Mirror Mondays: The Witches of 1986. Occult Magic Before It Had a Name

It is June 1st, and June has always been prime D&D time for me.

Summer was either already here or almost there, depending on where you lived and how hot it was. By then, we had stopped pretending school mattered. Days felt slow, and nights seemed endless. Any place, a friend’s house, the basement, the porch, your bedroom floor, or the dining room table, could become a world of adventure for an afternoon or a weekend. It was a time to sit back and properly read that new Dragon Magazine.

And that was the point. Summer is what makes adventure happen.

Riding your bike to a friend’s house felt like a real journey. The library became a place for research. The woods behind the neighborhood felt wild, and the old cemetery was like an unfinished adventure. If a thunderstorm rolled in, your house could turn into a dungeon.

In Jackson, IL, June 1986 was when the possibilities opened up.

School was over, but its presence lingered. Empty classrooms always felt strange compared to when they were full. The public library was chilly and filled with books on topics teenagers weren’t supposed to care about yet. We had bikes, dirt roads, creeks, and long afternoons. Adults were at work, so we had free time, and free time could be risky.

For Advanced Witches & Warlocks, June 1986 was a different sort of opportunity.

It was a chance to play Advanced Dungeons & Dragons the "right" way, at least, that is what we told ourselves back then. All you needed were the books, some arguments, your imagination, and the sense that the game still held some secrets.

Secrets are where you find Occult Magic.

I didn’t have a clear definition for it back then, but I knew it was there.

There is Arcane magic, the province of the Magic-User with his spellbooks and components and towers, the idea that intelligence and hard work can uncover power. And Divine magic for the Cleric, with his gods and prayers and holy symbols, where belief in the divinity is what matters. Mind you, we were not using those words back then. That is what hindsight has given us. But whether we called in Arcane magic or wizard magic, divine or priestly magic, they were the same.

But there’s something in between, too.

The red string charm. A name spelled backward and set alight. An old woman who knows what the Priest won’t tell you. A vision of the truth. Or a mirror that will only give you an answer under the darkest moon. The familiar in the room that seems to understand more than anyone else. A book nobody wants to claim to have read. A curse that stays until you right the wrong.

That is Occult Magic.

Don’t mistake "occult" for a costume. It is not a wizard with a penchant for wearing black, nor is it a cleric of an old god. It isn’t some word they put in to spook the parents. Pentagrams and black cats and Latin mumblings don’t automatically make it so. Occult is hidden. Concealed. Known only to those initiated.

This matters for the game. 

We’re talking about magic that’s forbidden or personal, knowledge kept through names, debts, and memories. Some people think it’s evil, but making it only about evil isn’t very interesting. Not everything forbidden is wicked. Sometimes it’s just dangerous. Sometimes it’s off limits because it’s embarrassing or because it reveals a lie. It might be forbidden to keep power away from those who aren’t supposed to have it, or because it belongs to people society prefers to ignore: women, outsiders, immigrants, queer people, or strangers.

This is what gives Occult Magic its import for an Advanced D&D Witch or Warlock.

A witch isn’t just another Magic-User with a different spell list. She’s not a Cleric without a temple, either. She needs her own way of understanding magic. Arcane Magic explains the physical world. Divine Magic is about asking gods for help. Occult Magic is about following hidden threads.

What lies underneath? Why put that charm under the threshold? How does a name echo through three generations? What did the villagers and the thing in the well come to an understanding over? Where has the baroness’ reflection gone? And why does the old road put itself out of sight when the moon is new?

A witch doesn’t ask, "What spell was cast?" She asks, "Who needed that to be hidden?" That changes the game completely.

Occult Magic has to do this if it is to alter how we play. It has to turn things into an investigation, making you care about names, places, and what is remembered. It puts the Game Master to work considering family curses, old debts, powers you won’t find on a map, or any old scrolls, and the like. It has to be something special, something hidden. 

Charisma remains the right primary stat for a witch on account of all this. Intelligence is for the Magic-User to pore over his spells, Wisdom for the Cleric to serve his god. Charisma allows the witch to stand at the circle’s edge and call on the unseen. She has to be able to bargain, bind, bless, curse, lead, and put people at ease. She needs to invest something of herself into this bargain, or there will be no bargain at all.

The same holds true in Jackson, IL.

Here, Occult Magic is more than finding an old book in your attic and casting spells. There is a structure to the town you have to read. You have to know the cemetery is not only just a cemetery, or that the library has its share of uncatalogued books. You can tell the school hallway is different once the last bell has rung. The man running the occult shop will have your name before you’ve given it to him. You understand the creek’s name is no accident and that it points to something bad.

For a young witch in Jackson, discovery comes before power. She doesn’t begin with a list of spells. She starts with an experience, a dream, a mark on her skin, a voice, a mirror, a dead girl in the bathroom, or a teacher who notices something in her and quickly looks away.

The magic is still a secret to her. But as she starts to follow the threads, the pattern becomes clear. The horror isn’t that magic exists, but that it’s always been there, while everyone else has ignored it or just survived it. 

This becomes important later on with the idea that some knowledge, either in books, games, or record albums, is just too dangerous to have. 

You could say the Satanic Panic had it all wrong. To them, "occult" was a byword for corruption: dangerous books, dark rituals, evil music, and demonic imagery. An adult would see a teenager with a fantasy novel and some heavy metal on, or one drawing occult pictures and talking of spells, and they would put two and two together and come up with something very wrong in their own imaginations.

But that is missing the point entirely. What you have there is adults who are terrified of young people having access to hidden knowledge. That kind of terror is right at home in Jackson, IL. Not on account of the claims being true, but because they are wielded as a weapon. The girl with her books is being watched. The boy making strange maps is put on the spot. A horror movie makes a teen look suspicious. Get a few friends together after school, and you are a "cult."

It is not supernatural, but it need not be. Jackson has horror enough of its own to go around.

For Advanced Witches & Warlocks, this matters because witches are the class most misunderstood by others. She knows what people need but are afraid to ask for. She might heal a child and still be called wicked, or give a warning and get blamed when it comes true. That’s Occult Magic in a social sense. Hidden knowledge always has a price. In an adventure, it could be your name, a memory, a night’s protection, or a promise never to enter a certain room. In Jackson, the price is your reputation.

That’s why Occult Magic isn’t just about darkness. What matters is what’s hidden or forgotten. It can protect, bind, summon, or curse. It can reveal the truths people live by. It’s both good and dangerous. Magic should be both.

Of course, every spell having a risk is part of the fun, but magic is also dangerous because it changes how the witch relates to the community, to spirits, and to herself. Once something hidden is revealed, you can’t hide it again. And what you uncover might not let you go. Both projects should follow that idea.

In Jackson, IL, Occult Magic drives teenage horror. The town isn’t haunted because of scary spirits, but because the secret is out and the kids have noticed. June 1986 is the perfect time for this. The days are long, adults are busy, and the school doors aren’t always open. The creek is low enough to reveal its winter secrets, the cemetery grass is overgrown, and the roads out of town feel like an invitation. Summer is for adventure, and Occult Magic helps you find it.

The Mirror Shard: See the Hidden Thread

This spell is more of an adventure tool than a combat spell. You can use it as a low-level Witch spell in Advanced Witches & Warlocks, or as the first real magic a teenager tries in Jackson, IL. It won’t show you everything, but it will reveal the connection between something you see and a hidden entity nearby.

A locket might show you the thread to its owner’s grave. A bloodstain could lead to the person who made it. A teacher’s shadow might connect to an old yearbook photo. A charm under a door could glow with the color of the family who placed it there. Sometimes the thread looks like a red cord or black smoke; other times, it’s silver hair, ink, or music only the witch can hear.

