind the Real Men Feel podcast. As a survivor, transformational energy coach, author, and suicide prevention advocate, Andy openly shares his story of mental health struggles and self-discovery. Combining emotional authenticity, ancient wisdom, and modern horror insights, Andy helps others embrace their full humanity and heal through the power of vulnerability.

Connect with Andy:

• TheAndyGrant.com
• Instagram: @theandygrant
• Facebook: Andy Grant

Resources Mentioned:

• Real Men Feel Podcast
• Book: Still Here: How to Succeed in Life After Failing at Suicide

Kendall and Corey: Andy, welcome to Horror Heels.

Andy Grant: Thanks, it's my pleasure to be here.

Kendall and Corey: We're excited to have you. We know Andy from the New England Podcasters group. Really, really excellent collection of people who are so, so helpful as we kind of navigate this world of podcasting. So, I spent one night as a zombie in a haunted attraction.

Kendall and Corey: Between the makeup and all the the zombie, screaming and the fake fog for eight hours, I was done after one day. But can you talk a little bit about your experience as a zombie?

Andy Grant: And I did it, I think I was fully made up, 16 different nights for the season. I had been laid off earlier in the year. I could not get a job, being a middle aged guy in my 50s. No one cared, no high tech jobs were touching me at all. The only interview I could even get was to be a part time minimum wage zombie.

Andy Grant: And it was the job I took, and I was glad to have the time to be able to do it. Yeah, the fog is there, but it never got so cold. it was a haunted hayride and the zombies are the kind of last thing to get you. And, every other zombie was like 20, 22 years old.

Andy Grant: so it was a real, it was a very interesting experience, but, yeah, they're just such a blast that immediate reaction of getting someone to jump or to be afraid or, if someone's being all stoic, I would try to get a laugh out of them. And that, so getting a reaction from anybody just made, that all worth it.

Kendall and Corey: cool. Very cool. Can you talk a little bit about your history with horror? In general,

Andy Grant: I've loved horror films ever since I was a kid. grew up growing up in the Boston area, pre-K, channel 56 had creature double feature every Saturday, and that was usually, me and friends doing sleepovers and everybody watching the old black and white monster movies. so from right from then on, I was hooked.

Andy Grant: Even though what I call a horror, one of the first horror movies I would say is Jaws. my dad took me to see that when I was way too young, and my mom was horrified, and I had nightmares, and I was like, I like nightmares, this is great, but I was a really depressed and at times suicidal kid as well, so I loved all movies, I liked to hide out in the theater, I loved anything that would fill my brain with something beside my own shitty thoughts.

Kendall and Corey: Gotcha. So can you talk a little bit about, how you feel about our theme that horror is good for mental wellness?

Andy Grant:

I get it, and I also experience kind of the opposite as I've gotten older and healed, I find that there's certain horror movies that they stick with me, they bother me more than they ever used to, especially kind of the I can't watch the torture porn genre, just the slash for no reason, I just can't stomach it anymore, it really upsets me I feel it viscerally, it's really weird, and I used to like, as a teenager in 20s ah, whatever, yeah, pack them up, pack them up more, the bloodier the better, but, as I've, matured in multiple ways, that's gotten tougher, I remember, Hereditary was the first movie that just stuck with me and bugged me for like days after I saw it, and I was like, oh my god, and I kind of want to watch it again to see if it still has any impact, but then I'm like, I don't want to ruin that it had an impact for so long on me too, I think that anything that allows you to feel, to express, and again, it can be what you see in a horror film connects with you, and you feel like I'm not alone, like this, this isn't as horrible as I made it out to be, and also an emotional experience gets you out of your own bad rumination, so yeah, I think that anything that can be healing and a distraction, it can be all those things,

Kendall and Corey: Well, spoiler alert, Hereditary will still stick with you. I just re watched it a couple of weeks ago and yeah, that's probably like third or fourth time I've watched it.

