It all started when my friend and I made our own Ouija board - and it worked! I was always curious about using one as I did not think it would work.

That night my two friends and I were asleep, but I was awakened by the feeling of something brush against my feet. I burst into tears straight away as it terrified me. The next night I slept at my own house and my boyfriend was asleep next door. Half asleep, I heard my bedroom door open and the sound of something running up the stairs into my bedroom. It felt like someone was standing in the center of my room staring at me.

There was a kind of black mass in the air, which is quite hard to explain. I called my boyfriend repeatedly and banged on the wall several times to wake him up, but he didn't. From that moment, I do not remember what happened to me, but my boyfriend tells me he found me lying on his bedroom floor crying. Then he says that the muscles in my body were having a spasm of some sort, like I was having a fit.

After around five minutes of this, it all stopped and I was normal, not remembering what had happened. I told my parents, but they said I was being silly. I changed rooms after that day, and it felt like a weight had been lifted. A few nights later, however, I heard knocking at my door, like someone trying to get in. It also touched my cheek when I was lying down.

When I went into my previous room the other day to collect some of my clothes, my lamp was thrown at me from the desk. I was so scared that I ran out straight away. Whatever this is, it is driving me crazy as I am only 16 and I am not getting any sleep. Do I have a ghost? And why is it trying to hurt me? - Natalie W.

THE OUIJA’S WARNING

“I used to live in a house in Pueblo, Colorado that I always thought was ‘peculiar’ because of the way I always felt in it,” says a reader who uses the name Aphrodite. She always felt like she was being watched, a feeling that intensified when she was alone. But she couldn’t quite identify the feeling. Was the watcher staring in anger or fascination? Soon the feeling turned into sounds.

One night her father had to go out to the store. To feel safe, Aphrodite locked every door in the house while she was upstairs. “The house is very big, so it creaks a lot, especially the stairs,” she says, “but as I was stepping into the shower, I heard the floorboards creak like someone was walking on them.” Aphrodite wrapped a towel tightly around her, counted to three and flung open the bathroom door to confront the intruder. There was no one there. She dismissed the sounds as her imagination and got in the shower. As she turned on the water, she heard the floorboards creak again. “Determined to find out the source, I left the shower running and with one huge thrust opened the door and, expecting to see someone, pushed forward so they'd fall down the stairs,” she says. Aphrodite grabbed only air.

Now thinking that the intruder might be a spirit, Aphrodite went to her room and fetched the Ouija board from under her bed and set it up on the floor. “I thought, if it was a ghost, it might want to communicate,” she says. Aphrodite lit five candles: red, green, yellow, blue and white. She set four of them at the corners of the board and placed the white one between her legs. “I gently put my hand on the board and called the spirit out. ‘If there's anyone here who wishes to communicate with me, please make your presence known.’” Something blew out the red candle and the Ouija’s pointer began to move. “The spirit told me he was a man age 32 who wanted to communicate with me,” she says. “He also said that he hated the way I lived and that’s why he watched me. I asked him if he was mad at me. He said yes. And the last message he relayed to me was: ‘GET OUT. WON’T BE SAFE LONGER.’ And with that the board was done.”

Aphrodite didn’t tell anyone of this experience, but she did try to convince her dad to move from that house. They didn’t even move when, during dinner one evening, they both heard the stairs creak, followed by an upstairs mirror crashing to the floor. They finally did move when Aphrodite’s dad got a new job. “Ever since then, I have wondered if the spirit is still there,” she says. “I still wonder if maybe I should have faced it or if it was a good thing we moved. I've talked to the recent owners of that house, and they say that their dog won't go into my old room and that the wife gets violently shoved when she is alone.”

EVIL PRESENCE AND DEAD FROGS

Unlike Rena, there are some people who were so terrified by their Ouija experience that they swear they will never touch one again – and warn everyone else to stay away as well. Reb, for example, begins her story with this warning: “Don't ever touch one or even be curious – they are the work of negative spirits, not benign to help you!”

What scared Reb so badly? Her tale begins in the summer of 1975 when she was 14 years old. Reb’s family was in a state of transition that year. They had just sold their house in Whitby, Ontario, Canada and hadn’t yet decided where they were going to purchase a new house and settle. So until that decision was made, they lived in a small apartment complex.

One day, a girlfriend was over for a visit. Bored and looking for something to do, Reb told her about the Ouija board she had received from her mother for Christmas. Reb asked if she’d be interested in giving it a try. “Sure,” her friend replied. “If it works, I'd like to contact my grandfather.”

In the basement beside the laundry room, the apartment building had a dark, dingy, nearly empty storage room with one window. Reb figured this would be an atmospheric place for their impromptu séance. The girls took the Ouija to the basement and set it between them on an old crate. Each put a hand on the planchette.

