Patty Beltz, a self-described “Romani pagan witch,” in Nature’s Way Emporium, her store on Main Street in Shenandoah. PHOTOS BY JACQUELINE DORMER
Originally published in the Pottsville Republican-Herald on October 31, 2021.
I have fond memories of Route 61. During my childhood summers, it was a yellow brick road to the paradise that was Knoebels Amusement Park. The lush mountain scenery and small towns my family and I passed through, along with the increasingly elaborate billboards advertising the park (a 3-D ferris wheel!), made the journey as exciting as the destination. Last winter, I had the idea to do a column about interesting places people can visit on the way to Knoebels. During my research, I found that Knoebels is surrounded by an unusually large number of religious sites. Route 61 is a sort of pilgrimage route, probably the only one on Earth that ends with roller coasters and baked potatoes. You can call it El Camino de Kozmo. In this column, I seek to reveal the histories of these holy places and what they mean to the people who worship there. From great churches to one man’s passion, these sites tell diverse stories of faith, love and humanity’s relationship with the divine in Northeast Pennsylvania.
Aimee Michelle Laferriere doesn’t like to use “the W-word” in public. When she does, people tend to laugh at her. The “W-word” is witch.
Laferriere, of Pottsville, is a Pagan witch. It's hard for her to explain her religion without people imagining Halloween spooks or Margaret Hamilton in “The Wizard of Oz.” Paganism is hard to define. It is a diverse, modern religion influenced by a variety of ancient mythologies. Pagans typically have great respect for nature and its power. Laferriere calls Paganism “Build Your Own Religion,” because no two Pagans have the same beliefs or relationship with their faith.
“I think that many Pagans are coming from a Christian religion,” Laferriere said, “and as such they’re used to everything being black and white. Paganism is flexible. You can come to your own conclusions. Not every Pagan practices witchcraft, and not every witch is a Pagan or wiccan. There are some witches who practice Christianity.”
Laferriere is a “solitary practitioner,” keeping her religion to herself. Few Pagans practice the same form of magic as her, and covens, she says, “can get pretty dramatic.”
“I don’t personally ever see Pagans or witches attempting to convert people,” she said, “although I have often had friends try to ‘save’ me.”
Tales of witchcraft in Schuylkill County date back centuries. In 1904, Mary Leib of Pottsville was accused of witchcraft. Townspeople claimed that Leib’s dog and cat glowed in the dark and had conversations in English.
“The cat was believed to have the faculty of crying like a child in distress,” wrote the Scranton Republican, “and when a belated pedestrian ventured to investigate the cause of the cries, the cat would laugh like a man and float away into space.”
In 1934, Shenandoah resident Albert Shinsky shot and killed 63-year-old Susan Mummey of Ringtown because he claimed she was a witch and put a “hex” on him.
Today’s Pagans and witches say that these stories have nothing to do with their true religious practices.
“Most of us don’t believe in Satan,” Laferriere said. “He was invented by Christians using a lot of Pagan imagery, partially to demonize preexisting practices as Christianity was moving to a new area.”
Patty Beltz is the owner of Nature’s Way Emporium, a store on Shenandoah’s Main Street that specializes in crystals, incense and other “witchy” items. She worships multiple gods and goddesses, whom she compares to Catholic saints. For years, townspeople have accused her of worshipping Satan.
“I had a lady coming in and saying I worship Lucifer,” Beltz recalled. “I said ‘Honey, look. Imagine that God is a big tree in the forest. Please remember, there are many paths to the big tree. Don’t block somebody else’s off, forcing yours.”
“Yeah,” the lady’s friend replied, “but you worship Satan.”
Patty Beltz in Nature’s Way Emporium.
Every night, two women go for a walk down Main Street. When they reach Nature’s Way, they refuse to walk on the sidewalk in front of the store, walking in the middle of the street instead. Beltz wonders why, if they’re so afraid of her magic, they don’t think it’s powerful enough to reach a few feet more.
“They’re just acting very silly and they’re treating me like the Boogeyman when I’m not,” she said. “I’m a Romani Pagan witch, and that’s not a bad thing. When you look up the word witch in the dictionary, you see a wise woman. When you look up the word Pagan in the dictionary, you see a nature dweller. That’s what I am.”
The modern rituals of Halloween come from the Celtic Pagan festival of Samhain (pronounced “sow-when”) Meaning “summer’s end,” Samhain marked the end of the harvest and the beginning of winter.
“We don’t recognize the Halloween part of it,” Beltz said. “We believe that Samhain is the day of the year that the veil between the dead and the living is the thinnest.”
To please the spirits, Pagan houses made offerings. Pagans would play tricks on each other, which they would then blame on the spirits. The pranks and offerings became tricks and treats on Halloween night. Pagans would predict each other’s future and dress in costume so that evil spirits would ignore them. They would carve turnips (later pumpkins) and put them in their windows, either to welcome the spirits of their loved ones or frighten off those who would do them harm.
“The dead walk again, they cross through the veil,” Beltz said. “It’s nothing to be afraid of. It’s a very serious day for us. It’s a very holy day for us.”