Andy Grant: yeah, cause I'm in a hermetic lineage, the modern mystery school, that creepy ending. I still remember I was alone in the theater watching that, and one scene at the end Is that something moving in the corner?

Andy Grant: Has that been there a long time? It is something! Wow, has that been there all day? What? And I just remember the creepy dread of that scene was amazing. I felt Tony Collette got robbed for not getting an Oscar nom

Kendall and Corey: Oh, so what was it that changed in your life or what, what was the, you think of the healing that got you to where you didn't want to watch the torture porn stuff anymore.

Kendall and Corey: It just wasn't for you.

Andy Grant: So I'm an initiate in the Modern Mystery School, and the initiation truly changes your energetic structure. It adds more, there's a healing called the life activation that I do with people, and that brings more light into your physical body and connects you to your divine purpose, and that just feels good.

Andy Grant: but when I went to HeLa's Academy to learn how to do that, that was a week long. So I got this healing like five times during the week and gave it five times. They're just this really high vibe. Energy is rising. I'm probably the most clear energetically in my life. I remember landing the plane, landed back in Boston.

Andy Grant: I did not recognize the city. I thought it was like in Vegas. Everything seemed extra bright and neon and like, where am I? And music was amazing. Everything was amazing. I got home. my wife had a hockey game on and there was a fight and I was repulsed by this fight in the hockey game and I was like, Oh my God, how long is this is going to be weird to navigate life.

Andy Grant: Like, how long am I going to feel this? Like this, this high really? and yeah, hereditary was, was out pretty recently after that. I think like a few months after that, that I went to that. again, interested, heard great reviews, and I was just shocked how it stuck with me. what else and smile everyone sees smile, oh, I don't want to look at him in the face I couldn't.

Andy Grant: Like it would took it like an hour and I had to go, I'm doing cleansing and rituals and bringing in other energy before I could look someone in the face and not feel like, Oh my God. If they smile, I'm going to deck them, what drew you to that organization in the first place? Yeah.

Andy Grant: Geez, there's a thing called life activation. And I'm like, sounds good. I'll like, I'll, I like new experiences, I'll try anything. And I'm receiving this life activation and during it, I remember thinking, I don't know what's happening, but I know I'm going to learn how to do this and I did, and it was, I always knew I was, I was being called to do something for men didn't know what that meant.

Andy Grant: Three weeks after this life activation healing. Real Men Feel was created and launched, so, and then that, that, that same year, I went on to Healer's Academy. I was just, full on, everything I do with clients is something that I learned to, to truly save my life.

Andy Grant: Other things along the path didn't work, and I don't recommend them I actually spent a year as a Scientologist and that was not good at all. There was some fine people there. There's but that was a overall, a really negative experience left me feeling worse than when I started.

Andy Grant: so yeah, it's, it's everything I've been through, self help, personal growth, has, brought me to the Mystery School, and it's been the most powerful tools that I've ever encountered.

Kendall and Corey: That's amazing. I don't even know if we'll keep this in, but we joke in my, in our household that I'm a recovering Southern Baptist and, that was in many ways, a very negative experience for me.

Andy Grant: Yeah, and that, I mean, that's, I love horror films that are rooted in ancient mythology, or, or some sort of cult, and Oh, what did I just see? the Viking Nordic thing, it's a Danish movie, it was on Amazon Prime, and it turns out, oh, just, it's just like a vacation, This family goes to some, Norwegian island and it sets up very traditionally and then it twists and it becomes like a crazy comedy like halfway through.

Kendall and Corey: Yes. Yeah. I recently watched that one with, Nick Frost.

Andy Grant: Yeah,

Kendall and Corey: Yeah. That was wild. So it sounds like You understood that you needed to find something to get you out of this path of, wanting to end your life. Like you were conscious of that to the, that you were willing to try a lot of different stuff to get to a better place.

