The Nankin Township Historical Society

I've crossed out the name of this 18-year-old kid because he had all sorts of problems going on. I'm assuming that Gundella crossed out the rest to use on one of the shows she regularly appeared on not to mention that most of it is negative. But that's mere speculation. Said kid had no job but he apparently had money to buy grimoires. He l aso had some good questions and information, not to mention grammatical and letter writing skills. Hartford Courant , November 1, 1995 If I knew the answer to such questions as "why the Witches insist on keeping 'The Goddess's' name secret?" I'd have written a book on the good witch herself. The subject of witchcraft itself seems like a several decade study to even attain a novice working understanding of it. The Billings Gazette , October 30, 1972 Anyway, Bill Kennedy is a familiar name so I'll skip to Dr. Martello's "Witch-In" on Halloween afternoon in NYC's Central Park. 25 years lat...

We're approaching Halloween night so I'll stick to an appropriate subject: Gundella the Witch. In this letter from a young new witch named Marlene the woman asks for a spell to break the bad luck which she incurred since taking initiation via the so-called "Full Moon Ring Method". She goes into some detail about both the initiation as well as the bad experiences. Gundella gives her a jinx breaking spell and instructs her to destroy the ring if she felt t hat it was the cause of her problems. She also adds in a rebuke-sales pitch by suggesting that if she'd like to learn about real witchcraft then she ought to buy her record "Hour of the Witch."

#416 of the Gundella Letters enters the realm of Creepersville. As such, I've crossed out the name and address of the Ann Arbor author. He requested a spell and made a phone call to the good witch hoping to woo Jane Fonda when she came to Detroit sometime in the early 1970s. From all indications she did not respond to his request in writing and hopefully contacted the police because this guy sounded either delusional or heavily medicated. Detroit Free Press , November 20, 1970 Based on the dates of letters 415 and 417 this would date the letter to November 20th or so of 1970 when Fonda spoke at the University of Detroit. The appearance included musical acts the Stooges, Alice Cooper and Damnation. Detroit Free Press , November 28, 1970

I won't belabor the Gundella letter thing too much (but will leave it for my blog on her ) and will leave the subject for the time being after this post. This letter seemingly indicates that Truzzi and Gundella first corresponded in October of 1969 and likely met shortly thereafter. There's nothing groundbreaking in the letter from my standpoint since I've researched Gundella for close to 10 years but a few things of note are as follows. 1. That her sister believed that she was less-than-authentic and was too theatrical, despite not being a witch herself (many relatives were including their mother, grandmother and great grandmother, among others so the sister was aware of how a witch "should" behave.). 2. That she was partial to Italian men! She was not only a ham but also a flirt. Good to know.

They often misspelled her name! Eastern Michigan University was fortunate enough to have renown sociologist Marcello Truzzi on their staff and when he died his papers were donated to the institution. Among those were many letters to Gundella the Witch (Truzzi had brought her to local and national prominence a few years beforehand and the two became good friends), both for her Witch Watch column in the Observer newspapers and personal correspondences asking for spells, that Truzzi was using for a study. Hundreds of letters, in fact. Fortunately for me I have a co-worker who goes to school there and was willing to grab me some photos of a few of the letters. Originally, I had wanted them scanned but seeing the photos that she sent makes me realize that they are better seen as is. Since I'm likely going to EMU today to gather some of the Gundella letters so as not to overburden my "colleague" (as the librarian referred to my co-worker in an e-mail; laughably since I'm...