Modern Witchcraft & Mysticism
In a city of noise and neon, one witch keeps the ancient ways alive through Wi-Fi and whispers.
Most people didn’t know that apartment 4C in the crumbling red-brick building on Juniper Street was enchanted. The landlord thought the old lady who lived there just liked incense. Amazon delivery drivers complained about how the air always smelled like burning lavender and salt. But if you stepped inside—and you were meant to—you’d feel the spell.
Not a thunder-and-lightning kind of spell.
More like a blanket on a cold day. Or a grandmother’s humming from another room.
Cora lived alone, and had since 1997. That was the year her husband disappeared into the sea with more questions than answers. Some say grief ages you. Cora looked exactly the same as the day he left, down to the streak of silver in her braid and the chipped black nail polish she never bothered to remove.
She ran a quiet business from her living room. Most clients found her through Reddit threads or obscure forums. “Cyberhex,” they called her online. All lowercase. No emojis. No nonsense.
She didn't advertise spells. She corrected disruptions. If your ex wouldn’t stop haunting your dreams, or you couldn't log in to your account no matter how many times you reset your password—Cora could help.
She called herself a tech witch.
Most people laughed, until they saw what she could do.
That Tuesday, a girl named Rena knocked on her door at 11:11 p.m. That time wasn’t an accident. Cora only saw new clients when the numbers aligned.
“Something’s wrong with my phone,” Rena said, fidgeting. “It... watches me.”
Cora looked up from her tea and motioned for the girl to sit. Her parlor was covered in relics: modem routers twisted into dreamcatchers, USB sticks hanging from vines, a dead typewriter blooming with moss.
"Tell me what you mean by watching," she said gently.
Rena hesitated. “I deleted all the photos of my ex. Every one. Even the ones from our trip to Paris. But last week, I got a memory notification from Google Photos. It was a photo I never took.”
Cora blinked slowly.
“He was standing by the Seine, just like before. Only this time... he was staring straight at me. And behind him... there was a shadow.”
She pulled out her phone and unlocked it. But when she tried to show the picture—it was gone.
“Every night, a new one shows up. And disappears by morning.”
Cora poured her another cup of tea, the steam forming symbols only she could read. She tapped a small obsidian stone on the side of the mug three times. The air shimmered.
“Okay,” she said. “Let’s find what’s buried.”
The spell wasn’t flashy. Cora didn't chant in Latin or draw pentagrams. Instead, she pulled out a cracked MacBook from 2010. Rena looked confused.
“We trace the magic through the digital veil,” Cora explained. “Think of memory not as something in your head, but something you rent space for on a server.”
She connected Rena’s phone via an old lightning cable. The lights in the apartment flickered.
“You’ve been hexed digitally,” Cora murmured. “Someone planted a mnemonic loop in your metadata.”
“Is that... dangerous?”
“It’s exhausting,” she replied. “They’re stealing your grief to fuel something.”
Rena shivered. “Why?”
“Because grief is power. Especially grief wrapped in unresolved love.”
She typed rapidly, whispering under her breath. The room filled with static—radio waves, fragments of forgotten voice memos, pixelated laughter. Cora’s fingers danced over the keys like she was conducting a séance.
Then she found it: a hidden folder named alcyon_watcher
Inside: photos of Rena. All from her phone. Except she hadn’t taken any of them.
And every image had the same man—her ex—just behind her shoulder.
“It’s not him,” Cora said. “It’s something wearing his face.”
Rena began to cry. “He died last year. I never told anyone.”
Cora reached out, her hand warm and steady. “You did. But not with words. With longing. That’s all spirits need.”
The tea in their cups started to boil—unlit, untouched. A signal.
“He’s tethered to your digital body. You clicked something, opened something—probably a text you shouldn’t have.”
Rena nodded. “I opened a message that said miss you always. I thought... maybe it was from him.”
Cora nodded solemnly. “It was from what was left of him. But it isn’t him anymore.”
She began to chant, low and rhythmic. Around them, the cords hummed. The laptop screen glitched, then went black. The spell was burning the thread.
“Say goodbye,” Cora whispered.
Rena stood, eyes full of tears. “Goodbye.”
The lights blew out.
When Rena opened her eyes, the apartment was quiet. The laptop was back to its home screen. Her phone buzzed once—then went silent.
No more photos.
No more shadows.
“Will he be okay?” she asked.
Cora looked toward the window, where the lavender smoke curled into the night.
“Grief never dies,” she said. “But it can rest.”
The next day, Rena changed her number. Got a new phone. Blocked the old memories the way you block a scammer. But in the back of her mind, she knew she owed her peace to a woman with forgotten magic, wrapped in Wi-Fi and tea leaves.
And somewhere, in a dim apartment above Juniper Street, a tech witch took another client.
Because the dead may be silent—
—but their code still runs.
About the Creator
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