BOSTON (AP) — A Salem, Massachusetts, woman who calls herself a witch priestess is taking a self-proclaimed warlock to court over accusations of harassment.
Lori Sforza, who runs a Salem witchcraft shop and leads a pagan church, filed for court-ordered protection against harassment from Christian Day, whose website calls him the “world’s best-known warlock.” Sforza accused Day of harassing her online and over the phone for three years. The two will meet in court on Wednesday.
A lawyer representing Day declined to comment. Day owns occult shops in Salem and New Orleans, according to his website. His lawyer said he lives in Louisiana.
The 75-year-old Sforza accuses Day, 45, of repeatedly calling her late at night from a private number and swearing at her, said Fiore Porreca, an attorney representing her. Sforza, who goes by the business name Lori Bruno, also alleges Day made malicious posts about her on social media.
“She’s being abused, intimidated and harassed,” Porreca said.
Porreca said the harassment has hurt his client’s business. On her website, Sforza calls herself a psychic and a clairvoyant. She claims to be a descendent of Italian witches who 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.
Salem’s Festival of the Dead — which culminates in the Official Salem Witches’ Halloween Ball on Halloween night — was created by Day in 2003 and has expanded to include a psychic and witchcraft fair and a seance.
The Salem District Court and the lawyers in the case would not provide a copy of the order filed by Sforza.
Sforza and Day were once business associates in Salem, Porreca said. They also made headlines in 2011 when they cast spells together to try to heal actor Charlie Sheen, who had called himself a “Vatican assassin warlock” during an interview on national television.
A judge in Salem District Court is scheduled to hear the case on Wednesday to decide whether Sforza’s allegations amount to harassment and if she needs court protection.
Salem, home of the 17th-century witch trials, has a tourism industry built around the occult that reaches fever pitch in October. The city is home to several witchcraft stores, museums dedicated to the trials and Halloween-themed attractions.
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There’s a joke in there somewhere. Regardless, the guy sounds like an asshole. He should run for congress.
Shouldn’t she just, you know, put a curse on him or something? Why does she need to sue him?
Cosplay weirdos.
Funny how all the mumbo-jumbo types run to the temporal authorities. So much for the goddess, angels, the Easter bunny and the Lord God of Hosts to stop someone from bugging you.
“Henry IV”, Shakespeare
Who here can define “warlock” for me? Let me tell you the history of this word. My family name, from Transylvania of course (really - on the southern slopes of the Carpathian Mts. in Galicia - Romania / Poland these days), was / is Warcholak. This was / is a large, entitled “family” with ancient castles and landed estates there, from “way back” into the 13th century. Our last name is defined in a 13th century pre-Cyrillic language dictionary, with Turkish origins, as a “supernatural being”. This word was found by a classmate when we were enrolled in a Mongolian language class at Indiana U. in 1971-73, where the best Mongolian language dept. existed in the West in those days (I was in the M.A. program for Tibetan language). His name was Prof. Lee, from France where he taught Russian and ancient Russian / Cyrillic languages. He had a 13th century dictionary. He looked it up for me. That word / family name, Worchalak, came as a loan word into English as the word worlak, dropping the palatal middle syllable because no such sound exists in English. Likely this is also Andy Warhol’s family, but shortened a different way. That’s the actual story, the truth of the origin of the word. But, just what is a warlock in the supernatural framework of the discussion here? This story is longer. I know, this is a really goofball distraction from the article’s meat, but then again, this is the real meat of the worlack or however you want to spell it (but is not vampire blood), believe it or not (didn’t Ripley say that before me?).