Andy Grant: yeah, like I always was naturally good in school, but this is a lesson that it took getting multiple times I had to accept that. All right, well, I'm not good at living. I'm not good at dying. there's gotta be something else. And back when I was 19 years old, I had this first experience of.

Andy Grant: Really hearing another presence, and I it wasn't my usual voice of everything sucks, you should kill yourself, it wasn't that, that critic, that angry demon in my head, it was this softer thing of, Andy, if you share your story, all the pain will be worth it, and I was like, shit that, that, that was scarier than a horror movie I'm, I'm having this experience of something else I, I thought all horror movies and possession movies and all those things, I thought it was all just fantasy, which is why I liked it.

Kendall and Corey: So knowing that, as you, imagine movies, were an escape for you. When you first found out about the mystery school, were you, sort of like leery what, is this real? What are these people doing?

Andy Grant: I trust my experience, and I hadn't experienced that life activation. So, I'm this is, I don't know what it is, but it's real. I feel different, I had never done this before in my life, but because I wasn't sure what it was, I did a before video in my car before the healing and I did an after video after it.

Andy Grant: And now I do that for lots of different things, but I was inspired to do that. And then my after video, I'm just laughing. It's I'm on something. I'm just like, I'm trying to explain how good I feel. And I just, I just giggle and it's just that was not my state for hours and days or anything, but it brought me such light.

Andy Grant: Into my physical experience that I had not experienced since I was a child or possibly ever in this form. and this the school, some of the teaching, some of the classes will use horror movies because it is light and dark and is good and evil and it's one of my teachers will talk about how it's okay to say, Oh, I see Jesus.

Andy Grant: I talked to Jesus. But if you say, Oh, I talked to demons. I see demons over there. People. Oh, you're crazy. Get out of here. And you can't have one or the other. If you believe in angels and God, you gotta believe in the other side, too. And this is a world of duality.

Kendall and Corey: Can you, describe what the experience was like and what was actually happening when you were going through the light, getting the light?

Andy Grant: Ah. So it's a long, it's 90 minutes long, and there's lots of different clearings, and sometimes I just felt, I would feel things. I would, I could tell that, oh, I felt lighter, I felt energy moving. Oh, that wasn't me. Oh, things that aren't me are, like, falling away. And then the, kind of the last portion is all sorts of different.

Andy Grant: protocols all brought together and at the very end is truly, I don't have in front of me. I have, I have a magic wand and I'm in the back somewhat. So they had it. It's the back of my head, a rock and a stick and it puts more light into these 12 areas along my energetic structure and I felt it and not like what is happening.

Andy Grant: This is I felt this rush of just energy into me. That was completely foreign. Yeah. Yeah. but felt really good. It, it felt natural. It felt like me coming back into me. but you know everyone i've done this for since then everyone describes it a little differently, but every single person has noticed Something happening.

Kendall and Corey: there are physical aspects to it.

Andy Grant: So what's now called life activation came from these different traditions and brought together clearings healings and bringing more light into somebody.

Kendall and Corey: Very cool. And people in the organization, are they from all walks of life?

Andy Grant: they're all still here. and that's why I love, Dr. Strange has become my favorite Marvel character because he goes into a mystery school. That's how he learned the mystical arts If people watched you, you had to be invited. It was very secret. but now the modern music school, we call him founder Goodney because he was the leader at the time it opened to the public, though it was founded, 300 years ago, he's an Icelandic man now living in Japan, trained in the Kabbalah by Orthodox Jews.

Andy Grant: he was a roommate of David Bowie in London in the 70s. Like he just has the most amazing experiences in life. Through all of the experiences brought together and was, got this message that you need to open this to the public now. Like everybody needs to be able to access these tools.

Kendall and Corey: Yeah, it's funny. I grew up southern baptist and we knew about the mystery schools, but we were never taught that they were still in existence, so it was an interesting concept for me to learn as an adult, when I escaped from the Baptist rhetoric.