The spell shows you what connects two things you aren’t supposed to know about. It won’t tell you what the connection means—that’s for you to figure out. It doesn’t replace real investigation in an AD&D game; if anything, it might lead you to make mistakes or ask tougher questions. If you use it in the halls of the local school in Jackson, you’ll see too much. Bully to victim. Principal to school scandal. Family name to the cemetery. The first time you cast it, you learn something important. The second time, you wish you hadn’t.

See the Hidden Thread
Occult Divination 

Witch Level 1
Range: 6"
Duration: 1 turn
Area of Effect: Special
Components: V, S, M
Casting Time: 3 segments
Saving Throw: None

Spell Effect

When the witch gazes through a fragment of silvered glass and speaks the Supernal syllable of revelation, the spell reveals a shimmering, metaphysical thread connecting a visible object or creature to a nearby hidden entity or significant location. The thread manifests in a form unique to the situation or the witch’s tradition, appearing as a red cord, a wisp of black smoke, a strand of silver hair, or even a faint melody only the witch can perceive.

Details

The spell illuminates the "Hidden Thread" between two things that are cosmically or karmically linked, regardless of whether the connection is secret or obscured.

• A locket might reveal a silver thread leading toward its owner’s forgotten grave.
• A bloodstain could show a pulsing red line trailing toward the individual who shed it.
• A charm tucked beneath a floorboard might glow with the specific color of the family lineage that placed it there.

The spell does not reveal the meaning of the connection or the identity of the hidden entity; it only proves that a link exists and shows the path to follow. This is an adventure tool meant to supplement investigation, not replace it. If used in a densely populated or high-drama area (such as a school or a town hall), the witch may see a chaotic web of threads that can be overwhelming and potentially distressing to the caster's psyche.

Material Components: A fragment of silvered glass that was a shard of a broken mirror and a drop of clear water.

More Insight From Daddy Rolled a 1

If you want another perspective of what was going on with AD&D in the mid-1980s then please check out Martin R. Thomas' blog and YouTube channel, Daddy Rolled a 1. 

• A Different Way to Look at the AD&D Hardcovers (Blog)
• Why AD&D Started Feeling Different in the Mid-1980s (Video)

Both discuss the same time period I am covering here, but with a different thesis statement. Both are also worth your time. By this reckoning, my project here is firmly in his Phase 3 camp. Which feels exactly right. I am pleased to see that we see this time period in roughly the same way. 

Mirror Mondays: The Witches of 1986. Why 1986?

So, one has to ask: why 1986?

It is a legitimate question and one that lingers under both Jackson, IL, and Advanced Witches & Warlocks.

I am not talking about the 1980s as a whole, or nostalgia for its own sake. You will find your share of cassette tapes and denim jackets here, horror paperbacks and D&D books with well-worn corners; they are part of the ambiance and atmosphere. I mean this year in particular. Why 1986?

State of the Art for AD&D 1986

For Advanced Witches & Warlocks, it is a strange and handy vantage point. If you go back to the 1974 boxed set, Dungeons & Dragons was almost thirteen years old by then. It was no longer a child. It had acquired a history, some scars, a few good arguments, and traditions. It was a teenager now. At times awkward, at times brilliant, occasionally too sure of itself, and sometimes hard to put a name to, but full of potential. In other words, a bit contradictory. A Witch book from this time should also be like that.

The first flush of the D&D/AD&D gold rush was done with. The game was a culture in its own right, having made its way from college clubs and basements into hobby shops, school lunchrooms, news stories, and even church warnings. With the Monster Manual, the Player’s Handbook, and the Dungeon Master's Guide, AD&D had a core identity and dictated how you were to think about fantasy adventure.

And yet it was in flux. Ravenloft was already on the scene, making a theatrical and tragic impression with its brand of gothic horror. Dragonlance had happened that placed more emphasis on charcaters as characters than previously. Note: Both Ravenloft and Dragonlance became part of what has been called the Hickman Revolution, and often the start of the Silver Age of D&D. The Forgotten Realms were coming, destined to be one of the big shared campaign worlds. So yes, 1986 has a liminal quality to it. AD&D was past its rawest beginnings but not yet the highly branded ecosystem it would turn into. Things were changing. 

That is exactly where the Witch belongs. In the space between the little brown books and the grand campaign worlds, between a dungeon crawl and some gothic melodrama. Between the wargame heritage and the kind of character play we were doing, even if the rules didn’t quite say so. That is what I am are after with Advanced Witches & Warlocks. Not some modern witch retrofitted for AD&D, nor a twenty-first-century class in old-school dress. I want a witch who could have been there, one you might have found on the same shelf as the old hardbacks in a used bookstore, in an era when parents got nervous seeing their kids sketch pentagrams in their notebooks.

She was always in AD&D waiting to be written down, but 1986 is when I can see her most clearly.

As for Jackson, IL, 1986 is important for another reason. It is one of the last moments before "the world wakes up from history."  You get the sense of it from "Right Here, Right Now" by Jesus Jones, though that song is from the early 90s, after the walls came down and things were moving too fast to keep up. 1986 is still on the other side of the mirror. The world was not yet as small as the internet would make it. You couldn’t check a fact in five seconds flat or send off a text to all your friends from the cemetery. From the comfort of your bedroom, you were not going to put your hands on a satellite map, or some scanned newspaper archive, or find what you needed on a message board. Information was something you had to go and get. It had a place.

So you went to the library to check the archives. You hopped on your bike and made the trip across town. You put in a call to someone’s home with the hope their parents would not be the ones to pick up. You made notes, copied down an address, and then you waited. The world was bigger like that, which is why it was so easy for shadows to take hold.

Horror needs that.

In Jackson, secrets have a way of surviving because the town is local enough for them to. Rumor has speed, but it is not even. There are things the adults know that the teenagers do not, and vice versa. And while there are records, they are sitting in a file cabinet, a yearbook, the church basement, or a box in some attic. A haunted town requires some friction. 1986 provides it.

But one must be careful with 1986; it is not as innocent as it seems. That is the trap when you write about the eighties. You can make the decade into set dressing with its neon and synthesizers, its malls and hairspray and horror films. I am fond of all that, but it does not cut it. If the year is to have any meaning, it must also have horror and pain; it has to hurt a little.

January 28, 1986, hurt.

When the Space Shuttle Challenger came apart 73 seconds into its flight, all seven on board were lost. NASA will tell you it was the STS-51L mission, and with Christa McAuliffe involved, many a schoolchild was tuned in. It was supposed to be routine. Easy. For my generation, it was one of the first times we saw a public tragedy in real time.

On April 26, 1986, the Chernobyl Reactor 4 suffered a catastrophic meltdown. All our fears about nuclear power played out for us on our TVs. The great specter of nuclear meltdown was now on our evening news, delivered by Tom Brokaw.

We had known the world was not safe, but this was different. It came into the classroom and put an end to the promise we had been fed. Space was our future, the shuttle was routine, the teachers were going up there, and the adults were in charge. Then the sky opened up, and you could see the horror on the faces of the very same adults.

That is what I want in Jackson. Not as a plot device to be used up, but as atmosphere. A fracture in the adult world. A teenage witch in 1986 is surrounded by grown-ups who will tell you they have everything under control despite the evidence to the contrary. You come to realize there are no paladins or wizards; they do not have the spell memorized, and sometimes they built the machine without heeding the warning that it might break. Once you see that, the world is a different place. It is more than innocence lost. It is the thin veil of lies about innocence. 

I talk about it a lot here, but even the Satanic Panic has its part to play in both projects. With Advanced Witches & Warlocks, it is the cultural Zeitgeist that makes D&D seem perilous to those who cannot fathom it, lumping in heavy metal, the occult, and a teenager’s imagination as one great threat. It was stupidity, but stupidity has a way of shaping a culture. Just watch the news today.

