HOCUS POCUS

Socialite Sally Quinn Says She Hexed Three People Who Died, But Won’t Hex Donald Trump

She has been asked to pull a Lana Del Rey, but refuses.

Sep. 15, 2017

Tina Brown's 7th Annual Women In The World Summit - Day 2

Jemal Countess

One could say, in a metaphorical sort of way, Sally Quinn has been a bewitching presence on the Washington D.C. social scene for decades, but as it turns out Quinn believes she is quite literally a bewitching presence who may have sent three people to the grave with her own form of witchcraft when she was in her late ’20s and early ’30s. Since opening up about her alleged powers, friends have asked Quinn to pull a Lana Del Rey and put a hex on President Donald Trump. Yet, the socialite and former newspaper columnist refuses after swearing off her dark arts long ago.

The revelation came in an interview with USA Today meant to promote her new spiritual memoir Finding Magic.

“When I was in my late 20s and early 30s, there were three people who hurt me in some way, or (hurt) somebody I loved, and so I decided to put a hex on them,” she told the paper. “I had never done it before. What I wanted to have happen was for them to feel what I had felt. I didn’t mean for them to die.”

Quinn, by the way, claims that all the women in her family are psychic, and that they learned voodoo-type rituals from their staff while summering in prototypical Southern Gothic town Savannah, Georgia.

She refused to divulge her full hexing process, but said, “I light candles and music and fire and notes and that kind of thing. I just sort of made it up. ”

So what happened to those she put hexes on?

“One person died right away, another person got fired immediately and then died, and then the other one died right away.”

Well, then!

Quinn said it was her brother who convinced her to stop. Though, lest you think Quinn is totally off to the moon, she did add, “intellectually I don’t believe in it, there’s something emotionally and psychologically that makes me worry maybe I did have some responsibility for it.”

Ah, yes, intellectually, of course.

Despite repeated pleas from friends, though, Quinn will not hex Trump, she begged: “I can’t tell you how many friends have asked me to put a hex on Donald Trump, and I won’t do it. I just said no. I don’t do that anymore.”

Witchcraft happens to be a recurring theme of the resistance in Trump’s America. Singer Lana Del Rey became the celebrity face of a movement to use witchcraft to curse Donald Trump, and later confirmed, “Yeah, I did it. Why not?”

For those who may not be familiar with Quinn, well she was once a glamorous newspaper columnist (to our younger readers: yes, we’re aware the term “glamorous newspaper columnist” may be as confusing and mythical as the concept of witchcraft, but there was once a world where such a thing was possible). She reported on society and the D.C. powers that be for the Washington Post‘s Styles section, and, most famously, ended up marrying the Post‘s legendary executive editor Ben Bradlee; the two became one of the capital’s most elegant hosts, though, again, in Washington there’s very little competition. Quinn’s always been known for a bit of quirk, and the family famously bought Grey Gardens from “Little Edie” Beale as a summer home (though, Quinn currently has it on the market).

She still continues to blog about religious topics, and in Finding Magic characterizes herself as a Christian who has dabbled in the occult.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Quinn is now being characterized on certain right wing websites as an “admitted occultist,” “wicked person,” and “practitioner of the dark arts” without a hint of irony. Intellectually, apparently some people do believe it.

Fall 2016, the Season of the Witch