Nightcrawlers, Witchcraft & Seances

Given that we’re now heading into Fall and getting into that pumpkin spice mood, for my Stories Of Summer post this week, I thought I would write about something a little more spooky than my usual posts.

*All stories in my Stories Of Summer series are 100% factual

My childhood friends can attest to the fact that I’ve always been intrigued by witchcraft, magic and ghosts. It wasn’t a weird obsession or anything, just a quiet fascination with the thought that there was something more out there. My mom was all for it, letting me buy books like “The Girl’s Guide To Witchcraft” and “How To Read Palms”.

I had a little wooden box that I filled with crystals, candles, spices and dried flower petals. When my mom was at work I would sit at the counter in the kitchen with my computer hooked up to dial up internet researching different spells and potions. I didn’t wear black or look the part, but I loved this little hobby.

Whenever it rained, I would walk around the yard in my bare feet collecting rain water and embracing the powerful connection I felt to nature.

If my friends thought it was weird, they never said anything. Most of them would play along when I suggested we have a seance at our sleepovers, or play “light as a feather, stiff as a board”.

If I’m being honest, I always felt some kind of ominous presence lurking around the area where I lived. The neighborhood kids and I used to play night crawlers around our subdivision. There are no street lights in Cedar Grove Estates, which I’ve always found odd, but the darkness provided the perfect opportunity to hide in plain sight during these games.

The subdivision has grown a lot over the years, and when I was a teenager, a lot of houses were just being built. One Summer evening, we all decided that the basement of one of the new builds would be the perfect location for a seance. We grabbed our stuff, and trudged through the darkness up the hill, careful not to alert any of the motion activated spotlights many of our neighbors kept on their houses.

The new build had no walls, windows or doors yet. It was just a walk-out basement with a frame, and stairs leading to what would soon be the first floor of the new home owner’s house. The first floor had plywood flooring laid out, and was essentially a platform with a straight drop off to the ground below. We took some time to explore first, entering in what would be the basement patio door and going single file up the freshly built stairs. Standing in a roofless house is a different kind of magic. It was an intensely clear Summer night, and the sky above was illuminated with a thousand stars, made even more bright due to the lack of street lights around us.

We laid on our backs and star gazed for a bit.

Once we’d had our fill of staring into eternity, we headed back downstairs to set up for our seance. I’d brought several tealight candles, chalk and salt. We set up our circle, and began the seance. None of my friends seemed uneasy, but the energy in the room was filled with a buzzing anticipation of them wondering if anything would happen. After a few minutes, we asked for a sign, and something clattered to the floor at the corner of the basement. Heat lightning flashed in the distance. We didn’t stay long.

We ended up leaving our candles, and a circle of salt on the basement floor, and ran back home. I later wondered what the contractors thought when they found everything. As an adult looking back, I’m horrified that we left that in someone’s new house, and hopeful they assumed it was just a bunch of kids messing around, and not a cult or something.

After that day, weird things started happening off and on around our house. My mom worked most nights until midnight, and since I was a teenager, it was my job to babysit my brother while she worked. One night, I had just let our dogs outside for one last bathroom break before bed, and I was talking to a friend on the phone. I was sitting at the kitchen table, across from the basement door, and suddenly heard extremely loud claws coming up the basement stairs. It sounded exactly like it does when dogs run up the stairs and for a moment I almost opened the door to let them up, when I remembered that they were outside. I opened the door after much deliberation, and there was nothing there. I also woke up many nights to see a figure standing at the end of my bed, in a white robe. Once I blinked, it would disappear.

Over the years we’ve had various seances at parties and gatherings, and weird things continued to happen.

I still have a fascination with witchcraft. Sometimes I dig out my old books and flip through them just for fun, and I have my eye on a new deck of tarot cards. We also adopted a black cat named Binx last year. His name was Binx when we adopted him, and the shelter told us that black cats are less likely to be adopted, which just made me want him more. I think my love for magic also shows in my obsession with manifestation and positive thinking. I still love crystals, essential oils, and mantras, which could be considered a different kind of magic if you believe in it.

I tend not to do seances anymore though.