Melissa Kim Corter has devoted her life to exploring the spaces most avoid—shadow, death, the haunted, and the hidden layers of the psyche. Drawing from Jungian depth psychology, shamanic wisdom, and her own lived experiences on one of America’s most haunted roads, she guides others through the dark night of the soul with reverence, clarity, and profound insight. In this conversation, Melissa reveals how fear, folklore, and the unseen can become powerful portals for healing, wholeness, and deep personal transformation.
What drew you to explore the intersection of shadow work, psychopathy, and spirituality, and how do these themes inform your healing practice?
I felt misunderstood for most of my life. My peculiar interests began young, my mother lovingly referred to me as Wednesday Adams. It didn’t seem to begin one day, it felt as if my interest in darkness, shadow and all things spooky and macabre were there from the beginning. Over the years my own fascination grew as I learned about some of the tragic events that occurred around my home and within my family. I wanted to understand human behavior and patterns because I was so deeply attuned to the emotional states of others, and because so many strange things unfolded within and around my environment. Missing women, serial killers (two of them), and stories of haunted places and people surrounded me. I didn’t feel like I had a choice but to pay attention… while others chose to avoid the discomfort, default into substances, or check out completely.
These experiences lead me to study parts of the human psyche that are often feared and misunderstood. Early in my work, I recognized real transformation doesn’t happen in the light, it happens in the underworld, in darkness. I became curious about the psychic forces that lie beneath surface behaviors, particularly the split between overly sensitive and intuitive individuals (empaths) and those who were detached, narcissistic, and even psychopathic. A series of terrible and intense encounters with people forever changed me, while simultaneously heightened my intuition and allowed me to become better at detecting manipulation.
In my work, these themes help clients name what they fear in themselves and others, and work with it instead of against it. We explore the artificial forms of light, the value and benefit of the ego. Exploring all of this through a Jungian perspective helped me see that spirituality without shadow work is not truly spiritual, and shadow work without a spiritual container can become overwhelming or retraumatizing. I see too many people using spirituality as an escape from suffering, instead of asking what it could offer in meaning or understanding. This difference allows us to gain access to the information hidden within as a symptom, to see it as a symbol, a form of communication directly from the psyche.
How has living on one of America’s most haunted roads and your love for cemeteries shaped your understanding of death, darkness, and the sacred?
While I was growing up, I did not realize the significance of my environmental influences at the time. It wasn’t decades later, while engaging with others or sharing our ‘origin’ stories that I realized mine was unique. Because I was born there, I do not know any other way of living or being, but I do believe places have energy, and that there is no coincidence when we end up living somewhere. These places have stories, and they are not all pleasant. This has taught me not to fear things I do not understand and to ask more questions. Growing up there also gave me an intensely acute sense of instinct, my intuition is heightened, and I know it has a lot to do with the things I felt, saw, and experienced while growing up in that area. That house and haunted road had an otherworldly quality to it, in Jungian terms we might say they are liminal spaces. They teeter on the threshold between the seen and unseen, life and afterlife, conscious and unconscious. Haunted energies don’t frighten me; it is just another form of unfinished business. I see them as remnants of unprocessed events, or something seeking completion or integration. These types of experiences remind us that darkness is sacred, and we do not need to be afraid. Instead, will we have the courage to lean in closer and listen.
Cemeteries are the most peaceful places to walk, I have taken countless walks to clear my head and bring in perspective. They remind me of what is important and sacred. For some they are a reminder of death, but for me I see nothing, but countless stories of moments lived and memorialized. Death, in this context, is not always about tragedy and loss. Sometimes these places help us process our psychological and emotional deaths, states of change and transition.
These experiences have deepened my work with clients. They’ve helped me hold space for symbolic deaths (initiations, endings, tragedy, and trauma work). They’ve also reinforced the importance of discovering the sacred that is hidden within these darker phases of life. In our culture (in the United States), we pathologize darkness, yet it is a sacred and holy space of incubation, where new things come to life as others transition. A haunted road, a cemetery, and the human shadow all contain deeper elements, this requires we see beyond the surface of things.
In what ways do horror films, true crime, and fairy tales contribute to psychological healing and self-awareness, especially in your work with clients?
