My fingers crawled from hanger to hanger, sliding elaborate costumes, floofy bridesmaid dresses, and wide-shouldered pantsuits down the clothes rack. Around me, other St. Vinny’s customers swarmed the Willy Street Halloween section in search of the perfect getup. I thought I was assembling a couple’s costume of dolmadakia (stuffed grape leaves) and tzatziki (yogurt sauce) — I have a thing for food outfits. But then my fingers landed on The Dress.
It was creamy white, with a built-in slip and an intricate lace overlay, with long sleeves, a shin-length skirt, and a high collar. It was vintage — 1970s maybe? — and it was giving strong ghost bride vibes. I’d gotten married two months earlier on a prairie in south Madison, and a bride-and-groom-themed couples costume would require a lot less explanation than if we dressed like Greek appetizers.
In the fitting room, the dress hugged my body like a spider web. It was perfect.
Then, I noticed the bloodstains.
The deep red-brown splotches spread across the front of the inner slip, as if the previous owner had gotten married with a knife wound to the belly. Like any stereotypical white girl in a horror film, I ignored the warning signs. I bought the dress.
I washed out the stains as best I could, Eddie roughed up an old suit with a cheese grater, and we transformed ourselves into a dead bride and groom. Our friends came over for a costume party — we still had a basement full of liquor from our wedding to get rid of — and we proudly showed off our costumes, including the bloodstains. Eddie shook his head as I revealed them, horrified. If I was the oblivious white girl in the horror movie, he was the Black side character, doomed to die first.
The morning after the party, I lay in bed and scrolled through photos from the night. Eddie got dressed to head to his parents’ house and kissed me goodbye.
Wouldn’t it be ironic if I posted a picture of us as a dead bride and groom, and Eddie died on the road? I thought.
I shook the thought away and chose the best photo — Eddie and I staring deadpan at the camera, framed by spider web decorations. I added a filter and posted it to Instagram.
Three minutes later, my phone rang. It was Eddie.
“I got in an accident,” he said, his breathing heavy. “I hit my head and I’m dizzy.”
I threw on clothes and ran down the street to the busy intersection just a few blocks away. Eddie’s tiny blue Yaris, crumpled on the driver’s side, had spun onto the sidewalk and wedged itself between a brick building and a pole. A smashed SUV sat in the intersection, a firework of glass scattered in front of it.
I wrapped Eddie in a hug and tried to calm down his shaking shoulders. His face was as pale as it had been the night before, tinted with white makeup.
The dress was cursed. How could I have been so reckless?
After the dust settled — tow trucks called, the hospital visited, concussion symptoms monitored — Eddie and I brainstormed. Should we return the dress to St. Vinny’s? No. We’d just pass the curse to the next person who bought it.
Instead, we contacted Ana, the mutual friend who first introduced us at a Pi Day party years earlier. She also happens to be a witch. Ana responded with a plan: We’d have a bonfire and do a cleansing ritual on the dress. “It was meant to be,” she told us. “I just made some moon water under a full moon with banishing energy.”
Phew. I’d never heard of moon water, but thank god we’d have it.
I don’t have much experience with witchcraft. But as someone who grew up as a pastor’s kid but no longer does the whole church thing, I delight in activities that would get me added to the prayer chain if my dad found out about them. So, that weekend we brought the dress to Ana’s house, driving (my car) as cautiously as if we were balancing a soufflé on the roof. I kept the dress crumpled deep in a tote bag, as though the thin cloth could keep the curse from spreading to the car upholstery.
At Ana’s, we lit candles and incense and prepared for the ritual by cleansing ourselves. First, we scribbled our anxieties onto thin slips of paper. We rolled them up, lit them on fire, and watched them rise into the air and disappear in a puff of smoke. Next, we (metaphorically) poured all our remaining bad vibes into a dish of salt, which absorbs negative energy.
To cleanse the dress, we concocted a poultice with cleansing herbs — dill, cloves, nettles, cinnamon and juniper berries. We added the moon water, too, which is water that Ana leaves outside during a full moon to absorb energy. It was fun — like mashing up witch’s brew in the backyard as a kid. Well, it is witch’s brew, I realized.
We gathered in the soggy grass around the fire, which Ana’s Eagle Scout husband had brought to life with wood that had been sitting in the rain for 24 hours. (This feat was its own kind of magic.) Eddie and I added the poultice to the flames, then the dress. It started to burn — or more accurately, melt, because the dress was about 95% plastic. The fabric shrunk and shriveled, releasing an acrid smell into the damp air.
After several minutes, Eddie poked and prodded the remaining clumps until just one remained, suctioned onto a log like a leech. He flipped the wood, and the flames surged as it engulfed the dress’ final remains.
In the near distance, a shriek filled the air. Yes, a shriek. As in, the sound of a cursed soul being released from its earthly tether.
“Did you hear that?” I whispered.
“Yes,” Ana said, eyes wide.
It could’ve also been a cat.
To me, it didn’t matter whether we’d really banished an evil spirit from an $8 thrifted dress. I’d spent the evening with people I loved, purged negative energy from my brain in the same way some folks might at church or therapy, and processed the terrifying experience of my husband being hit by a car. Plus, bonfires are always fun, ritualistic or not.
In the end, Eddie and I felt great. The magic worked.
Mel Hammond is an author, cat mom, and lover of dairy-free ice cream. You can check out more of her work at melhammondbooks.com.
