Shadow Work, from Light Magic for Dark Times

Shadow Work with Light Magic for Dark Times

October 31, 2018

BY LISA MARIE BASILE

As we move through #ScorpioSeason—and with it, celebrations like Halloween, All Saints Day, and Dia de los Muertos, we enter into the time of year between the autumn equinox & the winter solstice (here in the Northern part of the globe).

It’s a point of death and decay, change and discovery, when the gauzy veil parts and the obscure takes over. It’s when we visit our dead & our dead visit us (literally or not), & when we connect with whatever is beyond, establishing a link to both the darkness and the sacred unknown.

I have always felt a connection with darkness, the space between here and now. Between the perceived safety and the “dangerous” shadow. For so long I have felt not only a home in the dark—but too comfortable, almost naturally made of it. A safe space. I do not think this is a bad thing. I understand its liminality & language—and maybe you do too, either naturally or when you encounter a hardship or loss or trauma.

These darknesses carve out a space in our hearts, our wirings, and even our physiological responses. These things open up a gate, in us and elsewhere. It’s hard to ignore it—whatever your dark is—once it’s been opened. But that darkness isn’t simply an enemy; it can be a catalyst for healing.

Shadow work is about healing and encountering and reframing what hurt. For me, it’s largely about reframing my relationship with the dark, and making the liminality work for me. I believe it is an opportunity to transform, or cycle through transformations as needed, as I learned early from a mentor. It might take a while, or feel bumpy, but it can happen. Transformation isn’t linear, isn’t perfect, and it’s not always pleasant.

During Halloween, and during the entirety of scorpio season, that change comes more naturally. The gates are open; the winds of change whirl around us. Scorpio is the sign of transformation and regeneration, and so we may naturally feel inclined to shrug off what we don’t need and welcome what we desire. It is also the time to work through negative self-talk or journal about feelings of pain, shame, or fear.

You don’t have to believe any of this literally, either—it’s symbolic, if anything. The seasons shift, and there’s a wide, dark, open space ready for harvest.

During this time, I think back on when I was much younger in my teens, when I was in foster care. I always held the blaring sense that I was different, invisible, not enough. I heard the others gossiping about me and I longed to vanish, to be validated in my heartache. I pined for the traditional family unit with all the trappings that come with it. For many years I lived with shame and silence and anger, not realizing in those very differences was my entire world.

I eventually turned to shadow work to look those demons in the eye and find a way to live with them or eradicate them. To honor my light, despite the dark—and to honor my dark. To face and strike down the shame. Shadow work is the work we do to look into those feelings and internalized ideas to disassemble or rearrange them to bloom better things for ourselves.

My shadow work was always through writing and self-listening and even though I’m not perfect, I have been able to make peace with my past and turn that shame into pride.

Some of the things I did included:

Writing letters to my younger self, to heal her.
Writing out what hurts, or painful memories on a few slips of paper and then burying them in a box underground.
Using candle magic to illuminate feelings I was keeping buried; I’d sit on the ground and light a single candle for each feeling, letting myself sit with it and feel it.
Decide what I wanted my life to look like and take active steps to make it happen. I’d design a mood-board, light candles for manifestation at night, and journal about my goals.
I picked an archetype that inspired me and learned from her. Hecate is mine; goddess of necromancy and witchcraft, she leads the way through the dark and encourages me to face my shadows and find my inner power.

In my book, Light Magic for Dark Times, I share all of this, and more. I hope that those of you reading the book or those of you that are looking to pick up the book find some healing and opportunity in it. When reading it, you are the guide and you are in charge of the results.

Here are are a few of the things you’ll find in the book:

This spell was created with writer and editor Leza Cantoral.

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🦂 🌑 As we come upon #ScorpioSeason—and with it, Halloween, All Saints Day, Dia de los Muertos—we enter into the time of year between the autumn equinox & the winter solstice (here in the Northern part of the globe). It’s a point of death and decay, change and discovery, when the gauzy veil parts and the obscure takes over. It’s when we visit our dead + our dead visit us (literally or no), & when we connect with whatever is beyond, establish a connection to both the darkness and the sacred unknown. For me, that connection is something I worked on for years—unlearning fear and resistance and working toward change. It’s listening to the earth, taking long walks among barren trees, lighting a candle at night for my dead, writing letters to those I’ve lost, and deciding how, when spring comes around again, I will bloom. What I will let go of and what I will grieve. What I will birth. . . Just as we are reminded of how the earth and our bodies die, a sort of other realm opens—one in which we feel connected, heard, held, alive. Peer into it. Most importantly, have FUN with it. Dance in the dark. Say “fuck off” to what doesn’t serve you. Go deep in that alter ego. Don’t take yourself too seriously if you don’t feel good about that. . . On page 120 in #LightMagicforDarkTimes, you’ll find a Santa Muerte Death & Rebirth Spell—one inspired by the magic of @lezacantoral, who offered this spell to the book🦇 please check out her work, her writing, and, of course — try the spell.

A post shared by Light Magic For Dark Times (@lightmagic_darktimes) on Oct 20, 2018 at 11:09am PDT

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🐛Chapter 4 is regeneration & recharge, which follows the chapter on negativity. I think this particular chapter and Shadow Work will be two of the most productive sections to use this autumn (I encourage you to skip around the book!). Because with all that going inward this autumn, you’ll need a way to lighten the load and find a balance. . . These chapters allow you to ruminate and release. To glance back and then create forward. Because sometimes we need to wade into the muck before we can clean house, proverbially. . . We must treat our space, our bodies, and the energy we keep around us sacred, as a garden; would you ignore it? Let it die? If yes, that’s okay. Everyone gets to a place where things fall apart; that’s one part of the cycle. But if you want to move through the weird, fun, intense, necessary process of shedding skin...this chapter is for you. 🐍 You do shed, you do change, you are natural, you are flora; you must be watered, you must see the sun. So while you are working through this chapter, be mindful of your body. Do you need to breathe, stretch, drink water? Be mindful of your energy levels. Do you need to send some color into your blood? Say yes to the little things that make you vibrate. Whatever that means to you. 🦋 . . The ouroboros (as is depicted in the chapter opener) has long been used as a symbol by many, many cultures—by alchemists and spiritual practitioners, symbolizing the natural processes of life and death, the eternal and immortal energies of the cosmos and the universe, the destruction and rebirth of the self, of nature’s cycles, Kundalini energy, the beautiful and constant journey and continuum. I love looking at the symbol knowing/trusting that whatever may come, time goes on and things continue and my body will be recycled and it will blossom again. But on an everyday, pragmatic level it also symbolizes that change and renewal is bound to happen—no matter what. We are constantly changing, moving through and emerging from ourselves. We are always regenerating and renewing🐍

A post shared by Light Magic For Dark Times (@lightmagic_darktimes) on Oct 8, 2018 at 5:53pm PDT

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🌿 Last night I attended a panel called “What Is A Witch Without Her Coven?” and one of the many wonderful comments centered around how magic can be simple — mundane, really — taking a walk, taking a shower. This is one of the cornerstones of Light Magic for Dark Times, and it was wonderful to hear witches talk about this openly, the notion that witchcraft or a magical or intentional practice doesn’t have to be elaborate or expensive or fancy or Instagramable. The reason isn’t that you’re lazy or unwilling to study or apply yourself — but that life can’t always accommodate ceremony or the elaborate. In chapter 8, Last Minute Light, I share lots of little ways to summon your inner magic. To step away and sit in a bathroom stall and ground yourself—especially useful in 9-5s or toxic jobs or spaces where getting a minute away or taking a breath is hard. If you’re struggling, just know that a minute + an intention + your breath is your power. 🌿

A post shared by Light Magic For Dark Times (@lightmagic_darktimes) on Oct 24, 2018 at 1:12pm PDT

Lisa Marie Basile is the founding creative director of Luna Luna Magazine—a digital diary of literature, magical living and idea. She is the author of "Light Magic for Dark Times," a modern grimoire of inspired rituals and daily practices. She's also the author of a few poetry collections, including the forthcoming "Nympholepsy." Her work encounters the intersection of ritual and wellness, chronic illness, magic, overcoming trauma, and creativity, and she has written for The New York Times, Narratively, Grimoire Magazine, Sabat Magazine, The Establishment, Refinery 29, Bust, Hello Giggles, and more. Lisa Marie earned a Masters degree in Writing from The New School and studied literature and psychology as an undergraduate at Pace University.

2 Poems by Stephanie Valente

October 31, 2018

BY STEPHANIE VALENTE

WOLF BITE

it will only happen during a supermoon:

i promise, there are fields + wine + men

some women,

that you wish you could possess or become

you haven’t figured that part out yet,

maybe one day you will

after your palms crack, asphalt bangs

up your legs & there’s a point to lost

summer evenings where you wept,

but sweetheart, what if i told you

there was enough death in the air

except for this one, last bite?

