Living in the Wrong Neighborhood?

Here's an odd one from across the pond. According to this article from Metro, West Yorkshire police were called with a report of public indecency that sounds like a Witchcraft or Pagan ritual. Either that or it was some sort of kinky group doing a good impression of one. Whichever it was, the group seems to have chosen a location that turned out to be less secure and remote than they perhaps realized at first. They were practically stumbled upon by a local dog walker.

The dog walker, who wishes to remain anonymous, said: ‘I let the dog off for a run and he went to the top of the wood, near a field where kids play and people walk. ‘He disappeared and I heard what I thought was shouting so I went to get him, as he’s a big softy, but I thought he had scared someone. ‘It sounded like someone shouting in a different language, but then I saw a lady in her late 30s laid on a white plastic sheet.’ She said she thought the woman ‘was dead’ at first, but when she went closer to try and find her dog, she saw a man. The man then used his finger to take blood from a dead bird and ‘put it on the woman’s face’ before they had sex, she claimed.

She added: ‘I dragged the dog away, and my friend, and I walked away. Then, about 10 minutes later, I walked back that way and my friend said she saw at least five other women clothed around them [the couple] and we realised they were chanting. ‘We decided to go and ring the police as it seemed odd, because they knew people were there and just carried on. ‘We checked back later, to see if they’d gone and they were dressed in tunics and walking away as if nothing happened and had the sheet folded over their arms. ‘It was completely bizarre.’

I especially appreciate how practical it is to bring a plastic sheet for this sort of thing. Obviously members of this group had prior experience with navigating grass and twigs in the buff. I have to say, never in my life have I come across anything even remotely similar on a random walk in the woods or across any of the local parks or whatever. So I have to ask - am I living in the wrong neighborhood?

To be clear, I'm a lot less interested in living near a forest where people go to have sex (which can be found in a lot of places) and a lot more interested in living near a forest where people go to practice magical rituals. I do live on Powderhorn Park in Minneapolis, which has been the site of the gigantic May Day festival since the mid-seventies. Also, over a years a lot of local groups have held Wiccan and Pagan rituals there.

So I guess I'm about as close to that as I'm likely to be living in the city - and I grew up in the suburbs and hated it, so that's not an option. The countryside has its own problems. But at any rate, if these people were engaged in a magical operation I wish them all the success in the world. Otherwise, I at least hope that they had a good time.