Meet A Night of the Mystic Arts Mistress of Ceremonies....

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We believe the time is now right for you to meet our new friend....

New to A Night of the Mystic Arts 2024 is our Mistress of Ceremonies, Madame Catherine. The madame will usually be found at the center stage as she greets guests, makes announcements, and has a witty quip or ten for those who dare to make eye contact with her.

Who is Madame Catherine?

Born around 1640 as Catherine Deshayes Monvoisin in France, Madame Catherine had a difficult life. She was known to friends as "La Voisin" or "the Neighbor." She had many talents. Part-time fortune-teller. Part-time astrologer. Part-time wise woman turned apothecary. She lived her life during the reign of one of France's most famous rulers, the so-called Sun King AKA Louis XVIV. Catherine made her living doing what had to do to survive. She would practice medicine, particularly for women who needed health, especially with pregnancies and other female health maladies. She often acted as a combination of doctor, nurse, midwife, and pharmacist. She could provide everything from relief for allergies or a runny nose to love potions or even perhaps something even more sinister! 

La Voisin became embroiled in a scandal of the royal court in 1679. The king's guards arrested her on charges of witchcraft on March 12, 1679 as she was leaving Notre-Dame de Bonne-Nouvelle where she had just attended ass and the church service had just ended. Taken into custody, a month later King Louis XIV authorized a commission to conduct a thorough investigation into a wide-ranging series of deaths attributed to poisoning in Paris beginning in 1677. Between 1000 and 2500 people, many of them members of the French nobility, died under suspicious circumstances. Known as "les affaire des poisons" (the Affair of the Poisons), the investigation accused Monvoisin of fortune telling, professional sorcery, and the commission of poisons. The scandal unfolded in a way that shocked the king and royal court as Monvoisin's extensive client list included some of the most powerful people in France, including at least one of the king's mistresses and possibly his most famous mistress (a woman who later became his second wife), the beautiful Madame de Montespan. 

Found guilty of the collective charges of witchcraft, the commission sentenced Monvoisin to die in the way normally reserved for those judged guilty of being witches. Two days later, on February 22, 1680, Monvosin was burned at the stake as a witch in the plaza outside the Place de l’Hôtel de Ville in Paris.

Catherine Deshayes Monvoisin was thought to be dead given her gruesome execution. What was not known until now is that her troubled spirit continued to roam the Earth for hundreds of years until she found her way to the City of Casselberry.

Now preferring to be known simply as Madame Catherine, the organizers of A Night of the Mystic Arts are excited to announce that Madame Catherine will be showing her face in public for the first time in over three hundred years on October 11, 2024 at Lake Concord Park. Madame Catherine will serve as the Mistress of Ceremonies for ANMA. 

She will be present throughout the entire event, making announcements, sharing her story, and taking photographs. But beware! She is more dangerous than she may appear and is NOT to be trusted AT ALL!

Meet Madame Catherine at the 3rd Annual A Night of the Mystic Arts, Friday, October 11th at Lake Concord Park in Casselberry beginning at 5pm...if you dare!