In Jackson, IL, it is more than useful. A moral panic lets the respectable sort act on old fears. The girl was always a bit odd; the house was already off-limits, and the symbols in the notebook were being noticed. The Santic Panic just gave them leave to do something about it.

You don’t need the Satanic Panic to make a witch. What it makes is an excuse for one to be hunted, feared, and reviled. And that is the more frightening part.

Then there was the music. By 1986, you could still hear the early synth-pop and New Romanticism of the decade’s opening, but the center had moved. The hair metal era was on its way to taking over the landscape, though not yet in full force. 1986 is the space between those things. It is not one note. That is significant.

It is a year of transition. You can feel the afterglow of Live Aid from ’85, and Farm Aid had only just been held back in September out of concern for American family farmers. I put some weight on that because Farm Aid was in Champaign, Illinois, and that puts you in Jackson’s orbit, in the Midwest.

The music wasn’t merely an escape. It was making an effort, if a bit awkward at times, to be something more: political, useful, global. A mix-tape was your confessional, a message for when words would not do. Put in a request at the local station and hope someone heard it. It had the power of a spell.

Take Paul Simon’s Graceland in ’86, with all its complicated influence, as he brought South African sounds to the American mainstream. Or Peter Gabriel’s So, which managed to be art-rock and pop at once, and the end of his cult following days. Run-DMC put out Raising Hell that year, too, a necessary step for hip-hop to be seen by the rest of us.

I don’t see this as mere soundtrack trivia. It tells me what sort of year we are in. The old categories are dissolving, and the voices that were left out are being heard. Parents have their worries, the kids are tuning in regardless, and the culture is at odds over who has the right to speak and what is deemed dangerous.

The whole Parental Advisory row comes of this time. The Parents Music Resource Center was founded in 1985, aiming to label anything with objectionable lyrics. Much like the Satanic Panic, it made youth culture a battleground of fear and control.

Witches find that handy.

A witch is someone who will be labeled. Dangerous, immoral, corrupting, or unnatural. Too loud or too quiet. Too independent, too well read, too strange to be put in a box. You will find it in a fantasy village or a modern high school, in any small town where they think virtue is the same as conformity.

So 1986 puts pressure on me from both sides.

For Advanced Witches & Warlocks, it is an AD&D moment; the Witch has her place in a game that is between phases. The old stuff still counts but the new is coming, and horror has already made its way into the castle. For my purposes in Jackson, IL, it is a modern setting where a teenage witch can be left to her own devices, misread and watched, and have to go about things the old way. You could say the world is in a state of flux, but it is not yet all one piece. There are still secrets a town can hold. A girl can come across something in a library drawer and have no simple means of telling whether another soul has ever laid eyes on it.

Then there is 1986. It presents me with a culture that is afraid of its children. In some ways, that is the point of it.

Take the D&D crowd, the metalheads, the kids into horror or punk or goth. The queer kids, the smart ones, the strange boys and girls with their notebooks of symbols, the ones who read too much and ask questions they should not. They do not fit the narrative adults have put together for them.

The Witch is to be found there, at the fringes of what is approved. She is not the trouble. She is merely the one to see that the trouble was there to begin with.

That is why 1986 works. Do not mistake it for being simpler or better; it was neither. But it sat on a threshold. You had AD&D old enough for its own mythology yet young enough to leave some rooms empty. The modern world was tied in enough to feel global change but not so much as to put an end to local mystery. The whole culture was loud and nervous and moralizing, creative and frightened and very much alive.

A good year for witches. For mirrors. For secrets.

Mirror Shard: 1d12 Things Found in a 1986 Witch’s Room

This will work for Jackson, IL, or any modern supernatural game you want to set before the internet made doing your research too convenient. A teenage witch does not have a wizard’s tower. Her room is more perilous than that. Private, half-hidden, temporary, and only a knock from her parents away from being found out.

Make a d12 roll or pick and choose.

1. A spiral notebook with dream fragments and song lyrics, plus a page of symbols she cannot recall putting there.
2. An overdue library book on folklore, three months past due. The checkout card has the same name on it every eleven years.
3. Cassette tapes in a shoebox. Put in the unmarked one, and you will hear a voice going through the names in the town cemetery.
4. A hand mirror with a crack in it, wrapped up in a scarf. Works fine until after midnight.
5. A black cat charm on a broken chain. You can tell when spirits are close by how warm it feels.
6. A Polaroid of four of her friends in front of the school. If you look between them, there is a fifth shadow.
7. An old coffee mug with a candle stub in it. Lies in the room, and it will burn blue.
8. A note from class. Open it up, and the handwriting is different each time.
9. Some clipping from the paper on a death half a century back. She keeps it, though she has no reason to.
10. A flower pressed from the cemetery fence. Picked months ago, and yet it has not dried.
11. An old mixtape that says "DO NOT PLAY SIDE B." There is no music on side B, just breathing and a bell tolling in the distance.
12. A character sheet for a red-haired witch in purple and black for D&D. The player will tell you she never created her; she created herself.

Mirror Mondays: The Witches of 1986. Teenage Witches and the Haunted Midwest

Last week, I examined the witch in AD&D. As a class and a monster in a game of spell lists, curses, familiars, old women living at the edge of villages, mysterious maps, and a host of others. Advanced Witches & Warlocks is a project that aims to give her proper due among the iconic elements of classic fantasy RPGs.

But there is another mirror.

If the Advanced Witches & Warlocks is interested in exploring the witch as an element of a fantasy game in 1986, then the Jackson, IL project is a consideration of how the witch would fit in the modern horror world of 1986.

By the "modern," I don't mean contemporary times. I mean an era of landlines, lockers, cassette tapes, libraries, horror movies at midnight, school rumors, and parents who believe they can keep secrets from teens

These are very different takes on witches.

In the world of AD&D, the witch is always on the edge of the village. By the old road, the swamp, the shrine in ruins, or the sinister forest. In the Jackson, IL setting, she is on the edge of town, near the cemetery, an abandoned structure, the stream, the college, a different neighborhood, or a lonely road.

The map is different, but the location itself is not.

Jackson, IL, is where my imagination has found its new home. This place isn't Salem, nor New Orleans, nor some gothic European village under the full moon, despite my affection for those locations. No, Jackson is in the Midwest. It is a small town in central Illinois. A town with brick school buildings, college halls, county roads, corn fields, old graveyards, tiny churches, pizza shops, book stores, hardware stores, Friday night football games, Friday night dances, and houses where three generations have kept the same secret.

In Jackson, the supernatural does not require thunderous declarations or Latin incantations to reveal itself. Instead, it is rather subtler.

Perhaps it is the teacher who hasn't aged since 1569. Perhaps a door in the library, locked for no apparent reason. Perhaps a statue at the cemetery changing directions at midnight. Perhaps the name of a creek that no one remembers where the name came from. Or perhaps it is the mirror reflecting something other than yourself.

This is the haunting of the Midwest. It is not empty. It is a place filled with ghosts.

Every town in the Midwest has its stories: the house that has never been sold, the road where headlights disappear, the creepy old lady that kids are told not to approach, the rail road tracks where strange things occur, the auditorium in the school where lights flicker even with the power shut off, and the place outside town known only by its ominous name of "the Bad Land."

These are stories that form the Jackson, IL environment. Not simply the background, but the actual foundation on which the Veil between what is "Real" and what is considered "Supernatural" is constructed.

Most people in the town interact with the supernatural indirectly, in fleeting moments. A shadow. A whisper. A dream. A cold sensation down the spine. A name spoken out of nowhere. And they explain it away, because that is what humans do. It is simpler to believe that everything is ordinary than to accept that ancient tales still speak truth.