IF YOU EVER NEED TO SUMMON ME, START WITH THESE 10 INCANTATIONS OR PHRASES

does this dress come in black?
this calls for coffee.
i don’t smoke, but who has a cigarette?
my dream is to be surrounded by puppies.
everyone is so dumb.
why though?
let’s get pizza.
thanks! i bought it for $10.
i mean, don’t you agree?
i need to exit this planet immediately.

Stephanie Valente lives in Brooklyn, NY. She is a Young Adult novelist, short fiction writer, poet, editor, content & social media strategist. In short, she wears many hats. Especially if they have feathers. She is the Founder & Chief Editor of Alt Bride, Fashion Editor at Greenpointers, Associate Editor at Yes, Poetry, Social Media Manager & Columnist at Luna Luna Magazine, and Style Blogger at Kitschy. Some of her writing has appeared in Bust Magazine, Electric Cereal, Prick of the Spindle, The 22 Magazine, Danse Macabre, Uphook Press, Literary Orphans, Nano Fiction, and more. She has provided content strategy, copy, blogging, editing, & social media for per’fekt cosmetics, Anna Sui, Agent Provocateur, Patricia Field, Hue, Montagne Jeunesse, Bust Magazine, Kensie, Web100, Oasap, Quiz, Popsugar, among others.

A Poem in Photographs by Kailey Tedesco

October 31, 2018

Kailey Tedesco is the author of These Ghosts of Mine, Siamese (Dancing Girl Press) and the forthcoming full-length collection, She Used to be on a Milk Carton (April Gloaming Publications). She is the co-founding editor-in-chief of Rag Queen Periodical and a member of the Poetry Brothel. She received her MFA in creative writing from Arcadia University, and she now teaches literature at several local colleges. Her poetry has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. You can find her work in Prelude, Bellevue Literary Review, Sugar House Review, Poetry Quarterly, Hello Giggles, UltraCulture, and more. For more information, please visit kaileytedesco.com.

Photography by Alice Teeple

October 31, 2018

BY ALICE TEEPLE

You can follow Alice Teeple here and here. You can support Alice here.

Minerva Siegel is wearing Hips and Curves Lingerie, Photographed by Amanda Lillian Mills

A Simple Spell to Summon and Protect Your Personal Power

October 31, 2018

BY MINERVA SIEGEL

October is a sacred time for me. The very air feels alive with old magic as the leaves turn brilliant, warm colors and fall to the ground. On these special, crisp autumnal days, I feel magic stirring up inside of me, ready to spark at my fingertips. Spells feel especially potent now, and one of my very favorite ways to mark the enchantment of this spooky season is to perform a rite I concocted to manifest and protect my power. As fallen leaves nurture the ecosystem, we should take their lead and use this time to nurture ourselves and our magic.

***Minerva Siegel is wearing Hips and Curves Lingerie, Photographed by Amanda Lillian Mills

A Simple Spell to Summon Up & Protect Your Personal Power

Items Needed

A crystal you feel a connection with (I use Candle Quartz)
Protective Crystals (Obsidian, Black Tourmaline, Jet, etc.)
A white candle
Sage or Palo Santo to burn in a fire-safe container
Music that empowers you (I made a playlist for this comprised mostly of Courtney Love, Sleater-Kinney and other punk rock girl bands that make me want to riot against the patriarchy, as self-care)

I begin this spell by playing empowering grrrl jams. They make me feel angsty, passionate and powerful, which is the perfect emotional recipe for manifesting my intrinsic magic. After gathering the items required for the spell, I set protective crystals at the four corners of my little ritual space. Alternately, you can place them in the four corners of the room you’re working in, or use a compass to align the crystals with the cardinal directions, if you’re into elemental magic.

After my space is protected, I light the white candle to begin the spell. The flame is then used to set sage alight, which is placed in my cast-iron cauldron (fire safety first!). Next, I meditate with my personal power crystal, which is a particularly dark Candle Quartz specimen that carries its energy confidently and without restraint or hesitation. I close my eyes, open my third eye, and visualize energy flowing up from the earth and into my body. I imagine my aura glowing brighter with each wave of energy that washes over me. Then, I say my personal affirmations aloud:

“I am magical. I am powerful. I am compassionate. I am loved.”

They’re inspired by affirmations my good friend, professional witch Kit Bone, came up with. I say them thrice, or seven times, if that intuitively feels more correct in the moment, while still visualizing power manifesting inside me. By now, I’m feeling magic surging through me. I feel beautiful. I feel whole. I feel as though I could move mountains with the flick of a wrist, and that would just be as natural as anything. Aloud, I speak the incantation:

“Magic running through me,

help me See with clarity.

Power that I’ve summoned here,

protect me, and I’ll have no fear.”

Again, I repeat this three or seven times, whichever feels more correct at the time, and continue meditating with the crystal until I feel ready to move on. Sometimes, I’ll do a tarot spread at this point.

To end the spell, I thank the universe for its power, protection and love, and blow out the candle.

There’s no correct or incorrect way to make magic, and that’s the beauty of it. Feel free to follow this spell exactly, or to use it as inspiration to create your own power-summoning rite. Your options are as endless as the universal magic that runs through us all. Explore them! Harness your power. It’s October, after all- there’s no better time than now to dig deeply and embrace your truest self.

Minerva Siegel is an internationally-published writer, plus size, disabled model, and secular witch living in Milwaukee, WI with her Taurus, double-Virgo husband and their beloved rescue pups. A Sagittarius with a Capricorn moon and entirely too many planets in the 6th house, she uses witchcraft as empowering, daily self-care

November and Her Lovelier Sister

October 31, 2018

BY PEG ALOI

There were two sisters, November, the older, and her younger and lovelier sister, October. November was born when the trees were nearly bare of leaves and the fields were sere and still. October was born while the colors of the countryside were glowing and the air was perfumed with ripening grapes. It was not necessarily a known truth that October was lovelier, simply a widely-shared opinion among the people who thought of things in such terms. Some days, this seemed to include everyone.

October was the sort of girl one wished to bring to the harvest dance: she would wear a bright dress of some rich fabric like velvet or brocade, and lace the bodice tightly so that her full breasts spilled out like luscious fruits. She would wear her rippling auburn hair gathered into a thick bun with loose tendrils falling onto her shoulders. She’d wear her best dancing shoes, with heels of stacked leather that hit the wood floors with a satisfyingly firm but delicate thump. Her pale face, like a white autumn rose blushed with pink, would glow luminous beside her full, carmine lips, innocent of any cosmetics. All the better, since her kisses, sweet and soft, would leave no trace on a young man’s collar or cheek. She danced with many, and even kissed more than was perhaps her share. The scent of woodsmoke and pear cider would linger on her breast, and the heat of her body caused that heady perfume to swirl around her dancing partner’s head, and he’d be lost. But the man she arrived with was always the man she left with, and he was the toast of the town, to have such a beauty on his arm.

November was fine-looking (even beautiful, if you asked some folks who were not prone to flights of fancy). She was simply not as likely to garner the stares and whistles her younger and lovelier sister got. She was slightly taller, her hips narrower: where her sister had curves, like fruit, November was straight and solid, like a young tree. Her hair was the color of charred wood, but shiny, like a raven who has just preened its feathers. She was kind and thoughtful, more serious than her younger sister. She turned the heads of plenty of young suitors, but these young men still helplessly fell in thrall with October.

This grew tiresome for the town, and certainly for the sisters, who knew they should not let such a thing erode their love or loyalty for one another. And yet it did, it did. Their parents were old, and doting, and did not pay much mind to what had been happening since their daughters came of age. But the strange obsession of the townsfolk over which of these beautiful girls was the most desirable seemed to be causing unpleasantness, and cast a shadow over the usually lighthearted ways of courting.

One day, tired of the rivalry, it was decided, by townsfolk who thought they should be making such decisions, that it should be made clear once and for all who was the prettiest girl in the town. The festival day of Harvest Home was chosen: the day where October turns into November on the calendar, and a day when it was believed the worlds of earth and spirit merged more closely for a day. Surely such a time would yield truth and wisdom. One could take a vote, with slips of paper or an impartial judge counting raised hands (with neither girl looking on, naturally, so as not to make hurt feelings any worse). As talk of this contest spread, people chattered and whispered, knowing who they would vote for.

As Harvest Home drew near, and crops were gathered, and cider was pressed, and pies were baked, and suits were brushed, and dresses were trimmed with ribbons of gold and orange and red, an idea occurred to the townsfolk overseeing the contest: to have a person of integrity choose the winner, instead of having a wider vote. And this person could be none other than Sam Hain, the Lord of the Hallows, something of a god but really only a man, who nevertheless could only be seen in the flesh for a very limited time each year. Or was it a local man chosen for this role? He wore a mask made of corn husks, and a robe the color of mosses. No one ever seemed to know his true identity. In any case, his authority on this day was absolute, as ordained by custom.

