But first: Sabrina the Teenage Witch, a Florida home for unwed mothers, a book called How to Be a Groovy Witch, and why the witch has always hit differently for girls in that particular window of being twelve.

Then some actual history. How a city determined to leave its sordid history in the past ironically became the Witch City. How the pagans arrived in the early seventies and the economics sorted out the moral question very quickly. How a living spiritual community built something real on Essex Street, long before the ghost tours and the skull-shaped whoopie pies.

The Millennium Biltmore opened in 1923 on South Grand Avenue — the part of the city that doesn’t try very hard to be discovered. It was built as a monument to old Hollywood’s idea of itself: marble floors, coffered ceilings, murals on every surface that wasn’t already gold. The most celebrated people in the film industry moved through it for decades. Some of what shaped American cinema happened in its rooms.

Some of what haunts it did too.