CHELSEA WOLFE
The Witching Hour
Come with us as we take a dive into LA’s weirdest and most wonderful bookstore. Our guide: goth-doom queen and explorer of the ‘spiritual realm’, Chelsea Wolfe
WORDS: STEVE APPLEFORD
PICTURES: STEPHANIE CABRAL
Out of the broom closet: Chelsea is a proud witch
Chelsea Wolfe knows her way around a bookstore. Just watch as she moves quickly down the aisles and up the stairs, a mystery woman in layers of gothic black in search of something spiritual and witchy in the most eccentric literary establishment in downtown Los Angeles. She hasn’t been to The Last Bookstore in years, but has suggested it as a good place to meet and browse the shelves while she’s in town preparing for the release of her seventh album, She Reaches Out To She Reaches Out To She.
Over the last few years, the singer and guitarist has been increasingly open about her interests in the spiritual realm.
“In the witchcraft community we get excited when someone who’s either an artist or a creative is open about it – an open witch basically out of the broom closet,” she says, standing tall on laced-up boots, a quartet of dark braids draping over her shoulders. “It’s actually exciting. We want to support each other, because it’s not always easy to be open about that kind of thing.”
Upstairs is where things get weird. There are bookcases organised not by subject or author, but by colour – with entire shelves filled with red books, another for blue books, another for yellow. She glides through a tunnel made of old books glued together like bricks, past a bank vault filled with true crime and horror, and a sign that warns:
‘You are entering the labyrinth above The Last Bookstore.’
Chelsea lived in Los Angeles for more than six years, in a neighbourhood just outside downtown. The Last Bookstore was a frequent destination for her back then. We’re now standing in the ‘Religion And New Age’ section. Right beside her is an Egyptian sarcophagus made of plaster, looking rather more like a movie prop than a beloved mummy’s solemn pathway to the afterlife. The surface of the sarcophagus is painted in regal shades of purple, white and gold. Just steps way is an old birdcage inhabited only by a brass human skull and a metal statue of a raven.