Mystical Stories

These stories will be interesting for both young people and older readers. They are all united by the theme of witchcraft—more precisely, the theme of how harmful and dangerous witchcraft is for a person. Any attempt to touch the mysterious may turn out to be a dangerous attempt to make contact with otherworldly dark forces, with demons from hell.

The story “The Secret of the Third Name” is about fortune-telling with cards. A young girl is handed a deck of cards that her grandmother used for divination. The ability to tell fortunes passes down through generations, and the granddaughter, discovering this gift in herself, encounters her grandmother’s posthumous will forbidding her to tell fortunes. The price for a connection with unclean forces is too heavy.

The story “The Wind, Roses, and Waiting” is about three teenage friends, a young girl, and two boys. A demon in the guise of a handsome traveler tries to seduce the girl. The friends help her—driving the demon away with prayer—and set her before a choice: accept baptism or remain, once again, under the power of demonic forces.

The story “Dog Rose (Sweet Briar)” is about two twin sisters whose fates turned out similar. Both were betrayed by their beloved husbands. One of the sisters turns to witchcraft and takes revenge—first on the homewrecker, and then on her former husband. The second somehow miraculously ends up in church and forgives everyone who caused her pain.

The story “Two Thousand Two Hundred Years Ago” is about a six-year-old girl who is given an unusual doll. The doll is beautiful, and the girl talks to it—but as she does, it starts predicting the future. Some of the predictions are very ominous. With the help of the girl’s older brother, it becomes clear that an ancient pagan goddess’s spirit, Cybele, has been placed inside the doll—whose cult flourished in Rome until 204 B.C.