Monday, August 13, 2012

Sinister Kisses

Yahoo Answers can be a great source of amusement with all the strange and bizarre questions people are willing to ask once they have some degree of anonymity. While a lot of those questions are just plain dumb, a few describe situations that are downright weird - like this one. The person asking the question found a bag of candy on their doorstep, and wonders if it could be some sort of spell.

Is this witchcraft, a prank, or a gang initiation ritual?

I found opened Hershey's kisses in a plastic grocery bag on my doorstep this evening. Is anyone familiar with any kind of witchcraft (ranging from European, to African, to Latin American) or gang initiations? Is this considered a threat and should I be worried? I take things like this very seriously. I want to know the motive behind this so that I can have peace of mind. I always assume the worst, so I'm on the verge of calling the police to investigate this.

Additional Details

Yes, calling the police is something I am considering. If you knew where I lived and how malicious and envious people are of each other, you would too. I'm obviously not going to reveal where I live. I've had people break into my home before for no good reason. My home was just a target for gang initiation. I have all the right to be this paranoid. These godforsaken people have ruined my peace.

Wow. Wherever this person lives, their situation must be pretty darn awful. Still, calling the police over something like this is just going to get you laughed at. For better or worse, one of the advantages of using magick against enemies is that there are really no laws that apply to it unless the caster does something else illegal as part of the spell.


Now on to the question. I don't know much of anything about gang initiations, but if that's what it is it's a pretty sad excuse for one. "Okay man, now what you have to do is take this candy and drop it in front of that door over there. Then you're in!" I can't say I'd be very worried about a gang that was unwilling to require its members to do anything even marginally illegal or even difficult as part of an initiation. As far as a spell goes, just about anything can be a material basis for magick including candy, but if this is the case whoever cast it is not particularly skilled. The plastic bag won't hold a magical charge, and while the candy will, it would have to be eaten or at least touched to set in motion any sort of magical effect. Just picking up the bag isn't going to do it. I'm pretty sure that if, say, a skilled Hoodoo practitioner was trying to cast a curse he or she would use oil or powder across the doorstep so that the spell's effects would be harder to avoid. If you're worried about this being a curse, don't eat the candy. The same thing would go for candy that's been contaminated in some manner.

Several commenters have also noted that this looks similar to the old "dog turd on the doorstep" prank performed by someone with a poor grasp of how it's supposed to work. (1) You use a turd, not chocolate, (2) the bag should be paper, and (3) you're supposed to light it on fire so the target of the prank steps in it trying to stamp it out. Once more, I would contend that anyone too flat-out stupid to figure out how to follow those three steps is unlikely to be any sort of a danger.

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2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Probably just a misunderstood secret (or not so secret) admirer. However the OP is crazy. I don't mean that sarcastically. They have serious psychological issues. Some sort of delusional disorder, possibly paranoid scitzophrenia, but usually with that the post would be a bit more disorganized, but not always.

Scott Stenwick said...

It sounds more to me like some sort of anxiety disorder than full-blown paranoid schizophrenia. Still, it seems to be severe enough to blow this whole thing completely out of proportion.

Is it possible that this is a magical attack? Sure, but it doesn't appear to be a very competent one. On the other hand, calling the police over a bag of chocolates is pretty over-the-top and as such I agree with you that any danger associated with these errant candies is most likely all in the OP's mind.