“Grandpa,” the friend began, “if you are there, can you please let me know?" The pointer started to slowly slide around the board. The girls eyed each other nervously. And although it was a hot July afternoon, the storage room suddenly became uncomfortably cold. Instead of frightening the girls, however, it actually excited them. “This is neat-o!” Reb recalls them exclaiming. “We felt some heavy energy in the room and definitely did not feel alone in the room anymore. Apparently, it was her grandfather.”

Apparently. The friends asked a few more questions and received some answers, but after awhile tired of the game. Reb packed up the board and the girls parted to their respective homes, vowing not to discuss their possible spirit contact with anyone!

“Around 7:00 p.m., I got super tired while playing in my room,” Reb says, “which was unusual. So I lay down on my bed looking up at a picture above my bed, and I immediately fell asleep. But the room was spinning and I was fighting to wake up because I felt panicked, as if something else was going on. I felt like my spirit was being pulled from my body! I got really scared and, after a struggle, woke up.”

Reb felt she had to talk to someone. She decided to call her best friend Ted from the pay phone just down the street and ask him for help. “I felt very depressed, almost as if an evil black cloud was around me,” she recalls. “As I walked toward the pay phone, I saw some frogs on the side of the road and ‘knew’ that when I returned from the phone they would be dead. They were, too!

“I spoke with Ted and he said to get rid of that Ouija board immediately. They are evil. Paint a red cross on the back of it, he told me, break it in half, and throw it out. So I went back home and that is what I did. I used my red nail polish and made a cross, broke the board in half, and threw it in the dumpster by the apartment.”

Reb’s ordeal wasn’t quite over, however. “For several years after that, even when our family moved 200 miles north, I had that same recurring fight at around 7:00 p.m. when I felt the aching desire to sleep, feeling a sudden exhaustion,” she says.

That was the least of it. “Often times, the foot of the bed bounced around and shook, like something out of The Exorcist, and I'd feel ‘beings’ around my bed placing heavy invisible objects on me that would get heavier and heavier,” she says. “It was always a very frightening experience. No matter what I did, it wouldn't go away. I had a lot of bad luck. Some very bad things happened to me, the worst of which was that my sister went schizophrenic and had to be institutionalized – which I very strongly believe is possession!

“One day, I took out the little Bible that I got in grade school and started to pray to Jesus. I begged for help... and I got it. I started to feel at peace and never had those paralyzing, fatigue-induced states again. Yes, the Ouija board is very nasty,” Reb again warns. “My current best friend is a psychic ‘cleaner,’ and he told me that whenever he went into a home to cleanse it, he would ask the homeowners where their Ouija board or Tarot cards are, or he'd immediately zone in on them and remove them from the house.”

BROKEN BARRIER

Many paranormal researchers who have experience with the Ouija board advise that if you’re intent on using the board that you should first perform a cleansing ritual or create a psychic barrier of positive energy around you. Rena knew about this practice, but it doesn’t always work.

Rena was just finishing her sophomore year in May, 2007 when one of her best friends invited her to her house to spend the night. As sometimes happens when teens get together, they began to have a conversation about ghosts, demons, and scary things they had experienced. “I've always seen things,” Rena says, “so I had plenty of stories to tell. As I was telling one story, I saw a little black dot floating in front of me... kind of like a fleck of dust, but it caught my attention. When I asked my friend if she saw it, too, the dot started to float up to the ceiling. I kept my eye on it all the way, and then it was gone.”

Apparently, that got Rena in the mood for something even more thrilling, and she convinced her friend to try the Ouija board with her. “We weren't stupid and we knew how dangerous they could be,” Rena remembers, “so we opened a circle and set up a barrier to keep out evil spirits. I don't know if either of us really thought it was going to work. We didn't even have an actual board, so we made our own out of a Scrabble game set and a cup as a planchette.

“We asked the question that everyone asks: ‘Is anybody here with us?’ As soon as I asked that, the cup moved. We both looked at each other in silence for a moment. When my friend recovered, she asked how many people were present. We went on that night for about two hours, and when we finally closed the circle, we were completely exhausted. I ended up staying with her another night and we were fascinated by this new thing that we were doing.”

Rena and her friend were consumed by this strange phenomenon. They talked about it on the phone and told other friends about their experience. One friend in particular was also very interested, and the next time Rena got together with her, they gave the mystic oracle a try. “But this one didn't go so smoothly,” Rena says. “Our barrier wasn't strong, and something ended up getting in. My friend started crying. You could feel the evil in the room. That’s not a fun thing to feel, by the way. I went home to bed.”

Rena carried that creepy feeling home with her, it seems. “I woke up at three in the morning with a nightmare about a door,” she says, “just looking at a door. I don't know why it scared me, but it did. I still had that oppressive, ominous feeling in my heart. I woke up again at three-thirty, hearing a loud breath in my left ear, but went back to sleep after saying a little prayer. The last time I woke up was four, and I had had another nightmare. I was so freaked out that I told my parents and we all got together and prayed. It went away.”

