A Stepmom's Spiritual Warfare With Santeria: A True Story

Three minutes after I poured holy water over my dog, she wriggled out of my arms and ran.

Not walked. Not stumbled.

Ran.

She tore downstairs and began racing circles around the house. Then she attacked her food bowl, devoured everything in it, drank all of her water, and ran outside to drink from the koi pond.

I stood there staring at her.

Four days earlier, she could barely move.

I was a psychologist, but that didn’t mean I dismissed spirituality, energy, or the possibility that things existed beyond what we could explain scientifically. I’ve always been open to those possibilities. What I hadn’t experienced was anything that felt this intense or this physical.

I believed in the possibility of spells, curses, and negative energy. I just had never experienced anything firsthand that made me feel as though I were actually being affected by them.

And now I was.

What frightened me most wasn’t the idea itself. It was the fact that my body seemed to be responding to something I couldn’t see, couldn’t measure, and couldn’t explain.

As a psychologist, I knew there could be psychological and physiological explanations for what I was experiencing. But there was another part of me—the spiritual part—that wasn’t so quick to dismiss what was happening.

And then my dog got sick.

It started a few weeks before a spring break trip to New York City. At the time, I had been married to Danny for three years, and his two sons were in middle school. We had surprised the boys with the trip, and I should have been excited. Instead, I started feeling strangely disconnected from them.

It wasn’t depression. At least, it didn’t feel like depression. I only felt this way around the kids.

I started becoming uneasy in the hours before they came home from school. I wanted to isolate myself. When they arrived, I didn’t make dinner or help them with homework like I normally did. Instead, I went upstairs, closed my bedroom door, and stayed there alone.

Even their laughter drifting up from downstairs irritated me. I felt like a stranger in my own home.

This was definitely not normal. Then my body started joining in. My stomach cramped. I felt nauseous. My body ached, and I was exhausted all the time.

I told Danny what was happening. He did not give me the explanation I was expecting.

“Have you ever heard of Santería?” he asked.

I stared at him.

As if I wasn’t already annoyed enough.

Danny explained that his ex-wife, Jazmin, had practiced Santería. According to him, she had previously used spiritual rituals in an attempt to interfere with his relationship with another woman he dated after their divorce.

“I still owned our house,” he explained, “but the judge allowed Jazmin and the kids to continue living there after the divorce. One afternoon I went over there to fix the air conditioner when she wasn’t home, and I found two black candles in a pot of water with pieces of paper propped up against it.”

He said one piece of paper had his full name and date of birth. The other had the full name and date of birth of the woman he had been dating.

“And there were bones beside it. They looked like chicken bones or something.” According to Danny, he believed she was performing some kind of ritual against them.

For Danny, who had grown up around cultural traditions and beliefs that were completely foreign to me, this wasn’t nearly as strange as it sounded.

For a white, preppy girl from the suburbs, it sounded like the opening scene of an episode of Snapped—the kind where the ex-wife eventually murders her ex-husband, his new wife, and the stepmother.

I must have had a skeptical look on my face because Danny continued. “I have pictures.”

Of course he did. He also told me he had found Western Union receipts showing Jazmin sending hundreds of dollars at a time to a woman in Mexico.

Over the years, Danny had accumulated binders of documentation because Jazmin repeatedly threatened to take him back to court.

“To find out who she was sending money to, I had Cindy call the phone number on the receipts,” he told me. “The woman was a Santera.” Apparently, a Santera is a woman who practices Santería and may serve as a spiritual practitioner within that tradition.

My eyes widened. Oh, this was getting good.

According to Danny, Cindy had called the woman and told her she wanted to get back at her ex-husband and make bad things happen to him. The woman offered to help and asked her to send money through Western Union.

I burst out laughing.

“You have got to be kidding me!”

I wasn’t taking any of this particularly seriously until Danny looked at me and said: “She’s probably doing the same thing to us. Maybe that’s why you don’t feel well.”

I stopped laughing.

I gave him the kind of Whatchu talkin’ about, Willis? look that should probably be preserved in the Smithsonian. Was he serious?

I ignored him and pushed through my days. Until my dog got sick.

Tink wasn’t really my dog. She was my daughter.

She was a cuddly white-and-tan cocker spaniel who looked like a puppy even as a senior because severe neglect had stunted her growth. I adopted her when she was about a year old from a rescue organization, and we’d been inseparable ever since.

Normally, Tink was energetic and happy. Now she barely moved. She stopped eating and drinking. Two days went by, and she looked increasingly lethargic. I started giving her water with a dropper because I was afraid she would become dehydrated.

