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Meet a real-life Scottish witch who lives in a cemetery with her black cat

WHITE witch Maureen McKissock revealed her graveyard home comes ALIVE when a burial is taking place outside.

Maureen, who claims her pad has magic powers, lives in the spooky house in the grounds of Monkton and Prestwick Cemetery, Ayrshire, alone with black cat Denzel.

And she told how there are often strange goings-on in the house — originally built for gravediggers — when funerals are held just a stone’s throw from her window.

Maureen said: “If there is a funeral on outside I seem to get a lot of activity in here.

“There are always orbs dancing around when there’s a burial and sometimes there are weird noises. This house sits on the cusp of life and death — on one side there is a main road and the other is the graveyard.

“I find that the most magical place to be. It’s a special house and sometimes I feel as though it comes to life in some way.

“If there is a lot of activity I will just say, ‘stop this I don’t want it’, and it stops.

“After a funeral once I was sitting in my living room and all of a sudden a face started to come out of the curtains.

My friend who was here at the time was terrified because he could see it too, so I had to order it to stop and it disappeared.”

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Maureen started learning how to read tarot cards and crystal balls around 30 years ago after growing up watching her mum and gran reading tea leaves.

She also uses her supernatural powers to conjure up healing spells — and insists she only ever uses magic for good.

The full-time care worker, who keeps a note of past spells and tarot readings in her very own ‘Book of Shadows’, said she often has people turn up at her door who have come to the cemetery looking to make contact with deceased loved ones.

Maureen said: “I’ve had some strange requests. I’m not a medium, so I don’t claim to be able to summon up people’s dead relatives.

“But I read the tarot the cards which can help offer guidance.

“Everyone has black and white in their lives and if there’s anything bad you can work through it. Reading the tarot should be a positive experience. I don’t like anyone going away unless they feel more positive.

“I was taught to read the cards 30 years ago and to learn there’s got to be something there inside you before you start — it’s not an intellectual thing.

“Even though you can learn the meaning of every card you have to be able to put a reading over from them. My mum and gran both read the tea leaves so it was something we had in the family.

“I used to read the crystal a lot but I got awful headaches focussing all my energy on it. I keep my tarot work inside the Book of Shadows, as well as all the wee spells I do.

“You work with the faces of the moon when doing spells. If you wanted to bring something to you, you’d work with the waxing moon and finish on the full moon. If you wanted something taken away, like an illness, then you’d work with the waning moon.”


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Maureen — whose favourite films include Practical Magic, Hocus Pocus and Harry Potter, right, — refuses to cast dark spells and lives by the Wiccan law “Harm None”. She said: “When it comes to white and black witchcraft I think it’s all about the person that’s casting them and whether they are good or bad.

“I think things rebound thrice so I would never do anything to harm anyone — just things to help. Someone once came to me saying they wanted revenge on someone.

“But to be honest if you’re so desperate to get somebody back for something you’re better putting it out your mind – it’s better for you to do that. I think the universe can conspire to get that person back eventually.

“Love spells are also not something I would want to do. People need to have free will.

“When casting a spell I don’t feel I need to do intricate rituals because I have this magical house. Everything you work with in a spell is nature-based, like crystals, herbs, wood and candles.

For example if you wanted to bring money to you, you’d use citrine as that is the main ingredient in that spell.

You have to make up words of your own for your spells. Spells are a very personal thing and they have to come from the heart.”

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Maureen added: “A friend of mine passed away with cancer a while ago and towards the end he was very frightened and didn’t want to die but the cancer had taken over his full body.

“I gave him a wee bottle with oils and oak in it to give him strength and courage, which he wore around his neck. They phoned us five times to say he was definitely going and he always came through it.

“I think maybe the bottle gave him too much strength.

“It went on for months — much longer than the hospice had thought. So one day I took it and smashed it, and the next day he passed away.

“Maybe it was just coincidence but I wondered if it had pro-longed it.”

Maureen, who hosted a dinner party at her cemetery home for Channel 4’s Come Dine With Me show, told how she has no fears about living in a graveyard.

She said: “Lots of spooky things have happened here since I moved in 31 years ago but I don’t ever feel there’s anything bad here. Once when my mum stayed over she felt something shaking her and saw an old-fashioned baby on the bed.

“And my cat won’t even go in my bedroom — the only time he went in there he started jumping up and down as though he could see something.

“I believe the iron gates on the cemetery keep out bad, malevolent spirits. I’m quite comfortable with the afterlife — I know there’s something else when you leave here.

“I’m more scared of what’s happening out there in the world than in here. I feel protected in this house.”


I made The Sun appear

MYSTICAL Maureen believes she cast a spell to get The Scottish Sun to tell her story.

The white witch said she had asked the ‘Gods’ to bring some excitement to her life because she’d been feeling a bit ‘bored’.

And the next day she was delighted when reporter Christine arrived at her door asking for a chat.

Maureen told the writer: “I believe I brought you to me. The day before you arrived I was just thinking to myself that I was bored and I asked for something to happen.

“And I couldn’t believe it when you came to my door. I am never at the house.

“So the Scottish Sun was actually part of one of my spells. It was strange the way it happened.

“I also believe magic brought me my yellow Celica car. I had always wanted a bright yellow car so I did a wee spell and the next day my friend brought in a magazine and there was my car – I thought, ‘that is The One’.

“I don’t think I could have found another one like it if I’d gone looking for it.”

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Story of the wicca

WHITE witchcraft comes from the Pagan religion of Wicca which teaches that powers should only be used for good.

Witches believe that the human mind has the power to influence change in ways that are not understood by science.

In their rituals, white witches will perform spells for healing and to help people with general life problems.

Magic is practised according to an ethical code meaning it can only be used to help people when it does not harm others.

Witches believe in the ‘Threefold Law’ – meaning negative spells will be magnified when it rebounds on them.

Wicca also teaches reincarnation, where the spirit is reborn after death to meet again with loved-ones in another place.