Despite this experience, Rena hasn’t shunned the Ouija board completely. “It's made me more cautious,” she admits. “I didn't turn away from it because I know that just like in the physical world, there are good and bad spirits. But I'll never forget that night.”

THE DOG FELT IT

As we’ve seen in previous stories, asking the Ouija to prove itself can lead to unexpected, sometimes unsettling activity. Holly also found that out when she and a friend took out the board on a March night in 2005. “We didn't have any lights on,” Holly tells us. “Just two candles burning. She was sitting across from me, and to the right of me was my dog. He was lying on the floor, just chewing on his bone. My friend and I were trying to decide what question to ask it. Finally, we came up with one.”

Usually teenage girls will ask about boys or other giggle-worthy matters, but Holly and her friend had other things in mind. “We asked it if there were any ghosts in the house,” she says. “The pointer went to YES. Then, for some strange reason, my friend got the stupid idea to ask the Ouija board to prove itself! The next thing I knew, my dog jumped up, hair standing up on his back, teeth bared, and growling at our front door. He's never ever acted like that toward anything before or after that incident.

“We looked outside the door, but there wasn't anything there. When we came back, the candles were blown out and my dog was back to chewing on his bone. We haven't played with the Ouija board in that house since. That dog is no longer living. I had him put down November, 2005. He had cancer.”

THE CELL CALL

Can the power of the Ouija extend to affect inanimate objects, such as cell phones? J.N. had an experience that makes her think so. It was 2005 when she and a few of her girlfriends sat down with the Ouija “just to experience the phenomenon.” The girls were gathered at J.N.’s friend Becka’s house in Cottonwood Heights, Utah. It was the first time with the board for all of them.

“Her house was incredibly creepy, and undoubtedly haunted,” J.N. says, “so where better than there to start? Diane, Becka, and I were sitting in her living room, preparing the atmosphere. Once candles were lit and moods were set, Diane and I sat on our knees next to a piano bench, fingers on the planchette. Becka refused to touch it, and instead took the role of a ‘scribe.’ Please take note that we had all turned off our cell phones so that they would not disrupt the atmosphere.

“After speaking to a young girl named Wisty and a man who would not give his name, but instead kept attempting to move the planchette through the alphabet, we decided to stop. Suddenly, my cell phone started to ring. Being a teenager then, I used to have my ringtones all set as song clips. This time however, the phone rang its original tinny tune.”

Gripped in fear, J.N. looked to her friends, then picked up her phone from the table. “The phone number listed was not in normal format,” J.N. says, “but it was something like ************, without hyphens or parentheses, as would be the norm. Shaking, I answered and said, ‘Hello.’ On the other end, a man began to speak incomprehensibly in a language I did not recognize and could never place. When I said I was going to hang up, he got very quiet and began to laugh. That was assuredly the last time we used the board at her house.”

THE LITTLE WITCH

In 1974, Marie also was young – just 11 – when she was introduced to Ouija board weirdness. She was living in Los Angeles at the time. “A new girl came to our grammar school, and I was asked to be her friend and show her around school,” Marie recalls. “My mom thought it would be nice if I asked her over after school, since all the other kids thought she was strange. She came over and we went to my room. She started looking through my closet for some kind of board game and we found a Ouija board. I told her I thought that it was the stupidest game ever since it took a group of people to sit around it with fingertips barely touching it, and then it was supposed to move to spell out answers. In my opinion, it never worked and was just a gimmick. Someone inevitably always ends up pushing it around the board.”

Marie’s new friend laughed at this. Apparently she was more familiar with the Ouija because she told Marie that she hadn’t been using it correctly. She and her mother were witches, she told Marie, and that she could conjure up real spirits with this board.

“I didn't believe her,” says Marie. “She told me to sit in a chair in the middle of my room. She then placed the board on my lap. She took my hands and placed them on the Ouija and started forcing them to move quickly in a circular pattern. She then uttered some weird words. As soon as she released my hands, the Ouija flew out from me and raced to the letters M-A-R-I-E. I screamed and threw the board on the ground.”

Marie was more angry than frightened. She confronted her new friend and demanded to know what kind of trick she was trying to pull. But the girl only laughed in response. Marie said, “Let me see it move again, but this time no one goes near it or touches it.” The girl agreed and calmly told Marie to place the board on the floor where she had been sitting and to put the planchette in the middle of it. Marie did so, and the planchette began to move again – spelling her name!

“This time I freaked,” Marie says. “I ran to my mom. I told her what had just happened and that I wanted the strange girl to go home. I really was frightened of her and that board. My mom didn't believe me, but did take the girl home.”

Later, when she had calmed down and had mustered some courage, Marie returned to her room. The Ouija was still there, resting silently in the middle of the floor. Marie just stared at it for awhile, then carefully approached it. “I looked it over,” she says, “trying to understand how a piece of plastic with what looked like a pin in it could possibly move on its own. So I did something stupid: I challenged it. I put the board back on my lap, did the circle thing... and the most horrifying thing happened.

