Sarah Anne Sumpolec once found herself enraptured by incantations, Tarot cards, and casting spells —until an encounter with Jesus transformed her perspective.

Decades later, she’s now a devout Christian who shares her experience as a former real-life teenage witch to help people see God’s power to change lives and perspectives. Her harrowing story of engaging the spirit world and nearly losing her life is nothing short of deeply compelling.

The Beginnings of Witchcraft

Sumpolec recently told “The Playing With Fire Podcast” she grew up a “nomad” with her father frequently moving her family around; at moments, they faced near-homelessness.

But when she moved to a house in Delaware at age 13, something seemed different.

“My dad had said that we were going to stay, which, of course, was a big deal,” she said, recalling her hope the home would become a permanent place of residence.

The dwelling, which belonged to a former governor of the state, surprised Sumpolec, as she wondered as a child how her family could so rapidly go from financially struggling to living in such a great place.

“My dad, from the beginning of introducing us to that house … he was insinuating that this was a special house,” she said. “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.”

Sumpolec said her father found the prospects of a haunting “awesome.” Considering how much she looked up to him and wanted to connect with him, she said she “just went with it.”

A ‘Turning Point’

“Arriving there was very much a turning point in a lot of ways,” she recalled of the move into the home. “That was the first time he really ever introduced the supernatural or his interest in the supernatural.”

While Sumpolec’s dad was “cagey” about the details surrounding the home, the mystery and intrigue piqued her curiosity and further drew her in. Thirsting for a deeper connection with her father, she became increasingly intrigued by this otherworldly “worship.”

Then, when her dad gave her a book on witchcraft, proverbial gasoline was tossed on the fires of that rabid interest.

“My dad introduced me to it very specifically through a book that he handed me when I started asking more questions,” Sumpolec said. “It was a very old book.”

Soon Sumpolec was diving into that book and consuming other New Age texts, “voraciously reading” anything she could get her hands on. Witchcraft suddenly became the connective point she had always wanted — something that would draw her closer to her dad.

And strange events inside the home only added to that connection.

The more Sumpolec asked, the more her dad engaged, and the more he engaged, the closer she felt to him. Over time, her father told her witchcraft is “who we are as a family,” indicating it was deeply embedded in the familial fabric.

That revelation suddenly clothed Sumpolec with a newfound identity of sorts.

“I really felt like I had … like 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.”

Sumpolec, who considered herself a “good witch” and practiced so-called “white magic,” would often cast spells.

“Everything in witchcraft is a truth from God, perverted,” she said. “Satan doesn’t have any new ideas; he takes truth and twists it.”

Spirit Guides and the Roots of Chaos

Over time, this apparently enrapturing experience started to evolve into something else. While it “started out great,” soon Sumpolec’s relationship with her father began to unravel, as did her family circumstances.

“There was nothing ever scary about it for a long time until it changed, and that is 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,” she 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.’”

Over time, Sumpolec said, playing with fire birthed consequences; eventually, it all “turned on its head.”

“[There were] all these spirits that I thought I was messing with that I thought were good and that were guiding me,” she said.

But her communication with these spirits soon turned sinister, sending her on a diabolical path that could have ended her life.

‘The Most Terrible Moment of My Life’

Everything came to a head when her father, also in crisis, reportedly began using drugs. Substances suddenly clouded the bond they built — and things turned ugly.

One night, her dad — in a fit of rage, confused, and not realizing who she was — allegedly pointed a gun at her in a potentially deadly showdown.

“It was the most terrible moment of my life,” she said. “He had, like, 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.”

Sumpolec’s father luckily never pulled the trigger, but the event changed everything and likely played a role in her suicidal inclinations that soon followed.

“[It] shattered my trust in him,” she said, noting how the incident also drove her deeper into witchcraft. “I was lost … but because I had this altar in my room and the witchcraft stuff, I was like, ‘OK, you know, I’m gonna just dig down here.’”

If you were driving on the highway and came upon 13 semi-trucks blocking your way, you would likely be confused and possibly unhappy. That is, until you learned that these 13 truck drivers blocked the highway to save a man’s life.

