Witch witch, where do you fly?
Under the clouds and over the sky.
Witch, witch, what do you eat?
Little black apples from Hurricane Street.
Witch, witch, what do you drink?
Vinegar and good red ink.
Witch, witch, where do you sleep?
Up in the clouds where the pillows are cheap.
It’s been surreal and magical to be back in the warm embrace of New Orleans – and especially strange to have everything feel so calm and peaceful here (despite the full moon, Halloween holiday, and all associated deviltry) when up north, New York has been so recently beleaguered by a hurricane. Everything feels sort of backwards, and this time, I’m very grateful to be on the tranquil side of things, though a deep sense of foreboding about the frequency and intensity of future storms makes me very concerned for everyone I know (and those I don’t) who live along the coasts. We haven’t seen the end of this shit, and it seems like it might be too late to turn back.

☾ Publishers destroy Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark’s amazing artwork – I know this has been going around for awhile, but I always think of these stories at this time of year. The illustrations were what made even some of the less scary stories truly terrifying. It boggles the mind to think that anyone would ever dream of even trying to touch that. Last night, we celebrated the Mudlark Public Theatre’s 4th anniversary with their annual Halloween Cabaret Grotesque. The Mudlark Puppeteers performed a chilling rendition of one of my favorite stories from the collection, The Sinner Drum. It was terrifying and beautiful, as you might imagine!
☾ Wikipedia Entries to Read in the Dark

☾ A beautiful full moon post from artist Kelly Louise Judd: Hunter’s Moon
☾ Inside the lost island of New York: Eerie pictures of the abandoned leper colony just 350 yards from the Bronx

☾ The Vampire Beetle Bedpost Confessions
☾ A peek into Haunted Air – Anonymous Halloween photographs from c.1875–1955
“The photographs in Haunted Air provide an extraordinary glimpse into the traditions of this macabre festival from ages past, and form an important document of photographic history. These are the pictures of the dead: family portraits, mementos of the treasured, now unrecognizable, and others. The roots of Halloween lie in the ancient pre–Christian Celtic festival of Samhain, a feast to mark the death of the old year and the birth of the new. It was believed that on this night the veil separating the worlds of the living and the dead grew thin and ruptured, allowing spirits to pass through and walk unseen but not unheard amongst men. The advent of Christianity saw the pagan festival subsumed in All Souls’ Day, when across Europe the dead were mourned and venerated. Children and the poor, often masked or in outlandish costume, wandered the night begging “soul cakes” in exchange for prayers, and fires burned to keep malevolent phantoms at bay. From Europe, the haunted tradition would quickly take root and flourish in the fertile soil of the New World. Feeding hungrily on fresh lore, consuming half–remembered tales of its own shadowy origins and rituals, Halloween was reborn in America. The pumpkin supplanted the carved turnip; costumes grew ever stranger, and celebrants both rural and urban seized gleefully on the festival’s intoxicating, lawless spirit. For one wild night, the dead stared into the faces of the living, and the living, ghoulishly masked and clad in tattered backwoods baroque, stared back.”


☾ Sabbat Wine, Flying Ointment & Enthogens
☾ Make your Own Sabbat Wine and Flying Ointment
Here’s an interesting selection of videos featuring flying brujas and mysterious levitation:





I made an 8tracks mix to listen to while I get dressed up! It’s dedicated to all my witchy sistren celebrating Samhain this season:

Promised To The Night from angeliska on 8tracks Radio.

Magic from Halloweens of yore:
✪ I dressed as Vali Myers (one of my very favorite witches, ever) for Halloween last year…
✪ QUEENS OF HALLOWEEN
✪ New Orleans Hallowe’en
✪ Spookhouse Honey
✪ The Witches’ New Year
✪ Ha-ha-halloweenie
✪ ECTOPLASMIC HONEY
✪ WITCHNESS