“I felt an entity so strong and so forceful that it literally threw the board across the room and knocked me out of the chair. I was terrified. I ran out of there and went sobbing to my parents. Again they didn't believe me, but I couldn't bear to go back to my room and touch that board. So my mom promised me she would get rid of it.”

Later that evening, when it was time to go to bed, Marie refused to go near her room. She curled up on the couch with her dog. She was so frightened of her own bedroom that Marie slept like this on the couch every night for nearly a week. Fed up with this nonsense, her parents forced Marie to sleep in her own room, but she made sure that her dog was with her.

On the first night back in her room, Marie woke up in the dark to the sound of her dog growling and scratching at the door. “She was very upset,” Marie says. “My room was ice cold. I knew I wasn't alone. I was scared, but strangely indifferent. I was mad. I was angry. I slowly got up – almost as if I were in a trance – and walked to my parents’ room. How dare they force me to go to a room with an evil presence! I was going to wake them and make them deal with the entity in my room.

“I went to their room, turned on their lights, and just stood in the doorway. My mom was very startled, and my dad was more than a little annoyed. But something in my face said it all. There was fear in their voices, and I vaguely remember them saying my name. I was in a fog. Later, my mom was comforting me on the couch and washing me with a cool cloth. I don't remember exactly what happened. My parents said I wasn't myself. I had awakened them and then stood in the doorway pointing at something under their bed. I had a faraway look, and frankly I scared them.”

What was under the bed? The Ouija board! “My mom had told me she had thrown it away, but she had lied,” says Marie. “She thought I had been grossly exaggerating and that it was a harmless board game. She thought she would just hide it away until I had forgotten about it. When they tried to make me go back to my room, they noticed it was very cold. The dog was also acting crazy. That’s when my parents finally believed what I had told them.”

Was Marie’s new friend really a witch? Had she really conjured up something? Marie is convinced that the answers are yes. “My mother took the Ouija board and really threw it away,” Marie says. “When she did, she swears she heard it scream. I know no one else would believe her, but I sure did.”

FIRST TIME

Most of us were in our early teens when we first tried our hands at the Ouija board. DeeDee was 13, and prior to this experience she had never even heard of the Ouija. While she was visiting at a friend’s house just a few blocks away, her friend told her about an interesting board game that would allow them to talk to spirits, and that the spirits could use them as mediums to communicate. “Since I was pretty young, I thought it sounded pretty cool,” DeeDee says, “so I said, ‘Let’s try it.’”

DeeDee admits that she was pretty scared during the first few attempts with the board, but she was compelled to keep playing. “So we played again,” she says. “But this time the planchette moved so slowly we couldn't tell what the ‘spirit’ was trying to say. So I, being stupid and young, started yelling and cussing at the Ouija board to move faster. Suddenly, there was a burst of energy in the planchette, and it moved so fast we could hardly follow it.”

DeeDee’s friend asked the board to please slow down. In response, the planchette shot up to the word NO. “Then it moved so fast it flew off the board,” DeeDee remembers, “and we screamed and ran away.”

In spite of this experience, DeeDee was so intrigued by the Ouija board that she bought one for herself. She invited her friend to her house, where they played the Ouija in her room. DeeDee was more cautious this time, however, and hung a cross on the wall next to the board. “And then we asked something you should never ask,” DeeDee says. “We asked it to show us a sign it was present.

“Nothing happened for a few minutes. Then, sure enough, the cross next to the board fell down next to us. We screamed bloody murder because the cross was not within reach to be knocked over accidentally, so surely it was a paranormal experience. Ever since then, I have felt a presence in my room that never goes away. Please listen to me when I say you really should not play this game. It has haunted me ever since then.”

The reason many paranormal investigators advise against using the Ouija is that they believe it can open doors to realms that should remain closed. Ken M.’s cousin and friends learned this lesson the hard way.

“This happened on a hot August night in 1971 in the town of Lodi, California,” says Ken. “Some people are more successful at conjuring up spirits than others with a Ouija board. Carol, my cousin who swears by the story, had quite a history of contacting both benevolent and malevolent spirits.

“On this particular night, Carol and her friend were at Carol's house with their boyfriends. Soon after they began, the planchette took on a life of its own and told them there was a robbery in progress at a nearby McDonalds. Everyone was quite skeptical. Then the Ouija went on to describe the vehicle driven by the culprits: a station wagon, and that it was urgent. "Help, please help!" it spelled out.

“The men decided that the situation was too good to pass up, and just before they left, they told the women to not open any doors except for them. They drove off leaving the women with one shotgun and a box of shells. As their headlights pulled out of the driveway, Carol and her friend were terrified by a loud growling noise coming from the back door. Terrified, they braved enough energy to venture back to the door and were greeted by a loud scratching noise. As soon as they heard this, they scrambled back to where the shotgun lay and pumped shells into the chamber.

