View from the North 40: Salem warlock trial: It's a real thing

In a surprising twist of fate, a man who professes on his own website to be the “world’s best-known warlock,” lost a court battle with self-proclaimed witch priestess Lori Sforza in a little place called Salem, Massachusetts.

News just doesn’t get any better than this for Halloween.

On Wednesday, Salem News reported that witch Lori Sforza was granted a protective order by Salem District Court Judge Robert Brennan against warlock Christian Day. The harassment case revealed that Day, among other evil deeds, had been posting doctored and derogatory images of and comments about Sforza on the Internet and making prank phone calls to her in the middle of the night. Plus, she told the judge during the court battle, “he called me the C-word.”

So maybe it does get better.

For his part, Day said that Sforza was simply lying to get the conviction, or as he told the Washington Post: “This is not the fault of the judge. This is not the fault of me. This is the fault of a false allegation that is not true. I did not make those phone calls.”

The judge must have thought that at least some of Sforza's false allegations were not untrue. He said, in making his decision, that Day made a dismaying number of calls.

Sforza revealed during the case that she and Day had known each other for 27 years and she once treated him like a son. They went into business together in 2009 and made big headlines together in 2011 when they cast a spell to heal infamous actor Charlie Sheen who had called himself in an interview a “Vatican assassin warlock.”

Oh, me of little faith. Look how much better this has gotten.

Though no correlation has been made between the pair’s spell and Sheen’s state of mental health, but Sheen is back to work and, presumably, not trying to assassinate the Vatican with his amazing magic warlockness.

Despite this possible success, or maybe because of it, Sforza and Day had a parting of the ways in 2012 when Sforza opened her own shop, Magika, which she operates using the professional name Lori Bruno. Sforza says her professional qualifications come to her from her Italian witch heritage making her a psychic and a clairvoyant. She says on her website that her ancestors healed victims of the bubonic plague. She is also the founder of Our Lord and Lady Of The Trinacrian Rose, a pagan church in Salem.

Day operates shops in Salem and New Orleans, both cities being hotbeds of the occult.

Modern Salem has a thriving tourism industry built around the occult and Halloween is the peak season for those business people.

In fact, the Salem News reports that Sforza v. Day is not the only, or the most noteworthy, court case involving witchcraftery in the city, and they weren’t talking about the Salem witch trials of the late 17th century. In the past decade or two the modern Salem witch trials often have included witch-on-witch harassment and violence as they compete for business.

In 2012, shop owner Laurie Stathopoulos became incensed when competitor Joanna Thomas was taking picture of her investigating evidence of Thomas’ hexing of her door step. Stathopoulos crossed the street to Thomas, slapped Thomas’ camera out of her hand, then ripped a necklace Thomas was wearing from her neck and began hitting her, eventually striking Thomas’ head against the glass window of her shop.

Presumably, magic needs physical reinforcement on occasion in Salem’s witch district.

Even in Sforza v. Day, the defense council suggested Sforza, as a public figure, is just like Donald Trump and, therefore, subject at times to unflattering comments or caricatures.

“I’m not Donald Trump,” Sforza replied to that accusation. “I am a woman. I am not somebody’s footstool.”

Yeah, it got awesome in Salem this Halloween.

(Sorry, we're fresh out of foolstool at [email protected].)