Teenagers are not good at keeping their thoughts and opinions to themselves. That is why a teenager is perfect in a game about supernatural activity.

Adults follow routines, have reputations, jobs, mortgages, church groups, seats on the school board, and myriad reasons to preserve the "official" story. Teenagers care about other things. Why does that room stay locked? Why are they avoiding that particular teacher? Why did Mom go silent when I mentioned that name? Why does the school bell ring differently to me? And why do I see the woman in the black cloak and purple dress in the mirror?

Thus, the teenage witch belongs in this place.

Not only is she a character living between two worlds. At least partly, but not entirely. She is not a kid anymore, but she is not yet an adult. People look at her, underestimate her, boss her around, dismiss her, and correct her, all before she even knows who she truly is.

And then comes the magic.

She begins having dreams. Strange marks appear on her skin. She finds books at the library with strange titles. A stray cat starts following her wherever she goes and never leaves. Her reflection starts speaking to her. And perhaps she discovers that the story about the dead girl haunting the bathrooms at school was not just a story.

That is the importance of their first experiences.

Whereas in the world of AD&D, the witch appears with powers, spells, and a clear-cut purpose, here she is noticed. The world recognizes something in her, and she recognizes it back.

This can be terrifying, but also terribly tempting.

I played this scenario with Larina. There is a young girl named Larina. Some kids call her "Creepy." She has visions and talks to ghosts, but she tries to hide her magical abilities because she knows that using them attracts attention from things in the darkness.

This scenario is perfectly designed for Jackson, IL. But I also realized there was a lot more I could do with it. That starting with powers is one type of game, but developing them as the game progresses is something else. 

Being magical in the Jackson environment means revealing oneself. Every casting of a spell is an exposure to the darkness seeking light. Every magical act draws eyes. 

Jackson, IL, is still a modern reflection of the AD&D-inspired fantasy world in Advanced Witches & Warlocks. The witch concept remains the same, but the clothes are different.

The group of friends is the coven. After hours in school are the dungeons. Rumors around town turn into gossip in hallways. The wise woman standing at the edge of the village is now someone's aunt, a school teacher, a local shop owner, or someone who has waited patiently for the right girl to ask the right questions.

The familiar becomes a pet that manages to enter the school for reasons that no one understands. A notebook under the bed takes the place of the spell book. The place beyond the fence at the cemetery is the ruined shrine. An ancient deity is a name scrawled in pencil at the abandoned classroom.

But Jackson, IL, cannot merely be a simple adaptation of fantasy RPGs. 

Not only would it be uninteresting, but it would lack necessary depth. It would be uninspired. 

Modern horror has to have its own logic.

While in a fantasy game, the main heroes are expected to take up swords and bravely venture into the dungeons, their counterparts in the modern horror world still have homework to do.

They have to attend classes, deal with parents, curfews, training, work after school, live up to peer expectations, compete with rival schools, maintain reputations, deal with their younger brothers and sisters, and people who would certainly notice if they were gone for three days straight.

This makes a big difference.

A teenage witch cannot just leave town on adventures, and she has to find a way to come back, to cover the stains on her jacket, to explain why her homework was done in the library, why she is late for algebra after having seen something crawling out of the drain at night. And yet, this is not a restriction; it is the essence of the game.

The ordinary world, which is often a barrier in games of the supernatural, is, in fact, what makes them scary.

An isolated haunted school becomes frightening precisely because it is her school. A cursed road is terrifying precisely because her best friend lives on the other side of it. The monster at the cemetery terrifies her, because Grandma is buried there, while the witch's mark makes her fear going to gym class. The ordinary makes the scary parts scarier. 

This is where the theme of the Satanic Panic emerges as well, but in the background.

Not as a simple decoration, but as the very core of the game, because the town uses that panic as a vehicle to express existing fears that otherwise remain untapped. The odd girl has always been creepy, the abandoned house - terrifying, the mysterious books at the library – suspicious. While the rumor makes the witch, it provides a ready-made justification for the search. This is horror, not because of accusations, but because of the town's desperation to believe that it has reason.

Since the community is already scared of her dark clothes, her books, her music, her art, and the woods she loves, the Satanic Panic gives this fear permission. It transforms gossip into social concern, suspicion into righteousness, and parents into monstrous beings, not changing their appearances in the slightest.

Because this is Jackson, IL, the choice of setting is critical. Where in a grand gothic landscape, the supernatural would sprawl. Here it is concentrated in the small-town Midwest. Everyone knows someone; everyone is related to someone; there are always witnesses to secrets; and there are always connections between the town monster and this place, even if no one has figured them out yet.

The ghost is not just a ghost. She used to be someone's sister, student, patient, or an innocent victim of a horrible event. The hag is not a creature that came here to terrorize. She may be an aunt, a landlord, a neighbor at church, the one whose home everyone avoids because of some terrible sin, or the very reason that three generations of women in one family never drink tea after dark. Local legends are not just myths. They are a necessity. People share their tales with such inaccuracy because the truth demands too much action.

Here is the haunted Midwest I imagine for Jackson: the place familiar enough to evoke a sense of security, and unfamiliar enough to hint at inherent dangers.

It is the time that makes the adventure unique as well. 1986 is not chosen by coincidence, although the brand recognition factor cannot be denied. It represents not nostalgia, but distance in time. No smartphones, GPS systems, online investigations, instant messaging apps, or fast transportation are available for the characters. If something terrible happened at night, they needed a phone line, a bicycle, a car, a payphone, or the guts to go to see it.

Rumors spread quickly, but not evenly. Information is stored in filing cabinets, yearbooks, church hallways, newspaper archives, and the library collection.

Which means that all the investigations are hands-on. The characters have to move from place to place, talk to people, and expose themselves. Which is important because in Jackson, IL, knowledge is bound to a place. The public library is important not because it is there, but because it has archived newspapers. The occult shop is valuable not for supplies but for the chance of someone seeing a teenager there. The school is necessary because almost everyone in town once studied there and left something behind. And the cemetery is crucial, because names are inscribed in stone, but not necessarily in the right manner.

As you remember, the power of the witch in Advanced Witches & Warlocks is bound to fantasy conventions and expectations. It is associated with danger, complexity, and power. Magic comes at a price. It creates bonds and produces unexpected results. In Jackson, IL, everything is different because the flow of magical powers has changed. 

This is the reason why these two projects complement each other.

While the Advanced Witches & Warlocks focuses on how witches look in a classic AD&D fantasy world, Jackson explores how a sixteen-year-old witch attending a class on Tuesday morning realizes that her destiny is tied to something far older than the town.

I am not yet sure whether this second project will eventually lead to a full-fledged book. And it may take quite a bit of writing and effort, probably surpassing 80,000 words before I finally figure out the full vision, there is one thing that I am sure about.

Jackson, IL, is a perfect reflection. While the witch at the edge of the ancient village is the witch wearing the black cloak on the old road in Advanced Witches & Warlocks, the witch sitting quietly at the high school is the girl on the bus looking at the old road with fascination.

Because the fantasy witch and the teenage witch are not different.

They are reflections of one another through the glass.

Prof. Lars Nichols with his daughter, Larina

Mirror Shard: Larina, the New Girl Witch

Every good haunted school needs a new girl.

It is one of the staples in teen horror literature and movies, and yet it works so well because it is not a gimmick. From Buffy Summers arriving at Sunnydale High to start a new life to Sarah Bailey transferring to a new school to become the missing fourth link in a teenage coven. The new girl arrives in the adventure exactly when it is born in the audience member's mind. The new girl does not yet understand the rules of the game, so we get to learn with her.