“As they got the shot gun loaded, a knock was heard at the door. Carol pulled the drape back and was relieved to find her boyfriend and his friend standing there. Full of terror, they let them in. They told the men what they had just encountered and what they had just heard at the back door. Still skeptical, the men went to the back door to investigate.

“They found the door was shut but when they opened it, they found long deep scratches along the door frame. Carol told me that she and her friend threw away the Ouija board that night.”

Did the Ouija give false information just to get the men out of the house so it could terrorize the women? Scarier still, what would the women have encountered had they opened that back door?

The reason many paranormal investigators advise against using the Ouija is that they believe it can open doors to realms that should remain closed. Ken M.’s cousin and friends learned this lesson the hard way.

“This happened on a hot August night in 1971 in the town of Lodi, California,” says Ken. “Some people are more successful at conjuring up spirits than others with a Ouija board. Carol, my cousin who swears by the story, had quite a history of contacting both benevolent and malevolent spirits.

“On this particular night, Carol and her friend were at Carol's house with their boyfriends. Soon after they began, the planchette took on a life of its own and told them there was a robbery in progress at a nearby McDonalds. Everyone was quite skeptical. Then the Ouija went on to describe the vehicle driven by the culprits: a station wagon, and that it was urgent. "Help, please help!" it spelled out.

“The men decided that the situation was too good to pass up, and just before they left, they told the women to not open any doors except for them. They drove off leaving the women with one shotgun and a box of shells. As their headlights pulled out of the driveway, Carol and her friend were terrified by a loud growling noise coming from the back door. Terrified, they braved enough energy to venture back to the door and were greeted by a loud scratching noise. As soon as they heard this, they scrambled back to where the shotgun lay and pumped shells into the chamber.

“As they got the shot gun loaded, a knock was heard at the door. Carol pulled the drape back and was relieved to find her boyfriend and his friend standing there. Full of terror, they let them in. They told the men what they had just encountered and what they had just heard at the back door. Still skeptical, the men went to the back door to investigate.

“They found the door was shut but when they opened it, they found long deep scratches along the door frame. Carol told me that she and her friend threw away the Ouija board that night.”

Did the Ouija give false information just to get the men out of the house so it could terrorize the women? Scarier still, what would the women have encountered had they opened that back door?

If, as it is claimed by some, that the Ouija can contact beings from unknown planes of existence, couldn’t they perhaps give us information about winning the lottery or some other lucky numbers? Undoubtedly, this has been attempted many times. Clift S. says he tried it.

“Back in 1969, I was living in Tacoma, Washington, managing an apartment house,” Clift tells us. “One night I used the Ouija board to see what I could find out. I didn't know what spirit I would get, if any. After awhile, it started to move, so I asked who it was, and the pointer spelled out DAD. It scared me.

“I never messed with it again until 1971 when my brother came to Tacoma to live. I was betting on horse races, so his daughter, who had a Ouija board, suggested we should see if we could find out the numbers of the horses who would win the first two races at Portland Meadows racetrack. So my niece and I used the Ouija, and it said the numbers would be 2 and 6 in the first two races.

“My brother, his wife, my niece and I drove to Portland to play these numbers in the daily double. Well, the horses came in 6 and 2 in the first two races – just the reverse of what the board said.

“I don't know if my niece has the board anymore, but I do believe you shouldn't use the board because it will either cause you harm... or make you do foolish things like we did.”

The Ouija gave Clift the right answers, but not in a way that was useful to him. Was this the act of a prankster spirit?

Ouija Answer

The board isn’t always a prankster. There are many cases in which the Ouija provides real, verifiable information that is not known by the participants. Andrea’s experience is a compelling one.

“Two friends and I were talking about Ouija boards, and whether or not we believed in them. The two friends were firm believers in the board and its powers, but I was skeptical. Having a Ouija board myself, yet never using it, I decided to bring it to our next gathering and give it a try.

“At my friend's apartment we turned down the lights, lit a candle and went to work. Within a minute the planchette started to move. One friend asked if there was a spirit that wished to communicate with us. The planchette went to the word YES. Starting to think there was something to this, I had a question for this spirit. I had a brother my family lost touch with over two years ago. I asked if the ghost knew where he was. It answered YES. It spelled out quite clearly a street name in British Columbia, Canada.

“After finishing our session with the board and thanking the spirit, I searched the Net and found out there was one listing for this street in B.C. within the Fraser Valley, between Vancouver and the U.S. boarder. Upon searching the city's phone book listings under my brother's last name – there he was, plain as day. Having a very unusual last name, I knew it was him instantly. I tried the number, and it was his voice on the other line! I was stunned.

“Maybe there is something to Ouija. I don't know. The two friends knew I had a brother, but never met him. They also did not know my maiden name in order ‘fix’ the board's answer. I have no explanation except that I guess spirits do exist.”

