When Worlds Collide – $14.95

Ding dong! The witch is dead! Wait! What? That’s not right. Dorothy didn’t arrive in a spinning TARDIS.

The NeatoShop is happy to bring you another of artist Mike Jacobsen’s fabulous drawings. The When Worlds Collide art is available on both t-shirts and sweatshirts.

Be sure to check out the NeatoShop for fantastic Wizard of Oz and Doctor Who items!

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Naturally, the witches aren’t taking this laying down:

Queen witch Bratara Buzea, 63, who was imprisoned in 1977 for witchcraft under Ceausescu’s repressive regime, is furious about the new law.

Sitting cross-legged in her villa in the lake resort of Mogosoaia, just north of Bucharest, she said Wednesday she planned to cast a spell using a particularly effective concoction of cat excrement and a dead dog, along with a chorus of witches.

"We do harm to those who harm us," she said. "They want to take the country out of this crisis using us? They should get us out of the crisis because they brought us into it."

"My curses always work!" she cackled in a smoky voice. She sat next to her wood-burning stove, surrounded by potions, charms, holy water and ceramic pots.

Alison Mutler of the Associated Press wrote this story published on MSNBC: Link (Photo: Vadim Ghirda/AP) – via Boing Boing

Here’s a bit of American history we’re all familiar with… but know almost nothing about. The BRI wants to change that, because we don’t want witch trials -or with hunts- in our era. After all, someone just might decide that reading in the bathroom is a sign of demonic possession.

(Image credit: Flickr user Lexie Rydberg)

BACKGROUND The trouble at Salem, Massachusetts, began with two young girls acting oddly. It explodes into one of the strangest cases of mass hysteria in American history. In the six-month period between March and September 1692, 27 people were convicted on witchcraft changes; 20 were executed, and more than 100 people were in prison awaiting trial.

CHILD’S PLAY

In March 1692, nine-year-old Betty Parris and her cousin Abigail Williams, 12, were experimenting with a fortune-telling trick they’d learned from Tituba, the Parris family’s West Indian slave. To find out what kind of men they’d marry when they grew up, they put an egg white in a glass… and then studied the shape it made in the glass.

But instead of glimpsing their future husbands, the girls saw an image that appeared to be “in the likeness of a coffin.” The apparition shocked them… and over the next few days they exhibited behavior that witnesses described as “foolish, ridiculous speeches,” “odd postures,” “distempers,” and “fits.”

Reverend Samuel Parris was startled by his daughter’s condition and took her to see William Griggs, the family doctor. Griggs couldn’t find out what was wrong with the girl, but he suspected the problem had supernatural origins. He told Rev Parris that he thought the girl had fallen victim to “the Evil Hand” -witchcraft.

The family tried to keep Betty’s condition a secret, but rumors began spreading almost immediately -and within two months at least eight other girls began exhibiting similar forms of bizarre behavior.

THE PARANOIA GROWS

The citizens of Salem Village demanded that the authorities take action. The local officials subjected the young girls to intense questioning, and soon the girls began naming names. The first three women they accused of witchcraft were Tituba and two other women from Salem Village, Sarah Good and Sarah Osborne.

The three women were arrested and held for questioning. A few weeks later two more suspects, Martha Cory and Rebecca Nurse, were arrested on similar charges. And at the end of April a sixth person -the Reverend George Burroughs, a minister that Abigail Williams identified as the leader of the witches- was arrested and imprisoned. The girls continued to name names. By the middle of May, more than 100 people had been arrested for witchcraft.

THE TRIALS

On May 14, 1692, the newly appointed governor, Sir William Phips, arrived from England. He immediately set up a special court, the Court of Oyer and Terminer, to hear the witchcraft trials that were clogging the colonial legal system.

* The first case heard was that against Bridget Bishop. She was quickly found guilty of witchcraft, sentenced to death, and hung on June 10.

* On June 19 the court met a second time, and in a single day heard the cases of five accused women, found them all guilty, and sentenced them to death. They were hung on July 19.

* On August 5 the court heard six more cases, and sentenced all six women to death. One woman, Elizabeth Proctor, was spared because she was pregnant- and the authorities did not want to kill an innocent life along with a guilty one. The remaining five women were executed on August 19.

* Six more people were sentenced to death in early September. (Only four were executed: one person was reprieved, and another woman managed to escape from prison with the help of friends.) The remaining sentences were carried out on September 22.

*Two days later, the trials claimed their last victim when Giles Cory, an accused wizard, was executed by “pressing” (he was slowly crushed to death under heavy weights) after he refused to enter a plea.

REVERSAL OF FORTUNE

By now the hysteria surrounding the witch trials was at its peak: 19 accused “witches” had been hung, about 50 had “confessed” in exchange for lenient treatment, more than 100 people accused of witchcraft were under arrest and awaiting trial -and another 200 people had been accused of witchcraft but had not yet been arrested. Despite all this, the afflicted girls were still exhibiting bizarre behavior. But public opinion began to turn against the trials. Community leaders began to publicly question the methods that the courts used to convict suspected witches. The accused were denied access to defense counsel, and were tried in chains before jurors who had been chosen from church membership lists.