The night before Harvest Home, just before dusk, October went to the edge of the forest, seeking to call the fey folk to ask their help so that she might prevail in the contest the next day. She felt a bit guilty for thinking it was important, but part of her believed that once the matter was settled, she and her sister could simply go back to being sisters, and not constant rivals. She found an old weathered stump and sat upon it, pouring out some sweet cider as an offering. She sat, listening to the crows squawking as they gathered to roost in trees, hearing owls in the near distance, watching the sky fade from blue to rose to pale yellow and then darken back to blue. Dim stars began to glisten and she felt cold. Wrapping her shawl more tightly around her shoulders, she stared into the gloaming, wondering if she saw fairies on the move, or if it was a trick of the light. Was that faint, high-pitched laughter, or the breeze through a hollow tree? Were those fey folk dancing in the gorse hedgerow, or field mice rustling in search of a warm nesting spot?

October heard a faint crackling sound and felt a small blow to the top of her head. A hickory nut had fallen. She bent to pick it up from the ground, looking at its rough but smooth surface, its symmetrical shape, its soft grey brown color. And just like that, October didn’t know what to ask for, or even what she wanted. This made her feel anxious and confused, and then she felt a tickle of laughter behind her lips, and then, as quick as rain dousing a flame, she felt calmer than she’d felt in weeks. So she simply sat, listening to the sounds of nature around her, and after a time, made her way home carefully in the dark, the hickory nut tucked into the pocket of her skirt.

Arriving at the cottage, October could smell nutmeg and apples, and knew her sister must be making pies for the celebration tomorrow. Candles and lamps were glowing, and she yearned to be inside the warmth. She opened the door to find November reading a book by lamplight. There were two large pies cooling on the counter, and one small pie beside them. She looked up as her sister entered, and smiled.

“Mother and father have gone to bed. I left some stew to warm for you. It’s so cold tonight.”

October hung her shawl on the hook and smoothed her hair. “Yes it is,” she said, relishing the cozy warmth. “It’s cold but the stars are out. No moon tonight.” She spooned some stew into a bowl and poured a mug of cider and sat at the table, still not really looking at November. She ate, and the two sat in silence for a little while.

November got up from her chair by the fireside and walked to the counter. “I remember Mrs. Leeds saying that on the night of the dark moon, all things begin again.” She turned towards where October was seated, and was holding the small pie. “I made this with pears and molasses.”

October finished her stew, daintily wiping her lips with her finger, and sipping the cold cider. After the savory stew, the taste of apples was tangy and refreshing. “Thank you for warming the stew, I was hungry.” November set the small pie down on the table. October could smell the spice and fruit, and saw the careful pattern of leaves her sister had molded from the pastry. It was a beautiful pie. “It’s small, but look how finely made it is. I am sure it will please some fine suitor tomorrow--? October ventured, wondering what to say as the anticipation of the next day’s events swirled in the space between them.

November sat down across the table. “I made it for you. With the last of the pears.” October stared at November. Her sister knew she loved pears, even more than apples. November shrugged and a small smile crinkled her face. “It was a small crop this year.”

October felt a slow flush of heat move across her face, and turned to look at the fire, where embers were glowing. “You should have made brandy for Papa, not a pie for me.”

November tilted her head. “But it’s your birthday.” This was true.

October blinked. “That’s right. But it’s also your birthday.” This was also true.

For these daughters had been born on the same day, one year apart. It was the day that October ended, so that November might begin, when the color and fragrance and fecundity of summer gives way to the darkness and silence and depth of winter, the middle point of autumn that feels like a peak and a valley at the same time, on the cusp of a crystal-sharp moment of joy and sadness, beauty and decay, whimsy and wisdom.

October pulled the hickory nut from her pocket and held it out to her sister. “This is for you. It is not a pie. But I know where the tree is, and the nuts are beginning to fall.”

November took the hickory nut from October’s cold, trembling hand and looked at her sister’s sad and serious face. “Hickory nut pie will be a wonderful treat for midwinter. Shall we go and gather them, when the moon turns full?”

October’s eyes were brimming with tears as she nodded and smiled. “Yes,” she said. “Yes.”

Night fell around the cottage, and the sisters sat by the fire, listening to the wood cracking and popping, watching the dancing flames, as the moments passed and starlight sparkled on the orchard and the few remaining apples slowly froze on the bough, the cold turning them sweeter than they had been only hours before.

Peg Aloi is a witch and a warrior and a poet and a singer and a gardener and baker and a film critic and a scholar and a lover and a fighter and a badass bundle of sweet, sweet heirloom apple-scented righteousness.

A Spooky Story by Lydia A. Cyrus

October 31, 2018

BY LYDIA A. CYRUS

I was falling asleep while she was driving. This isn’t a surprise. To me or her. Something about being in a car, in the passenger seat, for longer than an hour puts me to sleep. The lines and signs are reflecting the headlights and occasionally I see them. Though most often I don’t. The sound coming through the radio is a story. One about a missing woman who is presumed to be dead.

She disappeared from some place that is cold. Some place that isn’t here. Her children go into foster care and are adopted and their adoptive parents might be Satanists. It is said that they had a well deep within their kitchen that they slaughter pigs over. The bones of other animals end up at the bottom of the well. The police said so. All of this is what I hear as I close my eyes and drift. Occasionally she asks me a question or makes a remark about the story. I agree and I continued to nod off. My chin resting in my hand, elbow propped next to the window.

It sounds like a plot from horror movie, but it isn’t. It happened. To a woman in her twenties who lived somewhere where it was cold. She disappeared. She’s likely dead now. There is no comfort for any of us. Me, sleeping for intervals of minutes, and her driving us home after a day of being tourists. Then she asks what would you do?

She means, what would you do if you saw a ghost? I think for a moment and I answer honestly. Sleep deprived and exhausted I have nothing but the truth to offer. I tell her that I would want a one-way ticket to the Mayo Clinic. For shock therapy. Because I know that I cannot live with that. That I could not function living with the image of a ghost. Any ghost. We laugh.

Not because shock therapy is something we want—that anyone wants—but because it’s true. Because neither of us could do it. The heat rises up from our feet to our faces and we’re quiet again. I’m sleeping. When awake, I watch the signs appear like a man made moon on the roadside. Then I watch the white lines run underneath us. To the side of the road everything is dark. Pitch black. But somewhere in the darkness there is a woman whose body is cold because she disappeared. Because she disappeared from a place that is cold. She can hear us as we listen to her story. Two young women, close friends, driving across the Illinois border, going home. We haven’t disappeared but we have seen something that will never vanish.

Lydia A. Cyrus is a creative nonfiction writer and poet from Huntington, West Virginia. Her work as been featured in Thoreau's Rooster, Adelaide Literary Magazine, The Albion Review, and Luna Luna. Her essay "We Love You Anyway," was featured in the 2017 anthology Family Don't End with Blood which chronicles the lives of fans and actors from the television show Supernatural. She lives and works in Huntington where she spends her time being politically active and volunteering. She is a proud Mountain Woman who strives to make positive change in Southern Appalachia. She enjoys the color red and all things Wonder Woman related! You can usually find her walking around the woods and surrounding areas as she strives to find solitude in the natural world. Twitter: @lydiaacyrus

3 Poems by Kimberly Grabowski Strayer

October 31, 2018

BY KIMBERLY GRABOWSKI STRAYER

Back Together

No ghosts without walls. In every horror

story, a haunted edifice. A house can be a home

or a trap. Gulp of water or skipping record.

In this scene, two teenage girls use witchcraft

to build a boyfriend out of body parts.

I say out loud why didn’t I think of this. They do

everything Frankenstein doesn’t do—teach

their creation to speak, how to touch. He knows

his body is not original, but the girls take the gun

from his hands. Kiss him on the mouth. They all go

to bed together, both dead and alive,

undifferentiated. The resurrection means pushing

oblivion up through the throat by leaning all her

weight on the stomach. I think—this is what love is.

I think—I could watch resurrection all day. I’m tired

of dismemberment. Reassemble the life force,

help it cough up the dirt. Dying here only means

an aesthetic shift—the teen wakes up and says I need

a cigarette. Light me up. Show me the movie

that puts the body back together. I’ve suspended

my disbelief so much, now I believe in anything.

Spell for Clarity

After Marosa di Giorgio

The solution must be to eat

a Petoskey stone. Round from this ice continent.

A slow-carve. The daytime Petoskey stone is dry,

looks brittle, like an ordinary limestone shucked

from the cliff. The daytime Petoskey stone

is my childhood collarbone, broken in a bike

race and grown back bowed. Ordinary breaking.

For this, I need the nocturnal stone—

its many eyes. Colonies of fossilized coral

glittering through the grey. We coat the stones

with lake water to render them vulnerable.

Something found only in Michigan,

can you believe that? When we were little,

the adults told us staying in Superior

for too long, the cold would kill us fast.