The Ouija Strikes Back

On rare occasions, use of the Ouija has triggered physical manifestations and psychokinetic activity. Darryl D. claims that he and his friends were assaulted by something during a Ouija session.

“When I was about 14 or 15 years old, I had a Ouija,” Darryl says. “My friends and I would gather in a basement at my friend Doug's house. We would turn the lights off, light some candles and sit around an old table that was in the house when his grandpa lived there. (His grandpa committed suicide in the kitchen.)

“One night when we where using the Ouija, a gust of wind came out of nowhere and blew out all of the candles.

“Another time, some girls came over to Doug’s house and we started using the Ouija. We started to see strange shadows walking around the basement... and then it happened: the candles went out and we all heard this horrible scream. After we got the lights turned on, we noticed that one of the girls, who was sitting on a couch watching us, had blood coming from the back of her neck. The necklace she was wearing had been ripped from her neck and was laying on the floor about 10 feet from where she was sitting. She had two small charms on it; we found one inside of a small crawlspace under the stairs and the other was outside laying on the concrete in front of the back door. I have not used this Ouija since this happened.”

I think anyone who experienced this would also put the Ouija safely away.

Rasputin’s Ghost

Those who experiment with the board often claim to contact spirits, some of who divulge their names. The identity of these spirits is usually impossible to verify. Once in a while, a spirit claims to be a well-known or historical figure – or even the devil himself. Such was John M.’s experience.

“When I was about 11 or 12 years old in the late 1960s,” John says, “I had a friend who claimed that he had a Ouija board where sometimes the planchette [the board’s heart-shaped indicator] would move about on its own if he left the board out at night. Naturally, I was skeptical, having never seen a Ouija board that did much of anything. As kind of a joke, I told him to bring it over one summer afternoon and we'd try it. Sure enough, as we started asking it questions, the planchette would move about very rapidly and provide answers, or sometimes it would just point to yes or no. Since the movement was so fast for the pressure I was applying to the planchette, I was convinced my friend was moving it himself, but every time I asked, he denied it. Nevertheless, we were having fun and continued to ask questions.

“At some point I finally asked, "Who are you?" and the board spelled out S-A-T-A-N. I just looked at my friend and laughed, now even more convinced that he was the one doing the spelling. So then I asked, "What's your last name?" and the board spelled out R-A-S-P-U-T-I-N, which meant nothing to me, but I wrote it down. After we were done, I looked up Rasputin in the encyclopedia and was stunned to see that a man by that name lived in late 19th century Russia, and was feared because of his supposed occult powers. Knowing my friend, his age, and his level of intellect, I became convinced right then and there that the Ouija was for real and that my friend had not spelled that name out.”

Even if the Ouija is capable of contacting the spirit world, is it likely that the spirit of Rasputin would speak to two teenage American boys? Or was some other entity just playing a scary trick?

Ouija Prediction

In 1997, my mother and I were playing around with the Ouija board, and it kept spelling out the name RANDY. I was married to a man named Jim at the time. The board kept telling us that I would meet my soul mate, his name would be Randy and he would be from the state of Maryland. I thought at first that my mother was stopping it on certain letters, so I asked her to take her hands off the board and let me use it alone. It still kept spelling out the name Randy and telling me we would soon be together. I took my hands off the board and laughed. I had just finished up a round of chemo; I was bald and sick, not to mention married to someone else. Who in their right mind would believe this or even want me in this condition, I told my mother. We put the board away and thought no more about it.

Three months later, I was separated from my husband and decided to go horseback riding with my mother. Her best friends of eight years were with her, and with them their son (I never knew they had). We started talking and I asked him what his name was, he replied, "My name is Randy." Shocked, I said, "Where are you from?" He replied, "Maryland."

I was then totally shocked. I grabbed my mother, took her aside and told her what this man had just said to me, recalling the Ouija board message a few months earlier. We stood silent for a few moments. That day we met, he somehow overlooked my sickness and fell in love with me. He has never left my side since that day in June of 1997. We are now very happily married and are the very best of friends. He IS my soul mate and the Ouija board couldn't have been more accurate. When people ask us how we met and we tell them this story, some are believers and other are not, but I swear to the good Lord above this is a true story with a very happy ending.

P.S.: I have not picked up the Ouija board since this day.

Ouija Lady in White

I've always been into the paranormal and have had quite a few different things happen to me. One time in particular was when I was in grade school, about 5th grade (I'm in high school now). I was staying the night at my best friend, Stephanie's house. Stephanie, her older sister and I wanted to play with a Oujia board. Of course, we didn't have one since we were all so young, so we thought we would make one. Personally, I didn't really think anything would happen, though I hoped that something really would. Steph's sister and I went to the garage to get a permanent marker. When we walked out, Steph's sis locked the door (I saw her do this) and I was behind her when all of a sudden the door slowly opened. We both ran screaming "OH MY GOD! OH MY GOD!" all the way into Stephanie's room. We were both in shock. Neither one of us could talk much after that.

