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The audience goes completely silent as if every woman here just remembered an ex who had it coming.

A few women shift uncomfortably in their seats, probably thinking about Clawdia dropping dead on this very property less than a week ago.

But most of them lean forward, fascinated.

Ghoulia doesn’t acknowledge the lethal elephant in the room. She just launches into her presentation. The woman has been talking about poison for longer than I’ve been alive, and it shows.

“The Borgias,” she begins, gesturing to an illustration on a screen behind her, “were an Italian family who rose to power in the fourteen hundreds, famous for their dinner parties. And for ensuring that certain guests never left them.”

The audience gasps with delight.

I bet those invited to those infamous dinner parties didn’t gasp with delight, more like fright. Or a dying gasp.

She goes into detail about Lucrezia Borgia’s alleged use of a hollow ring filled with poison, about Cesare Borgia’s preference for cantarella, about the entire family’s reputation for making enemies disappear through strategic use of toxic dinner courses.

Mom is leaning forward in her seat, completely engrossed, and I can see her taking copious notes on her phone. She’s either genuinely fascinated by Victorian death culture or she’s planning to use this information later, and I’m not entirely sure which possibility is more concerning. Note to self: decline all meals that my mother might be in charge of preparing.

Ghoulia moves on to Agrippina, the Roman empress who poisoned her own husband, Emperor Claudius, with a plate of mushrooms, to Catherine de’ Medici and her perfumed gloves laced with arsenic, to a dozen other historical poisonings that she describes with a specificity that makes me wonder if she’s got personal experience with some of these methods.

They say vampires live forever. Maybe she’s one of those? This Halloween season has me believing anything is possible. Anything nefarious at least.

They have no idea how easy it is, she thinks as a smile curves on her lips. A pinch in the right dish. A patient heart. That’s all it ever takes. In fact, that’s all it took.

I freeze solid.

She picks up one of the Victorian poison bottles from the table and holds it up to the light.

“This,” she says, “contained arsenic. The Victorians called it ‘inheritance powder.’ It was the favorite of impatient wives and daughters waiting for wealthy husbands and fathers to die.”

The crowd gives a nervous titter of a laugh with Georgie’s being the loudest and the most concerning. How many husbands has she buried, anyway?

“Arsenic was particularly popular,” Ghoulia continues, “because the symptoms mimicked cholera or food poisoning. Vomiting, diarrhea, abdominal pain. Doctors rarely suspected foul play.”

That’s because they didn’t have forensic science or a decent toxicology report.

She sets down the arsenic bottle and picks up another.

“Belladonna.” She practically sings the name out like a lullaby. “Also known as deadly nightshade. The berries are sweet, which makes them particularly dangerous. Symptoms include dilated pupils, blurred vision, hallucinations, and eventually respiratory failure.”

I’m taking mental notes and trying very hard not to think about which poison killed Clawdia.

Georgie’s hand shoots up.

Ghoulia sighs. “Yes?”

“Can you poison a ghost?”

“Ghosts are already dead, dear.”

“But what if he’s only MOSTLY dead?”

Mom puts her face in her hands. “Georgie, please.”

The audience laughs, and the tension breaks once again. A few women who were looking queasy seem to relax. And those who were looking ready to administer a few toxic elixirs seem a bit impatient.

Ghoulia moves on to a section about poisonous plants, and I watch her get increasingly specific about deadly nightshade, foxglove, hemlock, and oleander. She explains which parts of each plant are toxic, how to grow them, how Victorians used them both medicinally and nefariously.

“Foxglove,” she says, holding up a pressed flower under glass, “is the source of digitalis, which is still used today to treat heart conditions. In the right dose, it saves lives. In the wrong dose, it stops hearts entirely.” She bleeds a dark smile, and another round of chuckles circles the audience.