I know I'm getting old, because any time I watch a TikTok video about witchcraft, I hear myself unironically grumble, "Back in my day…"

For instance, whenever a WitchToker swears up and down that the very first thing a new witch must learn is protection magic, I immediately think, "Back in my day, we started with grounding and centering." But as curmudgeonly as I can be, I will admit that having a few basic protective wards in place—or knowing how to create protections on the fly—is never a bad idea.

As the following (honestly not that) harrowing tale of what the kids call "baneful magic" will illustrate. [Ed. Note: I'm not going to get into the intricacies of baneful magic here, although I do share some thoughts on the subject in my new book, The Chaos Apple: Magic and Discordianism for the Postmodern Witch.] My best friend Sarah and I were kicked back in my living room and enjoying the Irish folk horror film Unwelcome on Shudder, when my phone started blowing up like a tiny, digital firebell. Annoyed by the interruption, I paused the movie and opened a couple of social media apps to see what the brouhaha was, only to discover that a disconcerting number of young witches were quite disgruntled with me.

It took a few seconds to piece the drama together, but from what I could tell, a popular witchcraft content creator had posted a video regarding a feud they'd been having with an anonymous antagonist. They didn't name names, but they did describe him as having crooked teeth and pushing 30.

As you can imagine, their followers were in a slam-dance tizzy attempting to suss out the villain's identity. And for reasons that I would like to say were murky (but clearly had to do with the teeth), one of them decided that it was probably me. And they were actively telling everyone that it was probably me, accidentally tagging me in their comments as they did so. Every additional comment in the thread contributed to the growing avalanche of tags and notifications.

Let me just state for the record that it absolutely was not me. I wasn't worried, though, and I figured the truth would prevail once everyone simmered down. Sarah, on the other hand, was skeptical.

"Don't you think you should step in and set things straight?" Sarah asked.

"Are you kidding?" I asked in response. "They think I'm in my thirties. It's like I'm splashing around in the Fountain of Youth right now." I tossed my phone aside, grabbed a gold-colored, apple-shaped fidget spinner off my coffee table, and gave it an absentminded flick. "Besides, what are they going to do? Hex me about it?"

And as soon as I made that pronouncement—I swear I'm not making this up, y'all—the fidget spinner snapped in half.

I am not a big believer in psychic attack. I'm not saying it can't or doesn't happen, but I also don't think it happens anywhere near as often as the online, armchair occultists aver it does. I mean, hey, even the classic tome Psychic Self-Defence by Dion Fortune is like, [in a posh British accent] "Let us begin. Chapter 1: You Are Not Under Psychic Attack."

But I also couldn't shake the feeling that the broken doodad in my hand had taken a hit meant for me. I did not for a minute think that any of the whippersnappers currently grousing about me had intentionally, or even knowingly, tried to hex me, but, as Arthur Eddington once opined, "If an army of monkeys were strumming on typewriters they might write all the books in the British Museum."

"Be right back," I said. "I'm going to go make a witch bottle."

"And I am not going to stop you," Sarah replied.

Historically, a witch bottle is a protective charm that is half decoy, half landmine. It contains sharp things, like rusty nails and broken glass, but it also holds urine and a little bit of hair. And the idea of a witch bottle has been around for a long, long time. In England, when very old houses are being renovated, witch bottles are often found bricked inside the chimneys. Because there was a belief that witches could use chimneys to enter a house ("Back in my day…") and spread malediction among the residents. As such, the witch bottles were stored in the chimneys to prevent witches from doing that.

So here's where the urine and hair come into play. Let's say it's 17th-century England, and I'm pretty sure the village witch has it out for me and is going to try to curse me. If they did throw a curse, the curse would travel down my chimney, and it would encounter the witch bottle before reaching me. However, the witch bottle is going to have my scent, right? It's full of my hair and urine. So that's what the curse is going to hit. And when it does, it's going to snag on all of those sharp, pointy, stabby things under the urine, and all of that is going to trap the curse and deflate it.

In the present, a witch bottle was the perfect prophylactic against WitchTok ire. There was only one problem.

I was fresh out of bottles.

But I did have a background in Chaos Magic, which gave me a cunning idea or two.

At its core, Chaos Magic is an experimental, results-driven approach to magical practice. Chaos practitioners will try new things to see if they work, then try them again to see if they get consistent outcomes. And they are also adept at working within limitations—like being the only witch in the civilized world without so much as a half-empty mason jar in their possession.

Digging through my supply closet, I found some old thumbtacks and sewing needles, along with a hatpin and a dead wasp that I was apparently saving for a special occasion. Ingredients dutifully collected, I headed to the kitchen for a plastic food storage bag, into which I slid the pieces of the fidget spinner, my working theory being that if it really had been shattered by malicious intent, it could be used to attract more of the same.

I added my sharp objects, then poured in some homemade spicy vinegar before stepping into the lavatory to top it all off with the appropriate personal concerns. Sealing the bag, I marched out of my apartment and across the parking lot to the nearest dumpster, muttering an improvisational chant and imagining myself as the Pied Piper of Hamelin, leading malevolent rats away from the village. And once I reached my destination, I hauled back and hurled the bag into the dumpster as hard as I could.

The bag burst, its contents splattering wetly across the dumpster's fetid interior. As other residents tossed in their own garbage, any broken glass or sharp corners would contribute to the protection and capture anything negative thrown at anyone living nearby.

In lieu of a witch bottle, I made a witch dumpster. Just as effective, but with a much more voluminous diameter of defense.

"Okay, I have to say, that was pretty epic," Sarah said, once I was back inside and washing my hands with cinnamon-and-basil soap. "Everything you just did was like a scene out of a movie. Like, we're watching folk horror, but also, you are the folk horror."

It really kind of was, and I guess I kind of am. And I am also pleased to report that the content creator eventually jumped in to exonerate me, and I've heard nary a poor word from any of their followers since.

While I won't have a say in the casting, we are of roughly the same generation, so I would very much like Nicholas Cage to shave his head and play me in the inevitable Shudder original.