The witches of West Lebanon: on spirits, Halloween, communicating with the dead

Nemina and Gregg Starr in the "Reading Room" inside their North Main Street shop. (Lebanon Voice photo)

Gregg and Nemina Starr are both witches. They live in West Lebanon and operate the Under The Moon Shoppe on North Main Street in Rochester.
It is there that they sell wares to those interested in the metaphysical, the occult and witchcraft and also provide a wide array of services like Tarot Card and Ouija readings as well as helping folks communicate with relatives and other spirits long passed from this corporeal life.
For them Halloween is a very special time, when the "veil" between the living and dead is very thin and spirits abound. Whether you believe or not, we thought it would be a good time to speak with them about their shop, who they are and what they do .

TLV: How do you describe yourselves and what you do? Are you the occult? Witches?
Gregg: We like the word occult, but we identify with being a witch. It's an earth-based belief. It's not much different from what other people see, we just approach things from a different way. When you're a witch you're someone who works with energy and the elements to bring things together and make your life better for you and the others around you.
TLV: Did you get a calling to be a witch? I know you said you worked with famed witch Laurie Cabot of Salem. Did she inspire you?
Gregg: Well, growing up (near Malden, Mass.) I noticed different things. I saw things differently than other people. My grandmother showed me a little bit of Sicilian type things she was doing back in the old country. She had these folk remedies for when you were sick and she would use the Italian playing cards called the Scopa (similar to Ouija) to tell your fortune. I'd ask her questions like "should I go to school" and she'd lay out the cards and show me the reasons why or why not what I was doing was OK.
Just doing that showed me how to do it. Then naturally I went to Salem because this was an interest and that's when I walked into Laurie Cabot's Shop. She knew I was coming and called my by name.
TLV: Wait a minute, you didn't tell her you were coming, she just knew?
Gregg: She knew I was coming.
TLV: She knew your name?
Gregg: She knew my name.
TVL: When was this?
Gregg: 1982.
TLV: You must have been, like, "OK, This is it. I'm in." right?
Gregg: Yes. Then she showed me Tarot cards, which are very similar to the Scopa. So that sparked the interest and she gave me information and books and taught me what she was doing in her way so I kept going back and got into witchcraft. I was helping other people and helping myself and then I went along through the years doing that, then I went to Arizona and met Nemina and she had been into it for quite some time herself and so we talked about it.
TLV: So where'd you guys meet? An occult shop or something?
(they both laugh)
Nemina: Nothing so awesome. I stalked him (laughs). I had quit my job. I was from a small town out in Arizona and my family somehow convinced me I had to work at some other corporate place so I was in a new area, no friends and I saw Gregg and I was like he seems like my kind of person so you know i just kind of introduced myself. He had just gotten out of a relationship and we went out on our first date and we had the same dreams. We wanted to open up a metaphysical shop. So it just worked well together.
TLV: So Nemina, before I ask you about your past I want to ask you what's the difference between occult and metaphysical?
Nemina: Occult in its definition means secret knowledge, so it's knowledge that - at least back in the day - you don't share with anyone. It's for the select few. There are a lot of interchangeable terms. Metaphysical has more of a broad spectrum, it can include meditation and reiki and this and that, whereas occult is more like the ritualistic. It's secret.
Gregg: So we share with the public. We help people. People come to us. they say ''I need this'' or ''I need that'' and we help them along the way. But then, there are also things that we're like ''well, you can't know this information until you come to the other side,'' but we don't actively say ''hey, why don't you do this?''
TLV: Can you tell me some of the things some people might come to you to ask help with?
Gregg: Here in Rochester we get a lot of people who are battling with addiction and we'll guide them to help them build their inner temple to gain power to be able to run their own lives without the things that are their demons. Like drugs or addictions or these things, so we'll move them in the right direction and show them how to move the energy of the environment around them.
TLV: I know you said at some point when we were talking that you help people communicate with the dead such as a relative who has passed. So how does that work?
Gregg: Yes, yes, we do a few different things with that. One of the things we like to do is call the "dumb supper." And and we will sit down with the people involved and we''ll invite the person who has passed through the veil and then we'll use a crystal ball or Tarot cards to communicate with them (the dead).
TLV: When you say dumb supper do you mean you don't say anything. Like you can't speak, you can't talk?
Gregg: The spirit that comes and visits cannot speak.
TLV: So the spirit can't speak either?
Gregg: They'll speak through me. The people can ask questions. and then we can get answers.
TLV: So you can get answers from the crystal or the Tarot cards? You're using them like the medium?
Gregg: Medium is a good word. We'll use the medium for something to communicate through.
TLV: Now back to you Nemina. You said you're from Arizona?
Nemina: Actually I grew up in California and I grew up in a very religious household. I was Mormon, actually. And it's interesting, you know. I wasn't like a psychic, but when I was in second grade I was really drawn to love spells. I mean me and a couple of young girls my age.
TLV: When you say love spells, does that mean you put a spell on a boy?
Nemina: Oh, it was like "bring love into my life," which was fun for me. I found a lot of enjoyment in that. And when it was time for me to turn 8 and it was time for me to be baptized in the religion we were in, it didn't feel right, but I went through with that. But then I met another girl through church, and we did our first ritual together and it was interesting because she didn't have results from hers but I did from mine.
TLV: So in other words you got what you asked for
Nemina: Yeah, exactly, so when you're in a religion that you're like delving into witchcraft you don't expect it to manifest like that. So immediately the next Sunday i'm looking up the Bible, for witchcraft and it's saying "you'll burn in hell." Aw, that sucks, so I kind of went through this struggle when growing up about being the person I felt that I was and as soon as I turned 18 it was a form of wicca withchcraft that I became drawn to.
Wicca is a new version, which is a revitalization of paganism and witchcraft that came out in the '50s. So I had picked up up my first wicca book because it was right next to the poetry section at Barnes and Noble, and that's what I was drawn to a lot. And it felt true to me. It just felt like the pieces fell into place.

