Crystals have been fascinating humans for as long as there have been crystals and humans. You’ve probably felt it yourself, whether you’re someone who just admires a nice sparkly stone or an expert in crystals’ various properties with an array of healing jewelry. But wherever you fall on that spectrum, if you’ve ever been intrigued by crystals on any level, you owe yourself a visit to the Crystal Connection in Wurtsboro, the largest rock shop in the Northeast, where you’ll find a treasure trove of the earth’s finest work: rows upon rows of sparkling, luminous stones organized by size and color.
Crystal Connection holds a treasure trove of the earth’s finest work: rows upon rows of sparkling, luminous stones organized by size and color.
The crystals here, according to the testimony of one happy customer who brought her 10-year-old, are “are charged with sunlight, lovely aromas, and positive conversations,” and you obviously can’t go wrong there. Beyond that, co-owner Travis Ogden says, they’ve got an interesting little experiment you can try: “When people come in who don’t know much about stones, but they’re curious, we do something called a tourmaline test,” he says. “You’ll feel a difference when you’re holding the stone. We have quite a track record of people’s responses and how it works. But we take an approach that’s a little bit more grounded than a lot of other crystal shops, where you can take the crystal, the stone, and do whatever it is that you want with it based on your belief systems, because that’s what will work for you, whether you’re making jewelry or enhancing a spiritual practice.”
Ogden says there’s nothing pseudo about the science at the core of why so many of us resonate with crystals; it’s common sense. “It’s a mineral; it’s from the earth, and so are we—our bodies are part mineral, and part of the reason people are drawn to stones and start to feel something working with them is our body’s innate intelligence and craving,” he says. “Most of us don’t get enough minerals in our diets. People come in and browse, pick up a few stones, and then we talk about what’s going on with them and it tends to fit. Someone with anemia picks up a piece of hematite. People in emotional upheaval get drawn to lepidolite, which has lithium. They pick it up and have this whole-body reaction of feeling more comfortable, more at ease. It calms the mental chatter. The way we put it is, the stone chooses you.”
“It’s a mineral; it’s from the earth, and so are we—our bodies are part mineral, and part of the reason people are drawn to stones and start to feel something working with them is our body’s innate intelligence.” – co-owner Travis Ogden
Ogden’s partner and mentor, founder Tim Bracci, “has been working with stones and metaphysics for over 40 years” Ogden says. “A good friend of his suggested he come here, and he discovered that this area was ripe with energy that worked with what he was doing. That was back around 2000. He felt guided to buy a building and found this one—it was built in 1890 as a Methodist church, and it has amazing molded-tin walls that sort of amplify vibrations. At first he wanted to live in it, but it kinda grew organically into an antiquities and curiosities shop, and then, in 2008, into crystals.”
Ogden, who’d grown up among stones with his antique-dealer father, met Bracci at a crystal and metaphysical expo in the city, and soon found himself spending as much time in Wurtsboro as he could, joining the team 12 years ago. His education at the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park gave him serious customer service skills, and his lifelong love of stones and eye for design meant he’d found his niche. “I just got here following the crystal breadcrumbs,” he says. “Crystals work in interesting ways. Tim cultivated me, taught me about stones and the business of buying and selling them, and in turn I helped cultivate the store. He does what he does, I put my twist on it, and it kinda percolated and grew into four or five times what it was.” Jewelry makers, interior designers, and people furnishing wellness centers flock to the shop to get exactly what they need; customers have come from as far away as Alaska, Hawaii, and Europe.
Crystal Connection got a major signal boost when Business Insider’s Facebook page did a video story in 2016, and the team has been busy reinvesting and improving the visitor experience ever since.
“We put an addition on the church. We’ve turned the basement into a salt cave and a wellness space, and we have a building next door for our wholesale. We also bought the building across the street—it’s an antique shop now, and we’re renovating it to put other fun things in there for the village. As we’re gaining and doing well, we’re also bettering the community.”
Crystal Connection has legions of local and regional fans, and the shop is in the process of evolving into a wellness hub, with not just the salt cave experience but a whole range of hands-on and energetic healing modalities.
“We’ll be offering things like chiropractic and acupuncture and massage, along with some of the newer energetic options, like infrared therapy, that you may not be able to find in other places.”
Salt cave sessions can be scheduled online or on the phone; guests can start with a “sampler” hour and try out the full range of infrared and energy-based mats, belts, and other tools, including a vibro-acoustic bed, and then book more time with the ones they find effective on a firstcome, first-served basis. It’s a high-energy time to be running a crystal shop at the gateway to the Catskill Mountains. “We’ve seen a huge influx of people being drawn to the stones,” Ogden says. “It’s really blown up the past few years.
We gather that community and draw in new people with events; we do three fairs a year. Our next Holistic Healing Fair is coming up the first weekend in May. We had 20 practitioners last year, and it was a total blast.”
Salt cave sessions can be scheduled and guests can start with a “sampler” hour to try out the full range of infrared and energy-based mats, belts, and other tools, including a vibro-acoustic bed.
So stop in and see what the stones have to say to you—Crystal Connection lets you play with a lot of the magic in real time, at a scale that would be hard to duplicate at home. Besides the salt cave and other next-gen healing tech, there’s a giant amethyst chair you can sit in and a coffee table crafted of citrine at which customers are invited to sit and write down their prayers, wishes, needs or intentions, whichever you like. “Citrine amplifies prayers and intentions, and it amplifies external abundance and prosperity,” Ogden explains. “So you sit and write, and then you throw your paper into a basin, and at the end of the year, we burn them back into the ether for you. We started doing this right after the pandemic, and people love it—they really write their hearts out.”
crystal connection
116 Sullivan Street, Wurtsboro
845-888-2547
crystalconnectionnewyork.com
