Turn off the lights, light some candles and incense, and sit with a friend with the Ouija board between you. Place your fingers lightly on the planchette, ask your question... and wait. What will happen? Will the mysterious talking oracle give you an answer? Will it spell out something silly? Or will it give you a response that will frighten you to your core?
Many people believe that the Ouija board and similar talking boards can open a portal of sorts to other dimensions, and that there’s a danger that evil, non-human entities can come through to frighten, wreak havoc, and even possess. Personally, I think the Ouija is generally harmless to well-intentioned users, and I also suspect that it might provide a means for us to tap into our own subconscious, even to the point where psychic and telekinetic phenomena can manifest.
This can sometimes produce some truly scary experiences.
Consider these tales of the Ouija that readers swear are true.
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 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.”
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 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.”
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.”
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.”
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