This is important in a horror RPG.

The long-time local heroine already knows what is better to remain unsaid. She knows the forbidden hallways, the names of the families whose conversation must be cut abruptly, and the teachers whom one has to joke with and not argue. She was taught by experience. While she may not fully believe in the town tales, she knows what they are about or at least what to avoid.

The new girl doesn't know anything. Not yet, at least.

• She wants to know why the third-floor room is locked all the time.
• She is curious why no one ever swims in the creek downstream.
• She wonders why there is a gap in the school's trophy case.
• She would like to understand why the librarian keeps local histories in the drawers rather than on the shelves.
• She would like to know why people fall silent whenever someone mentions "Mauvaisterre" or "Blackthorne."

This makes her useful. This also makes her dangerous.

The character of Larina fits the concept perfectly because she is known and unknown. We know where she can evolve into. The Witch Queen. The occult historian. The redhead witch, who wears black and purple clothing and stands in the way of the bad things trying to get into our world. 

But this is not the case in Jackson, IL.

Larina might have just moved into town because of her father's transfer to the college. She might be a newcomer attempting to blend into normality, failing to do so by noon. She might already be aware that ghosts exist in her town, but she has yet to comprehend their meaning. The other students might consider her creepy before she even introduces herself.

This is useful at the table.

The role of Larina as a New Girl Witch is not to figure out the details for players but to expose the mysteries by noticing things that everyone else failed to see or has learned to ignore.

I use Larina here because she is a great character for me. She is a stand-in, though, for any character the players bring to the table. 

• She observes the reflection's weird movement.
• She listens to a ringing of the bell that no one else can hear.
• She realizes that a stray cat hanging around the school has come there with a specific purpose.
• She discovers that the dead girl haunting the school bathrooms knows her name.
• Her first lesson of magic is not about casting a spell.
• It is about revealing her to the supernatural world.
• The ghosts can see her.
• The entity residing beneath the railroad tracks sees her.
• The teacher who has not aged since 1769 sees her.
• So do students who needed reasons to regard her as creepy.

So use the New Girl Witch when you want to start your campaign with a supernatural revelation. She can be a player character, NPC, rival, friend, or a stranger whom the other characters need to trust or not.

And just like the PCs, she does not have to know everything.

She just has to know enough to be scared.

Mirror Mondays: The Witches of 1986. The Witch Was Already Waiting in AD&D

The main design idea behind Advanced Witches & Warlocks is simple.

The Witch was already a part of AD&D.

However, she had yet to receive an official class.

After all, she didn't really fall under the same category as other classes, such as the Magic-User, Cleric, Druid, Illusionist, Assassin, Monk, Ranger, or Paladin. But the Witch had a presence.

If you know how to find her, you will encounter her in the spells, in the monsters, in the implied setting, and even in Appendix N. She hides within the text itself. Like an occult figure.

AD&D already contained curses, charms, familiars, potions, polymorphs, magic circles, haunted mirrors, hags, night creatures, demons, devils, spirits, evil temples, forbidden books, and strange old women living on the fringes of the map.  Welcome to witch country.

All that was really left was to make the formal class.

That is why I don't think of my Advanced Witches & Warlocks as trying to force a modern witch concept into a retro-style game. AD&D has its own style, its own rules, and its own unique feel. If you drop a modern witch into AD&D's framework, it wouldn't work. The two things simply don't gel. 

Instead, the real question is: What sort of witch does AD&D want to nurture?

And that is why Appendix N plays such an essential role here.

While writing my Witches of Appendix N posts, I am doing far more than merely collecting witches in an inventory list. In reality, I am attempting to identify the essential concepts that were formed by early fantasy, weird fiction, horror stories, and sword-and-sorcery before D&D codified magic into game rules.

And once you start looking, the witches are everywhere.

Notably, not all witches will go by that name. They might be referred to as sorceresses, enchantresses, priestesses, hags, mothers, queens, oracles, temptresses, psychics, necromancers, or any other female with unusual powers. They are more than just distaff wizards; they have their own unique presence. 

Not all witches will be villains either. In fact, sometimes, they are the only ones capable of interpreting the strange events taking place. Whether that places them on the side of "good" or "evil" is often too simple of a question. 

That is important for gaming design purposes. 

The witch of AD&D doesn't have to be confined to folklore alone. She doesn't have to be a village healer, a wicked stepmother, a pagan priestess, an enchantress, or the mysterious old woman of the woods.

She is all these things combined.

Take, for example, the Satanic Witch featured in Poul Anderson's Three Hearts and Three Lions. The story takes place within a setting full of Christian, pagan, faerie, and infernal elements. The witch's magic is powerful because it has spiritual, moral, and social implications. Both the satanic witch and Morgan Le Fey of this tale stand apart AND stand between all these other groups. 

A witch doesn't simply cast a spell.  A witch makes contact with beings that want something from her. She makes social contacts.

Here is another vital lesson for our witch design in AD&D.

• Magic-Users learn the arcane.
• Clerics petition divine power.
• Druids follow the ancient rites.
• Witches make contact.

She makes contact with spirits, patrons, ancestors, elder gods, demons, the dead, the moon, the earth, and whatever else lies beyond naming.

Of course, this doesn't mean every witch is inherently evil. That would be sloppy game design and even worse, boring.

Here we see the magic of Fritz Leiber, where the main antagonist of one of the first Fafhrd & Gray Mouser stories isn't some evil mage, but Fafhrd's mother. Mor isn't just a boss in the dungeon, but family, power, culture, and control. She created that whole world for him, and escaping her is an accomplishment not unlike slaying monsters. Mor is not really evil. She is controlling; she is a matriarch after all, but she isn't harming Fafhrd; she is just not letting the youth run free. 

In Leiber's The Conjure Wife we see another witch, Tansy. She navigates her own "dungeon," only this time it is the challenges of a suburban housewife/witch facing other witches for dominance over their husbands' mundane careers at a University. Like Mor, Tansy is not about flashy magic; her magic is about something else.

That brings us to the third thing we learn:

The Witch is social.

She has family members, a coven, social and economic obligations, rivals, apprentices, enemies, taboos, and reputation. People know she exists before meeting her. People talk about her in hushed tones. People avoid her home, yet people end up visiting her.

• They visit when the child is ill.
• They visit when the cow stops giving milk.
• They visit when their husband takes a lover.
• They visit when their crops fail.
• They visit when the ghosts keep coming out.

These things aren't mere background flavor; they're solid adventure hooks.

The Witch should cause rumors. She should be a reason why villages need adventurers. She should affect villages in tangible ways.

Robert E. Howard brings up a fourth point. His worlds are full of the vestiges of lost ages, dark cults, serpent-haunted ruins, vanished civilizations, sinister rituals, and sorcerers whose power seems to predate even mankind itself. His witches and similar beings appear almost to carry within themselves the weight of lost history. Their magic is not theoretical; it is something that has been practiced long before modern civilization.

This matters. Well, at least to me and my view of how witches work.

An AD&D Witch is not simply an academic wizard with a new label slapped on. This character must embody knowledge of forgotten lore that remains effective. The old magic still works.

Sometimes that involves healing. Sometimes it involves cursing. Sometimes it involves making deals with powers better left unawakened.

And here we begin to see how the Witch becomes distinct from the usual AD&D Magic-User. Whereas the latter is kept aloof from the world through scholarship, the former is involved in the world and its dark undercurrents.

• She knows the trees that were once used to hang criminals.
• She knows why the church bell has a crack in it.
• She knows who among the midwives was secretly buried beyond the cemetery walls.
• She knows what the nameless thing in the well is.

Once again, this isn't just flavor. It is essential to what the class is.

A Witch PC knows more than just whether there is magic around. She knows the history of that magic. She knows who left it behind. She knows why.