Pretty little things. It's too cold there for anything

to survive. And the water is so safe to drink.

We washed our long hair in it, counting down

the minutes to nerve damage. The eye

of the Petoskey stone gazing all

the way down into our inkwells.

In high school, a boy drowned in the lake—

undercurrent wiped him clean. All the news reports

repeated how strong he was, how all his life

he trained for this. Eat the Petoskey stone, quick.

Diamond of bone. Gravity of gray. A boat tour

of the great shipwrecks. For this, the daytime stone

will not do. You need something colder than ice. So

cold it feels like so many final breaths in your hand.

I think—no, don't pay your hard-earned money

for these tours. What kind of wreckage will you see?

What is left there, in the deepest lake? Swallow.

Make of yourself a glass-bottomed boat.

Annabelle

children still want/ some facsimile baby/ tuck it in at night/ tote around by plastic foot or hand/ most of us have soft middles/ puffed cotton where a beating/ could be/ the human part of me/ catches/ at that mechanism/ causes you to look/ for a face/ in the margins/ how the haunting begins/ that hunt for features/ a taking care/ making sense/ humanness and all the trappings/ little replica/ little glass eye/ I just want someone to take/ care of me/ instead get tossed around/ undressed/ set a place for me/ at the table/ stitch a story in my mouth/ in the movie/ play placeholder girl/ who keeps coming back/ every time you throw her away/ I don’t move/ but kill/ I come back/ make you sit upright/ stop blinking/ at the screen/ to see the whole dark/ make the audience/ say why would anyone want that/ creepy dirty doll/ where did she come from/ where is her lock/ why does she keep coming back/ it’s best if you turn out all the lights/ and name me something sweet/ so everything you killed/ for your little girl/ will come back

Kimberly Grabowski Strayer is a poet and horsewoman from Kalamazoo, Michigan, where she received her B.A. in English Writing from Kalamazoo College. She holds an M.F.A. in Poetry from The University of Pittsburgh. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Superstition Review, Midwestern Gothic, Cleaver Magazine, Crab Fat Magazine, and others. Her chapbook, Afterward, is available from Dancing Girl Press.

The Ghost in the Green House

October 31, 2018

BY JC DRAKE

It always begins the same way: my eyes pop open, my mind is awake, but I cannot move my limbs or open my mouth. A wave of fear passes over me, my heart begins to race, and I think the same thing – I’ve died and this is the last few moments of consciousness, before my life slips away. Thus far, that hasn’t been the case. Usually after a few terrifying seconds, my limbs unstiffen and I am able to move.

This is sleep paralysis. It’s a condition that afflicts about three million people in the United States and which has only begun to be understood within the last few years. Essentially, many of us will wake up out of a deep, dreaming sleep immediately without going through the various stages of wakefulness. The human body naturally has a self-defense mechanism that keeps us from moving excessively during sleep and an episode of sleep paralysis is triggered when we come out of sleep but that mechanism is still active. In short, we become conscious again before our bodies are capable of movement.

I’ve been experiencing it my entire life, now more than forty years. The first episode I recall is actually one of my earliest memories. I awoke in my bed, lying on my side, but was totally frozen. I tried to scream out – in my brain I was yelling – but no sound came out of my mouth. When my body was once again able to move, I screamed my head off. My parents didn’t understand what had happened, and told me I had just had a bad dream. But I wasn’t dreaming, I was fully awake.

This condition on its own is terrifying enough. After hundreds of episodes I’ve become used to it, or as used to it as a person can be when they suddenly find themselves paralyzed. But not every episode is the same; sometimes, well, I see things.

That, too, began when I was a child, lying in bed frozen from another episode of sleep paralysis. In the corner I would often see a dark figure, not much taller than a child, huddled in the corner of the room. As the episode continued I would see it stand up and walk quickly towards me, before I finally fully awoke and was able to move. Nothing was there after all – but I’d seen it. This usually meant sleeping with the light on for the next few nights.

Again, neuroscience has an explanation for these terrible visages. Due to the rapid wakening process, not only is the body not fully away but the conscious mind is still partially in a dream state. As such, we will see our “dreams” as something present and terrible in our physical space. I am a skeptical person and inclined to believe the rational explanation when one is on offer, but I’ve never been fully satisfied with this aspect of the sleep paralysis diagnosis.

Why is it that throughout history we so often see the same things, across cultures? Dark shadowy figures, little imps and demons, images of terror. Why doesn’t my half asleep mind project an image of a cooked breakfast or my wife smiling from the corner of the room? Why did I see dark, shadowy things crawling out of the walls at age 4 and why do I still see them at age 44? It never changes, no matter how old I get, where I live, or what my mental state is.

It was actually this question, as a young person, that got me interested in studying what we might call the “paranormal,” though I’m really not fond of that term. I grew up in a family that came from a long tradition of rural Southern folktales and folk magic. To say they were superstitious is an understatement. I grew up believing I was seeing ghosts and with access to no other information, that’s what I came to believe. In time I developed a more nuanced approach, largely through investigating cases of hauntings, from talking to other people, and, indeed, from obtaining an education in the sciences. When the lights are on and I am fully awake I can embrace the scientific reality of it all, but when I am again frozen in terror and a black hand is reaching out for me from the shadows, the rational explanation offers no comfort.

There is one incident that stands out from the others in terms of its effect on me, because it turned out to be prophetic. More than just an episode of sleep paralysis, this incident became a ghost story. As a result, my skepticism has never fully recovered.

We bought our house in York, Pennsylvania as a retreat from Washington, DC and the cramped Beltway lifestyle. Don’t get me wrong, I love working in DC, I just don’t much care for living here. As lovers of history, antiques, and everything old and weird, York proved to be absolutely the best spot for us to set down roots. A crumbling steel town slowly going through a hipster-fueled revival, it’s not for everyone. But my wife and I fell in love with the place from the moment we first drove into town and had purchased a house in an historic neighborhood within two months of first deciding to settle there.

Our realtor never showed us the house on her own – we had to find it ourselves. When we told her we were looking for something “historic,” she never quite got the message and continued to show us places that, while nominally old from the outside, had all the modern feel of a whitewashed home in the suburbs. But that’s not what we wanted. My wife found the Green House and had to force the realtor to take us there.

It’s a three story row house, twice as tall as it is wide, in a working class neighborhood near one of the country’s first industrial cat litter factories. Charming. Built around 1877 when Reconstruction-era industry arrived in York, the house is in various phases of remodel. The parlor is just as it would have been in 1877 and so is the master bedroom and the office. The servant’s quarters upstairs are remodeled and make a fine TV room and one of the smaller bedrooms has been turned into an unpleasantly cheerful modern bathroom. The radiators are all original, the pipes are exposed on the walls. On a good day, the electricity will stay on until bedtime without tripping a breaker.

We fell in love with place immediately, even though the realtor refused to even go upstairs. Our offer was accepted and within a couple of weeks we were moving in. It was within that first month that I saw the ghost.

The Green House is disconcerting. Haphazard attempts to remodel it have left it full of dark corners and blind turns. The stairs are particularly bothersome. When standing on the stairs it is impossible to see what is around the corner in the hallway at the top. When lying in bed in the master bedroom, one can see all the way down that same hallway, but cannot see what is coming up the stairs. This creates a funhouse effect in which one sitting in the parlor or lying in the bedroom is confronted with the staircase, but cannot see what’s coming up or down it.

The house is noisy – it’s a row house in the city and it shakes and rattles like all old houses do. But the stairs have a sound all their own; something walks those stairs, usually late at night but often in broad daylight. Due to their odd construction it’s possible to hear the sound of walking, but to never see what is there. Except for that night, shortly after we moved in, that I believe I saw it. Or rather, her.

I was asleep on my left side in bed, my wife snoring away behind me, the cats snuggled at our feet. Something had woken me up rapidly from a very deep sleep, as is often the case with an episode of sleep paralysis. I couldn’t move, I was frozen stiff, my arms folded in front of me, forced to stare down that long, dark hallway, lit only by the street lights outside. I could hear the sound, the footsteps on the stairs, slowly and gently climbing. And then, there emerged a figure.
She was a little girl, thin with black hair and narrow features, her mouth drawn together tightly, no older than 14. She was dressed in a kind of night gown made of red and white material like gingham. I could see her face and hands but not her feet. She wasn’t fully visible – she was like a photograph projected on mist. She seemed surprised to see us laying there in bed, the door open.

I saw her and she saw me and in my mind I began to scream. Then my limbs started to move, my mouth fell open, and I was awake. The girl was gone.

I got up, explored the hallway, used the bathroom, and went back to bed. I spent the rest of the night playing with my phone, one eye on that hallway. Shortly thereafter I switched to the other side of the bed; my wife is a heavy sleeper and has never been disturbed.