Andy Grant: Yeah. Yeah, like one of the the, the Bible doesn't have anything. There's no coverage of Jesus from birth to like he's 30 again, right? So the mystery school says the three wise men were leaders of three mystery schools who came to see the, the, the being that they were told was coming and that he went to all the mystery schools there.

Andy Grant: high in the mountains of Tibet there are so supposedly ancient tapestries and murals depicting Jesus being there being trained working with the ritual masters and teachers of the Tibetan mystery school, but then the Egyptian mystery school as well.

Andy Grant: yeah, it's that's one of the things that draws me into it as well the mix of history and esoterics and metaphysics and Yeah, it's, it's, yeah, I've loved the path so far.

Kendall and Corey: What do you say to folks who seem very skeptical about this?

Andy Grant:

everything I do on a daily basis to heal and protect myself is something I made fun of for years. Energy work is much better experienced than it is explained. so I can give people a 50 minute taste of experience of something. I have a remote healing that, there's a few things I can do that are remote.

Andy Grant: There's remote healing that is most people are familiar with Reiki or at least have heard of it at this point. But that's, that's energy work and why the life activation and so many of the best tools we have must be done in person is to get it fine tuned so you can be surgical energy work not just I'm flooding with good vibes and oh yeah I feel it but you know it'll go kind of where it wants to or where is it going to just leak out of you or whatever so the in person healings let us be just so strategic and surgical and placing energy to the places that will get the best out of you

Andy Grant: I always invite people, if you're open to trying something, let's try it. But if you're just so closed, do you want to be right or be happy?

Kendall and Corey: No, that's a good point. as a practitioner, do you feel like there's times when you like be recharged, so to speak?

Andy Grant: So all healing is self healing, so I'm just kind of there for the ride in directing things, but every healing I do brings more healing to me. Like I, I feel great. I've, I have had that thought and oh, I got someone, oh, I'm so not into this. And I start yeah, this is, this is the best day ever. Like it, it rejuvenates me.

Andy Grant: it's not like I need. There's not some special care I need to do for myself because I help other people. It's just, it's all in sync. yeah, if sometimes healing energy will truly come through me, and I feel it too, sometimes I'm directing it. So I can be the straw or the director. that's, it could be the spoon that stirs the drink all these various metaphors.

Andy Grant: there's just a sense of joy in being of service.

Kendall and Corey: Well, it sounds like once you've found it, it's with you, right?

Andy Grant: Yeah, but I've also stopped twice. So, so yeah, so I'll go really deep and then I have doubts. I'm like, Oh, this is not, if it doesn't work, but am I supposed to bring this? Am I supposed to present this? cause I was not raised with any sort of religion. One of the first people that

Andy Grant: tried to get me, born again, Christians, they would talk to me like, Oh, do you have a personal relationship with Jesus? I'm like, no, who's he what's up. And they had me recite that old thing. And now suddenly we're getting phone calls and emails.

Andy Grant: I'm like, Oh, I didn't realize I joined your club by saying whatever you asked me to say in that parking lot. So yeah, I,

Kendall and Corey: we did it.

Andy Grant: I took multiple world religion classes and I studied the Quran and took classes on Islam to understand everything.

Andy Grant: And I kept seeing more commonalities than differences. And it was much more like the structure and the rules are what screwed it up. But you go back to the source and it's. The source helps everybody. So what I find in Mystery School is that it's, it's taken us back to source. So many things just feel true and I don't need to, I don't need to logically explain every step.

Andy Grant: I find that, that science and especially quantum physics keeps catching up to spirituality as opposed to the opposite.

Kendall and Corey: is your wife a practitioner as well?

Andy Grant: She actually is, she's not active in it at this moment. She's, right now she has a job working in the prison system. So it's really tough to Try to bring anything new into that environment, but also bring something that's like really of the light and yeah, you can't just

Kendall and Corey: Gotcha. Well, the final question that we ask every guest on this show is who is your favorite final person survivor in a horror flick?