• What spirit cursed the bridge?
• What drives the wolves away from the north road?
• Why does the old woman who lives near the outskirts to put out milk on dark nights?
• Why does the baron’s daughter cast no reflection?

That's why Advanced Witches & Warlocks doesn't reduce the Witch to simply having a spell list. She is not a wizard with a broom. She is not a cleric with a pointy hat.

The spell list is important, however. AD&D is a game of rules, levels, spells, limitations, saving throws, and consequences. A class has to have some sort of unique footprint.

But a class needs something else too.

It needs a role in the implied setting and world.

The Cleric implies temples, deities, undead, holy symbols, and orders.

The Magic-User implies spellbooks, towers, apprenticeships, lost libraries, and rival magic-users.

The Druid implies sacred groves, circles, mistletoe, ancient faiths, and harmony.

The Witch implies cottage homes, covens, familiars, curses, enchantments, rites of the full moon, hidden grimoires, local superstition, wizened crones, prodigious children, the fool of wisdom, and the dangerous generosity of one who understands your predicament and the price of its resolution.

This is not merely an addition for AD&D. This is part of what makes it AD&D.

Consider the monsters.

The hags; Night hags. Sea hags. Greenhags. Lamias. Medusae. Harpies. Vampires. Succubi. Lycanthropes. Demons and devils who tempt mortals with power. The undead whose restless souls seek redemption. The fey whose customs of hospitality and revenge dictate their actions.

These are not random monsters.

These are elements of a world in which magic is dangerous, intimate, and transactional.

This is the world of the Witch.

Consider the spells.

Charm Person. Detect Evil. ESP. Clairvoyance. Polymorph. Geas. Bestow/Remove Curse. Speak with Dead. Animate Dead. Reincarnation. Contact Other Plane. Magic Jar.

These spells all have their roots in esoteric practices that involve dealing with spirits, transformations, fates, and taboo acts.

These spells all contain elements of witchcraft.

One cannot simply mix and match bits of the Magic-User and the Cleric classes, add a cat, a broom, and a pointy hat. One cannot create the Witch in such a lazy manner. The Witch should not be merely a Magic-User with a familiar or a Cleric without armor nor a Druid with a different robe. 

A proper Witch demands her own mechanics and her own logic.

That logic for Advanced Witches & Warlocks is Occult Magic.

• Arcane magic is learned magic.
• Divine magic is authoritative magic.
• Occult magic is secretive magic.

The Witch recognizes magic as a complex tapestry, and one that might take notice if its strands are pulled apart.

And that's the other reason why Charisma remains my pick for the Witch's primary attribute. Not beauty, not popularity, but presence. Presence, as in the power of the self vis-à-vis others. Because the Witch must bargain, bind, curse, bless, threaten, pacify, command, and beckon across thresholds. 

It is equally obvious why this applies directly to Jackson, IL. Our young Witch may well be one of the smartest people in the room, but we don't need to assume it, and our young Witch will certainly never be the wisest. But our young Witch will have presence. Sometimes it may be subtle. Other times it may be awkward. And it will most likely manifest only under the cover of darkness, fog, mirrors, and whispers of her name. In the context of a school, Charisma becomes not simply popularity but social gravity. The ability to pull others into a secret, intimidate a bully, unsettle a teacher, console a frightened child, or even make that mysterious dead girl in the bathroom listen.

The reason why the Witch also works in Jackson, IL, just like in AD&D, is that she is powered by relationships. And there is perhaps no better place than high school for such power to operate.

Multi-faceted Non-Player Character Witches

That leads to yet another reason why this class is not too simplistic. Modern fantasy is often built around clear-cut heroes and villains, and both can do the job. However, AD&D requires something more nuanced.

The old-school Witch must be useful to the party, feared, necessary, and possibly suspicious.

She may be the party's best hope of countering the effects of a curse... while also being the very reason that curse exists.

She may heal a sick child in one town while being accused of causing a blight elsewhere. She may be neutral but remember that neutrality doesn't imply passivity but rather balance, debts, oaths, and repercussions.

She may be good yet be truly horrifying and evil, yet still cherished by someone she saved.

These are the roles that I want for my new class.

The Witch had to appear in Advanced Witches & Warlocks because of what AD&D represents.

• A dungeon door.
• A path through the woods.
• A forsaken altar.
• A burial site.
• A locked chamber.
• A mirror.
• An old and forgotten tome.

In all cases, the Witch understands that these are thresholds and must be named.

• She was there in Appendix N.
• She was there on the spell lists.
• She was there in the monster manuals.
• She was there in the rumors.

Advanced Witches & Warlocks does nothing more than greet her, provide her some rules, and give her a voice.

Shard: The Village Witch

She was in the game even before she became a class.

She was in the rumor table, though nobody called her by name. She was in the little cottage noted in the forest wilderness map. She was the old woman the people feared, and yet the one they visited under the cover of darkness. She was the stranger who knew the barrow’s true name, the seeress who told the party not to open the black door, the sole inhabitant of the town not showing any sign of surprise when the dead started walking.

There were always traces of her in the game. Her familiar lurking on top of a fencepost. The curse that no Cleric could lift, but she knew who placed it. Potion brewed from grave-moss, moonwater, and blood. Charm tied in red thread. Child born under an unlucky star. Ruined shrine where old rituals still work.

Introduce the village witch whenever the party arrives in a small town dealing with some problem they don’t want to face. She can be anywhere near the settlement – at the edge of the map, at the edge of the woods, marsh, ancient trail, ruin of the old temple, the last house in town before the fields become dark.

She is not automatically an enemy of the party. Nor is she always friendly towards everyone around her. She is not a monster, though the monster may fear her. She is not a Cleric, though the villagers seek her help whenever they get sick. She is not a Magic-User, though she casts spells that are unknown in academies. She is not a Druid, but uses all the old names for plants and trees.

She knows about what the villagers have done. She knows what the monster wants. She knows the secret the priest won’t talk about in public. She knows what the Magic-User failed to discover, because he was looking for written magic while ignoring oral magic. The magic that predates writing. 

Maybe she cured the reeve’s son once, though the reeve still considers her a wicked witch. Maybe her familiar has encountered the monster, and refuses to venture into the forest at night. Maybe she knows the old name of the hill ruins, but calling it brings her blood loss. Maybe she has written down her secret spells in some old tome that gets written by itself whenever it rains thunderously.

Perhaps the village priest consults her in secret for the reading of dreams. She may have buried something beneath her hearth long ago and never talked about it for two decades. She may recognize one of the party members' birthmarks as a witch-mark. She may ask to have the curse removed only after somebody confesses.

She may inform the party that the haunting isn’t actually caused by the undead, but rather it is the grief made manifest. She may recall times when the ruined temple had worshippers. She may remember which tomb is empty, and why people keep flowers on it. She may not venture over moving waters ever since the last witch-hunt came to the town.

It shouldn’t give away rumors and heal the party for free like an automaton. She has her needs, debts, limits, and enemies. She may request to have a piece of hair, offer to protect someone, make a pact under the moonlight, retrieve a missing charm, or identify the liar among the villagers.

Most of all, she must have a price.  Not gold, for sure. Rarely gold. 

Usually, something only the PCs can provide.

But in any case, the witch is out there. Waiting. 

Mirror Mondays: The Witches of 1986. Two Books, One Spell

Monday has often been Monstrous Monday here at The Other Side for a very long time. A mirror into what I am working on at any given point in time. But for the next few months, I am turning the mirror in a manner of speaking. And the mirror is an apt metaphor for what I am doing. 