Later, we all went to bed. As usual, Steph and I slept out in the family room, which made me really uneasy because the garage door is in the family room. I couldn't sleep at all that night. I just sat there with the blankets over my head. All night I heard footsteps walking around me, and finally I got the nerve to see what was there. I pulled down the blanket and standing in the doorway was something that has always been etched into my mind: There was a lady, maybe in her 30s. She didn't look very friendly and she just stared at me like she was going to fly right at me and strangle me. I was scared to death. I remember her wearing a sheer white dress that seemed to be ripped and cut at the bottom. She was standing still looking at me, but her dress was waving like there was wind flowing at her. I don't remember any windows being open. Then, as quick as you can blink, she was gone. Every time I think about that woman, it's like I just saw her. I'll always remember the way she looked at me and what she wore.

The Clear Message

I was throwing a sleepover party for some of my close friends. I'm really into paranormal stuff, so I told my friend to bring her Ouija Board. At exactly 12:00 p.m. we starting communicating with the board. At first we asked stupid silly questions, but then we stared getting more serious. My friend that brought the Ouija came to the party late because she was coming from her uncle's funeral. When we asked for the spirit's initials, it spelled the ones of her uncle. I personally thought it was one of my friends playing a joke on me, so I put the Ouija board to the test. I told the spirit that all of us would go out of that room for about three minutes. When we would come back in, I told it, I wanted to see a sign that there was really a spirit talking to us. So we left the room. A few minutes later, I made sure I was the first one back in that room. Boy did that spirit hear our message:

The empty dishes were all turned upside down. (We were holding the séance in the kitchen)... a box of mints were all over the floor in the shape of a star... all of the cupboards were open... it was very, very cold... we noticed that if you drew a line from point to point where all the things were misplaced, it formed a star.

The reason why we think everything formed in the shape of a star is because my friend who brought the Ouija Board is a witch, and so is some of her family. We asked a few more questions to the spirit, but then it said good-bye at exactly 2:00. They say that the realm between this world and the next is open from 12:00 to 2:00. I guess it really is.

It Knew My Fears
Some people say it's static electricity or some natural effect, while others claim one of the participants is always pushing it. But I know all too well that Ouija boards do work, and that they are not something to be taken lightly.

My best friend at the time, Kaci, and I went through a stage where we'd mess around on the Ouija board all the time. We used to ask the same old, "Who am I going to marry?" "How many kids will I have?" "Who's got a crush on me?" type of questions. It was all just in fun. One day we were at Kaci's dorm, and there were a couple other people on the board with us. For some reason, the "spirit" we were speaking with took a dislike to me. It refused to answer any of the questions I asked it, or even acknowledge I was present. I gave up and removed my fingers from the oracle. Kaci asked the spirit why it didn't like me, and it spelled out: BIG HALO. It knew I was a Christian and it caught what I jokingly called my "Jesus aura."

After a little while, I put my fingers back on and began to ask it various questions about God; I had to test its spiritual knowledge. The spirit knew, without me saying it, that I didn't believe it was a ghost or a deceased person, and when asked, it admitted to being a demon or one of the angels that fell at the beginning of time. I actually began to argue with the demon about God, which, let me warn you, is not a good idea!

It began to taunt me with parts of my family's past that only I knew. Of its own accord, it made reference to my dead grandfather, who beat and molested my mother throughout her childhood. It was just to upset me. It worked, of course, and I had to leave the room. I felt like I'd just fought a spiritual war, and I was disturbed by the outcome.

That experience didn't stop me from playing again in the future. I was just always careful to stay as far away from the topic of religion as possible.

It wasn't long before I began being "haunted" at home - far away from Kaci's dorm. I believe that by using the Ouija board, I opened myself up to little demon visitors that followed me home. I can't blame it on any one instance; I think just using it in general opened the door to the nether realm.

Let me explain that I've had a recurring nightmare since I was a child. In it, I'm always in a room that is pitch black. There is a light switch on the wall that glows in the dark. No matter how many times I flip the switch on and off, the light never comes on. Usually there's someone after me or something evil that makes it imperative that there be light in this certain room for my very survival. I always panic, then wake up. I've never in my life been as scared as I am in those dreams.

I've told Kaci this before, in one of our many discussions of our worst fears. There must have been a demon listening, too, because they used that very scenario to get to me.

One night, I was going downstairs to where my bedroom was, and I tried to turn on the light using the light switch at the top of the stairs. It didn't work, no matter how many times I tried. I immediately started to freak out. I walked shakily down the stairs to use the light switch at the bottom. That one didn't work either. All the other lights in the basement worked except for the the ones for the hallway. The next morning, I asked my older brother, whose bedroom was also in the basement, if the lights worked for him. He said yes and looked at me like I was crazy. I told him what happened, but he didn't have any better of an explanation for it than I did.