I chalked the experience up to just another bout of sleep paralysis. We adopted the “ghost” as our own in a joking way to make ourselves feel better any time something went bump in the night. Somehow the weirdness of the house was easier to explain with a personality – even an imaginary one – attached to it. I even came up with a little nursery rhyme about her that begins:

I am the ghost that walks the stairs,

Tread carefully or you’ll join me there.

Thus we lived happily in the Green House, enjoying what precious weekends we could afford to spend there, all the while making it our own. I haven’t seen the ghost again, though the sound of footsteps remains. In the summer of the third year we decided to rip out our backyard and turn it into an English-style garden, with fire pit, rocky path, and flower beds instead of the grass we had to cut. It was while putting in one of those flower beds that we found the grave.

An oblong circle of concrete, decorated with inlaid seashells and chunks of white crystal, it’s about four feet wide and four feet deep. It is a solid concrete vault clearly dug out and built in a hurry by an amateur. We began excavating it after lunch on a Saturday, not fully understanding what it was until we got it cleared out. It was full of bricks and lumps of coal all the way down to the bottom. There was no body, but there was fragments of bone and that’s when I realized what we’d found. Someone else had done the same thing as us, stumbled across the grave and excavated it. But they had found the body and had it moved, we hoped, to a proper burial place.

We left the bone in place and removed the bricks for use as a fence liner. Then we turned the grave into a pond, lining it and sealing it up so that it would not be forgotten, but would also be a more pleasant part of the landscape.

I found only one thing that gave any clue as to the identity of the former occupant: a small square of red and white gingham.

JC Drake has a day job with the federal government, but has a passion for researching unsolved mysteries. He and his wife Vickie travel frequently, are the parents of two adorable cats, and divide their time between Silver Spring, Maryland and York, Pennsylvania, where they continue to reside, along with the ghost, in the Green House. If you have a paranormal encounter or a mystery that needs solving, you can contact Dr. Drake at drake.investigates@gmail.com

Growing up with Ghosts: Memoirs from my Haunted House

October 31, 2018

BY MELISSA MADARA

It was a chilly, late-fall evening when I broke into my childhood home. The process felt mechanical, even trancelike. I used a screwdriver to pop a window frame on the porch, while my friends hung back at the edge of the property until I gave the all-clear. I’m not sure what I was expecting when I tumbled through the porch window into the house- now silent, cold, and dark, yet still heartbreakingly familiar- but it definitely wasn’t ghosts.

We sold the house in 2013, as a stipulation of my parent’s divorce agreement. It sat empty and decaying for two years afterward, the gutters falling off and the lawn overgrown, before it was leveled for new construction in 2016. It was always strange seeing the house like that in the frequent visits I made back to the lot, but it always remained a talismanic object for me- symbolic of the entire lives lived within its walls, and often seeming to breathe with a life of its own.

In a way, this was true. For as long as I can remember, the house had been haunted. I don’t mean this in some metaphorical, poetic way. I can count on one hand the amount of times my best friend agreed to sleep over, and she still recounts stories of sleep paralysis, disembodied knocking, and the unsettling sound of movement within the walls. My mother’s boyfriend once ran screaming from the house in the middle of the night after seeing an apparition seated at the foot of my bed. If I invited boys over for teenage shenanigans, they would find a way to leave by dusk. Our house had a storied reputation, and there were always more stories being written.

The earliest memory I have of experiencing our haunting (or hauntings, perhaps, because it took so many forms) was of the footsteps on our staircase. This was always the most obvious and consistent aspect of the haunting, and occurred nearly every night until we finally left. They were the heavy footsteps of the last patriarch of the house- a toweringly tall man we knew as Walter. Every night, Walter methodically plodded up and down our stairs, as if on patrol. The door of my childhood bedroom opened right to the top of the staircase, which gave me a unique vantage of the footstep phenomenon, and the absolute nothingness attached to the sound.

There was also disembodied knocking from within the walls. Lights would flicker on cue, especially when discussing the haunting. Sleep paralysis and night terrors were common. Certain rooms would give off icy chills, or the unsettling feeling of being watched. Objects would move, vibrate, throw themselves across rooms, or even disappear completely, only to reappear in plain sight months later. Apparitions were frequent occurrences- from previous tenants, to strange and horrifying patches of living darkness, to unfamiliar characters- human and animal alike. We had a particularly odd three month stretch where every guest to the house would repeatedly ask “when did you guys get a cat?” We never did.

It’s amazing what you can normalize over time. As a family, we engaged with the haunting on a near daily basis, but except for a few rare and animated occurrences, I don’t recall us being scared or unsettled at home. We even frequently engaged with the haunting, though this mostly amounted to yelling “SHUT THE FUCK UP” at Walter’s ceaseless all-night stair climbing. The supernatural nature of our house was integrated into the mundanity of our lives.

That was, until the Black Thing arrived.

I’ve always been prone to exceptionally high fevers, usually breaking 104 but once rising to a life threatening 107. These temperatures have brought vivid and terrifying hallucinations since I was a teenager, but the first time I saw the Black Thing, it was no hallucination. I was a senior in high school and up very late with a fever, perhaps past midnight. My mother woke up to give me medicine to reduce the heat, and she had just slipped back to bed. In my delirium, I was absently staring out my door and into the hallway, when the darkness seemed to gather and coalesce, densely and thickly, like ink in water. The seething blackness gathered into a vaguely humanoid shape with arms and legs- well over six feel tall. The Black Thing took what could be called a step forward, and placed what might have been a hand on the frame of my doorway, using it to let itself in. It then appeared to crouch next to my bed, staring eyelessly into my face. I summoned my strength, flicked on my bedside lamp, and called for my mother as loud as I could. She immediately ran into my room, eyes wide, and asked “You saw that, too?”

Whatever it was, the Black Thing became an unwelcome fixture outside my bedroom door. Its presence spread an uneasy air through the house, and seemed to affect the mechanics of our interpersonal interactions, as well as the original haunting in the home. We fought more as a family, and felt driven apart. I fell into an acute depression. We began to hear Walter’s footsteps not just at night, but following immediately behind when we ascended the stairs, as if chasing us. Living, dead, or otherwise- the Black Thing’s presence affected us all.

It became so severe that my mother tried to exorcise it herself once when my sister and I were at school. She began by issuing statements of intent, stating that the house was her domain and she wasn’t about to let some shifty shadow prick scare her children. She used burning herbs and sea salt to begin cleansing the house, but only got so far. In the middle of the process, she recalls the TV flicking on to static and then shutting off, after which she fell violently ill, vomiting in the kitchen sink until she was exhausted and could not continue. She was still visibly shaken when we returned home that afternoon.

That week, I took a free period to cross the street from my high school to a Passionist monastery, where I consulted a priest on the issue. He blessed a crucifix for us that I still have in my home, sent me on my way with some holy water and a pat on the head. I took these objects home, and while they seemed to help us set up stronger boundaries with the Black Thing, it never fully disappeared, though never troubled us so severely again, either. I wish there was a more cinematic ending to this story, but there isn’t. It’s existence faded into something we experienced and coped with, but were never again terrorized by. As I said earlier, it’s amazing the kind of things you can normalize and learn to live with.

As an adult, I’ve done my share of research about what the Black Thing could have been. I have my theories, but ultimately I don’t think I’ll never know. Could it have been a “shadow person”- a common yet unexplainable figure of spooky folklore? Could it have been an egregore- an autonomous manifestation- of the shared trauma of my parent’s divorce? Could it have been a demon, or something more sinister? Was it the spirit of a person who had died? Had it ever been alive? While I don’t have answers, I do have the experience that we all shared in that house, and it’s something that I hope will embolden and prepare me should I ever encounter a similar fiend again.

When I revisited the house that fall and broke in, I wasn’t driven to reconnect with these old haunts. I was nostalgic for my youth, and wanted to curl up in my old bedroom and spend a night feeling at home for the first time since I moved out. When I clumsily tumbled in through that window and dusted myself off, I wasn’t thinking about ghosts. But as I looked up and through the windows that peered from the porch into our old living room, sure as shit, there they were- as if I had just interrupted a tea party. There were several faint and humanoid shadows, facing me, all leaning at odd and unsettling angles like crooked teeth. And smack in the middle, of course, was the towering Black Thing. They were all just as I remembered experiencing them, and now seemed a bit harmless- maybe even welcoming. There was something very familiar in that moment that erased anything that might have been spooky for someone else. We always shared that house with other worlds, and it felt almost nice to come home to a spectral welcoming committee.

I called for my friends and helped them through the window, and when I looked back, the ghosts were gone. Maybe they were just for me to see, who knows? We turned on our flash lights and I opened the unlocked porch door, which swung open into familiar darkness. I was blessed to be able to spend one final night exploring the haunted house I grew up in before it was demolished. Most importantly, I’m grateful that I had the change to finally say my goodbyes- to my youth in that house, the years we spent living there, and the numberless strange creatures we shared it with.

