The Ouija Board
Stephanie Caves, Ohio, USA
October 1998
Ok, I know no one ever believes these are true but I have an honest experience I wanted to share. When I was fifteen I spent a lot of time visiting my cousin Jessica. She was several years older than I, with a place of her own, and always seemed to have to most entertaining people around her. One was a woman named Jeanie who claimed to be a medium. For my sixteenth birthday they decided to throw a huge party for me to end with a sleep over. Well when the party had dwindled down to about six of us someone got the idea to get out the Ouija board Jeanie brought with her. I had never played with one of these before and was a little hesitant but everyone else thought it was a great idea and went on without me.
So they are all sitting there running the planchette that is supposed to spell things out and grumping because nothing is happening. I finally got bored of being the odd person out and sat down. The minute I touched the planchette it started dragging our fingers way faster than before and started spelling. E-L-I-Z-A-B-E-T-H over and over again. Jessica started to laugh a little and said there is no Elizabeth here, but the wedge jumped over to the word yes and stopped. Everyone just looked around at each other for a minute and started asking "ok who did that". No one had picked their hands up yet though and the wedge started moving again. This time no one was laughing. We couldn't pick up our fingers, so we all just sat there horrified as it spelled things out. It took about a few minutes total but it seemed like forever. It spelled out that it's name was David and it had loved Elizabeth in another life and he would watch over her everyday until she came back to him. This time Jessica yelled out "there is no Elizabeth here!". David wrote out one more thing , that she was here, he would never leave her and he knew she felt him the night she ran away. Then it just stopped. We were all just horrified and threw the board away that night.
I have never touched another Ouija board and I never told my friends the truth either because it was just to scary. My mother still teases me occasionally because until I was five I tried to convince her that my real name was Elizabeth and to top that off, two or three months before I had attempted to run away from home. I got about two miles away from home and felt a huge chill and could have sworn I felt someone's breath in my ear. I was so scared that I ran all the way back home and snuck back in my window. So I guess I am a believer, I just try not to think about someone looking over my shoulder most of the time but occasionally I still get that chill and remember that night.