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When Cassandra 'Cassie' Nightingale (Catherine Bell) inherits the town of Middleton's 'Grey House', a large, old house said to be haunted by 'Grey Lady' Elizabeth Merowick, and subsequently opens Bell Book and Candle, a gift shop dealing with crystals, Tarot cards, and other occult items, she earns the reputation of being a witch and incurs the wrath of the mayor's wife, Martha Tinsdale (Catherine Disher). On Cassie's side, however, is Middleton's widowed police chief, Jake Russell (Chris Potter), and his two children, Brandon (Matthew Knight) and Lori (Hannah Endicott-Douglas). However, the question in everyone's mind is whether or not Cassie is a real witch.

The Good Witch is a Hallmark Channel movie written by screenwriter Rod Spence. It was followed by The Good Witch's Garden (2009) (2009), The Good Witch's Gift (2010) (2010), The Good Witch's Family (2011) (2011), The Good Witch's Charm (2012) (2012), The Good Witch's Destiny (2013) (2013), and The Good Witch's Wonder (2014) (2014).

As bossy Martha Tinsdale tells the story, Grey House got its name because Elizabeth Merowick liked to wear grey after she was left to languish by her sailor husband. However, as Cassie tells the story, Elizabeth and her husband, Naval Captain Charles Hamlin, were madly in love. They spent two passionate months together before Charles was called back to duty, never to return. Elizabeth kept a light burning in the window for 28 years until it finally went out. The next day, Elizabeth was found dead of a broken heart.

Historically, a bell, a book, and a candle were used in excommunication rites over 1,000 years ago. After performing the excommunication ritual over someone who had committed a particularly grievous sin, the bishop would ring a bell to evoke a death toll, close a holy book to symbolize the ex-communicant's separation from the church, and snuff out a candle to represent the sinner's soul being extinguished from the light of God. A more recent reference people may be familiar with is the 1958 movie Bell Book and Candle (1958) about a modern day witch.

Cassie tells Jake, when he asks about her background, that her given name is Sue Ellen Brock. She was the daughter of performers who traveled all over Europe. When her parents were killed in a car accident near Zurick, Switzerland, she was sent to live in the United States. Eventually, she changed her name to Cassie Nightingale and moved away because she didn't want to be found.

On the night of Cassie's Halloween party, her shop is vandalized by Dylan (Alexander De Jordy) and Michael (Nathan McLeod) Tinsdale. They are apprehended by Deputy Derek Sanders (Noah Cappe), who phones Jake. Jake and Cassie go down to the station, where the boys express their hatred for Cassie and tell her to leave town. When their parents arrive, Martha also gives Cassie her two cents, while their father, the mayor of Middleton (Paul Miller), tries to talk Jake out of filing charges against the boys. Cassie finally speaks up and says that she's not going to press charges because she doesn't want the boys to be branded as delinquents this early in their lives. Martha starts ranting again about Cassie and her "black magic" shop, but her husband tells her to shut up, as her vendetta has turned their sons into vandals. He assures Cassie that his sons will clean up the mess they made and that they will pay for any damages the boys have caused. When Cassie and Jake arrive at the shop the next morning, the boys are already outside scrubbing the red paint from the shop windows. Cassie and Jake go inside to assess the damage. Other than glass on the floor from the broken windows, the merchandise appears to be unharmed. Jake goes to find a broom to sweep up the glass and notices the same broom that he saw last night at Cassie's house. When he asks Cassie how that broom got from her house to the shop when she hadn't been there in between, she says that there's probably a perfectly reasonable explanation. When Jake asks her whether she's really a witch, she kisses him.

That question is left unanswered. Cassie certainly instigated a lot of things that could be seen as magical, e.g., talking to animals, chasing away Lori's monsters with a dreamcatcher, solving Brandon's problem with the bully Kyle (Jesse Bostick) by using a chunk of amethyst quartz, getting Grandpa O'Hanrahan (Peter MacNeill) to return to Ireland with a shamrock amulet, and helping Nancy (Paula Boudreau) with a love potion. However, it could be argued that Cassie simply used the power of suggestion to help others deal with their problems. Whether or not Cassie has any supernatural power is up to each viewer to decide.

Cassie's gift shop, the Bell Book and Candle, is often linked to the movie Bell Book and Candle (1958) (1958), in which a witch runs an occult shop in New York. Other movies that are likened to The Good Witch include Chocolat (2000) (2000) in which a woman opens a chocolate shop in a small French village and shakes up the rigid morality of the community, and to Stephen King's Needful Things (1993) (1993), in which a gift shop caters to each individual's needs, but with a very different intent.