Halloween Haunts: Samhain
By Brooke MacKenzie
During my senior year of high school, I had become a devout practitioner of Wicca, and I made sure everyone around me knew it. I would offer “Blessed Be” as a standard farewell, and even the occasional, “Goddess Bless” when someone sneezed. I performed love spells for romantically challenged friends, crafted prosperity dolls as Christmas presents, and self-righteously preached about the destructiveness of patriarchal religion. I dyed my hair blue and then green and then purple, spilled wax all over the carpet during full moon rituals and bogarted my mom’s stock pot to use as my cauldron.
You are different. So are we. This was the promise on the admissions brochure when I applied to Sarah Lawrence College—a small, famously eccentric, liberal arts school outside of New York City—and upon arrival, I launched myself into the work of proving just how very different I was. I yammered on about Wicca, and religious persecution, and the Divine Union between the Goddess and the Horned One.
I was a pretty cool hang back in the day.
In reality, I was a Minnesota girl who was terrified at being away from home for the first time—having just graduated from an arts high school that had the all the fun and friendship camraderie of a years-long summer camp—and, in addition to this drastic change, my beloved grandmother passed away during orientation week. I had been preparing myself for her death throughout the summer, and she and I had had our own deeply resonant farewell the day before I left for school (I managed to refrain from using the utterance of “Blessed Be”), and my parents decided it was best for me to stay at school and get settled in instead of coming home for my grandmother’s memorial service. Though there was much tearful pleading on the phone, eventually I agreed.
As the weeks went on, I realized that I didn’t feel different or unique or edgy in my new college setting. I felt awkward, out of place, and entirely alone. I used Wicca not only as a familiar lifeline to my previous life—from which I already felt so far removed—but it became my entire personality. It was an image, a security blanket, a conversation topic, and that small piece of social capital which I hoped to leverage in order to set me apart from the very folks with whom I was hoping to blend in.
And so, when that most sacred of Wiccan holidays, Samhain (or Halloween, to the uninitiated) rolled around, I was looking forward to engaging in a meaningful—if solitary—ritual in order to reconnect with my spirituality (“The veil between our world and the spirit world is, like, super thin on Samhain,” I had told a group of fellow diners in the cafeteria as they nodded and their eyes glazed over) and engage in an activity that would be a badly needed balm for my grieving, homesick heart. Luckily, I lived in a charming dorm that had a turret like a castle and a private, fenced in backyard that would be the perfect place for my ritual. On Halloween night, I slipped away from a party, changed out of my sexy cat costume, and gathered my supplies.
I had an extensive collection of magical ritual objects that I opted not to bring with me to school, due to concerns about something happening to them, and because I wasn’t sure where I’d find the storage space in half of a dorm room. I cobbled together whatever I could find and headed out to the backyard to begin my Samhain ritual. The yard was perfect for my protective circle: a portion of it was illuminated by a solitary spotlight that hung on a telephone pole, and the rest of it was in shadow.
The act of casting a protective circle involves carving the air around the perimeter with an athame, or ritual knife (in this case, a butter knife) and making offerings to each of the four directions: typically, a crystal for the earth spirits in the North (a rock I had found in the parking lot), incense for the wind spirits in the East (a small portable fan from my room), a candle for the fire spirts in the South (a matchbook from a gas station, as candles were strictly forbidden on campus), and a sacred vessel with charged water for the spirits in the West (a red plastic Solo cup filled with tap water). In the center of the circle, I placed my cauldron: a plastic salad bowl that still had the remnants of someone’s red wine vomit.
I was ready.
The ritual went horribly. Everything felt off. For starters, when I engaged in the energy raising (dancing around the circle and projecting the energy into the cauldron), I felt awkward and self-conscious. The thought of someone watching what I was doing was embarrassing. I knew, ultimately, that no one would have batted an eye if they had seen me, given the fact that folks preferred to take their clothes off during parties and I had already seen half of campus naked. The problem was definitely me. Suddenly the mantle of “cool, devout Wiccan girl” that I had been wearing didn’t feel so comfortable. I whispered the words of the ritual instead of declaring them loudly and rushed through the entire thing to get it over with. At the end of the ritual, I sat in quiet meditation with my eyes closed.
