We're thrilled to have you as one of our featured creators during #31DaysofHaunting on Haunted Trails! With a title like Salt & Mirrors & Cats, we can't help but be intrigued. So, tell us, what exactly is Salt & Mirrors & Cats?
Joana: Hi Samantha, thank you so much for this opportunity to be featured on your project! Salt & Mirrors & Cats is a new literary zine with stories, poems and art about superstitions. We want to publish fiction, non-fiction and artworks related to the magical world of superstitions, from new or established writers and artists from all across the world. Joining me on the core team is Signe Maene, writer and audio dramatist extraordinaire, and our folk horror designer Hayley, also known as Prairie Bones. We also have a podcast, with audio dramas and interviews with some of the writers invited to participate in our zine, which is being produced by the multi-talented Kerria Seabrooke from #BookChatWeekly — set up after Chris Gregory from the Alternative Stories and Fake Realities podcast inspired us to do one as well! The first issue of our zine will be published very, very soon. We really hope you’ll like it!
What inspired you to create the magazine and how did you come up with such a charming title?
Joana: Salt & Mirrors & Cats was a sister project that I came up with to complement my work with Superstition Sam. I’ve been trying to explore the potential of superstition in relation to mental wellbeing, and personal family ritual as a sense of comfort and belonging. When you ask people if they believe in superstition, the reply is generally ‘no’. My family for instance, often considered me ‘weird’ for liking folklore, but they were the ones who were always telling me to not open umbrellas indoors or walk barefoot in the house. These actions and sayings had often been passed down by their own parents, and were done to keep safe and not attract bad luck. In other words, if you were to take a deeper look, you’d probably find that many people perform daily rituals like carrying a favourite pen. We also wish each other good luck before important events, like driving tests or sports matches. This can become second nature to us, and we don’t even consider these actions as superstition most of the time. Take birthdays, for instance. In essence, they’re a yearly ritual of gathering friends and family to wish us another year of life and health. They’re not strictly necessary though, and some cultures don’t even celebrate ‘birth’ days. That’s what made me ponder on some of the reasons why we might do things like this: to seek happiness, community, or safety even? Not discounting that science has shown us that superstition can be termed ‘irrational’, but what if it could actually work as a sort of ‘cognitive-behavioural therapy’ to help us seek a deeper meaning in life? That was the starting point with Superstition Sam, which I first created during lockdown in 2020, because reading about folklore and superstitions really helped with my mental health. But as Twitter began to collapse in on itself, I felt like the project had sort of lost track of its ethos, so I stopped hosting it as a hashtag and decided to do something more tangible and authentic like a publication, since my professional background is in writing and design. That’s when I woke up in the middle of the night with a name in my head for a zine: Salt & Mirrors & Cats, three little words with three of the most potentially recognisable superstitions out there. I am so happy to hear that you like it!
What can we expect from your inaugural issue?
Signe: We can’t reveal too much yet but our inaugural issue features stories and poems that are whimsical while others show the darker side of superstitions. Some of them will make you laugh while others will enchant the reader. They’re very diverse, but the one thing they all have in common is that they approach the theme of superstition in a refreshing and original way. We also have very well-researched and engaging essays, as well as artwork that speaks to the superstitious souls of artists from around the world.
So many horror stories are rooted in superstition. Is there any particular superstition that scares you or gives you the chills?
Signe: There aren’t many superstitions that scare me personally, but I like to imagine I’m a witch and in that regard a superstition that terrifies me is one from Flanders that says witches will be unable to leave a church if you place a broom upside down against the church door. I do often enter churches to stare in amazement at the sculptures but would not like to be locked up in one. Another similar superstition says that if a broom is placed underneath the chair of a witch, the witch will be unable to move. In Flemish folktales, this often happens to recognise witches and know who should be avoided, but I have and sometimes still suffer from sleep paralysis and being unable to move or speak even for a few seconds is horrifying beyond words. I can only imagine what that must be like when you’re at the mercy of someone such as a witch hunter who views you as evil and wicked, a detestable abomination that needs to be removed from society!
I grew up in the Caribbean where superstitions and folklore was a significant part of my childhood. I have a deep connection to it still and I'm always curious about its place in other cultures. Has superstition had an influence in your own life and upbringing?
Joana: Definitely! I briefly mentioned it in my previous answer, but superstition was a huge part in my upbringing in Portugal. One of my earliest memories, for instance, is being in my grandparents’ house and opening an umbrella indoors and getting scolded by my nan. I especially loved that my granddad used to carry acorns in his pockets. I quickly developed an interest in folklore as a result, and I used to incorporate it into my comic book stories, but it was around 2020 when it really became a huge part of my life. I had just been diagnosed as neurodivergent, and when you get news like that, you go through a period of grief because you don’t know who you really are, since you’ve had to create so many masks throughout your life to fit into the ‘normal’ world. To overcome that period, I started looking into my earliest memories, many of them with my grandparents, since my grandad had always accepted me as I was, as I think he might have been neurodivergent as well. And there were so many proverbs and traditions that I still use today that came from him or my nan and other elderly people in my family. They gave me the sense of belonging and roots that I needed, at a time when I had no sense of where I belonged, especially as I don’t live in Portugal at the moment. It also helped me to realise that the meaning of life might be community and acceptance of each other, so I hope that feeling really comes across in our zine.
We're Halloween obsessed here on 31DaysOfHaunting so our final question to you is, what's your ideal way to spend All Hallow's Eve and have you got any special Halloween traditions you do each year?
Signe: I wish Belgium could be just as Halloween obsessed as 31DaysOfHaunting is! Halloween isn’t really celebrated here in the same way as it is in other countries. It’s one of those days we all know but pay little attention to, except for shops wanting to make a profit by selling faux spiders while there are most likely real ones at home! As a child I did dress up as a witch once and roamed the streets in search of doors that looked friendly and a wee bit frightening in the hopes of getting some candy but as the only witch in the neighbourhood, I had little luck. As a consequence, I don’t have any special Halloween traditions and usually spend the evening reading, but I’m considering wearing my clothes inside out and walking backwards at midnight this year in the hopes a fellow witch will show up and perhaps teach me a spell or two while we brew a cup of tea.
Thank you for letting us go behind the scenes at Salt & Mirrors & Cats and sharing your experiences with us. Congratulations on the launch of the magazine and we look forward to future issues!
Readers, follow the team via the following links for the release of the first issue and all the latest news on future projects!
OfficialWebsite: https://superstitionsam.com/salt-mirrors-cats/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/saltmirrorscats/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/saltmirrorscats
Bluesky: @saltmirrorscats.bsky.social
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