We recently connected with Mellissa Clancy and have shared our conversation below.

Mellissa, appreciate you joining us today. Can you talk to us about serving the underserved.

I serve a community that receives a lot of hate because of stereotypes and cliches… mostly from bad Hollywood movies that are not ‘Practical Magic’ or ‘The Craft’. I’m talking, of course, about the Pagans and Witches community.

It’s not easy being a pagan in small town Ohio. There are a grave number of notions and assumptions that people think I, or any of my friends, do. Like flying, for instance. I’m sorry to say that I’ve never hopped on my broom and taking a midnight turn through the neighborhood cackling away, although let’s be honest, that would be awesome. I don’t worship the Devil nor do I sacrifice cats in his or anyone’s name. I promise, we’re not as ‘dark-sided’ as some people believe.

Do you know what I do? I blow the candles out on my birthday cake and make a wish. I read a lot of books. I sell a lot of books. I make candles on occasion that smell amazing in my kitchen. I also love to cook. I garden and try not to kill every living plant that comes home with me. I told my children that if they put their baby teeth under their pillow, a fairy will pay them money and take the teeth in exchange. I play with my cat(maybe that’s a stereotype?) I make teas for my customers when they have colds or need a pick-me-up. All kinds of simple things like that. I also collect shiny rocks, sticks, and bottles, much to my husbands chagrin.

The other day I had a customer come in the shop that I haven’t seen since last year. I asked where she had been for so long and she replied that she was stuck working and that she still lived with her parents. Times are tough and places to live are expensive, I get it. She nodded and then said that she wasn’t allowed to come to the store, even though she was twenty-two, because if her parents knew their daughter wasn’t a part of their religion then they would throw her out of the house. My heart broke for my customer, to live in fear is the worst kind of life. She actually waited for her parents to go on a vacation so she could come to our shop in peace.

Unfortunately, this isn’t the first time I’ve heard a story like this. Many people come to our shop for peace. To get away from the noise of people who don’t get it, who don’t understand the journey our customers are on. It’s not easy being different; to march to the beat of your own drum or to realize that you don’t fit in the mold the world has cut out for you, it’s harrowing. To be stuck in “the broom closet” and not being able to be who you are in public is depressing and a soul-sucking experience. To live openly without fear of retribution seems like such a lofty goal some days.

One elderly woman walked in our store and immediately burst into tears. I went to hug her and ask why she was crying, and after she dried her eyes she looked at me and said, “You don’t understand how long I’ve waited for a shop like this. When I was growing up, there weren’t any witch shops, and we snuck around our books as if it were a crime.”

Our store is many things, delightful bookstore, metaphysical shop, tea house, crystal and jewelry shop, etc. but the one thing that it will be at the heart of it all is a place of Sanctuary. No judgements, no harassment, no questioning looks, we don’t do that. You need some herbs? Yes, over here. Incense? Right this way. Clear Quartz or Black Tourmaline? Yep, that’s over there and on sale. There are no stupid questions, only people seeking answers on their own time and in their own way. You don’t have to hide here, we take all kinds.

Familiar Books & Metaphysical Shop is a place that serves. Period. A magical place filled with knowledge on many different subjects, a place of enchanting serenity, a charming cozy store that is here for you.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

Many customers come into our store knowing they want something but can’t quite put their finger on what that ‘something’ is. What I like to do is to get to know a customer before I start throwing titles or cauldrons their way, to understand what they are going through on a personal level allows me to better curate books or maybe a tarot deck to what they need. I ask a few simple questions: “What’s your path?”, “What do you want to learn?”, and “Do you have any questions?” Usually, the customer has a question that Google just can’t answer, or maybe a new path that they want to take. Narrowing down what the customer needs, and what they want is the whole objective.

When you come into our shop, we want you to experience the shop, not just to stop by and browse around(which you can totally do) but to feel the shop on a visceral level what we do and why we do it. When you come to Familiar Books & Metaphysical Shop, we want you to feel at ease, be comfortable in asking questions, to feel safe and secure surrounded by books and incense and tea. I guess that’s really what sets us apart from a lot of chain stores, we care about what you feel and experience being here. We want to know what you need and how can we get that for you.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

When the Covid Pandemic hit in 2020, we were a fully functioning used bookstore. We had over 10,000 books ranging from Sci-Fi/Fantasy to History to Mysteries… you name it, we probably had the title. At the beginning of the year, we were at our best. Finding rare books was a specialty of ours, people brought in their families to browse the aisles and rooms for hours, we didn’t mind. Everything was looking up and then It happened.

Covid.

It’s not easy being a bookstore where people would touch literally every book on a shelf, and then touch their face or body in someway. I couldn’t follow people around the store spraying down each book with Lysol (it would ruin the books) and it was doubly difficult to ask people to wear masks completely over their faces. When the Ohio gov’t said everyone needed to shut down for at least three months, we knew the end of our little shop was near and there was nothing we could do about it. No one wanted to bring their kids in for fear of touching a book with the virus on it, and we couldn’t blame anyone for not stopping by.

It was time to pivot.

The one thing we had going for us was the fact that we had a pagan community that wanted the books we were selling. Dave and I knew that we had to do something fast or it was the 9-5 jobs again, which we didn’t want. We took the three months of shut down as a time to incubate, we could revamp and reroute the store a different way, toward the very people we loved having in: Pagans and Witches.

During 2021 and 2022 we had a combination of an Occult shop with a Used bookstore, which worked for a while but we realized that more and more people were shopping all of our witchy books and none of our mysteries or histories. So, in an effort to pivot again, we shut down the used book portion of our store and went fully occult and metaphysical shop in January of 2023 and have been surviving and thriving ever since.

Can you tell us the story behind how you met your business partner?

I met my business partner, Dave, in 8th grade German Class, in 1998. It turns out that, even though I transferred to another school the following year, I’m pretty unforgettable! Dave found me through Facebook in 2011, and in 2015 he asked me to marry him, and I said yes!

We opened the bookshop together at the local mall and a few months later we eloped and married in the forest. It was a dreamy experience.

My business partner is also my closest friend, my confidant, my husband. I wouldn’t change a thing.    

Contact Info:

• Instagram: instagram.com/familiarbooksohio
• Facebook: facebook.com/familiarbooks
• Other: tiktok.com/familiarwitch2