News
Ex-witch shares how she left the occult for Christ; why Halloween is “Satan’s playground”
Outspoken Christian and ex-witch Jenny Weaver said before she accepted Jesus as her Lord and Savior, she spent nine years of her life practicing witchcraft, abusing drugs and obeying the whispering voices she believes were demons “tormenting” her with the command: “Go cut yourself, cut yourself, cut yourself.”
In an interview with The Christian Post on Friday, Weaver, 39, explained why she firmly believes that Halloween is “Satan’s playground.” Weaver describes the secular holiday as such because it’s a day when witches and warlocks devote more time to practicing witchcraft to access the demonic realm, she added.
As someone who lived as a witch for nearly a decade, Weaver said she knows that during Halloween witches and warlocks believe that the veil that separates the demonic realm from the earthly realm is thinner than usual, making the ability for those practicing witchcraft to have access to more of the demonic realm.
Weaver said Halloween originated from the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain, which was recorded in ninth century books. At the festivals, which would take place at dusk on Oct. 31, Weaver said the Celts would light bonfires, wear costumes and spend the evening summoning spirits of the dead.
The Celts who practiced this would call on the spirits of the dead to come to them and roam throughout the Earth, according to Weaver. The costumes, she said, were worn by the Celts because they believed disguises would keep the “evil” spirits from recognizing them.
“Halloween is not just about candy and fun costumes, and you can’t separate the origins of Halloween from Halloween,” Weaver told CP. “You can’t separate a holiday that was created for witchcraft … in the same way that you can’t take a Ouija board and say you will use it to speak to the Lord. People need to make a conscious decision to serve the Lord, because you can’t serve demons and God.”
For Weaver, her past curiosity about the demonic realm began during her early teenage years. Although she was raised in a Christian household, she said her parents and other family members were abusive toward her.
Even though Weaver had a few friends at school, she said she was often bullied by a group of female students because she had started to develop vitiligo — a condition the causes white patches on the skin due to a loss of pigmentation.
As a result, Weaver felt as though she was an outcast at home and at school, leading to severe depression and struggles with self-worth.
When she was 13, she visited a friend’s house where she became captivated and intrigued by the 1996 movie “The Craft,” which is about four high school witches who get revenge on their bullies.
Following her exposure to the movie, Weaver said she started to read and study about how she, too, could become a witch.
In a 2019 interview with televangelist Sid Roth, the host of “It’s Supernatural,” Weaver detailed why she began looking into how to become a witch.
“I was looking for control in situations, in a life where I felt like I had no control at all,” Weaver told Roth in the interview posted on YouTube. “And to me, it looked like these four witches who went to high school were making these bullies pay for picking on them [and] they were getting people to like them and getting all the things that they wanted. So I looked at that, and I said, ‘I want that too.’”
Weaver said her past journey into the occult started “innocently.” She’d burn sage and use healing crystals in an attempt to find happiness within herself and to access power from the demonic spiritual realm.
However, before she knew it, the trajectory of her life took a “spooky” and “haunted” turn as she began to delve into witch spells and other occult practices.
Shortly after, Weaver moved into a new home where she lived with a female roommate who was a practicing witch and descended from a long line of witches.
Due to their heavy involvement in occult practices, the two women began to experience hauntings in their home.
On one occasion, Weaver said she and her roommate were in separate rooms when suddenly, they both began to feel an evil presence in the house. They each walked out of their bedroom and entered the hallway where they asked each other what was going on.
“The hallway light turned off and we both fell to the floor and glass went flying everywhere,” Weaver told CP. “On other occasions, me and my roommate would continuously hear scratching and tapping on the walls when we would lay down to sleep and we witnessed things moving on their own.”
Weaver and her roommate felt that there was evil on their property. In an effort to alleviate what they were experiencing, they planted a garden of marigolds which Weaver said is a flower that is believed to ward off evil from homes.
“We were OK for one day and then the next day, when we went to look at the marigolds, we saw that all of them had dried up and were dead,” Weaver recounted.
As a result of practicing witchcraft, Weaver also began experimenting with drugs and she became addicted to meth and heroin.
“Witchcraft is related to drug or substance abuse because people who are into witchcraft often take substances so they can be more open to the spiritual realm, and that often leads to abusing drugs and alcohol,” Weaver added.
“Your guard goes down and you’re able to be more open to the spiritual realm when you’re under the influence of alcohol or drugs. And in these cases, drugs and alcohol often become idolatry, and are viewed as gods and goddesses,” Weaver continued.
At this time, she also began battling a self-harming addiction. She would often cut herself on a daily basis because she said demons that she believes were summoned through her witchcraft practices would tell her to do so.
In her interview with Roth, she said at one point when she counted the cuts on her wrist, there were 56 on one arm, making her arm look as though it had “gone through a shredder.”
Because of the “haunted house” experiences, Weaver also began to fear that one day demons would kill her in her sleep. As a result, she stopped practicing witchcraft.
Weaver said she continued to abuse drugs, cut herself daily, and eventually became homeless while pregnant and committed crimes which led to her being incarcerated.
“I was tired of running and being hungry and going from place to place, from car to car and from hotel to hotel, not showering,” She told CP. “I would get clean at a church somewhere, and then I was back at it, it was a back-and-forth time, and I was starting to become tired of running.”
One evening, Weaver said she went to a hotel room and felt as though she had hit rock bottom. She then cried out to God, asking him to help her.
A few days later, she had been using drugs in the hotel when she suddenly heard a loud knock at the door. It was the police. She was arrested. On the way to jail, Weaver said she was surprised because a female police officer began to minister to her about Jesus Christ.
“I didn’t even know who this lady was, and she just said, ‘you have a purpose. God’s got a good plan for your life,’” Weaver recounted in her interview with Roth. “I don’t remember her name or anything. But God used her to minister to me and I never went back from that point on.”
After that encounter with the officer, Weaver said she never went back to the drugs and she turned her life over to Jesus Christ.
Now in her late 30s, Weaver openly shares her testimony of finding Christ after she stopped engaging in occult practices and how Jesus delivered her from cutting and drug addictions. She shares these accounts on her Facebook page and website, Jenny Weaver Worships.
In an Oct. 15 Facebook live video, Weaver shared the “dark truth” about Halloween and how it relates to the demonic realm. In the video, she shared the Bible verse Ephesians 5:11, which commands Christians, “Have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness but rather expose them.”
“I have come to expose darkness. I have not come to compromise. I came to expose the devil,” Weaver proclaimed at the beginning of her video.
“On Oct. 31, witches everywhere will be on high alert, all awake, all practicing the craft, casting spells,” Weaver told her Facebook audience. “When you look beyond God, and go to another source, you open yourself up to the demonic realm. When we Christians participate in something like Halloween, it doesn’t matter your intentions, it doesn’t matter if you think it is easy, breezy, no big deal, the fact of the matter remains that it’s a holiday that has always been about celebrating the dead and the demonic realm.”
For those who have already engaged in practicing Halloween or witchcraft, Weaver said “there is always hope and forgiveness found in Jesus.”
“No matter how we were raised, what we are used to in our culture, what society has deemed normal in culture, we are made new in Christ and given a new life and culture in Him,” she said. “We need to let those old traditions go and ask for God to lead us. Lean carefully on the side of the Lord, and not on the side of culture.”