So out on the West Coast there's not a lot of places like there are here. Here there are schools and community and out there there's not a lot of people to work with. So I was a solitary practitioner for a long time. It's been about 10-12 years for me and I've just been doing my own thing with it. and you know, you find within your path, like for me, i gravitate a lot more to working with herbs and working with stones. There's different types of intuitives.
I'm a physical intuitive so if I hold something I get information that way where Gregg is a spiritual intuitive which means that his energy is out here and he connects with other energy.
TLV: So how long have you been in this shop and how would you describe this shop?
Gregg: We opened up Oct 23 last year. We cater to a wide crowd. You don't have to claim to be a witch to come in. People come in all the time to get Tarot reading, to get teas if they're not feeling well, so we cater to all: new age, reiki.
TLV: So now, here at Halloween, is this a special time for you? For witches?
Gregg: Yes, during the month of October, we tell people the veil between this world and the other world is very thin, so communicating with spirits is very easy. I mean they're coming, a lot. Originally with the traditional Halloween you can see people dressing up like ghosts and monsters because they felt that the veil between the living and the dead was very open and they feared and they didn't know.
TLV: You mean it was to scare the spirits from coming through the veil?
Gregg: They were afraid of the spirits. Plus Halloween for us is considered our New Year. And on that day is when the veil is most open. So communication is much easier. comes through quicker.
TLV: So is there anything that you do like a ceremony on anything?
Gregg: Each year it's not like we have the same ritual, like people have at Christmas, but we do something. We always do some sort of communication with the ancestors, with the dead. It symbolizes honoring the dead with respect or if people want to communicate, it's a good time for that, too.
Nemina: We also work with the energies and with nature, so you have your phases of the moon, you also have your changes of the season. Everything has a correspondence to it. So it's a great time to set goals, like a New Year's Goal, but also for releasing those bad habits that don't serve you.
TLV: So you say the veil is really thin right now. What could regular folk do if they wanted to say, connect with an ancestor who had passed? Is there any mindset you try to get yourself into to pave the way, if they wanted to try it themselves?
Gregg: I think what you're asking is, I mean, of course they could come here and they could sit down and we could communicate for them, we could do a Tarot reading, we could show them how to meditate. And I'm going to get down into the best way they should do it. It's called "alpha." They want to get into an alpha state. You have different states of consciousness. Alpha is the next step down from Beta where we're at normally. When we're in Beta, we're conscious like we are right now, but if you calm yourself down to a slight meditative state called "Alpha." You can accomplish that by closing your eyes for two minutes.
Nemina: It's just the same as when you're watching a movie or you're zoned out in a relaxation state.
TLV: You're not actively thinking.
Gregg: Exactly.
TLV: So tell us how you do it?
Gregg: You close your eyes for two minutes and you're there kind of like right before you're going to sleep you close your eyes and then your consciousness alters.
TLV: Do you try not to think about anything? Or do you think about the person you want to connect with?
Gregg: I show people how to count down to Alpha, so they can count down and get to that state and then for the trained, they can go to what's called an "instant Alpha" where they can switch it back and forth when they need to.
Nemina: A lot of what we do - you see people do what we do all the time - the only difference is that we know what we're doing.
When we sit down with someone to connect with someone (who's passed) we have this intention. Your energy has already gone out there to reach and connect with this person, so someone at home that wants to meditatively connect with a loved one, they have to set that intention. So with a lot of people if they set that intention that I'm, you know, going to connect with my grandma, all of a sudden they try to do it and they see or hear something. But then they question what they see or hear like, "Oh maybe that wasn't anything."
TLV: They think "It could've been me doing it?"
Nemina: Right, so you question it, well so then you're blocking any kind of avenue, so I would say people are the biggest blocks, they're their own worst enemy, because they don't believe what they're seeing and not intune with being intuitive and trusting their instincts. That's why we're here, not to be just a retail (shop), but also help people that want to learn.

TLV: What else do you do here
Nemina: We'll also go into people's homes that are haunted to help cleanse out any energy and stuff. its not something that we advertise huge right now, but we do it.
TLV: So you say there are a lot of spirits out there, especially at this time of year. Should we fear them?
Gregg: The way Laurie Cabot explains is she says sometime you might be afraid of a spirit, but she says once a spirit passes they're benign, they're not scary. They won't hurt you, there just there and sometimes they might have good information for you, they have a different perspective being across the veil. You might hear things, you'll see things, you'l feel things, you may be driven to get out of some place, but it's not like the movies where they want to hurt you.

If you would like to learn more check out the Under the Moon Facebook page here.
They will also have special Halloween observance on Monday with Tarot Card readings and more with Judika Illes, a well-known author of several books on mythology, the occult and witchcraft beginning at noon followed by a Halloween Samhain at 7:30 p.m.