This week’s meeting featured one of our more unusual programs. Sabrina Velandry, known to many as Sabrina the Good Witch, joined us to talk about her work as a tarot reader, medium, ghost tour guide and screenwriter, and about the thread that connects all four.
Sabrina began by thanking the club and noting how Rotary’s commitment to service, ethics and connection aligns with her own work. She acknowledged that tarot and mediumship come with plenty of misconceptions and offered members a look at how she approaches them. For Sabrina, tarot is less about predicting the future and more about offering a symbolic map for reflection, helping people step back, examine their choices and find clarity during moments of transition. Her practice draws on active listening, empathy and pattern recognition, and she sees mediumship as a way to offer comfort and connection to people working through grief. She also shared a fact that surprised some members: in Salem, fortune tellers must be licensed by the city.
From there, Sabrina turned to her storytelling work. As a ghost tour guide, she translates local history into engaging, place-based experiences that help preserve Salem’s heritage for residents and visitors alike. She pointed out that these tours do more than entertain. They bring foot traffic to local businesses and help shape the identity of the communities where the stories are told. Her screenwriting, meanwhile, gives her a disciplined way to shape complex human motives and conflicts into structured stories. In all of her work, she said, the goal is the same: uncovering truth, honoring human experience and connecting the past with the present.
Sabrina also spoke about what storytelling can offer businesses. Organizations that tell their story authentically connect more deeply with customers, and leaders who pair data with emotional intelligence and intuition are often better equipped to navigate risk.
She closed with her life’s passion: telling the story of Bridget Bishop, the first person executed during the 1692 Salem Witch Trials, who was hanged on June 10, 1692. Sabrina described Bishop as an independent, outspoken woman who defied the rigid norms of her time. Her story, Sabrina said, is a powerful reminder of how fear, prejudice and a rush to judgment can destroy individuals and communities, and of why it matters to defend marginalized voices today. Through screenwriting, reenactment and educational media, Sabrina hopes to bring Bishop’s story to a wider audience.
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