PETOSKEY — After a year of exploring, expanding and fighting for the right to tell fortunes, Poetess and Stranger owner Sarah Snider is celebrating the store’s one-year anniversary.

Poetess and Stranger opened at 445 E. Mitchell St. Unit A on Oct. 28, 2021. Snider hoped that opening near Halloween would be a good way to market the store, 28 also happens to be a lucky number for her.

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“I would say that, more than any single feeling I have about (the anniversary), there's this intense feeling of gratitude in my heart. It goes beyond that feeling of pride that I set out to do something and I did it. It has more to do with how absolutely grateful I am that this community is so curious and so accepting and so generous,” Snider said.

“Throughout all of the summer, I realized profoundly that (the) people that live in Petoskey and Charlevoix and Boyne City and Harbor Springs (are) the people in our community that are keeping me in business and for that I get goosebumps," she said. "I'm so grateful.”

To celebrate the milestone, the store will hold four events between Oct. 28 and Halloween. Starting the celebrations off from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Friday, Oct. 28 will be a mini psychic fair. Psychics that can be found in the store throughout a normal week will be there offering quick readings using tarot, runes, oracle cards and spirit boards. There will be a Reiki practitioner offering intuitive readings as well.

On Saturday, the store will participate in the downtown children's Halloween parade and trick-or-treating from 10 a.m. to noon and will have the regularly scheduled psychic from 2-6 p.m.

On Sunday, the store will be closed but Snider will be offering rune and tarot readings by appointment.

For Halloween on Monday, another mini psychic fair will be held from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m., this time with Snider herself offering readings as well. While the psychic fair is going on, there will be a crystal trunk show with Jojo Head with Snow Drum Creations.

Anyone who shows up on Halloween wearing a costume will receive a 13 percent discount on regularly priced products in the store, but not the items in the trunk show.

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“It is always exciting to see when a business reaches an anniversary milestone. The fact that many entrepreneurs who started businesses after 2020 are doing so well is a true testament to creating a Thriving Petoskey,” Petoskey Regional Chamber of Commerce President Nikki Devitt said.

“We love seeing the success that Poetess and Stranger has had in their first year and we look forward to celebrating many more successes in the years to come.”

To top off the four-day celebration, Snider will be announcing the second phase of Poetess and Stranger — community engagement.

Possibly as soon as November, the store will host classes and workshops on various topics relating to magic. There will also be a crocheting and knitting group called Stitch & Witch and The Birch Mystery Collective, which Snider described as a quarterly gathering of magically minded folx.

“When I first started out, I wasn't quite sure how interested people would be in metaphysical products. Turns out, everybody loves it, the weirder the better. And so it has been my delight to actually go and find the things that I didn't even know existed and even fall in love with them myself,” Snider said.

“It's been really fun learning what people like and what people are looking for and be able to surprise and delight them on a weekly or monthly basis. But I think the biggest thing that I discovered that people were looking for was a community and having a place where they can connect with other people that think similarly and practice similarly to them.”

— Contact reporter Tess Ware at tware@petoskeynews.com. Follow her on Twitter, @Tess_Petoskey.

This article originally appeared on The Petoskey News-Review: Poetess and Stranger to celebrate anniversary with four-day event