Live from Witch City Tarot Convention: History of Tarot, Haunted Hawthorne Hotel & Ghost Hunters

Live from Salem: Tarot Convention Kick-off

• 🎙️ This episode was recorded live at the Witch City Tarot Convention in Salem, Massachusetts, at the historic Hawthorne Hotel.
• 🎤 Host Daisy Egan presents a three-part show: the history of tarot, the history of the Hawthorne Hotel, and an interview with a paranormal investigator.

The (Humorous) History of Tarot

• 🃏 The speaker humorously recounts a fabricated history of tarot, starting with Janet Tarret in 16th-century Florida, who supposedly invented the cards.
• 🧙‍♀️ Janet, a hermit with an injured eye, was rumored to be a witch, but the speaker attributes her eye injury to a college keg stand accident.
• 🎨 She began drawing portraits of people who bothered her, which evolved into a deck of cards, eventually leading her to Paris where she rebranded as Jana Tarot.
• 🃏 Today, tarot decks are highly accessible and cater to diverse interests, from social justice themes to pop culture icons.
• 🔮 A three-card tarot reading for the audience yielded Death, The Fool, and Coven, interpreted humorously as a past of dumbness, an imminent death, and a future in a dead coven without taxes or voting.

The Haunted Hawthorne Hotel

• 🏨 The Hawthorne Hotel in Salem, Massachusetts, is known for its paranormal activity, particularly on the third and sixth floors.
• 🔥 The hotel site has a history of fires, with a building on the same spot burning down three times before the Hawthorne was constructed in 1925.
• 👻 Documented hauntings include a crying baby spirit in room 325, a woman in a white dress on the sixth floor, and unexplained noises and moving furniture reported by guests and staff.
• 🍎 The most compelling haunting is attributed to Bridget Bishop, the first person executed in the Salem witch trials, whose ghost is said to appear on the sixth floor, often accompanied by the smell of baking apples.

Paranormal Investigator's Experiences

• 🕵️‍♀️ Shari DeBenedetti, a paranormal investigator with nearly 30 years of experience, shares her personal encounters.
• 👻 Her first significant experience involved a male entity that physically restrained her and manifested as a doppelganger of her then-boyfriend, leading to her divorce.
• 💡 DeBenedetti explains that paranormal activity can stem from residual energy or intelligent spirits, and emphasizes the importance of logical investigation and debunking common occurrences like EMF sensitivity or faulty wiring.
• 🗣️ She discusses the use of paranormal investigation equipment and cautions against misinterpreting device readings, highlighting the need for careful questioning and analysis.
• 💔 She recounts another experience where a spirit violently threw her then-boyfriend, which ultimately helped him believe in the paranormal and allowed her to connect with his deceased daughter.
• 🏠 DeBenedetti's work focuses on helping others who have similar experiences, especially in a time when discussing the paranormal was less common.