Witches Pack Up Their Potions in Rossville
Magick school heads for Salem
By MATT BARTOSIK
Updated 12:21 PM CST, Tue, Nov 3, 2009
The witches of Rossville are packing up their spells and incantations and heading out of town. That downstate city is no place for a practicing pagan.
For the past two years WitchSchool.com has headquartered there, offering classes both online and in real-life Chicago classrooms.
The whole time they've been teaching their craft a group of militant Christians have given them hell.
The academy has been plagued by protests, and the complainers have even sprinkled the wheels of witches' cars with holy water.
Their brooms must've been in the shop.
Having reached their limit with the annoyances, the "Wicca and Magickal Education Source" will be moving to a more witch-friendly town: Salem, Massachusetts.
"The churches can scream and yell, but I thought at the end of the day if you proved yourself a good neighbor, people would get past that," Ed Hubbard, co-founder and CEO of the Witch School, told the Chicago Tribune. "I learned that's not true."
Most of the 40,000 students are online and won't notice if the "classroom" moves. But maintaining the website is no easy task, and Hubbard has had difficulty acquiring technical support from local vendors.
Hubbard believes that not only will Salem provide better business opportunities, but it will yield inspiration as well.
"The place where the most [witch] persecution occurred has become 'The Witch City,'" he said. "Maybe there's hope for us everywhere else."
We have to wonder though, do they have to physically move the cauldrons or is there a spell for that?
Matt Bartosik, a "between blogs" blogger, has no idea how to play Quidditch.
Copyright NBC Local Media / NBC Chicago
First Published: Nov 2, 2009 11:38 AM CST
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