Rituals to Fully Embrace the Samhain Season

October 31, 2018

BY MELISSA MADARA

For many witches the world over, Samhain is a particularly precious time in the wheel of the year. It takes place after sundown on October 31st, as a midway between the Autumn Equinox and Winter Solstice and the start of the dark half of the year. The name Samhain (pronounces SOW-in) comes from the Celtic pagan tradition, but the holiday goes by other names throughout the UK- Kalan Gwav in Cornwall, Ysbrydnos or Nos Galan Haf in Wales, Hop-tu-Naa on the Isle of Man, and of course Halloween through much of the English speaking world.

For many, this day is regarded as a liminal time when the veil or barrier between the seen and the unseen world is at its thinnest, and communication or travel between the two realms is most possible. Samhain hinges between two celestial polarities- light and dark, warmth and cold, life and death- and in this way, acts as a portal to spiritual worlds, bringing communication, initiation, travel, and contact.

The spirits who manifest themselves in this place could be family members, ancient ghosts, or even a host of fairies and supernatural creatres referred to in Irish mythology as the Aos Si. To keep these spirits at bay, great bonfires are lit as a cleansing and protective measure, and offerings of food and drink are left out to appease the spirits in hopes that they will act as protectors during the cold winter ahead. Pumpkins, or more traditionally turnips, are carved into toothy grins, filled with candles, and carried or placed at the door as talismanic objects to protect its owner from these spirits. Celebrants wear costumes and masks to blend in with the wandering spirits, so they may safely travel the night among them.

For witches, this time is particularly useful for engaging in spirit work, ancestor veneration, exalting the earth, or connecting with the Otherworld. Even if you don’t come from the Celtic or Pagan traditions, the magic of this time is open to you, because its mysteries are primal. Liminal spaces have been regarded as portals to other realms across history and the globe, and are a common theme through many traditions that seek to walk between these realms.

Below are a few brief and inter-traditional rituals for accessing different aspects of the Samhain season. They should be accessible to new witches but also engaging for experienced practitioners, and provide access to just a few of the spiritual treasures that this festival has to offer. I encourage you to enter them with a pure heart and a willingness to explore, as both are required to breech these other worlds, and the spiritual, uncanny landscapes beyond.

GET TO KNOW THE SPIRITS AROUND YOU

Many magical traditions honor the concept of genius loci, or “spirits of place.” Depending upon your tradition, these can be the spirits of your home, the land it sits on, the trees and plants around it, or the litany of spirits that have inhabited and walked this space before you. The benefits of fostering relationships with these types of spirits can range from home protection to gaining knowledge of the spiritual landscape in which you reside, but it’s also always a good idea to be a good neighbor.

To initiate contact with these spirits, prepare a suitable offering. This could be a feast of natural, earth-based foods (apples, spirits, fresh bread), a beautiful altar decked with objects from your home or neighborhood, beeswax candles, or something simple like sweet smelling incense. Set this in a prepared space and turn out all of the lights in your home.

Prepare an strong herbal bath. I tend to use cedar boughs and birch bark when I work with spirits of place, but you may find it more useful to prepare a brew of local plants, stones, and sacred herbs. Strain this brew and either add it to your bath, or add it to temperate water in a large pot and pour it over your head, baptism-style. This water should be patted off gently and not dried thoroughly, and bathing should always occur by candlelight. If you would like to dress afterward, have clean, comfortable clothes prepared.

On leaving your bath, approach your altar space and light any candles or incense. Sit back and allow the darkness of the room to cloak and envelop you. Speak your name into this place, and your intentions for fostering these relationships. Let these spirits know they are welcome, and how they can best make themselves manifest to you. Ask them if there are offerings they like, or methods of contact that are most effective. Ask them how you can be of service to them, and how they can be of service to you. Talk all night if you like, or simple share communal space with one another.

When it is time to leave, I like to break bread. I take a piece of bread or fruit and break it in half, eating half and leaving the other on the altar. I leave the candles and incense burning all night, and in the morning, I carry leftover offerings and wax to a crossroads, riverbank, or the edge of the forest (being careful not to leave inorganic materials in nature).

HONOR YOUR BELOVED DEAD

Ancestor magic has powerful benefits for the practitioner, being that blood is shared between the spirits and oneself. When we talk about ancestor spirits, we don’t just mean the ones you can name. The term refers to millennia of births and deaths that lead to your existence. This can also refer to non-blood ancestors, such as the lineage of witches in your tradition. Initiating contact with these spirits should be easy because of lineage, but also may be difficult in the event of ancestral trauma. These spirits usually have a lot to say, and it is best to listen closely and with reverence.

My ancestor altar is a permanent installation in my home, and is made up of several parts. I have many old film photographs of my family, dating back three generations. My preferred offering to familial spirits is a glass of water, a piece of chocolate, and small dish containing honey and olive oil, but these will vary family to family. If you’re unsure of what to offer, a glass of water and a white candle never really go wrong.

I also encourage you to build a physical place for these spirits to reside. This could be a clay jar, a ceramic skull, a wooden box, or a wax poppet, but the role is to create a vessel for spirit to be housed and live in your space. These vessel can be filled with your personal concerns (hair or blood are nice choices), red thread, necromantic herbs (marshmallow root is my fave), white eggshell, soil from graveyards (particular where family is inferred), frankincense, and other non-perishables that seem appropriate. You may interact with this object as a physical extension of your ancestral spirits, and feed it when appropriate.

You may also find it useful, especially if there is strong ancestral trauma in your lineage, to employ the assistance of a psychopomp, or a spirit that can cross between worlds. Common choices are Hermès or Hecate from the Greco Roman pantheons, but family spirits that you have strong connections to are also good choices. I often use my childhood dog for this purpose.

You may choose to veil this altar when it is not in use, as it can be intensely personal. Black or white are good color choices, and any natural fabric will do. I use white vintage lace.

In my experience, these relationships (like most family) gain their richness over time and repeated interaction. Offer them a portion of your dinner each night. Share the joys and the sorrows of your life with them. Ask for advice and favors, but be sure to return the favors when given. Work to investigate and heal ancestral trauma where it is present. Seek out the other witches in your family line. Map your family tree. Stay engaged in the work of maintaining both your living and dead family, and the rewards of support will amaze you.

PREPARE FOR THE WINTER AHEAD

As witches, we can understand the turning of seasons on both a physical and archetypal level. As the earth wanes into darkness, we can similarly engage in a spiritual introspection- turning our focus inward, and weighing what works and what doesn’t in our lives. It is a time when the choices that do not serve us truly show their faces, and where we can more easily access the wild & intuitive nature of our spiritual selves to seek out better pathways.

The Samhain season is an excellent time to begin this sort of work in preparation for both the literal and symbolic winters ahead. Deepening our relationship with our intuitive nature and confronting our devilish, harmful “shadow” selves are parts of the great work of witchcraft, so anytime is a good time to start, but the liminal space provided by Samhain gives us a unique perspective. Just as darkness and light can simultaneously inhabit the container of Samhain without judgement, so too can we hold space for both of these aspects of our selves, and examine them without fear or shame. It is the nature of liminal spaces like these to hold space for opposites, not to force moral values on them, and harnessing this potential is incredibly useful.

A skill that I’ve found helpful in discerning between the needs of the intuitive, soulful self and the wants of the shadow self is turning the spiritual ear to the voice of both parts. There is a quote by a medieval Christian monk who said that at night, angels and devils would appear to him, but sometimes the devils would appear as angels and the angels would appear as devils. When asked how he tells them apart, he said you can only tell by how you feel when they’ve left you. The same is true for these two parts of the self. The voice of the intuitive nature is soulful and deep. It is how we feel when we are moved by artwork, or when we feel our sense of place in the world, or when we appreciate nature, or when we engage in work aligned with our soul’s purpose. The voice of the shadow self is driven by fear and anxiety, and seeks revenge, dominance, isolation, and judgement of others. When the soulful voice speaks, we are called into action, we are moved to passion, and we fall in love. When the shadow self speaks, we worry, we tremble, and we lose sleep.

A ritual I’ve found for engaging these two selves is one I learned while I was living in India. In a modified version of this ritual, the practitioner should sit in as much darkness as can be gathered, particularly in a place that inspires a little bit of fear. Basements or closets work well for this. The practitioner should enter a meditative state, and call into this place all the things they fear most- people who have wronged them, deepest fears about themselves, traumas, demons, wrathful gods, serpents, spiders, lions, tigers, and bears. They should focus on calling these creatures into their space, and inviting them to feast on the practitioners spirit and body. The practitioner should focus on visualizing this feast in detail, and hold space for the feelings that arise. Cry, scream, and agonize through the experience.

In my experience, there comes a breakthrough point at the crescendo of fear when a new voice emerges. A soulful and light voice, that cuts through the chaos of the others. It understands the soulful self as independent from these ego-driven terrors, and banishes them. It is self assured and possesses the capacity to offer the deepest healing. Crying may turn to laughter. The participant should stay in this place as long as they would like, until they feel ready to leave.