On the third day, I took her to the veterinarian.

$525 later, I was told that all of her tests and exams were normal.

Healthy.

Perfectly healthy.

I drove home with a sick dog who had apparently passed every medical test with flying colors.

And that’s when something inside me shifted.

I didn’t know what was happening to me or to Tink, but I knew I was terrified.

I knew that if I didn’t figure it out, I was going to lose my baby girl.

So I was willing to try anything.

Yes.

Anything.

Danny started making phone calls to find us a Santero or Santera.

“I think we all need a cleansing,” he said, looking almost relieved that I had finally stopped laughing at him.

“Cleansing? The only cleansing I’ve ever heard of is a colonic or a juice cleanse.”

Danny looked at me.

“This is a little different.”

He grinned and shook his head, acknowledging yet another cultural difference between us.

I went to work that day mostly to keep myself from wearing a path into our wood floor from pacing.

My assistant could tell something was wrong.

“If I told you, you’d have me committed,” I said.

“Try me.”

So I told her.

I couldn’t even look her in the eyes. I was embarrassed by the words coming out of my mouth.

When I finished, she stared at me.

“You’re not crazy,” she said. “My stepdad is a Santero. I’ve had a cleansing before, and it really works. I can call him and see if he can meet with you tonight.”

Of all the people I could have told, I had somehow chosen the one person who could actually help me.

Maybe these were my guardian angels at work.

Her stepfather came to our house that night.

I was expecting something out of a horror movie.

Instead, a completely ordinary middle-aged Mexican man showed up.

I’m not sure what I expected—a creepy little old man with one glass eye and a long, whiskery white beard that he would stroke ever so gently.

And a scepter. You can’t have a wizard without a scepter. Wizard, Santero…at that point, I didn’t know the difference.

My husband and I sat around the dining room table, hanging on his every word. His Spanish was difficult for me to understand, so there was some Spanglish and some charades involved. Adding to the atmosphere, the lights in our dining room were dim because my frugal husband had bought energy-efficient bulbs that took approximately three years to reach full brightness.

The Santero began with a tarot card reading.

I wasn’t unfamiliar with tarot. I’d had tarot readings and psychic readings before, but only for entertainment. This felt different. He told us there was “darkness around us” and that a woman was spending a great deal of time and energy wishing bad things for us. My mouth fell open. The hairs on my arms stood up, sending a chill through my body.

He said the woman didn’t like my relationship with my stepchildren and wanted to “separate” me from them. That got my attention. Separation was exactly what had been happening—physically and emotionally. He also said the woman wanted to interfere with our marriage. Well, duh. Jazmin had been causing problems since Danny and I first started dating. Tell me something I don’t already know.

Then he asked about my dog.

Tink was curled up in my lap, barely moving and completely unlike herself. The Santero explained that dogs can be especially sensitive to things people may not notice. He believed Tink was trying to protect me by taking on the negativity surrounding me, but didn’t know how to release it.

A surge of adrenaline shot through me.

I turned toward Danny with my eyes practically bulging out of my head. He had brought up Tink without us telling him about her. I fell in love with that dog all over again. And then I felt guilty. If she was somehow taking on whatever was happening to me, was I responsible for making her sick?

The Santero told us that, according to what he believed he was perceiving, there was another practitioner in Mexico involved and that we needed a cleansing and protection ritual.

The cost?

$1,500.

There it was.

The psychologist in me finally screamed loud enough to be heard.

Have you seriously lost your mind?

I knew how vulnerability worked.

I knew how fear worked.

I knew how easily people could become suggestible when they were desperate.

And I knew he had just watched us tell him enough information to give him plenty to work with.

He has you exactly where he wants you.

But then there was Tink.

My dog was sick.

I was sick.

And I was terrified.

I wrote the check.

Yes, somewhere in a land far, far away, there was once this magical piece of paper called a check—a mysterious artifact that apparently substituted for actual money.

After the tearing sound of the check separating from the others and the smell of money burning, I followed him around our house as he burned sage, chanted in Spanish, and sprinkled holy water into the corners. He left me with a gallon milk jug filled with holy water. I was instructed to bathe Tink and then pour the holy water over her.

Crickets.

That’s it?

Holy water?

What was he, Jim Bakker?

I was just waiting for him to smack me on the forehead and yell, “You’re healed!”

If this didn’t work, I was going to end up like his even crazier wife, Tammy Faye, with thick black mascara running down my cheeks.

