Ex-teen witch recounts dabbling in occult, suicidal struggles before coming to Christ
'I traded a whole lot of nothing for a whole lot of God'
A former self-described “teenage witch” who struggled with suicidal thoughts says her life was transformed after she surrendered to Jesus Christ.
Sarah Anne Sumpolec was 15 years old when she began dabbling in witchcraft: browsing New Age bookstores, conducting seances and using Tarot cards.
In an appearance on “The Playing With Fire Podcast,” Sumpolec said after moving frequently as a child, her father found a house in Delaware that previously belonged to the state’s former governor.
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“My dad, from the beginning of introducing us to that house … he was insinuating that this was a special house,” she told podcast host Billy Hallowell. “He hinted at it all along the way, and then when we moved there, he was like, ‘You know this house is haunted,’ and, of course, he tells me this in excitement.”
For Sumpolec, the move marked a turning point in her relationship with her father and her own personal journey.
Her dad gave her a “very old book” on witchcraft, which Sumpolec says “was the first time he really ever introduced the supernatural or his interest in the supernatural.”
Upon devouring the book’s contents, Sumpolec says she finally found common ground with her father and soon learned more about him — and his spiritual proclivities.
She recalled at one point her father telling her witchcraft is “who we are as a family.”
“I really felt like I had … opened up this key of something that I was meant to do, and identity is huge, especially when you’re a teenager,” she said. “I had an entire altar set up in my bedroom.”
Practicing what she called “white magic,” Sumpolec would cast spells as a “good witch” and worship “gods and goddesses” at a makeshift altar she built in her bedroom.
Then, she says, things began to take a more sinister turn.
“This is the biggest thing that I wish I could communicate on a grander scale to, especially teenagers … that the enemy is all about seduction,” Sumpolec said. “He doesn’t come in with this big evil intention … it’s a slow luring in, and it’s like, ‘Oh, look at this power.'”
Sumpolec says she was suddenly faced with the dark side of the supernatural realm.
“[There were] all these spirits that I thought I was messing with that I thought were good and that were guiding me,” she said.
In a blog post for CBN titled “Confessions of a Teenage Witch,” Sumpolec warned that while there is a “prince of the power of the air,” that’s not the end of the story.
“Since the power source that witchcraft taps into comes from Satan, a lot of stuff actually happens. I don’t even like to think about the things I saw,” she wrote. “Yet, just because “stuff happens” doesn’t mean that it’s truth. Satan does have some limited power on Earth, so that’s why psychics are sometimes right and why witchcraft seems to “work.” Don’t mistake Satan’s power for God’s. They can’t even compare!”
Around the same time, Sumpolec said her father began using drugs and weakened the “bond” the two had shared.
It all came to a head when Sumpolec says her dad aimed his shotgun at her.
“It was the most terrible moment of my life,” she said. “He had three guns with him at the time, and my mother had left with my younger sister to take her somewhere safer but had left me there.”
While her dad never pulled the trigger, the incident drove Sumpolec deeper into the occult, bringing with it nightmares and “negative” spiritual experiences that she says were difficult to explain.
She says it was during this time that her “spirit guide” began to convince her to end her life.
“So one night I drove away in my car intending to never come home again,” wrote Sumpolec. “As I was driving on the back roads, waiting for the carbon monoxide leak in my car to do its work, I remember feeling relieved. Perhaps now, I thought, I can finally escape.”
But the attempt failed: Sumpolec says she blacked out before waking up on the ground outside the car.
It was a result that left Sumpolec to wonder whether divine intervention was responsible.
“I think I was rescued. I honestly think I was rescued because I woke up. I don’t remember stopping my car. I don’t remember getting out of my car,” she said. “I literally woke up on the ground next to a tree. So I fully believe an angel got me out of that car.”
And with college just months away, Sumpolec says she resolved to “stick it out.” It was during her freshman year she roomed with two Christian girls who “carried their Bibles around” and “didn’t swear or smoke or drink — which meant that our room was a no-party zone.
“Which I was also not happy about,” she added.
Sumpolec says after witnessing the “peace and security” the girls exuded, she became intrigued and began to eavesdrop on their Bible studies.
Shortly after that, she took them up on an invite to another Bible study, where Sumpolec says she first heard the message of God’s love and grace toward sinners who put their faith in Christ.
“I made God an offer that night, right before Thanksgiving,” she wrote. “I told Him that if He was real, and if He really wanted me, then I was His.
“He took me up on the offer.”
Since that fateful night, Sumpolec says she has followed Jesus, turning her back on the occult and growing to become the author of a YA series and co-author of a daily blog ministry, “Girls, God and the Good Life.”
She says she even burned all of the books, candles, idols and other items used in her witchcraft “in a big bonfire.”
“I know God was pleased with that,” she said. “I had traded a whole lot of nothing for a whole lot of God.
“It was a pretty good deal if you ask me.”
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