On another night, I was again going downstairs, and I noticed a light on in the family room at the end of the hallway. I walked back to see where the light was coming from, and saw that the light was on in the furnace room in the very corner of the family room, with the door to the furnace room closed. I didn't think too much of it; I just figured someone had to go in there for some odd reason and forgot to turn the light off. I asked my parents, then my little sister, as they were the only ones home that day, and they all claimed they hadn't gone in there in months. That creeped me out almost as much as the light switch experience. Who - or what - was messing with the lights in the basement?

Then it happened again. This time, my friend Nicole was spending the night and we were going downstairs to go to bed. Once again, neither light switch in the basement hallway worked, but all the rest of the lights down there did. Now I was really frightened. I could have called the first time a fluke, some kind of wiring glitch that prevented those lights from working for a few minutes. Now that it had happened again, I knew this wasn't caused by anything natural; something otherworldly was behind it. I tried to stay calm for Nicole's sake. I remarked, "That's weird," and tramped down the stairs and into my room like nothing out of the ordinary was going on.

The third time it happened, I'd had enough. I finally fessed up and told my mother everything. She told me about playing with the Ouija board when she was younger, and that as a result she started to experience astral projection. She had these recurring out-of-body experiences for years, until she went to a Christian conference and heard her situation explained as being the result of having opened oneself to the demon world. You wonder where you actually are during this out-of-body experience? It's believed that you're actually in the same dimension the demons travel in, like you're walking around in their world. You can imagine that this isn't the safest place to be, even for a short while. The cure? A sort of exorcism performed on yourself. She explained it to me, and told me that would be my answer as well.

The Gangster Who Loved Me
I grew up in what was considered a "haunted house" that had links to the Mafia in the '20s and '30s. I have also always had a strange fascination with the Mafia and never knew why. I remember one of the spirits I saw as a child was a tall, young man wearing a long overcoat and fedora. When I was 17, I found out what this was all about.

My best friend's neighborhood was having a garage sale. There was one house that I went back to twice because I wanted a book that they had. On my second trip back, I noticed this old Ouija board on a table. I thought, "Now how did I miss that before?" It had no price, so I asked the women who were having the sale how much they wanted for it. They were absolutely dumbfounded because they couldn't figure out who the board belonged to. They did not remember putting it in their sale and it didn't belong to either of them. They said, "How about $1?" I took it. (At that time I had a male friend who was a self-proclaimed witch. He told me that someone wanted to contact me and that's why I found the Ouija.)

My friends and I playing with it and asked it silly questions. We each figured that the other was pushing the planchette around the board. We were just having fun. One night, about a month later, something amazing happened. My friends Christi and Sara and I were in my bedroom playing the Ouija when all of a sudden the planchette began to move with an inhuman force. It spelled out: YOU ARE BEAUTIFUL, then pointed at me. It pointed at Christi and spelled out: MAKE GO AWAY... SHE WITH HER. It pointed at Sara and spelled out: TALK. Sara took Christi's place. The spirit said: GK WAS WITH HER. (We later figured out that this must be her mother, who committed suicide and who had those initials). The spirit said that he went by G.T. He was 18 years old and lived as a gangster in Chicago in the 1920s. He told us the most amazing story about how he was framed and murdered. He apparently was approached to kill a member of their mob family. Although he turned down the job, word got out that he was asked. His best friend is the one that revealed the info to the man that was supposed to be killed. This man hired a hit man that went by the name of "Fader." Fader shot G.T. once in the back and once in the chest as he turned around. He died on a Chicago street in 1925. He told us that he used egg whites to slick his hair back, and that he loved jazz. His favorite jazz artist was a local named K.D. Johnson. He was in love with a young woman named Stephanie. My hair looked similar to hers, he said. He saw me and that's why he came through. That's why he told me I was beautiful. He also said he has seen me before (I am not sure, but he may be the young man I used to see as a child).

I didn't quite believe in it all yet. I just thought I had a brilliant screenplay on my hands. It was going on 10:15 p.m. that evening and we had been talking to this spirit for nearly two hours. It was just like having an invisible friend in the room. In the middle of the conversation, the planchette jerked and began pointing to Sara. It spelled out: GO HOME NOW and went to GOODBYE. After that there was nothing. It was a Friday night and Sara had a midnight curfew. She didn't want to go home at 10! It kind of freaked us out though, so just to be safe she went home. That night, I got a call at 1:00 a.m. It was a very shaken Sara. She explained to me that her sister had to call the police - there were people out in the driveway breaking into their cars. It was a bunch of crack addicts breaking into cars and stealing stuff for drug money. They were high and had knives and guns. Her sister looked at the time right before she called the police. It was 12:09 a.m. It takes roughly 10 minutes to get from my house to Sara's. She would have been pulling into the driveway when these drugged up lunatics were breaking into cars.