This is the question I am asked most carefully, in the quietest voice, usually near the end of a call after someone has worked up to it. They describe a feeling — a pull toward someone they should not want, a dream that will not stop repeating, a sense that something outside them is steering their attention. They want to know if a spell was cast on them. Almost always, the honest answer disappoints the question. It takes a certain amount of nerve to ask a stranger whether you might be spiritually compromised, and I try to meet that nerve with something better than a scripted answer. Most calls end with relief rather than confirmation, because most of what people describe traces back to something ordinary once we actually look at it together. Most of what people describe has an ordinary cause. A small amount does not. This article is my attempt to tell you which is which, without doing what a great deal of this industry does to people who ask.

Why This Question Comes Up So Often

Human attention is not as self-directed as people assume. We fixate on people for reasons that have nothing to do with spiritual interference — unresolved history, proximity, loneliness, a resemblance to someone else entirely. When that fixation feels sudden or out of character, the mind reaches for an external explanation, because “something was done to me” is easier to sit with than “I am doing this to myself for reasons I don’t fully understand.”

I am not saying spiritual work never happens without consent. It does, rarely, and I will describe what it actually looks like below. I am saying that the feeling of being pulled toward someone is not, by itself, evidence of it. Most of what gets called a spell is the ordinary and uncomfortable experience of wanting something inconvenient.

The Difference Between Suspicion and Evidence

Suspicion is a feeling. Evidence is a pattern you can actually describe out loud, in order, with dates attached where possible. The gap between the two is where most of the anxiety in this situation lives, because a feeling alone can spiral indefinitely, while a pattern either holds up under a few direct questions or it doesn’t.

Before you call anyone, try writing down what actually happened, in the order it happened, without the interpretation attached yet. When did the pull start. What was going on in your life in the weeks before. Whether anyone had unusual access to your name, photo, or belongings around that time. Whether the dreams, if there are any, started before or after the pull itself. A plain timeline, written without the word “cursed” anywhere in it, tells you and any practitioner far more than the feeling alone ever will.

Here is what that looks like in an actual call. A client once told me she was certain a coworker had cast something on her, because she could not stop thinking about him. When we built the timeline together, the pull started the same week her long relationship ended and two weeks before the coworker did anything at all. The timeline itself answered the question before the shells ever needed to. That is the value of writing it down first: sometimes the pattern rules itself out in the retelling.

This isn’t busywork. Clients who arrive with a clear timeline get a faster, more accurate reading than clients who arrive only with dread, because the shells are confirming or complicating specific claims rather than a general sense of unease.

What Genuine Interference Actually Looks Like

When I do find real spiritual work behind a client’s situation — and I do, on occasion — it tends to share a small number of features together, not any single one in isolation.

One sign alone is almost never enough to act on. It is the combination, and the timing, that tells me something real is there. — Baba Ali

What Almost Always Explains the Feeling Instead

Before any reading, I ask about the mundane explanations first, because ruling them out honestly is most of the job. A few show up constantly:

• Unresolved history. A person you dated briefly, or almost dated, or wanted years ago can resurface in your attention when your current life gets unstable, with no spiritual cause at all.
• Trauma bonding. Attraction to someone who is inconsistent or unavailable often intensifies precisely because they are inconsistent. That pull is real and painful and entirely psychological.
• Loneliness projecting onto proximity. The person you see most often becomes the person your mind fixates on, independent of actual compatibility.
• Someone else’s suggestion. I have had clients whose entire concern began the day a friend said “that’s weird, are you sure nobody’s working on you?” Planting the question is sometimes enough to manufacture the feeling of an answer.

Two more explanations are worth naming on their own, because they show up almost as often as the four above. The first is simple novelty — a new person entering your orbit during a genuinely dull or difficult stretch of life will always feel more magnetic than they’d feel under ordinary circumstances, purely by contrast. The second is anniversary timing: attention toward an old flame spikes reliably around dates that mattered once, a first meeting, a breakup, a shared trip, even when you’ve consciously forgotten the date matters. Neither of these needs a spiritual explanation, and both resolve on their own once you notice what’s actually driving them.

If any of these fit your situation more naturally than a stranger’s ritual would, that is very likely your answer. I would rather tell a client that than take a materials cost for a reading I already suspect will find nothing.

A Reading, Step by Step: What I Actually Check For

Clients often picture this as something dramatic — candles, a dark room, a verdict delivered in a hushed voice. In practice it’s closer to a careful conversation. I start with timeline questions: when the feeling started, whether you can point to a specific week or event, and what was happening in your own life right before it began. Most of the answer is already sitting in the timeline, before a single shell hits the table.

Next I ask about the four signs directly — the turning point, the dreams, the judgment gap, the physical symptoms — and I listen for how many are genuinely present versus how many the client is reaching for because they already suspect the answer. People under stress will sometimes retrofit a normal symptom to fit a frightening explanation, and separating the two honestly is most of the actual skill in a reading.