The monsters will still be present; they always are. This time, though, I'm focusing on the witches who confront them, call them into being, control them, get rid of them, or even turn into them. I want to think of 1986 not just as a date, but as a breeding ground for imagination.

For me, 1986 isn't about warm, fuzzy nostalgia. It is a lens to focus my attention. 

It's the hardback Advanced Dungeons & Dragons books on the table, odd paperbacks found in used bookstores, heavy metal music, scary films, late-night TV, school libraries, local stories, and that feeling of books your parents wouldn't let you read. It's the year when fantasy games, talk of the occult, and being a teenager all felt crammed into one shadowy room, with a general sense of fear from the Satanic Panic and a sense that something…more existed. 

That's where two things I'm working on intersect.

One is Advanced Witches & Warlocks, my take on a retro witch book, as if the AD&D witch finally got the attention she deserved around 1986. It's aiming for release around Halloween 2026, which feels fitting. Witches should appear in October.

The other is Jackson, IL, a modern supernatural setting in the Midwest, centered on odd towns in the middle of the country, teenage witches, haunted schools, local monsters, hidden family histories, and the strangeness of growing up in 1986. This one is different; it doesn't have a release date. It might not even be published in a typical way. It's going to be about 80,000 words before I can even say it's a book, and it isn't there yet, but it’s progressing.

However, these two projects are constantly influencing each other.

They aren't the same book, or even the same style of book. Advanced Witches & Warlocks is all about fantasy gaming, character classes, occult magic, witch lore, warlock groups, magical spells, animal helpers (familiars), and what the witch should be like alongside the Cleric, Magic-User, Druid and Illusionist.

Jackson, IL, is small-town horror. It’s the high school hall, the library, the old graveyard, the pizza place, the road leading past the cornfields, the local university, the occult store in town, and the house that everyone knows about but nobody discusses. It's about teenage witches in a world where adults have carefully constructed their lives to act as if the supernatural isn't genuine. 

One is the witch as a character in AD&D.

One is the witch as the girl in homeroom who understands the mirror is showing a false image. 

And the central question for both of them is the same:

When 1986 is the focus of the imagination lens, what does a witch actually look like?

In a fantasy setting inspired by 1986, a witch is much more than just someone on a broom who casts spells; her origins lie in folklore, fairy tales, frightening tales, hidden knowledge, the books Appendix N lists, and the stranger parts of fantasy. She’s part of a group of witches, follows certain customs and has powerful figures she answers to, observes forbidden practices, performs ceremonies under the moon, and taps into ancient powers that aren't easily contained in spellbooks or churches. 

She isn't a Cleric. Clerics have a church, a god, and openly stated beliefs. And she isn't a Magic-User, because Magic-Users study, have specific formulas, and believe the universe can be written down completely.

A Witch has something much older and more personal; she has connections. Connections to spirits, the land, her ancestors, the moon, old gods, and, really, to be honest, things that are best left unmentioned. She understands magic isn't only something you learn, but something you receive from family, get through deals, endure, and occasionally live through. 

And that’s how it is in fantasy.

But in 1986, in the real world, the witch is a bit different, although not as different as you'd think.

She’s the new student who seems to know a lot, the quiet one who hears things in empty rooms, the head cheerleader who keeps everyone protected but won't admit to how afraid she is, the outsider with the family that's been around forever, or the girl who happens to find the right (or wrong) book at the library…and it’s as if the book was waiting for her.

She exists amongst lockers, telephone landlines, cassette tapes, school bells, what everyone in town is saying, and teachers who might not be entirely human. The school after hours is her dungeon, the roads leading out of town are her wilderness, and her temple is the bedroom floor late at night, with candles, a notebook, and a mirror that shows more than it should. 

Both of these witches are liminal, in-between people.

And that’s the essential point.

A witch is on the boundary. The edge of town, the edge of social groups, the edge of the church, the edge of family, the edge of becoming an adult, the edge of the map. She knows where the lines are because she's crossed them, and sometimes she chose to, other times she was forced.

That’s why witches work so well in old-fashioned gaming. Dungeons & Dragons always liked boundaries: dungeons and the wild, law and chaos, the village and the ruins, human and monster, the living and the divine. A witch belongs in that boundary zone.

And that’s also why they suit teenage horror. Being a teenager is a boundary zone. You aren't a child, but you're not an adult yet, and everyone is misleading you about both. You’re expected to follow rules you didn't create, you're given a future you might not even want, you're observed, evaluated, underestimated, and told to stay away from doors that someone else has already opened.

That’s where a witch finds her place.

The Midwest is important here as well.

These aren't Salem witches, not exactly, and not the glamorous witches of Hollywood. The witch of the Midwest lives amongst brick school buildings, university towns, country roads, old cemeteries, the changeable prairie weather, church potlucks, basement playrooms, and libraries with surprisingly good collections of occult books.

She knows the local ghost stories. She knows which road to avoid in the dark. She knows who lived in that house before the current family changed the name. She understands that not all monsters come from Transylvania or from Hell; some are created by the cursed land surrounding the old town, in the drainage ditch, beneath the old bridge, or in the quiet that exists between what everyone says and what nobody will talk about.

That’s where Jackson, IL is.

And that's where Advanced Witches & Warlocks is also finding a new foundation.

The fantasy witch and the teenage witch aren't separated in my mind; they are each other’s reflections. One wears a purple dress and a black cloak, the other wears jeans, boots, and an excessive amount of eyeliner for a Monday. One has a familiar and a Book of Shadows, the other has a cat that isn't quite a cat and a notebook hidden under her mattress.

Both of them understand the same truth. 

People who are respectable act as if magic isn't real, because acknowledging it would change everything.

This series, Mirror Mondays: The Witches of 1986, is where I’m going to look at that reflection.

Some weeks I’ll be more focused on Advanced Witches & Warlocks; talking about witch types, magical practices, familiars, traditions, warlocks, spells, monsters, and creating a witch's book that feels as if it could have existed in the AD&D period without just copying old texts. 

Other weeks I’ll focus on Jackson, Illinois; teenage witches, haunted schools, folklore from the Midwest, local monsters, bad roads, strange teachers, shops with occult items, and why 1986 is the perfect year for supernatural horror.

Most weeks will be somewhere in the middle.

That's the unusual intersection where both projects come together.

The mirror is now open.

Mirror Shards: The Mirror Between Larina Nichols and Larina Nix

Not every magical object starts as something valuable. 

Some begin as a simple question.

A witch looks in the mirror and sees herself...but not the person standing in the room. She sees another life, another world, another version of the same soul. One that is older, stronger, stranger, and maybe even more dangerous.

For Advanced Witches & Warlocks, this mirror might be an ancient magical object, a way to see into the future or a risky way for witches to get in touch with alternate selves, echoes of their mentors or their future selves.

But for Jackson, Illinois, it's more personal. A teenage witch sees the woman she could become, or the woman she was somewhere else, or the woman who is protecting her from a fantasy world that shouldn't be real.

The mirror doesn't question in a straightforward way. That would be too simple.

It shows what could be.

It shows a warning.

It shows power.

And sometimes, when the room is dark and the house is quiet, the image in the mirror moves first.

I am focusing on this witch in particular because she has a pedigree. She was created as an AD&D character in 1986. She is my window into this liminal and reflected world. She was a playtest character for every version of the witch class I ever wrote, including AD&D and NIGHT SHIFT.

I have another post I am picking at, "What I Learned Playing the Same Character for 40 Years," and some of that insight feeds into this and vice versa. She is the test bed, as I have said before, my "Drosophila melanogaster" of these tests. When playing a game, I ask, "What would Larina do here?" When designing one, I ask, "How can I do Larina here?" Both questions have served me well over the last 4 decades. 

