Hoodoo Herbs & Conjure Work

Jonathan L. Harris

My first experience in the spiritual realm occurred when I was ten years old. My aunt, whom I was incredibly close to, had recently passed away, and I began having dreams about her where she would come and speak to me—often telling me who in our family was about to die next. As a child, these dreams and other visitations would scare me. So much so that I’d be afraid to leave my bed. I did my best to ignore my abilities, but my connection with the spirit realm only grew as I got older. I kept these gifts a secret for a long time until a teacher I trusted and who shared the gift encouraged me to tell people about my gift in class and even demonstrate my abilities by channeling members of her own family. By the time I was in high school, I had become somewhat of a minor celebrity people were coming up to me in class and asking me for readings. Even their parents would sneak into school under the guise of visiting their kids, only to seek me out and bring me possessions of those who had passed recently to try and connect with them. Not everyone was a fan, though. Growing up in the bible belt, I had many detractors between parents who thought I was the devil and school administrators thinking I was crazy. Growing up with this gift was anything but easy. Things came to a head when I was called into the principal's office one day after getting in trouble for giving reading between class and making some of the students upset. As I sat in her office being reprimanded, the principal's grandfather appeared to me with an apology for his granddaughter. As she wrote up my report that I was to take home to my parents, I told her a secret only known to her and her grandfather. At that moment, she turned pale as a sheet and sat silently until finally dismissing me back to class. ​ I was then sent to a psychologist who asked me to provide him with a reading so he could validate my abilities. After meeting with me, he felt that I was incredibly emotionally intuned and would be best suited for a small class environment where I wouldn't be distracted by all the energies of the different students in the larger classes. At sixteen, my gifts had become a nightmare. Living next to a graveyard, I saw spirits constantly. They continued to frighten me, often appearing in mirrors or hovering over my bed at night. I had gotten to a point where I just wanted to give up. I tried everything to suppress my gifts, but nothing worked. Finally, a mentor of mine brought me to meet a pastor at the local church. She explained that this gift was nothing to hide but that I should embrace it and use it to help people, and by using my gift for good, I would find the mental peace I so desperately wanted. I began conducting “message lines” at her church, where I would meet hundreds of parishioners a day delivering messages from their loved ones.   Through those encounters, I was invited into people's homes to provide private readings for their families and friends. My minor celebrity grew, and soon people I didn’t know were stopping me in the street, waiting for me after church, or showing up at my house unannounced, begging me to provide them with a reading. Some of these strangers would turn out to be members of Charlotte’s high society. Well-connected professionals, desperate to talk to their loved ones or get an edge in their careers. Through these new connections, I was invited to attend a lecture featuring a number of professionals, including a Doctor who would become profoundly important later in my career. Dr. Cherry Collier. Throughout my schooling, I had found it increasingly difficult to connect with my predominantly non-spiritually gifted peers. This lack of connection impacted my mentality so much that After graduating High school, I created a small support group for people like me who had gifts and wanted to connect with others who shared that spiritual connection. While the group started small with less than a half dozen or so people regularly attending the meetings, it wasn’t long before unfamiliar faces replaced the familiar ones I had come to know. The crowd began to grow at an alarming rate. We soon had sixty to a hundred people attending these meetings, with more people waiting in the wings to join us. I soon found myself opening up new groups all around the southeast.