But I had nothing to lose.

So I did what I was told.

I bathed Tink.

I poured the holy water over her.

Then I waited.

Three minutes later, Tink wriggled out of my arms.

Then she ran.

Not walked.

Ran.

She tore downstairs and began racing circles around the house.

Then she devoured her entire bowl of food, drank all of her water, ran outside, and drank even more from the koi pond.

I stood there staring at her.

I had no explanation.

If I hadn’t witnessed it myself, I wouldn’t have believed it.

Something had changed.

And for the first time, I understood why people believe in miracles.

Our cleansing was scheduled for the night of a full moon. For the week leading up to it, we were instructed to wear our underwear inside out and pin a cross to the inside of our clothing so it remained hidden. The Santero returned to our house carrying a bag full of supplies like a Santero Santa.

He had Danny and me write our intentions and wishes on small pieces of white paper. There wasn’t nearly enough room for everything I wanted to write.

We each added a drop of our blood and sealed the paper inside a small red pouch. This was now my protection pouch. I was instructed to keep it close to me at all times.

Next, we went into the bathroom. Danny and I stood in the bathtub wearing only white underwear, facing each other with our arms around one another’s waists and our foreheads touching.

Nearly naked.

In a bathtub.

With a strange man standing there.

The Santero draped a rosary over us and began pouring holy water over our heads. The water was freezing. I couldn’t believe I was actually doing this.

Then I remembered Tink.

I had witnessed something I couldn’t explain.

And as a psychologist, I also knew about the placebo effect. I knew that when people genuinely believe something will work, belief itself can create very real physical changes. So I pushed the cynicism aside.

I opened my mind.

And I let myself believe.

The Santero chanted in Spanish while gently touching his hand to our heads and different parts of our bodies. The holy water continued pouring over us. Then something strange happened. My body felt hot from the inside even though I was freezing on the outside.

I became dizzy.

Then nauseous.

I whispered to Danny, “I think I’m going to throw up.”

Luckily, I made it to the toilet.

I projectile vomited in a way I’d previously only witnessed in movies like The Exorcist.

The Santero smiled.

He believed the vomiting was one way the body released what needed to be released.

I climbed back into the tub.

The cleansing continued.

And gradually, I felt like I could breathe again.

I felt lighter.

Energized.

Alive.

It was a feeling I hadn’t experienced in months.

The night ended outside beneath the full moon.

It was midnight.

I was wearing a white tank top and white underwear worn inside out, still dripping with holy water.

I held a cross in one hand while the Santero knelt in the rose bed, chanting rhythmically in Spanish.

He dug three holes in a triangular formation.

Into them went three plants: rosemary, sage, and spearmint—herbs he believed could absorb negativity and offer protection.

Then he had us make a wish on three shiny silver dimes that he placed beneath the plants.

The holes were filled with dirt he had brought from a graveyard in Mexico.

At this point, I should probably mention that I was raised Jewish.

The Santero would lower his voice to a whisper as he rocked forward and bowed his head toward the ground, holding each tiny dime in both hands as though it were a rare and precious stone. As he rocked backward, his voice grew louder. He kissed the dime, raised it toward the sky as an offering, and gently placed it into the dirt. He repeated the ritual with each plant.

Behind me, I could hear Danny hammering crosses over the doorways throughout our house. I stood there in the darkness, shivering from the cool night air against my wet skin, gripping the cross tightly against my chest. I looked up at the stars.

And I believed.

Not because I suddenly understood Santería.

Not because I had stopped being a psychologist.

And not because I could prove what had happened.

I believed because, at that moment, believing was the only thing I had left.

Life got better after that. We never saw the Santero again. Tink was healthy. I was healthy. And somehow, I became close to the kids again.

Did the cleansing work?

Was Tink somehow responding to the energy around me?

Was I experiencing a psychological reaction to an extraordinarily stressful situation?

Did the power of suggestion change something in my body?

Did the holy water have anything to do with Tink’s recovery?

As a psychologist, I can come up with plenty of explanations. As the woman who watched a dog who hadn’t moved in four days suddenly bolt from my arms and run around the house, I have a few other explanations too. I never became a practitioner of Santería. I still question what happened that night, and I probably always will.

But I came away with something I didn’t have before: respect for a spiritual tradition I had once dismissed without knowing anything about it. I also learned something about myself. Being skeptical and being open-minded aren’t opposites. Sometimes being open-minded means admitting you don’t have all the answers.

I still have the Santero’s phone number.

Just in case.