When Christianity came to the Celts, All Saints Day and Samhain combined to create All Hallows Eve - Halloween. Laferriere celebrates with ham and pumpkin pie.
“I personally enjoy the good food, indulge in spooky decor,” she said, “and take my daughter trick-or-treating. I also set up a small altar and light a candle for the dead.”
In 15 years, Beltz has transformed Nature’s Way from a bowling alley flea market stand to a brick-and-mortar store that Laferriere says has a relaxing vibe.
“You won’t find anything on my shelves from Wish or Amazon,” she said. “My things come from Madagascar and Peru and Brazil. My grandmother used to tell me ‘Petrushka, don’t be fake.’ I fear karma but I fear my grandmother more. I fear her four fingers will come down from the clouds saying ‘Petrushka, no.’”
Witchy goods for sale at Nature’s Way Emporium.
Beltz learned everything she knows about witchcraft from her “Baba,” her Romanian grandmother.
“Back then you couldn’t talk to anybody about this,” she said. “That was something very taboo. They weren’t going to burn you at the stake, they weren’t going to hang you, but my grandmother had bricks thrown through her window, and late at night women in babushkas would come to her door asking for magic, but the next morning they wouldn’t lock eyes with her.”
Beltz uses Baba’s wisdom on young women who want to become witches, but know nothing about witchcraft besides misinformation online (Beltz calls them “Google witches.”) Once, a girl came into Nature’s Way and asked for a voodoo doll to use on her boyfriend, who cheated on her with her best friend. Beltz told the girl to use the doll on herself instead.
“What kind of a witch are you?” The girl asked.
Instead of using the voodoo doll to cause another person pain, Beltz told her to use it to symbolically cleanse herself of anger.
Young Beltz used to ask her Baba about “black magic.”
“Petrushka,” Baba used to say, “there is no black. There is no white. There is only magic and a smart witch chooses when or where to use it.”
In Baba’s Romani culture, older women were responsible for “binding” or “hexing” people to stop them from doing evil deeds. Typical victims included abusive husbands and “carousing” women. Because of this, witches were respected by the community.
“It’s not a power,” Beltz said. “Witchcraft works simply because you need three things for witchcraft to work and you can’t buy them in anybody’s store. You need will, belief and intent. You can have the biggest cauldron and the fanciest crystals, and your magic will not work.”
After her Baba died when she was a teenager, Beltz rebelled against her strict Catholic father.
She was mad at “the Divine” (what Pagans call God) for taking her Baba away. Baba’s magical items were locked in four trunks and Beltz never wanted to look at them again. She married Ronnie, a former altar boy disillusioned by the Church’s constant requests for donations. He believed that money, and organized religion in general, “took away the purity of believing in something.” Patty agrees, which is why she will never become the high priestess of a coven of witches.
“Why should I be the high priestess?” She asked. “If I’m the high priestess, then who are you? The minions? Just the nobodies? I don’t like that idea.”
One year, when she was in her attic looking for Christmas decorations, she noticed Baba’s trunks. For curiosity’s sake, she looked at what was in them - bottles and jars and twigs and beads and animal feet. Baba’s Books of Shadows (Pagan religious texts) contained feathers, coins and baby teeth.
“I have baby teeth and cat whiskers here in my store, that I’ve collected,” Patty said. “There are certain things in witchcraft that we keep hidden because that keeps it magical. All those things, feathers and hair and fingernails, all have meaning when you’re doing spell work.”
As she looked at her Baba’s magic, Patty smiled. Ronnie thought it looked like something out of a Stephen King movie.
“I like symbolism,” she said. “My will, my belief, my intent feel stronger when I use symbols. If I take my wedding band off, am I still not married to my husband? When I see it, when I twist it when I get nervous, when I play with it when I’m daydreaming, it reminds me of Ronnie.”
Ronnie died of cancer in May.
“Patty, please don’t give up the shop,” he told her shortly before he died. “It’s gonna be your sanctuary.”
“When Ronnie first passed away, I didn’t want to be here anymore,” she said, “I didn’t want to go on. The sense of loneliness was just unbearable. I wanted to go with him.”
In Beltz’s interpretation of Paganism, suicide is considered a sin. It is believed that Pagans who commit suicide don’t get to see their loved ones in the afterlife.
“My religion states that you must live your life ‘til it is time for you to go, and you don’t get to choose that time,” she said. “I’ve never died before, so I don’t know if that’s true, but I don’t want to take the chance that I’ll never see Ronnie again because I took my life. My religion has kept me strong, to learn to live without him.”
When Patty taught witchcraft from her home, she would quiz her students to see what they learned. The students were often stumped, but Ronnie shouted the answers from the other room (“It’s rose quartz, ladies!”)
“He was a smart little witch that was riding the river in Egypt called denial,” Patty said.
This Samhain, Patty will celebrate with a traditional Pagan “dumb supper,” a meal with the spirits of her dead loved ones. She will cook their favorite foods - halupki, haluski, kielbasi. She will eat silently, alone. There will be a place for her Baba, her mother and her father. Ronnie will be at the head of the table.
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