Niche group of Bears fans turn to witchcraft, cast spells for w-i-n over the Rams

Is casting a spell the key to the Chicago Bears success in the postseason?

Amanda 'Mandy' Marron, a TikTok content creator known as "The Bears Witch," thinks so.

Posting videos before every Bears game, Marron has gone viral for her witchcraft. As the team advances in the playoffs, "The Bears Witch" said her following has grown as hundreds interact with her posts. With the team posting a record of 11 wins and 4 losses since she began casting her spells, she said she has no intention of stopping.

"I'm a fan first, a witch second," she said.

Two days before each game she sets a bottle of Malört on her altar and lights her orange and blue candles on a tray with Chicago giardiniera, incense, celery salt, cloves, salt and a single bay leaf. Chanting "go Bears, Bears win, Bear down" to set her intentions, Marron steps away and lets the candles burn until they've gone out. Once the wax is gone, the spell has been cast.

For Marron, what drives her spells success is her intention.

"It's kind of like a meditation to me, focusing the right energy in the right place," she said. "If you're just gonna light a candle at home and think that that's gonna do something, no, you actually have to put kind of your heart and thoughts into it to want a specific outcome to happen."

That intent for Marron is always positive, she said, because casting spells against teams won't work.

Marron started casting spells after she was "heartbroken" during the start of the season. After watching the team lose its first two games to the Minnesota Vikings and the Detroit Lions, she said she began posting her spells on TikTok hoping it would get some laughs. Within days of posting her first spell, she said the video gained more than100,000 views.

Starting her videos by letting viewers know that she's "the friendly neighborhood Bears witch," Marron said she's creating something positive for people to get behind.

"There's so much negativity in the world right now," Marron said. "The fans coming on board, supporting the team, seeing a team that hasn't done really well. I mean, we haven't won a Super Bowl in 40 years. I'd like to think that I contribute to that positive energy that's out there."

An Etsy spell for a Bears win

As the Bears mounted a second-half comeback against the Green Bay Packers on Saturday night, Zoe Blomquist had a simple explanation: witchcraft.

On the Thursday before the game, Blomquist purchased a custom spell from the shop MiscMystic on Etsy for $11.18.

Watching the game with family and friends, she said "every time they scored some crazy touchdown, everyone was just excited to be like witchcraft is real or like your witch is working."

Blomquist bought the spell as a gag gift for her brother-in-law who is a big fan of the Bears, but said she didn't know what to expect as a first-time buyer.

"It was kind of underwhelming," Blomquist said. "I got an email confirmation, like anything else that you order online, that my item had been purchased, which felt a little bit weird for it to be like a spell."

Hours after buying the spell, Blomquist said she received a message from the witch saying that her spell had been cast with a photo attached.

The photo featured candles, pentagrams, an orb and a card that read "Chicago Bears."

Ahead of this weeks game, Blomquist said she has not yet bought another spell, but plans to buy one Saturday.

Natalie Bruner, a Bears fan living in Louisville, Kentucky, purchased an Etsy witch after she saw stories about fans of the University of Connecticut and University of Louisville men's basketball teams hiring witches to reverse their losing streaks and redeem their seasons.

Bruner bought a spell for $18 from the shop CerberusCurio on Etsy to cast a good luck spell for Caleb Williams and the Bears ahead of Sunday's game. "Not that the Bears need a turn around or anything, but if there's a game to buy an Etsy witch, this feels like a good one," she said.

Bruner said that Sunday's match-up between the Bears and the Rams "feels like David versus Goliath because nobody thinks we're going to win."

Bruner, who didn't grow up watching football or supporting any team, began rooting for the Bears in 2020 because of her love for Chicago. In the years since, Bruner said being a fan of the Bears was difficult because it always felt like they were right on the cusp of success.

"If we win this weekend, I'm doing it again next weekend," Bruner said. "And if we win next weekend, I'm probably going to hire like three witches for the Super Bowl."