Only after that conversation do the cowrie shells come out, and even then they’re confirming or complicating what’s already been said, not replacing it. If the shells and the conversation agree that nothing spiritual is happening, I say so plainly, and the call ends there — no working proposed, no cost incurred. If they point somewhere real, I’ll tell you exactly what I see and what a clearing would involve before you agree to anything.

What to Actually Do If You Suspect This

First, do not panic, and do not accept an urgent framing from anyone selling you a solution. Real spiritual interference, when it exists, does not require an emergency response measured in hours. Anyone insisting otherwise is working from urgency, not from the actual situation.

Second, get a genuine reading before any working is proposed — from me or from anyone else. A reading should come before a quote, not alongside one. My own process is laid out in full on the how it works page, and the same order should apply anywhere you go: listen, read, then — only if warranted — propose work.

Third, if a working is genuinely needed, it is almost always a cleansing rather than anything dramatic. The relevant piece here is protection and clearing, not confrontation. My colour choices for that kind of work are explained in candle colors for love magic, specifically the section on white and black together — cut, then clear.

What Not to Do If You Suspect This

A few reactions make a genuinely uncertain situation worse, and I see all of them regularly.

Don’t confront the person directly with an accusation. If nothing spiritual is actually happening — which, again, is the more likely outcome — an accusation damages a relationship or friendship over a suspicion that a proper reading could have ruled out calmly, at no cost to anyone.

Don’t attempt a DIY “reversal” ritual pulled from an unverified online source. Clearing work aimed in the wrong direction, by someone without real training, can create the very static it was meant to remove. If a reading confirms something real is present, get guidance on the clearing itself rather than improvising one from a video.

Don’t spiral into checking their social media or whereabouts. This is the most common response I see, and it’s the one that does the most damage to the person doing it. Monitoring someone’s activity feeds the fixation rather than resolving it, whether or not any spiritual cause is involved.

Don’t pay for “emergency” removal before a reading has happened. Say it with me: a reading comes first. Any practitioner asking for payment before they’ve listened to your actual situation is following the scam pattern, not a genuine practice.

Don’t let one bad reading convince you every practitioner is a scam. The industry has a real problem with fear-based selling, but that doesn’t mean every practitioner operates that way, and it doesn’t mean your original question doesn’t deserve an honest answer from someone else.

What a Practitioner Should Never Say to You

A few specific phrases are close to a guarantee that you’re dealing with a scam operation rather than a real practice, and they’re worth memorizing exactly as written.

“I can already see it” — said within the first minute of a call, before you’ve described anything in detail. A real reading takes time to arrive at a conclusion; an instant diagnosis is a sales technique, not a spiritual one.

“This needs to be handled tonight or it gets worse” — manufactured urgency attached to a timeline nobody but the seller can verify. Genuine spiritual work, when it’s needed at all, does not operate on artificial deadlines.

“There’s a deeper layer we need to address” — delivered after you’ve already paid for the first working. This is the upsell that never actually ends, because there’s always another “layer” as long as you keep paying for one.

“I can’t explain why, you just have to trust me” — offered when you ask a direct question about what’s actually being done or why. A real practitioner can explain their reasoning in plain language. Evasiveness about the basics is not mystery, it’s a warning sign.

"Don’t tell anyone else about this, it will interfere with the work" — isolation dressed up as ritual instruction. Genuine spiritual work is not undone by a second opinion, and any practitioner who wants you cut off from the people who would tell you to slow down is protecting their sale, not your outcome.

The Pattern to Recognize and Refuse

I want to be direct about this because it is the actual harm in this space, more than any spell ever could be. The “you are cursed” pitch works by manufacturing fear first and offering relief second, priced at whatever the mark can be pushed to pay. It preys specifically on people asking the question this article answers.

The mechanics are almost always the same, and once you’ve seen the pattern once, it’s easy to spot again. Step one is a confident, specific-sounding diagnosis delivered before any real questions are asked — “I can see it, you’re cursed” within the first two minutes of a call. Step two is urgency: this must be handled today, tonight, before the situation “gets worse.” Step three is a price that climbs the longer you hesitate, or a series of escalating follow-up fees for “deeper layers” of the same original problem. None of that is how a genuine reading works, and every part of it is designed to bypass the calm thinking a real decision deserves.

My own Ethics & Safety Promise names this directly as something I will never do. If you take one thing from this article and nothing else, take this: a practitioner’s job is to calm an anxious question with an honest answer, not to grow the anxiety into a bill.

Frequently Asked Questions

A Final Word From Baba Ali

Most people who ask me this question leave the call relieved, not because I told them what they wanted to hear, but because I told them the truth plainly and did not charge them for the privilege of hearing it. If your situation is genuinely spiritual, I will tell you so and explain exactly what I see. If it is not, I will tell you that too, and you will have saved yourself money and worry either way. That is the whole job.

If you call for the free consultation, bring the plain timeline described earlier in this article rather than just the feeling. When it started, what else was happening, whether anyone had unusual access to you around that time, and whether the pull has responded at all to distance. Those specifics let me tell you, honestly and in the first call, whether this deserves a real look or whether you can put the worry down tonight.