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A potion created to ward off ghosts proved to be so powerful, the beleaguered household needed a hazardous materials team to come remove it, according to investigators in North Carolina.
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The unusual call for help came around 9:30 a.m. Sunday, and involved a home on Northwoods Circle in Winston-Salem.
“Someone associated with the home bought a book on psychic home safety practices, then went to Amazon and bought a 68% concentrated nitric acid and set it by the door to ward off the haints,” a Winston-Salem Fire Department official said.
A “haint” is a malevolent spirit, and the term derives from the African-American Gullah Geechee Culture in South Carolina’s Lowcountry, experts say.
The potion’s pungent odor is what prompted a plea for help, officials said.
A hazmat team in full safety garb neutralized the acid, which is “highly corrosive” and can take the form of a “gas, vapor, mist, fume, or aerosol,” the National Library of Medicine says. “Nitric acid fumes may cause immediate irritation of the respiratory tract, pain, and dyspnea, followed by a period of recovery that may last several weeks,” the National Library of Medicine says.
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The Winston-Salem Fire Department says it does not recommend the “action or practice” of using nitric acid to ward off haints. “Please don’t try this at home. Seriously,” the department wrote in a Facebook post.
That post had racked up hundreds of reactions and comments within a day, many from people who couldn’t believe what they were reading.
“So what you’re saying is there is a witch hunter afoot?” Haley Forsay asked.
“Are we melting ghosts in acid now or something?” Jenna King wrote.
“What safer alternative would the WSFD recommend for psychic home safety? Asking for a friend,” Barbara Fuller posted.
“Whatever happened to the basic salt line or talisman? … Cases like this are exactly why covens recommend apprenticeship,” Samantha Nicole Trivette said.
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Winston-Salem is about an 80-mile drive northeast from uptown Charlotte.