Midday light shines through stained glass. The colors fill the room. Look one way and it feels like an old church lady’s space. Look another way and it feels like a goth teen’s cave. The room is full of odd company. A stuffed bunny in a dress sits nearby. A white teddy bear looks angelic. A black-eyed doll stares back. It seems ready to wake and choke you in your sleep. On the walls, a crucifix hangs on one side. A rip saw hangs on the other. A Holy Bible rests on a table.

Next to it sits a thrift-store novel called Shadow of Cain. The story is about a mass murderer. A deer skull rests on the dresser. A deer foot hides under the bed. The furniture looks haunted. Each piece seems at least a hundred years old. “Not pictured is my crazy dead cicada collection,” says Hayden Anhedonia. She ends a breezy bedroom tour over Zoom one afternoon in March.

Hayden Anhedonia’s Church Home

She walks through a doorway. The space opens wide. More stained glass fills the room. Pews line the floor. An altar stands in front. This is the sanctuary. It belongs to a converted 19th-century church in rural Indiana. Today, it is Anhedonia’s home. She moved here from Florida. The rental is 6,238 square feet. It costs $950 a month. She shares it with three friends. They found the place online last summer. “It felt like it was meant for me,” she says. She sits down in front of the altar as she speaks.

Faith and Reclamation

Anhedonia grew up in a close Southern Baptist community. Her father was a deacon. She and her mother sang in the church choir. Today, her view of faith is more complex. She left the church at 16. By then, she had already faced rejection for being gay. Later, she came out as a transgender woman. Around the same time, she began making dark, emotional music as Ethel Cain. She says her choice to live in a former church was not out of anger. Instead, it was about taking something back. She calls it an act of reclamation.

Finding Comfort in the Past

“Everything I do through my art is a way to get my thumb on top of what’s happened to me in the past, because now I’m in control and I can’t be hurt by it again,” she says, a slight drawl peeking through a tone that’s both disarming and determined. “So for me, living here, I can walk around the sanctuary and there’s no bad vibes. It’s this weird, bittersweet comfort. It’s just me and the quiet.”

Strange Happenings

It is not always quiet in the church. Anhedonia loves horror films but doubts the supernatural. Still, she admits strange things happen here. The doors sometimes lock and unlock on their own. Her black cat, Agatha, adds to the mystery. At night, the cat somehow appears inside the closed sanctuary. There was also the mirror. One evening, Anhedonia looked into an antique glass. She saw a spirit sitting on her bed. The figure stared back at her. “I looked over, and she wasn’t there,” she recalls. She pulls a gold cross necklace from under her top. “She kind of looked like me.”

A Funky Personality

Anhedonia sits in her pandemic best. She wears a dirt-brown sweatshirt printed with leaves and bark. Her pajama pants are covered with skulls. A scrunchie pulls her hair back. Tiny tattoos circle the top of her forehead. Her music may sound dreamy and dark. But her lyrics are blunt. They explore self-harm, toxic sex, and despair. Her Twitter feed is just as raw. She calls it her “ADHD ramblings.”

It is full of sharp, scary-funny posts. One reads, “all u need to know about me is that i was the girl in middle school who wanted to fuck slender an.” In conversation, though, she is polite. She begins a story about an acid trip in the woods with a disclaimer: “I don’t even know if I can say this on here…” She also loves the word “funky.” She uses it for almost anything. Her sheltered church life? Funky. A Tallahassee house in a car lot, filled with insects? Funky.

Hayden and Ethel

The line between Hayden Anhedonia and Ethel Cain is blurry. Anhedonia says she is still figuring it out. “Ethel is not a separate character,” she explains. “She is a piece of my life that I cut off to give her her own space. It got to a point where she was taking me over. But she’s also my role model, because she’s what I want to be.” Two years ago, Anhedonia began releasing music as Ethel Cain. The early songs were soft and haunting. At times, she sounded like a slowed-down version of Florence Welch. Other times, she recalled Lana Del Rey mixed with Grouper.

Her new EP, Inbred, pushes the sound further. She wrote, recorded, produced, and mixed nearly all of it herself. The tracks explore many styles. “Michelle Pfeiffer” is a sweeping power ballad. “God’s Country,” which runs eight and a half minutes, leans into epic folk-pop. The title track dives into raw grunge. Even with the range, one feeling ties it all together. The music carries eerie grandeur, lifted by Anhedonia’s versatile voice.

Family Shifts

Anhedonia says her parents have changed a lot. “It’s been kind of a 180 with them,” she explains. They are not the same people she knew while growing up. Her parents are still Christians. But they no longer practice the way they once did. “I think they just got tired of it,” she says. “Now they’re like, ‘We will be Christians from home.’” Her father is less connected to her art. He is a country man who married a creative,

Ms. Frizzle-type woman. Her mother, though, is supportive. She listens to the songs Anhedonia sends her. She calls them “mommy-friendly,” because she dislikes swearing or graphic themes. Her mom runs a nail salon in their hometown. She plays “Michelle Pfeiffer” for her clients. She proudly tells them about Ethel Cain.

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