Pagans Outrage Pell City Neighbors

(Stacey Norwood)  The small, quaint town of Pell City has been compared by many to Mayberry.
To Sondra Mcdonald, it more closely resembles 17th Century Salem.

Then again, McDonald is a high priestess in the Wiccan Church.

She and other Wiccans gathered Tuesday in the 30th Street home of Robert Hamilton, a high priest in the newly incorporated Sacred Circle Covenent. Court papers signed by the a Saint Clair County probate judge legally make Hamilton's rented home a house of Wiccan worship.

Police surround the house on all sides - blocking off streets, they say, to keep the peace as the Wiccans prepare to celebrate a "minor sabbath day" under the summer's last full moon.

Neighbors - all Christians - are none too happy.

"It's witchcraft...demonic...it's devil worship," shout a group of protestors, adjectives flying too fast to attribute them to any one individual.

Others in the group carry placards demanding Hamilton leave the neighborhood, taking his "black magic" with him. A sheaf of signed petitions express a similar desire.

Hamilton, a Birmingham native, says he moved from Birmingham nine months ago for the "peace and quiet." Now, as he explains the meaning of the altar and "consecrated circle" in his backyard, Hamilton has anything but peace and quiet.

In fact, one must strain to hear Hamilton at all. Behind him - just over the wire fence that separates him from neighbors, a group of protestors are singing "Amazing Grace."

"I'm taken aback. The people standing in my front yard with picket signs call themselves Christians," the high priest says. "This is not Christ-like. From what I understand Christ to be, I think it's kind of hypocritical."

The group on the other side of the literal and figurative fence denounce the Wiccans as "devil worshippers" and say they want the group ousted from the neighborhood.

"I don't know about y'all," shouts one woman in the crowd. "But I'm going to fast - and I'm going to pray this thing down."