An Interview with Cincinnati's Christine Schiefer of "And That's Why We Drink"
It’s always weird to see a celebrity in person. I’m usually the type to awkwardly panic and figure out if I saw something or not. With Christine Schiefer, I figured our meeting would eventually happen since we’re both Cincinnati people but the last thing I expected was for her to come into my place of work. Luckily, this meant I had no option but to talk to her and don’t you know… we knew people in common. It was very kind of Christine to agree to meet up with me for an interview for Haus of Mourning.
If you’re not familiar with who Christine is, she is the host of podcast “And That’s Why We Drink” (ATWWD) with Em Shulz which features one paranormal and one true crime story and “Beach too Sandy, Water too Wet'' with her brother, Xandy Schiefer, which involves dramatic readings of 1 Star Reviews. I started listening to ATWWD right before COVID hit and like many others, their podcast truly got me through the pandemic.
Christine and Em started the podcast in February of 2017 and have since won numerous awards, written a book (A Haunted Road Atlas), gone on many tours and released over 300 episodes. So… let’s learn a little bit more about our Cincinnati gem.
Christine was born and raised in Cincinnati. “My parents are both from Germany and they met in Cincinnati. They had a German restaurant in Mt. Adams. We lived above the restaurant, it was really cool growing up here,” Christine explains. When her parents split up, they moved to Clifton and she spent the rest of her childhood growing up in that area. Christine said, “I spent a lot of time on Ludlow, walking up and wandering around and buying peach rings at CVS and I don’t know, causing trouble… I feel like it’s a very Cincinnati thing, the second we got our license we would just drive around and go to gas stations and buy candy. I don’t know, maybe that was just me, I wasn’t cool, I wasn’t drinking beer or anything, I was just eating a lot of candy and driving around town… It was a lot of innocent fun.”
After college and then grad school (where she met Em), Christine came back to Cincinnati to regroup which was when she met her husband, Blaise. Together, the two of them moved out to LA which is great because that was where Christine and Em reconnected and started “And That’s Why We Drink.”
Now, however, Christine and her family are based back in the Cincinnati area. While it was a hard decision to move back, the timing was right. When I asked what inspired the move back here, Christine said, “We were blind to the upcoming pandemic, but it was December of 2019 and we were like let’s make a change. We wanted to buy a house, our lease was ending and we had one tab open for Zillow in LA and one tab open for Zillow in Cincinnati, you can imagine how jarring that switch was and I always felt the tug to move back, I never thought I’d be in LA forever… but basically just to buy a house and start a family.”
Aside from touring, this means that Christine and Em work from afar for the most part. Luckily, one good thing from the pandemic was normalizing working from home. Christine said, “We started recording remotely before I moved because of COVID and I was like, ‘see guys, we can make it work.’ And then when I moved I didn’t say anything for several weeks because I didn’t want people to say oh, it’s so different now because you moved. We kept recording and then a month in I was like, surprise! That was my secret strategy.”
As a Cincinnati native, one of Christine’s favorite spots in the city is Spring Grove Cemetery. She said “I grew up so close, it is so peaceful and beautiful and that’s where I realized that it isn’t just spooky, it can be beautiful and grounding.”
Christine also has a love and appreciation for old buildings and homes. She and her husband live in an old home that just may be haunted. While Christine has had quite a few odd things happen while living there, her husband experiencing it is the validating part. Christine said, “Lately, the big thing is that my husband’s stuff gets moved. His glasses will vanish and he only has one pair of glasses that he wears every single day and only takes them off for bed or to shower so he’ll get out of the shower and say ‘where are my glasses’ and we’ll look everywhere, and then six hours later they’ll be on his pillow on the bed.” Very odd, indeed. And, they happen to share their home with Harry, a presence on the 3rd floor. Both Blaise and Christine have felt the spookiness of the 3rd floor and Christine continually sees someone walking past her office door. When Christine spoke with a psychic, the psychic asked about the presence in their house and said she was seeing a man (Harry) on a continual loop getting home from work in the evenings. After she spoke with the psychic, she did a little bit of research and found records on a man named Harry who died in their home in the 1940s. Cue the goosebumps.
Because Christine does the true crime portion of ATWWD, she is constantly researching very intense topics. Oh, and did I mention she’s the mom of an adorable two year old little girl, Leona? I asked Christine if dealing with these topics constantly has had an effect on her and if it's hard to turn off when she’s not working and she said, “I’m always contemplating that. It shifts over time. When I got pregnant I was a lot more sensitive to certain types of stories and it ebbs and flows…There was a time where I couldn’t read stories with child victims and I still struggle with that a little bit but it’s less intense than it used to be. I’m not great at shutting it off. I used to have pretty bad nightmares, not so much anymore. I’ve always been very good at compartmentalizing in general so I think that’s naturally how I approach it. I definitely have some shows that are my buffer shows, like ‘The Good Place’ I watch after a scary documentary.”
In addition to these deadly topics, Christine has to balance work/mom life and a touring schedule. But sometimes, life brings a silver lining. Christine said, “My husband got laid off from his job and was really burnt out from working the ER so we decided he could give the stay-at-home dad thing a try. And that’s worked out.” Plus, the added bonus is that when Christine tours, Blaise and Leona come along as her very own roadies.
I asked Christine if there is one true crime story that haunts her the most in the over 300 stories she’s covered and before I could get the question out she was shaking her head yes. The answer: Israel Keyes. She said, “ This one is seared into my memory. He was a serial killer living in Alaska and what he would do is travel somewhere, bury a kill kit and then years later, hop on a plane and decide, I’m going to kill that family and then fly back to Alaska. No rhyme or reason. There wasn’t a type of victim, he killed elderly people, children, men, women. There’s something so sinister about that.”
This fall, Christine and her brother, Xandy, will be on tour with “Beach too Sandy, Water too Wet” in Pittsburgh on 11/8 and Nashville on 11/9. If those aren’t dates you can make, do yourself a favor and listen to “And That’s Why We Drink” or “Beach too Sandy.” You will be endlessly entertained and maybe a little scared. But that’s what we call balance.
** All photos are by Hailey Simone.