(Editor’s Note: The following interview with Donna Condoluci was conducted Friday at The Flying Broomstick on East Bank Street, Albion, by Assistant News Editor Raymond Coniglio).

Question: You pretty much grew up in Kentucky. What part of Kentucky?

Answer: It was the eastern part – the very eastern part.

Question: Was it rural?

Answer: Oh, yes – coal mining country. They were so conservative down there when I was growing up that the Catholics were shunned. Seriously. I mean, if someone came around and said they were in the Catholic religion – man, that was taboo. We had to travel 20, 25 miles to go to the "city," if you wanted to call it that. To us, Pikeville at that time was like Batavia – the big city. The last time I was down there they said, "We’ve got to take you over to West Virginia to the mall." Now, we’re used to Greece Ridge, Irondequoit Mall, Marketplace Mall. They took us over into West Virginia and their mall consisted of about 10 stores!

Question: How did you get interested in New Age?

Answer: Well, it was like I’d been searching my whole life trying to find it, a religion. I mean, growing up, I went to numerous churches. And it was like, I just didn’t feel right in any of them. I just happened to pick up a book one day and started reading it. And it had some question in there like, "Do you feel like you don’t fit in around certain people?" Or, "If you go to church do you feel like you’re out of place and shouldn’t be there?" A light bulk went off in my head. "Oh my gosh, this fits me." And I kept reading and reading and reading. Three or four years ago we wound up going to the Rochester Pagan Pride festival when it was still in Spencerport … It was like, "Oh my gosh, these people – this is where I belong." They are the nicest people you’d ever want to meet, and funny thing is, so many people get the wrong idea about this stuff.

Question: You call The Flying Broomstick, a New Age store. What does the term New Age mean to you?

Answer: New age to me is unique and out-of-the-ordinary things, things that you wouldn’t normally find in Wal-Mart, Kmart, places like that. …People can come in here and find something definitely different.

Question: Is there a philosophy behind it?

Answer: I believe a lot of it is spiritual. There are a lot of people who believe in that – more than a lot of people know. I myself am one who believes in spirits. I believe in reincarnation. I believe there is more after death than most people believe. I know this place is haunted. Seriously – my husband saw a spirit in here.

Question: In this store?

Answer: In this store. Scared the living daylights out of him.

Questions: What were the circumstances?

Answer: One day he was in here by himself, painting. He saw this white wisp of a thing go flying from the very back room through the wall into the place next door. We haven’t told them that (laughs). I don’t know whether they’d believe it or not. The funny thing is, we went to a séance in Rochester two or three weeks after this incident, and there’s no way in the world that the medium could have known anything about it. They knew we were moving into a new store and that’s it. And the spirit came through to (the medium) and told him that she didn’t mean to scare (my husband), but wanted to let him know she was here, and she’s happy with what we were doing with the place. We were finally cleaning it up and fixing it up.

Question: So she’s a friendly ghost.

Answer: Definitely. She’s very connected to this place. They didn’t really give us a name – except that it started with an "E" – but they said that somehow or another she’s connected to either this building or this particular part of the store. And they figured she was from right around the turn of the century.

Question: These sorts of things, Paganism, Witchcraft – or Wicca—intimidate some people who look at that stuff as sort of evil…

Answer: There’s a misconception that we believe in Stan, that we sacrifice people and children and babies and animals, and we don’t. It’s never actually been done by witches in general. Actually, if you look in the Bible, the Christians were the ones who did the sacrificing in the name of God! A lot of people get a misconception about this stuff, and the fact of the matter is, we don’t believe in Satan. We don’t believe in Hell. And our version of heaven we call the Summerland. Basically we believe heaven is what you make it. Your conception of heaven may be the golden gates, the clouds, where somebody else’s (ideas of heaven) may be a beautiful meadow with trees and flowers and butterflies around and sunshine. That’s basically my conception (laughs). My idea is just spending the days relaxing in the sun and a beautiful field…

Question: How has the response been, from the business community and the general public?

Answer: It’s been very accepting.

Question: Were you at all nervous about provoking a negative reaction in conservative Orleans County?

Answer: I was, I was. But I looked at it this way, if they’re gonna (protest) it’s gonna happen. They’ve been really good around here. I think what it is, is little by little people are coming in then going around and saying, "man, you’ve got to check out this little store." They’ll stop, and they’ll see the name and it scares them off – or they get curious. They see the stuff in the windows… they’ll come in and say, "Oh, wow, I can’t believe it, this place is so bright" – and I just have to smile, because it’s not dark and dank…

Question: Like Frankenstein’s castle or something?

Answer: Yeah – something creepy. And when they walk in the door they’re surprised.