It is nice to have prepared a drink and small snack after ritual to help the participant return to their bodies. Journaling, drawing, or automatic writing can help process the experience, but the important takeaway should be the discernment between the two voices that both inhabit the self. You will always know them by how you feel when they leave you.

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5 Ghostly Films to Settle Into This Halloween Season

October 31, 2018

BY TIFFANY SCIACCA

I've always had a soft spot for a good ghost story. From a slow-burner like The Others, to the fun and quirky The Frighteners, there is just something about the genre as a whole that has always appealed to me. Though there are newer films I have enjoyed—Rigor Mortis, Haunter, and Ghost Stories, I’ve decided to share some of my favorites from the 70s and 80s—with one cheat, because I love it so much I always recommend it!

Ghost Story

The first offering is Ghost Story, a 1981 film directed by John Irvin and adapted from a story written by Peter Straub. It stars silver screen legends, Fred Astaire, Melvyn Douglas, Douglas Fairbanks Jr., and John Houseman. Without spoiling anything, I can tell you that it is about a group of college roommates brought together as old men after the death of a friend who then forced to come to terms with the horrible secret that has tormented them all.

Lady In White

In Lady In White (1988) written and directed by Frank Laloggia, Lukas Hass stars as a young Frankie Scarlatti, who witnesses a crime that has already happened and is attacked shortly after. While recovering, he discovers the dark connection between the two events. There is a bond formed between Frankie and the victim that is endearing as he seeks to bring her killer to justice. This is spun like a dark, coming of age, fairytale—but I can’t tell you if there is a happy ending or not. With Len Cariou, Alex Rocco and Katherine Helmond also starring, Lady in White received positive reviews when it debuted and was considered a good suspense film that “did not rely on gore.”

The Fog

I wasn’t going to include The Fog, because everyone includes The Fog. But clearly, it’s on everyone’s list for good reason, so I decided why not? Starring Adrienne Barbeau, Jamie Lee Curtis, Tom Atkins, and John Houseman (again!,) Janet Leigh and Hal Holbrook, this John Carpenter and Debra Hill film also centers on a dark secret. Like they say, “What is done in the darkness comes out in the light.” (Actually, I just googled it and apparently, I misquoted that, but I am keeping it in!)

I love this movie because it’s a perfect ghost story that never grows old. I mean really, who doesn’t think about The Fog whenever a bank rolls in? Even when I was in Sicily, and witnessed a phenomenon called “Lupo di Mare”—a quick moving fog that envelops everything—I thought of this movie. I watched it swallow as much of my town as I could see and it scared the life out of me!

Don’t Look Now

Don’t Look Now is a last-minute switchout because I had not seen The Haunting of Julia in such a long time, I didn’t feel comfortable recommending it and did not have the time to watch it again. Starring Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie, Don’t Look Now was directed by Nicholas Roeg and is an adaption of Daphne du Maurier’s short story of the same name. Don’t Look Now is a story bookended with tragedies and deals with a couple’s grieving process after the loss of their only daughter. There are of course more layers to this film then an Opera cake, but I don’t want to give anything away, except for these shots.

The Devil’s Backbone

My last recommendation is from 2001 and was directed by Guillermo del Toro. The Devil’s Backbone stars Marisa Paredes, Eduardo Noriega, and Federico Luppi. It is a gothic horror set in 1930s Spain at the tail end of the Spanish Civil War and follows the relationships between an older couple who run an orphanage sheltering the children of the military and government, their younger employees as well as a newly arrived resident who begins having visions of a ghostly orphan. The Devil’s Backbone has been compared to The Others but is infused with a thicker melancholy and is really a moody and beautiful film that needs to be seen at least once! All of these suggestions can be viewed on YouTube, Amazon Prime, Vudu, Google Play and many other sites, so if you can, squeeze one, two or all of these onto your Halloween Movie watchlist and enjoy!

Tiffany Sciacca is a writer who has recently moved to Sicily from the Midwest. Her work has appeared in the Silver Birch Press, SOFTBLOW and DNA Magazine UK. When she is not learning a new language or trying to blend in, she is reading horror anthologies, binging on Nordic Noir or plugging away at her first Giallo screenplay. @EustaceChisholm

5 Ghost Poems by Catherine Kyle

October 31, 2018

BY CATHERINE KYLE

For Ghosts

This one’s for the ghosts

alive

or dead

or in whatever state.

You need it? Then

this one’s for you.

An honorary

ghoul.

If candles won’t light

get new candles. Throw

the old ones out.

If words you have sung

form architecture

windows and pillars

shadows and beams

that haunts you, well then

burn it down. Light

the bouquet,

pansies and forget-me-nots

all blazing.

Touch it to

the load-bearing walls

now. Cast

your corsage in.

Dig a grave of soot

and ash and

lie in it.

And watch.

A Garden Ghost

A ghost revisits

the body of a girl,

a skeleton, now

with lace gloves.

The ghost sheds ghost tears

one two three

that plunk the bony ribs.

Clean and blue as buttons, like

a silky workday blouse.

The ghost turns on the garden hose

and does not turn it off.

irresponsible

unreliable

groundskeeper

if you ask me.

The water fills up

thyme and nettle beds,

the poison ivy.

Fish swim by and huddle in

her sternum and

her hips.

A River Ghost

I want to talk

to the river but the river

is either silent or

roaring. No in

-between, no inside

voice. It pouts

or throws my things.

Already it has broken

thirteen teacups wrapped in paper,

gold-kissed rims and

painted cobalt landscapes

jigsaw crunch.

The river does not speak

in words. It speaks

in overflowings. Creeping

over sandy shores

and soaking my new boots.

It will not talk

to me, it will not talk

to me, it will not tell

me what

it wants. It wants

to be angry,

I think. It wants

to Cubist all

my mirrors.

Look at me, it seems to growl.

My face: a rippled blot.

A Family Ghost

Ghost girl touches the family

photograph, edges creased, gnawed

-on by time. Runs her pointer

finger down the silky paper

seam. It crosses the breast

of a woman, fold a sash imitating

quiver. Echo of what weaponry

she might have gripped and shot.

Ghost girl knows many weapons

are invisible. Knows many injuries

are guarded under tongues.

The woman’s face is stalwart,

mouth a heart monitor

with no pulse. Ghost girl wants

to climb inside, to interview

her teeth. What was your life like?

What would you have wished

you could demolish? What would you

have saved, had you power? How was it,

your pre-ghost?

A Messy Ghost

You know how they say

you can’t die in a dream?

This

is just like that. You’re not

awake, but there’s nowhere

to go. So park it. And adapt.

Welcome to the liminal,

survival’s purgatory. Survival is

all liminal, a temporary stop. (Yet)

I want to know your breed of this,

your verbing, your endurance.

Tell me of your tinctures,

your spit-shined artillery.

Tell me of the herbs you crush

and slather as a poultice. Tell me

of the cloak you wear as you

shoulder the cold. Enter this forest.

See your breath rise into arms of cedars.

These are territories of things unforgotten

that cannot be healed, either. Here, we all

survive. Welcome to the emptied drawer,

the thousand haystacks scattered.

Weave them, now, all back together.

Sort the fleeing parts.

Stop Screaming: A Short Story

October 31, 2018

BY CARLEA HOLL-JENSEN

The sky is black milk and the clouds are ash. Along one side of the road, the trees are indistinguishable from the stone hills rising behind them. On the other side, the dark mirror of the sea. It’s been miles since I saw any light but my own headlights, even longer since I’ve seen another car.

When the tire goes, I careen onto the shoulder and shudder to a stop. No problem, I tell myself, remain calm. I strike the flares, lay them out in a semi-circle around the car—purely ritual at this lonely hour of the night, but I’m comforted by their sizzling glow.

The jack suspends the car and I work the lugs off the tire. The spare goes on easily and I’m tightening it up when the drone of an engine separates itself from the drone of the sea. As the headlights crest the hill, I have to shield my eyes.

The car slows. It pulls up behind me, also on the shoulder, and the shape of a man emerges from the passenger side. “Need a hand, Miss?”

In the dark, he is indistinguishable from the rest of the night.

“That’s all right, thanks.” My voice boils out of me, too loud. “I’m almost finished here.”

Isolated as we are, he seems too close. He takes a step towards me. “Really,” he says, “it’s no trouble.”

I will the flares to make a barrier between us. “Really, I’m fine.”

“I don’t think you are,” he says.

That’s when I notice the driver’s side door of his car is standing open. That’s when the second man comes up behind me and strikes me down.

I come to tied to a bed beside a dead woman. Her throat is a red aperture, but her eyes are open and staring at me. Our wrists are lashed to the headboard, our ankles to the foot of the bed. Her blood swamps the mattress, still warm.

My body convulses upward, arching away from the wet bedclothes. A scream gutters in my throat, but I won’t let it out. No problem, I tell myself, remain calm.