In the stillness, I had the unmistakable feeling of being watched.
Someone was standing in the corner of the yard. The figure was mostly hidden in shadow, but from what I could see, it looked like a tall, slender man with long hair. My face burned with humiliation. Oh my God, how long has he been standing there? How did he even get in here? Is there another entrance? Do I acknowledge him or—
My train of thought was interrupted when the man began moving. He took a step closer to me before slowly crouching down, disappearing into the shadow entirely. My nerves flared and there was a buzzing sound in my ears. Something wasn’t right. The autumn air felt suddenly hot and oppressive. I sucked in my breath, waiting.
I heard a rustling sound. Fallen leaves being disrupted by footsteps. My adrenaline was acidic and relentless as my nervous system went on high alert. A voice in my head bellowed: STAY WHERE YOU ARE. THE CIRCLE WILL PROTECT YOU.
I waited.
Out of the shadows came a skunk. The man was gone, and the skunk began its slow, stalking sojourn across the yard towards me. It was walking a straight line directly to me, staring. There was no snuffling or foraging or exploring typical of animals going about the business of their survival.
Again, the voice in my head commanded me to stay put. To have faith. To trust the protective circle.
And still, the skunk crept closer. My instincts seared my stomach lining, and every hair on my body was at attention. The voice in my head fought to be heard over the primal pounding of my pulse, and my muscles began twitching, priming themselves for escape. But I stayed put.
The skunk came closer. And closer. And—
“OH, FUCK THIS!”
I bolted from the circle and the skunk ran after me—its nose mere millimeters from my frantic feet. I slammed the door in its face, ran to my bed, and pulled the covers over my head the way I used to as a kid after watching a scary movie.
Everyone else from the dorm was still out partying and drinking and making the kind of memories that folks do in college. They were on the other side of an otherworldly chasm, and I was alone and terrified after having just been chased by a shapeshifting SKUNK.
I willed my breath to slow, and it was hot and a little rancid under my blanket. After the fear subsided, I felt tremendous shame. When I didn’t trust my protective circle, it was as if I hadn’t trusted the power of my faith. Instead of being a serene witch, standing strong in the face of whatever the hell kind of evil this was, I had run like a shitty little coward. I was, in fact, the very definition of a bad witch.
It took me until the following evening to go to the yard and clean up my ritual objects (I would have left them out there longer, unable to bear the shame of seeing the detritus of my failure, but someone needed the salad bowl). Shortly after that, I became disillusioned with Wicca—and, frankly, with religion in general. However, while I didn’t realize it at the time, it was the best thing that could have happened to me. Eventually, I learned that I didn’t need a “thing” to connect with others, and I settled comfortably into the rhythm and social landscape of college. I also learned that trusting my instincts—the ones that ultimately took me away from the protective circle in favor of actual safety—was more important and ultimately useful than blind faith in something other than myself.
During my time there, I had numerous experiences with ghosts at Sarah Lawrence. After a particularly harrowing one, I asked the Powers That Be to take away my ability to see and communicate with spirits. But that’s another story for another time.
I will say this, however: just because I can’t see the ghosts, doesn’t mean they aren’t there. Watching, listening, and waiting just on the other side of the veil.
Brooke MacKenzie is the author of the short horror fiction collection, GHOST GAMES (Gravestone Press), which Kirkus Reviews called, “[a]n indelible batch of nightmarish tales,” and the horror poetry collection, THE SCARY ABECEDARY (Curved Quill Press). Her short fiction and poetry have appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies, including the Bram Stoker Award-nominated MOTHER KNOWS BEST from Black Spot Books. Two of her stories have been produced as podcast episodes by The Night’s End Podcast. She is represented by Jennifer Lyons of the Jennifer Lyons Literary Agency. For more about Brooke’s experiences with Wicca, listen to her episode on the Mortified Podcast. You can find her online, on Instagram (@mackbrookepro), and hanging out in Brooklyn with her husband and daughter.
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