Forget Pride Floats: Cookeville Mayor Endorses Self-Proclaimed Witches to Steer City’s Christmas Parade

Since we began covering the City of Cookeville’s controversial takeover of the area’s half-century-old Christmas parade after Mayor Laurin Wheaton caved to local LGBTQ+ activists, new details have emerged. 

Thanks to an outpouring of messages from concerned locals, The Pamphleteer has learned that Wheaton not only strong-armed the churches originally hosting the parade into turning it over to the city but also appointed the leaders of Cookeville Inclusive who have publicly identified as witches to take an active role in the Christmas tradition’s planning. No, these are not overly zealous fans of The Craft or Wicked. They actually think they are witches. And Mayor Wheaton was happy to hand them a community-facing role.

In a more bizarre turn, an activist who goes by the name Emily Woods Witch on social media is the daughter of Cookeville’s director of Leisure Services—the department in charge of parade logistics. 

Following the “statement of faith” brouhaha that the Tennessee Holler’s Justin Kanew sensationalized in October, Mayor Wheaton called a meeting of the city council, Putnam County government officials, and volunteer community parade organizers. According to sources who attended the meeting, the Mayor and Putnam County Superintendent Corby King pressured the organizers into turning control of the event over to the city.

“As the meeting started, the Mayor told the pastors, ‘You’re just going to have to give the parade over to us,’” said an individual in attendance who wishes to remain anonymous. “I’ve never seen anything like it.” Another source who wishes to remain anonymous corroborated this account of events.

According to our sources, Mayor Wheaton and Superintendent King repeatedly told organizers that they would not allow schools to participate unless the churches and other organizers stood down. At issue was an LGBTQ+ high school club that wanted a presence at the event. Fearing political retaliation and finding no way forward without Wheaton sabotaging their event, the organizers conceded. Superintendent King could not be reached by press time.  

During the official October 24th council meeting when members voted to assume control of the parade, the governing body took the unusual step of not adding the item to the agenda until the meeting was underway, giving the public little notice of the action. Wheaton then shoehorned the unanimous vote into the last two minutes of the session. “As a council, we had a choice to sponsor the parade,” Councilman Eric Walker said. “That was decided unanimously on October 24th. My motivation was to continue a long tradition for the children of our community to enjoy a Christmas parade, it’s really that simple.”

But several locals expressed concerns that the council intentionally kept the vote quiet to minimize public outcry in the overwhelmingly conservative community. “We were surprised because we checked the agenda to see if we needed to go and nothing was there, so we skipped the meeting,” said an incensed Cookeville resident who wishes to remain anonymous. 

Immediately after the vote, Mayor Wheaton appointed Cookeville Inclusive’s Sam Raper to the event’s planning board. Since then, Raper has been active on social media bragging about how the city caved to her group’s demands and how she and her supporters “changed a parade.” 

According to sources familiar with the matter, the parade will feature four floats that Raper and her team have shepherded: Cookeville Inclusive, Upper Cumberland Pride, Queer Closet (a group that gives clothes to trans people that many locals fear is targeting kids behind parents’ backs), and the occult shop The Tiny Cloak. 

Montana “The Maker” Chambers, owner of the Tiny Cloak, has deep ties to Cookeville Inclusive. Before the city took over the parade, she started a GoFundMe that raised over $4,000 for the organization’s competing event that, by all accounts, she never refunded to donors when Cookeville Inclusive abandoned the idea after Raper joined the planning board. Since the decision, she’s gloated about how the city has “taken away the parade from the churches” and how that’s “a big win for us” in social media videos promoting her shop. 

More disturbingly, she’s also encouraged owners of local porn outlet The Love Shack to apply for the event in addition to posting on social media about how her float in the family-friendly celebration will incorporate her “bad a$$ Witch B*tches.”

Earlier this year, Chambers allegedly crashed the local National Day of Prayer breakfast in her witch garb after encouraging her online followers to disrupt such events. Both Chambers and Raper are active in the Facebook group CKVL Magic Society, a hub for “the witches and pagans of Cookeville, TN.” 

Likewise, Emily Woods Witch, daughter of Cookeville’s Leisure Services director, Rick Woods, has reposted Chambers’s comments about the parade on social media and works part time at The Tiny Cloak when her boss is engaging in activist pursuits. Leisure Services staff confirmed to The Pamphleteer that their department is in charge of the parade and working closely with organizers like Raper. 

While Cookeville Inclusive has an LLC registered with the Secretary of State, it lists its mailing address as that of The Biz Foundry, a local 501(c)(3) business incubator in downtown Cookeville. The Pamphleteer reached out to Biz Foundry CEO Jeff Brown about his non-profit’s support of an organization that explicitly claims its primary goal is to advocate for local policy changes. “We have no control over their businesses and take no political or religious stand any more than any other landlord,” Brown said. “Therefore, what they do has no effect on our non-profit status.” 

Though Raper has long been very public about her affiliations with witchcraft and intent to subvert Cookeville’s culture, Mayor Wheaton still appointed her to a leadership position. According to Raper’s comments on the Cookeville Inclusive’s GoFundMe, Mayor Wheaton is “very excited about her ideas.” 

Since the controversy erupted, The Pamphleteer has repeatedly attempted to contact Wheaton via her office, email, and personal cell phone. She cannot be reached for comment.

Regardless, not all council members share Wheaton’s enthusiasm for involving proud witchy activists openly hostile to Christianity as stakeholders in the Christmas Parade. Both Vice Mayor Luke Eldridge and Councilman Ali Bagci made statements at the November 7th council meeting expressing opposition to those trying to sow discord and use the parade as a forum for political messaging. 

But the damage has been done. After a record 130 entries last year, the parade’s participation has, according to our sources involved in the event, declined by nearly 50 percent as many groups have dropped out to avoid further controversy. Though Mayor Wheaton has actively tried to keep information from her constituents throughout the process, word seems to finally be getting around. “I don’t think most of the people involved know what’s really going on yet,” said a source familiar with the matter. “When they do, I’m sure they’ll want nothing to do with it too.”  

The issue has also led local faith leaders to direct more attention to Cookeville. "Most Bible Belt denominations are also intentionally oblivious to the spiritual battles going on right here in smalltown USA, and are strictly focused on missions abroad in lands far away,” said Pastor Dale Walker, President of the Tennessee Pastors Network.

Given Raper and Chambers’s public statements and promotion of misinformation—much of which contain decisively family unfriendly content—the Council should be on firm footing to bar Cookeville Inclusive and its associated organizations from participating without running afoul of civil liberties protections. Whether or not Mayor Wheaton will stop her petty politicking and dereliction of duty is the subject of another follow up.