I force myself to look around the room, breathing deep and slow even though I can taste the drowning copper of her blood. There is a lamp on a nightstand beside the bed, chintz wallpaper, a mirror on the opposite wall that reflects our image back to us. My companion is not looking in the mirror, her eyes still fixed on me. To my left, a door; to my right, a window.

If I hold my breath, I can hear the sea. Downstairs, a radio plays sentimental songs. I can hear someone moving around, voices fluctuating softly.

“You don’t have long,” the corpse tells me. Her lips don’t move, because she’s dead.

“How do you figure?”

“I can see through the floorboards,” she says. “Also, I’m floating above you. I don’t know if you noticed.”

I hadn’t. There she is, scudding along the ceiling like a lost cloud. I wonder what it’s like to look down and see your body below you. I might soon get to find out.

“You’d better hurry,” she says.

While I struggle to free my hands, my companion reports what’s happening downstairs.

Through the floorboards, she observes our assailants dancing a waltz. They seem very much in love, she says. Sometimes even killers need a little human touch. They’re probably very sympathetic, for murderers. One of them, the one who spoke to me, the one who is not a man but a dark shape, is drinking slugs of isopropyl alcohol. It won’t kill him, because he’s impervious to harm. If anything, it makes his stomach flutter, like nervous excitement—butterflies.

As she’s telling me all this, I slip free of the ropes. Not because I get the knots loose or anything. What happens is my hands change size. Then I can sit up and undo the ropes around my ankles. “This doesn’t normally happen,” I tell the corpse.

“You look familiar,” she says. “Do you play checkers?”

I try the window, but the frame is nailed shut.

“No? What about chess?”

Even if I broke the glass, which would certainly attract attention, we’re two stories up and the ground below is bare rock. Beyond the stony hill is a soft dark beach and, beyond that, the sea.

“I thought maybe I knew you from one of my clubs.”

“I don’t suppose there’s a back stairway,” I ask the corpse.

“Just the one,” she says.

It was worth a try. No problem, remain calm.

I tread carefully across the bare floor. The door is not locked, but it comes away from the frame with a groan. I hold my breath.

Downstairs, they’re still dancing. Their heads lean close. The dark one’s hand dips lower along his companion’s back.

Just a little more and I can slip out, my blood-wet dress catching on the tongue of the lock. Edging down the hall, I approach the stairs. In my stocking feet, I am quiet, but I crouch down to make myself quieter and smaller still. If I could, I would shrink down entirely, the way my hands changed size, but that portion of the evening seems to be at an end.

On the balls of my feet, my fingertips brushing the floor like an ape’s, I creep around to the top of the steps and look down—straight into the living room, where the killers are swaying in one another’s arms to a standard of days gone by. The music is louder here, and more sentimental, too. One of the men, the one who knocked me down, appears quite moved. Big, fat tears seep out of his closed eyes.

There’s no chance I can get past them. The stairs let out onto the front corridor, in plain view of the living room. The only reason I haven’t been discovered is that the killer facing in my direction has his eyes closed.

Scuttling back against the wall, out of sight from the first floor, I close my eyes and breathe carefully in and out. No problem, remain calm.

There must be another way out. That ghost means well, but just because she can see through walls doesn’t mean she knows everything.

As I crawl along the floorboards, splinters wedge themselves into my knees. I’m leaving a trail of borrowed blood behind me.

Back in my room, I stand up. There must be something in here that could help me escape. The corpse watches me search the room with reproachful eyes, while her spirit follows me around, bumping against the ceiling like a balloon.

“I know I’ve seen you before,” she says. “Was it on the number nine bus?”

The bureau drawers are empty, except for a case of tarnished war medals. Maybe the killers were brothers in arms. Or maybe the medals belonged to someone they killed. Maybe they came with the house.

“Or, no, wait,” the ghost says. “I know how I know you! We went to elementary school together, remember? We played hide and seek in your attic and you kissed me through a length of gauze?”

I could fashion the sheets into a rope, but I’d have to get them out from under the corpse, and the killers would probably spot me out the ground floor window. And I’d still have to break the window to get out.

“Or was it—You were the woman I saw on the street corner, looking up at a flock of birds in flight. Yes, that must be it. I remember the shape of your jaw.”

Then again, maybe breaking the window wouldn’t be such a bad idea. With what? Not the war medals, surely—but the lamp has promise.

“You don’t really think that’s going to work, do you?” the ghost asks.

I ignore her. I’m only going to listen to constructive criticism from now on.

The lamp lets me unplug it from the wall, and I carry it over to the window. I cradle it. “OK,” I whisper, my lips brushing its glass base, “we’ve got one shot at this. Don’t let me down.” Remain calm, remain calm.

The lamp smashes through the window with wonderful force, arcing through the night to shatter on the rocks below. I am so proud of it, but only for a moment, because then I am listening to shouts of alarm from downstairs.

I hear the killers run outside to see what the commotion is. I can hear them blundering around in the dark, yelling at one another. Down the stairs I go, my stocking feet slipping, skidding in the hall, and then I am spilling out the front door, down the walkway, running, running into the night. The dark is absolute, and somewhere behind me I can hear the killers shouting, pursuing me, but I will run. I will keep running.

Soon it will be light.

“Wait,” the ghost calls out, hovering in the doorway. “Where are you going? We were getting to be such good friends!”

Carlea Holl-Jensen’s fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in, among others, Grimoire, Psychopomp, and Fairy Tale Review, where I was recently runner-up in their 2018 Prose Award, judged by Kathryn Davis. I'm the co-editor of The Golden Key, an online journal of speculative writing, and co-host of the podcast Feminist Folklore.

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Blood Moon Limpia by Monique Quintana

October 31, 2018

BY MONIQUE QUINTANA

When I was a girl, I watched my boy cousins conjure spirits in our family house. Our great grandmother, Marcrina had to do a limpia to clean it out. I wonder if those spirits birthed other spirits that have existed in the many rooms that my body and my family have encountered.

Our landlady had received the Delno house as an inheritance from her dead brother. The house was trimmed with orange paint and the front yard was covered in flaxen colored weeds that itched my ankles when I walked across the lawn. They made me question why we had moved in there. It made me think, should sisters reject gifts from their dead brothers? When we lived in that house, it was the first time I had my own little fruit tree. I thought that only good would come from that tree, the way that the dark lord’s daughter, Xquic became pregnant when a tree spat on her in the old creation of her magic twins, Hunahpu and Xbalanque.

The first night in the house, I walked into the bedroom doorway and my arm began to bleed. There was a tiny hook sticking out like a half moon. It must have held a bolt and lock in its past life. The sting of the pain felt different than an injection needle, and I shivered because I imagined my arms filling with rust and small bits of paint.

On the second day, I saw that the blue on the restroom walls was painted haphazardly. I did like the color of it because it remained me of the ocean, and I very rarely get to see the ocean. I hung a mirror in the corner and it looked like an egg floating over my head.

On the third day of living in the Delno House, I saw her in the old storage shed shaped like a triangle. A black widow spider, its stomach the size of a marble. A red blushed stomach. All her legs quick and nervous like my fingers. I left all of my summer dresses to hang over cardboard boxes, flapping in the cold wind that swept through the broken window. Left lipstick and thread in jars and muffin tins. Electrical cords ran under the basin, dripping with water and rust.

My son and I burned sage under the light of the moon and my son started crying. We began to argue mightily whether the sage was bringing bad energy instead of clearing it away. If the copal we burned in the morning time was making us hate each other. In that cold wind, we made our ancestors into demons and we shivered in shame.

I invited my friends over for new moon tea and we write our intentions on small scraps of paper. The candle lights melt the bits of crystalized sugar off the pan dulce in blues and yellows and milky whites like smiles. We three took a picture in front of a large growth, combustion of purple flowers. We were happy to be consumed by the flowers.

I took baths two times a day, leaving the window open to listen to the birds. The window over the tub like a mouth. I would stand up in the tub and watch the shade grow under the giant tree. I thought of myself sleeping deep under the dirt and tree roots, my limbs tangled and peaceful. I go under water and come up again. The mirror floating about my head like an egg. My blue hair under me like kelp and like smoke.

Monique Quintana was born and raised in the Central Valley, “the other California” and holds an MFA in Creative Writing from CSU Fresno. She is a Senior Associate Editor at Luna Luna Magazine, Fiction Editor at Five-2-One Magazine, and a contributor at CLASH Media. She blogs about Latinx Literature at her site, bloodmoonblog.com, and her work has appeared in Winter Tangerine, Queen Mob’s Tea House, Grimoire, Huizache: The Magazine for Latino Literature, and The Acentos Review, among other publications. She is an alumna of the Sundress Academy for the Arts and has been nominated for Best of the Net.Her novella, Cenote City is forthcoming from Clash Books in March, 2019. You can find her at moniquequintana.com