General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20266 min read

Living for the Dead

Living for the Dead is an American unscripted television series in which five queer ghost hunters travel the United States visiting haunted locations, described by its producers as helping the living by healing the dead. It premiered on Hulu on October 18, 2023, with all eight episodes of its first season released at once, and was narrated and executive produced by the actor Kristen Stewart.¹^•² The series came from the creators of Queer Eye and was widely described as a paranormal take on that show's format.¹^•³

Key fact	Detail
Premiere	October 18, 2023, all eight episodes released at once on Hulu¹
Format	Unscripted (reality) series; five queer ghost hunters visit infamous haunted locations across the United States¹^•²
Narrator	Kristen Stewart, who also executive produced²
Cast	Alex LeMay, Juju Bae, Ken Boggle, Logan Taylor, and Roz Hernandez²
Distinction	The first paranormal reality show with an all-LGBTQ+ cast⁴
Ratings	IMDb 6.5/10 from about 1,900 users; Rotten Tomatoes Popcornmeter 40% from 500+ ratings with no published critic score⁵^•⁶
Availability	Streamed on Hulu from October 2023 until September 2024, after which it was unavailable to stream in the United States⁷

Spoilers

Premise and format

Each episode follows the five investigators, who call themselves the "Ghost Hunties," as they road trip in a decorated van to a haunted site, investigate reports of paranormal activity, and attempt a resolution with the people who live or work there.⁴^•⁸ Stewart's narration opens and closes each episode in a deadpan register heavy on puns.⁹ Episodes run about 46 minutes and carry a TV-14 rating.⁷

The producers framed the show's approach as a departure from conventional ghost-hunting television. Rob Eric, a producer known for Queer Eye, said that many paranormal shows provoke spirits to get a response, while his team instead tried to understand what was happening because they were there to help someone.¹⁰ Producer Rob Eric also noted that paranormal television had long been told from a heteronormative perspective, which he cited as the reason a queer cast made the genre feel new.¹¹

Cast

The five cast members each brought a distinct specialty:¹⁰

Ken Boggle, tarot card reader and psychic medium, who had worked in the paranormal scene for 15 years.¹⁰^•¹²
Juju Bae, a self-described witch and conjurer who draws on Hoodoo practices.¹⁰^•⁹
Logan Taylor, a professional psychic medium who conveys direct messages from the dead.¹⁰^•⁹
Alex LeMay, the tech expert, who uses investigative equipment.¹⁰
Roz Hernandez, a paranormal researcher and trans woman who had previously worked as a drag queen and comedian; reviewers frequently singled her out as the show's skeptic and comic center.¹⁰^•⁹^•¹³

Hernandez described herself in a later interview as the most skeptical of the five, saying she wanted to rule out every logical explanation before attributing anything to a ghost, though she reported experiences during filming that changed her certainty.¹⁴

Production and casting

The series was announced in mid-2023, when Stewart posted a casting call for "the most gayest, most funnest, most titillating queer ghost-hunting show ever."⁴ It was produced through a partnership between Stewart's company, formed with her screenwriter fiancée Dylan Meyer and producer Maggie McLean, and Scout Productions, the company behind Queer Eye.⁸ The credited producers are David Collins, Michael Williams, Rob Eric, Renata Lombardo, Kristen Stewart, CJ Romero, and Elaine White.²

Casting director Logan Clark of the Casting Collective reported that about 2,000 people applied, helped by publicity around Stewart's involvement; the pool was narrowed to 100, and Clark spent roughly eight weeks, six to seven hours a day, receiving readings from the candidates to assess who had a genuine skill. He described the show as the first paranormal reality series with an all-LGBTQ+ cast and pointed to the parallels between the horror and paranormal space and the experiences of LGBTQ+ people, particularly youth.⁴

Locations and content

The first season visited sites including an abandoned hospital in Louisville, Arizona's Copper Queen hotel with its story of Julia Lowell, a clown-themed motel, and Cleveland's House of Wills, a former NAACP hub that has fallen into ruin.⁸ An episode set at a former mental hospital featured Hernandez presenting documentation of gender-nonconforming patients.⁹ Cast member Alex LeMay said the show's digging into queer history distinguished it from earlier paranormal programs.¹⁵

Reception

Professional reception was limited and mixed. Rotten Tomatoes recorded no published Tomatometer reviews and a 40% average audience score from more than 500 ratings.⁶ On IMDb the series held a 6.5/10 rating from about 1,900 users and received three award nominations.⁵ The two early critic reviews aggregated by Metacritic, from We Got This Covered and Decider, both scored it 70; the Decider review judged that the ghost-hunting segments would entertain or exasperate viewers depending on their beliefs, while the emotional bonds among the team read as genuine.¹⁶ The Guardian called the show a "perfectly silly Halloween treat" that avoids theorizing deeply about how queerness and the supernatural overlap.⁸

Criticism also came from within queer media. On Slate's Outward podcast, hosts Christina Cauterucci and Jules Gill-Peterson, an intellectual historian of gender and sexuality at Johns Hopkins University, argued that the show's premise, that queer people have profound empathy to the point of being able to heal ghosts, reduced queer people to a cultural prop, and Cauterucci criticized an episode that likened anti-LGBTQ+ oppression to attitudes toward people claiming paranormal abilities.¹⁷

Availability

The series streamed on Hulu from October 2023 and was removed from the service in September 2024; as of late 2025 it was unavailable to stream in the United States.⁷ No second season appears in Hulu's published schedules.¹⁸

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Series and fictional screen worlds › Unscripted, reality, and web-native series › Documentary, docudrama, and lifestyle series › Factual entertainment and specialist-interest formats › Premiered 2020 to 2026

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

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