The integrity of the girls then came into question. Some of the adults even charged that they were faking their illnesses and accusing innocent people for the fun of it. One colonist even testified later that one of the bewitched girls had bragged to him that “she did it for sport.”

As the number of accused persons grew into the hundreds, fears of falling victim to witchcraft were replaced by an even greater fear: that of being falsely accused of witchcraft. The growing opposition to the proceedings came from all segments of society: common people, ministers -even from the court itself.

THE AFTERMATH

Once the tide had turned against the Salem witchcraft trials, many of the participants themselves began having second thoughts. Many of the jurors admitted their errors, witnesses recanted their testimony, and one judge on the Court of Oyer and Terminer, Samuel Sewall, publicly admitted his error on the steps of the Old South Church in 1697. The Massachusetts legislature made amends as well: in 1711 it reversed all of the convictions issued by the Court of Oyer and Terminer (and did it a second time in 1957), and it made financial restitution to the relatives of the executed, “the whole amount unto five hundred seventy eight pounds and twelve shillings.”

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The article above is reprinted with permission from Uncle John’s Legendary Lost Bathroom Reader.

This special edition book covers the three “lost” Bathroom Readers – Uncle John’s 5th, 6th and 7th book all in one. The huge (and hugely entertaining) volume covers neat stories like the Strange Fate of the Dodo Bird, the Secrets of Mona Lisa, and more …

Since 1988, the Bathroom Reader Institute had published a series of popular books containing irresistible bits of trivia and obscure yet fascinating facts. Check out their website here: Bathroom Reader Institute

1. Beginning in the 1970s, Salem began to actively embrace its past as a draw for tourism. The TV series Bewitched recorded six episodes in the town in 1970. As tourists came, more businesses sprung up to accommodate their interest in witches and witchcraft. Practitioners of Wicca and Neo-Paganism moved to Salem, at first to open businesses and later to be among those who shared the same beliefs and lifestyle. A rift grew between the townspeople who wanted to emphasize the town’s historic sites and those who wanted to make money by giving tourists what they want. The controversy came to a head in 2005 when TV Land erected a statue of Samantha Stevens, the lead character of Bewitched, in the town center.

2. Salem has historic sites that have nothing to do with the witch trials. The House of the Seven Gables, also known as the Turner-Ingersoll Mansion, is an actual house built in 1668 that inspired Nathaniel Hawthorne to write his book The House of the Seven Gables. Salem was an important port in the trade with East India, and shipping merchants built lavish mansions in town. One, the Gardner Pingree House, is now owned by the Peabody Essex Museum. Both buildings are among many in Salem that are open for tours.

3. Salem is home to several Wiccan and/or Pagan organizations, like the W.E.B., the Witches Education Bureau; P.R.A.N.C.E., The Pagan Resource and Network Council of Educators; the Witches’ League for Public Awareness; and The Witches’ Voice.

4. Salem has three museums in which you can learn the history of witchcraft and the famous trials: The Salem Witch Museum, the Witch Dungeon Museum, and the Witch History Museum. These are in addition to several general history and art museums.

5. Salem takes advantage of its reputation with a dizzying schedule of Halloween events. You can watch a recreation of the events that led to the witch trials performed downtown, enjoy the festival of the dead, or listen to scary stories told at various locations everyday through the weeks leading up to Halloween. Every day in October is jammed with witchy events.

I learned something new at Neatoramanaut Minnesotastan’s excellent but unpronounceable blog TYWKIWDBI every day, like this architectural oddity called the Witch Window.

In American vernacular architecture, a witch window (also known as a Vermont window, a coffin window, or a sideways window) is a window (usually a double-hung sash window, occasionally a single-sided casement window) placed in the gable-end wall of a house and rotated approximately 1/8 of a turn (45 degrees) from the vertical, leaving it diagonal, with its long edge parallel to the roof slope. This technique allows a builder to fit a full-sized window into the long, narrow wall space between two adjacent roof lines. These windows are found almost exclusively in or near the U.S. state of Vermont, principally in farmhouses from the 19th century…

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Also known as La Voisin, Catherine Monvoisin was a midwife and French sorceress who was a personage in the Affaire des Poisons, in which several members of the aristocracy were executed for witchcraft and poisoning. She was a well-known practitioner of medicine, provider of abortions and maker of love powders and potions, and she served many famous Parisian women. Monvoisin was burned at the stake in 1680.

Link -Thanks, Mike Vogt!

"Apparently 400 years ago people put cats behind walls to ward off witches. It clearly works as, since we have lived in the village, we have not seen sight or sound of any witches."

Mr Parson said neighbours have told him the cat was previously found behind the wall 20 years ago, but was put back by another resident. He added: "There has been a local myth, a legend, that there was a cat buried in the house but of course we had no idea where that was. We were also told about a child’s boot left in the house because it was once used as a cobblers’, and was supposed to bring luck.

"I am not a superstitious man but the cat is a little bit of village history and adds charm to the property."

Link (Photo: APEX)

If you love the Wizard of Oz (or the trendier Broadway musical Wicked), then this is the weathervane for you: the wickedly awesome Flying Witch
Garden Weathervane.

It’s $50, but that’s the price of coolness: Link – via Trendir