There are a handful of witches, both characters and personalities, as well as more simple archetypes, that I use when testing any game I play and any game I write. Larina is the most forward-facing of these witches. She isn't the only one. Elowen still gets a lot of play, as does Moria, Amaranth, and others. But Larina has a lot of history, both in games and in the real world. 

A Mirror Shard in both games is a means to communicate with other versions of yourself. Or other versions of others. It is a sneaky little device I have thrown into my games when I want to try out one version of a character in another's universe. Valerie Beaumont is a regular abuser of these mirror shards. She isn't even my character, and she keeps crashing into my games. 

Which brings up an interesting point. 

In Advanced Witches & Warlocks, the "mirror shards" are the magic items connected to the magical mirrors.

In Jackson, IL, "mirror shards" are the people you see in the mirror that are not you.

Both developed from the same fundamental idea and then took on different meanings in my writing. I don't really feel the need to reconcile these differences. Different games. Different universes. But there is something fairly evocative about calling these characters mirror shards. 

Larina is a mirror shard. Valerie is a mirror shard. Even someone like Jenny Everywhere is a mirror shard.

Greg: "I feel sorry for the guy who tries to buy them a drink!"

Candy and Denise in Jackson, IL, are mirror shards of Candella and Duchess in Glantri. Or is that the other way around?

It is because they are "mirror shards" that they heard the Bell in Jackson, IL, when only supernatural creatures heard it. They are not supernatural, but they are special. 

An out-of-game idea for one is giving me an in-game solution for another. 

I have quite a lot more to say on all of this.

Witchcraft Wednesdays: Spellbound (2025)

 Last month, I mentioned that I got my copy of Spellbound (2025) in the mail from author Thomas Negovan. It is a treasure trove of commentary and images of all sorts of fantastic vintage paperbacks about witches and witchcraft. From fictional accounts of witches and black magic, to how-to and self-help guides, to the growing fascination with witches and the occult throughout the 1960s and 1970s. 

The book is rather fantastic, to be honest, and filled with some great memories.

The book is 7.5" x 10", so a bit smaller than letter size, but it has the feel of a larger "coffee table" book. The photos are fantastic, and it was a joy to see so many I remembered.

The binding is good, and you all know I am a sucker for a book with a ribbon bookmark. The pages are edge-painted purple. This would seem to clash with the red cover, but honestly, it doesn't. It adds to the weird vibe the entire book is going for, and it works well for me. 

We begin with a brief prelude about the Bibliomancers concept. It explains that this special hardcover edition is an expansion on the original 2023 softcover edition by Astraleyes (more on who that is later). Thomas Negovan expanded on the original copy to give us the collection of 1960s and 1970s occult ephemera. 

The Foreword is by occult book collector Astraleyes, who came up with Bibliomancers and the first edition of this book. The picture of Astraleyes and his books is also a nice stroll down the book aisles of my memories. 

The Introduction by Thomas Negovan hits me where I live. "As far back as I can remember, used book stores were my chosen houses of worship." Feels like something I would have said myself. He name-drops Man, Myth & Magic series, and more. Sounds like he was visiting my home library/office/game room. 

Negovan goes on to discuss how the growing interest in witches, witchcraft, and the occult got started in the 1960s and 1970s. A time I have called the 70s Occult Revival here in these pages. He ties it a little closer to the 1960s sexual revolution than I have, and he is spot on, really.  The role of witchcraft and feminism was always linked, either by its proponents and detractors, in ways that can't really be ignored. See my own Aiséiligh Witchcraft Tradition for how I touched on the same topic. Negovan does an excellent job, in both words and stunning photos, of setting the stage for why witches and witchcraft found such an open welcome in the city and suburban lives of many modern women. Not just witches, but also Wicca and witchcraft as a practice. 

All the while mainstream society was pushing against all of this, the market for witches and witchcraft had never been stronger. This book is a testament to that explosive growth. 

Negovan goes deeper, naturally, than I have here but covers familiar ground. He is explicit about the four distinct categories emerging from this era. The Wiccan traditions of Gerald Gardner and his adherents, such as Raymond Buckland. The later Alexandrian Tradition (which I often lump together here despite their many and manifest differences), the Sybil Leek/Horoscope boom (which I often call "Left Over Hippie Shit"), and the most dominant, Witchcraft as Aesthetic. Not just wicca guides or other self-help books popular at the time, but being a witch because it was cool.  Those were the woman my young brain imprinted on as wonderful, powerful, and sexy. These were all aided by the boom in cheap paperbacks that became ubiquitous in bookstores, grocery stores, and just about everywhere. I am still astonished to this day by how much these treasures in my own collection originally cost compared to what I would later happily pay for them.  The spread on pages 24-25, 26-27 is like unlocking a core memory of the first time I ever walked into a college bookstore at age 10. I was overwhelmed. I was ecstatic. It was akin to walking into a holy sanctum. And one thing is very, very clear. Thomas Negovan feels exactly the same way.

Negovan begins to leave the discussion of the zeitgeist behind to focus on the books themselves, plotting a course from the rise of pamphlets at the start of the 20th century onto the rise of Wicca in the early 1950s and on. It was not something that happened overnight, even if the boom of the 1960s and 1970s felt that way. We are treated to several different covers of Gardner's "Witchcraft Today," which fairly depict how society viewed witches and witchcraft at the time of each publication. We move to what I have always considered the tipping point of this phenomenon, Stewart Farrar's 1971 "What Witches Do" and Raymond Buckland's 1970 "Ancient & Modern Witchcraft."

The book moves on to give some of the wonderful paperback covers, and, where possible, renditions of the original cover art sans titles. 

Many of these titles should be familiar to readers of this blog. More are familiar to me from my own collections. 

The number of titles published between 1968 and 1972 alone was staggering. All of this while the background noise was Vietnam and Richard Nixon.

And the art. To say I imprinted hard on many of these covers doesn't take a Ph.D. in psychology. I flip through these pages, and I see Marissia looking back at me. I see Rhiannon, Esmé, Aeronwy, and Eria. And in the covers of "What Witches Do" and "Anita," I saw the first glimpses of Larina. 

To many readers, this is a glimpse of witchcraft's past. For me? It is a yearbook filled with photos of old girlfriends and lost loves. 

Even some of the Witches of Appendix N appear here. As with Fritz Leiber's "Conjure Wife." Indeed, with the aid of this book, I could expand my own "Appendix O."

And it fits so nicely with many of my other witch-related hardcovers.

It is hard for me to tell if this is a book for the casual reader. This book deeply resonates with so many of my own memories; it is difficult for me to detach myself from my "nostalgia gogles" (as my oldest says) or even bits of deeply ingrained memory. How can I objectively review something like this?

Obviously, I can't. Nor even do I want to try.

I am going to say that this book is extraordinary. Thomas Negovan certainly thinks so. The care, attention, and love he put into it are obvious from the first few pages.

Seeing a book like this get made is one of the best reasons for a Kickstarter. 

I see he has another Kickstarter for the third volume in this trilogy (this was the second!), Binding the Devil. 

While I am sure there might some duplication, I have books in my library that would fit that did not find their way into Spellbound.  So yes, this one should give me as much joy. Check out some of his previous 88 Kickstarters; the guy has good taste. You can pledge this new book and add on Spell Bound for another $79. 

You can also get your own copy directly from their store. While I think the limited-edition Art Nouveau version is fantastic (and, as an aside, Negovan really seems to know his Art Nouveau), the red cover I have with the model from "How to Become a Sensuous Witch" is the one that really called out to me. 

Negovan chose this cover well as one of the best examples of "Witchcraft as Aesthetic".  Why? "How to Become a Sensuous Witch" is not a guide on witchcraft, or a lurid witch tale, or even a primer on sex magic. It is a cookbook.