Andy Grant: oh man

Kendall and Corey: It's always difficult.

Andy Grant: yeah what's up? It's not I mean, it's it's a series more but and he didn't yeah Well, I guess he is alive. Yeah, Rick Rick and the Walking Dead Always pulled for him always connect to him. I always loved that character Going through the emotional ringer ups and downs.

Andy Grant: So that's easier that that's an easy pick for me. I've always That's been one of my favorite shows since it came on

Kendall and Corey: that's a good one.

Kendall and Corey: and I love movies with a down ending. That's why I love the Smile franchise, because they don't make it. if you kill your hero, I'm like, yeah, this is my kind of movie. Let's go, it's going to be interesting to see what they do with a third movie with that ending and I don't want to spoil it for people that haven't seen it because it is relatively new, but it's whoa, okay.

Andy Grant: And I always, I looked up that director what else has he got? What am I missing? And this is all he's done. So I'm like, all right, is he going to have something else or just make this universe bigger?

Kendall and Corey: I love like when they, when a sequel ups the ante, I really thought the sequel was, better than the first,

Andy Grant: Yeah, no, I agree. And I, I love the original and that's why I can't believe how up leveled on every aspect that that sequel was. And again, I thought I was pushing for that to get it. So I'm in SAG and I can sometimes I'm on committees to nominate things to be nominated. And I really thought smile too.

Andy Grant: I thought that lead should get an award. I thought that was a, an overall much better film than The Substance, which did, has gotten awards talk, so, very interesting.

Kendall and Corey: What's kind of making us want to revisit, the walking dead again. It's been a little while. We sometimes we'll go back and like rewatch and stuff and, what was the spinoff one, the first spinoff one that we started, fear, fear,

Andy Grant: the Walkingyeah, I never finished that, I've watched the original series, probably the first seven episodes, seven seasons five times. And, cause I would, yeah, when nothing going on, they would binge that, even before binging on streaming games, he would just throw a weekend of it, I'm like, I get sucked in every time, and,

Kendall and Corey: Right.

Andy Grant: And, the most recent spinoff with Rick and Michonne, I thought that was the best one so far.

Kendall and Corey: Oh, I have not watched that one

Andy Grant: cause just like six episodes, bang, and, the one with Negan and Maggie, that was shot in Massachusetts, the second season was shot here, faking New York City.

Kendall and Corey: are Negan and Maggie a couple in that series?

Andy Grant: no, they're, they're frenemies at

Kendall and Corey: Okay. That's what I was, that's what I thought. Okay. Yeah. No, that makes sense. Very, very cool. Well, awesome. We really appreciate you coming on and being so open.

Kendall and Corey: it's the reason we do this is to get the message out there to people that, horror is not just, we're not all maniacs and stuff. Like we're good people. It's just, we find what makes us feel good and embrace it.

Andy Grant: too many people sit on trapped emotions. So if, if screaming and jumping is ah, I, I jump easy, I'm, I'm embarrassed in a theater if it's too crowded, Oh man, I'm, I'm the little girl jumping all around and screaming and, But, but it's fun, I love it.

Kendall and Corey: I've always loved that aspect of watching a film, and, I always surrounded myself as a teenager with my friends. Who also didn't mind that, cause yeah, especially as a teenager, you feel kind of silly sometimes it's Hey, that's what the reason we were watching it was to get a little, a little adrenaline going.

Andy Grant: Right, yeah, yeah, I love to go for the ride. I'm not one of the people that like, let's watch this and not be scared. I refuse to Buy it. no, go for the ride, man.

Kendall and Corey: Yeah. What's the point you can buy popcorn someplace else. Right.

Andy Grant: and cheaper.

Kendall and Corey: Awesome. Well, thank you again for joining us. This has been fun.

Andy Grant: Yeah, it's my pleasure.