There’s probably not a lot going on for the professional witches of Salem, Massachusetts, once Halloween’s over.
Sure, a lot of them still have their shops open, but there’s just not the crazy buzz, the tremendous commercial vibes there are during the month of October when being in Salem is just one big meshugas, culminating in the meshugas to end all meshugas on October 31st.
As my sister Trish lives in Salem, I get to see the meshugas up close and personal, and it’s great fun if you a) don’t have to drive through it (I train it and walk to my sister’s house); and b) you have a place of refuge when the meshugas gets too meshugassy (I walk to my sister’s house).
Still, I always wondered what the witches do during their off-season, and had assumed that many of them had a diversified portfolio of skills to fall back on when black and orange are no longer the colors du jour.
And now, thanks to the Wall Street Journal, I know what some of them do. They rid foreclosed houses of their bad ju-ju so the new owners don’t have to deal with it.
I had heard of the practice of burying a statue of St. Joseph, upside down in your yard to help you sell a house. But I hadn’t heard about using witches to whisk away any negativity in a house you’d just bought.
Witch Lori Bruno and warlock Christian Day – and if that isn’t a great name for a warlock, I don’t know what is – helped Salem house-buyer Tony Barletta with his new home before he started gutting it. (Apparently just tearing out the old sheetrock and ripping up the old linoleum isn’t enough, when it comes to a foreclosure.) To help Barletta out, Bruno and Day:
…clanged bells and sprayed holy water, poured kosher salt on doorways and raised iron swords at windows.
I really like that melding of the Judeo-Christian traditions. (Would gargling with holy water with kosher salt in it relieve a sore throat better than tap water and Morton’s, I wonder?)
Ms. Bruno also hollered the bad stuff away:
"Residue, residue, residue is in this house. It has to come out…Lord of fire, lord flame, blessed be thy holy name...All negativity must be gone!"
That negativity is all those “’energy imprints from past discussions, arguments, money problems. All of that is absorbed by the house." This according to a “so-called intuitive” who seems to know something about distressed home sales in California. (Why am I not surprised that a “so-called intuitive” has hung her shingle out in Orange County? Meanwhile, if, by “intuitive” they mean Myers-Briggs personality test intuitive – as in INTJ – then maybe I can do foreclosed house de-negativity-ing. I’m an “N”, after all, which is Myers-Briggs for “intuitive” since the “I” was already hogged by “introvert”. See how easy it is to get diverted?)
Salem has seen an upswing in the use of cleansing rituals on foreclosed houses: there were eight last year, compared to one or none most years.
The witches of Salem aren’t getting rich on this, by the way.
Ms. Bruno and the other Salem witch mentioned in the story don’t charge for it. (I hope they take tips at least…)
For them, this is goodness-of-the-heart kind of work, but there are others elsewhere trying to turn house cleansing into a business.
Austin, Texas-based feng shui consultant Logynn B. Northrhip is teaming up with Scottsdale, Ariz., real-estate agent Jason Goldberg to offer a package of services to create better vibes in a home, either before sale or after purchase. The two met at a yoga retreat.
Good luck with the competition, which not only includes the good-hearted witches of Salem, but also:
…psychics, priests and feng shui consultants, among others, [who] bless or exorcise dwellings.
While they don’t get paid for their house-cleansing services, it is head’s up marketing for Mr. Day and Ms. Bruno.
He owns the Hex Old World Witchery magic shop downtown [Salem] and she gives psychic readings there.
Now that I think of it, I actually live in a foreclosed home, a condo bought at auction in 1991 from a flim-flam man who’d done a bit of real estate speculating. When we first bought our place, he was still living in the building, but eventually “his” unit, too, went on the auction block, and he was given the old heave-ho.
When I consider all the odd-ball aspects of living where I do, beginning with the flim-flam man and continuing to the present day of general building weirdness, I’m starting to wonder whether we shouldn’t have done an exorcism of some kind before we moved in.
Hmmmmm.
Wonder if Ms. Bruno and Mr. Day would consider an ex post facto bad ju-ju cast out?
Of course, it’s not contained in our unit: it’s the whole building. But since they don’t charge to begin with, I guess they wouldn’t charge extra.
I’d pay their transpo. Plus give them a nice fat tip.
Wonder if it’s too late to rid our building goof-ball negativity?
I know where I can buy kosher salt; I guess I could stop by a Catholic Church and poach a bit of holy water from a holy water font.
Would you have to believe in it to make the cast-out effective?
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