When we take on a symbolic view, horror films, true crime, and fairy tales become potent mirrors. They give us psychological distancing and safety from certain aspects within our psyches. We are constantly unconsciously projecting parts of us (including our deepest fears and feelings). When we watch a film or follow along with the narrative of a real crime story or fairy tale, we gain access to some of our emotional and psychological blind spots. Stories have power and medicine. Myths and fairy tales often inspire the story arc of traditional horror and psychological thrillers. In this way, they offer language, imagery, and metaphors for what often remains unconscious, or hidden within. In my work with clients, especially those drawn to shadow work, these different artistic forms are more than genres, they become an alchemical vessel. As the client sits with everything that is stirring and begins to ask themselves certain questions, the magic of the image, film, or tale comes alive in a deeply personal and authentic manner. It can be quite overwhelming when it first happens. My book Apothecary for the Afflicted is a resource for those looking to work on the shadow in a supportive and constructive manner while using old school dark fairy tales to lead them through the process.
These stories, films, and fairy tales help us process fear, trauma, unconscious beliefs, and stagnant patterns by first externalizing these different facets and emotions, allowing people to face and analyze what was initially internalized. True crime specifically can touch upon these various components for women, helping them study and heighten their intuitive abilities. Sometimes this is an unconscious attempt to reconcile previous trauma, sometimes to prevent it, and other times it provides a canvas to express feelings that don’t fit in a typical box. Our emotions are not straightforward, and they do not make logical sense even though we try to use mental and psychological processes to express them. Sometimes a client will identify with a character (or victim) which can activate unconscious material in a safe, symbolic frame. It is important to recognize not everyone is drawn to these darker aspects because there is something wrong, or a need for compensation. Sometimes they are drawn to explore them because they have a gift that requires, we enter dark spaces, or illuminate what is hidden for others. These art forms and stories remind us that healing isn’t about fearing darkness; it’s about reclaiming it as part of our wholeness.
How do you balance your rigorous academic training in Jungian depth psychology with your shamanic and intuitive healing modalities?
Interestingly both are required. Balancing Jungian depth psychology with shamanic and intuitive healing is less about choosing one over the other and more about weaving them into a cohesive, alchemical process. Jung himself was deeply influenced by myth, symbol, and indigenous wisdom traditions; his Red Book is a testament to the imaginal and intuitive realm of personality, psychology, and myth. My academic training offers a strong container, a structure through which the unconscious can safely emerge. It provides the language of archetypes, complexes, and shadow, giving clients a map for understanding their inner world.
It takes discipline in healing work just as it takes compassion, presence, and intuitive awareness in Jungian depth psychology. They intersect more than not, so one feeds the other in an interesting way. In addition, it allows me to work the tools, exercises, and personal practices that I teach. Because I am actively working the tools, I am able to speak to the depth they offer when encouraging my clients and students.
Shamanic, intuitive modalities, and Jungian oriented work allow access to the non-linear, the ineffable. They speak in image, sensation, and energy, bypassing the rational mind to reach layers of the psyche untouched by linear or logical language. These methods are especially useful in working with trauma, soul loss, and the fragmentation that occurs as we move through various seasons of life. The two approaches complement each other beautifully: the psychological gives form and meaning; the shamanic restores the lost aspects and parts of the self.
Can you share how your own journey through the “dark night of the soul” has influenced the unique way you guide others through theirs?
My own journey through the dark night of the soul was necessarily a singular event, but a series of periods throughout my life. Each one certainly had the same quality. This quality is a ‘descent’, the psychological and mythic process of feeling yourself moving down and inward. As I moved further within, I felt like I was slipping or falling. It is a terrible feeling, sometimes frightening, and usually disorienting. The thing I have learned is to surrender, each time I go through this process I let go a little more. Then I am able to understand the necessity of this process, and how it is stripping away the parts of my identity that need to be transformed the beliefs that are ready to change, the expectations that are meant to fall away. It felt like parts of me were unraveling, and these moments taught me that sometimes our tools no longer work, and the ego had no choice but to surrender. What emerged from each of these moments was a deeper sense of intimacy and understanding of the psyche. The psyche is guiding each one of us, and we discover this as we move through intense periods of uncertainty, and the unknown. I learned to stop seeking and chasing as an escape and began to recognize darkness as a form of invisible light.
This has profoundly shaped the way I guide others through their own dark nights. I don’t rush the process or offer false hope. I help clients stay present with the discomfort, to meet the symbolic death rather than resist it. Drawing from a Jungian perspective, I offer a different perspective, to move through the descent and see it for what it is, an initiation. From a shamanic and intuitive lens, I recognize soul loss, fragmentation, and the need for retrieval and ritual.
Because I’ve walked that terrain, I know how lonely and disorienting it can be… and how necessary. My role isn’t to rescue, but to observe, reflect, and offer perspective into the blind spots of my clients. I hold space for their emotions and the process while trusting the innate wisdom of their psyche to guide them, even and especially when the path has gone dark. The dark is not a demon or a detour, it is a doorway.