A Man Threatens to Take His Own Life

Recently, in the early hours of a Tuesday morning in Detroit, Michigan, a man was reported to be on an overpass and threatening to jump in order to take his own life. Reportedly, the man was struggling with issues in his family that led him to this place of hopelessness.

The Michigan State Police were alerted by a phone call about someone threatening suicide, and they found the man on an overpass over Interstate 696.

The police came up with a surprising and creative plan. “We always want to make sure that people realize there are so many other options,” said Lt. Michael Shaw.

And they did that, with the help of several truck drivers.

The Truck Drivers Blocked the Highway

Along with talking to the man and trying to calm him, the Michigan State Police began to ask semi-trailer truck drivers for help. The flagged down these drivers on the highway and began organizing them underneath the bridge so as to form a “safety net,” if the man were to jump.

That’s why the truck drivers blocked the highway. They were working together with state troopers and other local officials to show the man that people are for him.

Lt. Shaw explaining the tactic they took said, “They start to grab semi drivers and troopers standing there were able to line these semi-trucks underneath that overpass. So it’s kind of like a safety net to make sure if he moved anywhere on that overpass, there was a semi there.”

A photo was taken to show the truckers and police working together. Watch news coverage of the event here:

Apparently, this wasn’t the first time the Michigan State Police asked for help from truck drivers…

Some people refer to schools as kids’ second homes because of how much time they spend there. As a “second home,” children learn more than just reading and math; they learn how to interact with others, how to regulate emotion and behaviors, and what healthy relationships look like with both peers and authority. So if a school uses harsh punishment, this impacts the child more than just in that moment—it can impact the child for a lifetime, in terms of how they view authority, the identity they develop, and what behavior is “normal” in relationships. That’s why many were appalled upon learning about one elementary school located about 30 minutes outside St. Louis, in Illinois, that put a boy in a box as punishment every day for more than a month before the mother found out.

The School that Put a Boy in a Box as Punishment

In 2016, Melody Haller enrolled her son in the second grade at Alhambra Elementary School, located in Alhambra, Illinois. Yet, after three months of her eight-year-old child, she learned the school was enforcing harsh punishment on her son. According to the mom, initially, the child was being punished for talking too much to his classmates. The boy’s desk was moved away from the other children’s desks, and the teacher had put a cardboard box around him to cut him off from other classmates, and to keep him from talking.

Haller said, “A box has been put around him where he can see no students, no teacher, only the board.”

The child was put in a box like this for eight hours a day more than a month before his mother found out, but that was not all.

Haller’s son also was required to finish his lunch in the principal’s office, and his privileges to go to recess were sometimes revoked. The boy told his mother that the principal had also had him clean the water fountains and some of the walls in the school as a punishment instead of going to recess.

Find out more about the story and see photos of the box on this news report out of St. Louis:

Read on to find out how the mom found out this was happening…

Meet Chiquita Hill, the Columbus, Georgia mom who takes her child’s misbehavior seriously, and enacts tough confidence. This mom called the police on her son to teach him a lesson.

Exactly Why the Mom Called the Police on Her Son

Last month, 10-year-old Sean was in for a surprise from his 33-year-old single mother, Chiquita Hill. Although this surprise was planned out of love, it would not be a happy surprise for Sean. This mom called the police on her son.

It all started one day when Sean’s teacher paid a visit to Hill’s home. Sean’s classroom teacher explained to Hill that she had seen a disrespectful attitude developing in the 10-year-old boy. The teacher said he had been disrespectful to multiple teachers, as well as to the kids in his class. The teacher was concerned about his misbehavior in school, and she explained that Sean had brushed her off whenever she’d talked to him about not paying attention during lessons.

That visit and conversation with Sean’s teacher concerned and upset her, and she made a plan. The mom called the police on her son.

Hill explained, “I knew I had to do something to shock him.”

Thinking about his future, and hoping to redirect her son’s behavior, Hill called got in touch with the Columbus, Georgia Police Department. She explained to an officer what the teacher had told her, as well as her concerns for his future. She shared that she is a single mom, and she needed some help to nip this problem in the bud.

Hill wasn’t sure whether the police would help her, given the nature of her idea. But after they heard about his entire situation, they decided to work with her on the plan, and use it to encourage Sean to take responsibility for his behavior. According to Hill, they understood where she was coming from and wanted to help her.