Haunted Objects: Stories of Ghosts on Your Shelf (17 page)

The majority of people who use a Ouija game—especially those who use them for fun—will never encounter anything. There are, however, those stories that pop up, making you wonder whether the board is a magnet for activity or a focal point for people who are already experiencing the paranormal.

Every talking board has a story, usually involving wacky things that happened while people were using it. I have marveled at the stories people have told me over the years. Most are insignificant moments of unexplained activity, like a light flickering or a spirit knowing too much about the people using the board. These instances can be explained away.

Then there are the more disturbing and less frequent occurrences, like the time a board told a group of girls someone dangerous was outside, only to have the prowlers caught a few minutes later. Many of the stories focus on the boards becoming an obsession to the users, who tell of using them every night for a week at a time, or spending days researching something the board told them. They range from simple stories of overuse to one story I was told about a college student who became so obsessed after playing, he spent all his free time making boards out of anything he could find.

These tales paint the board with a similar brush. An average person starts to play with one, usually as part of a group, and then something happens. The common theme is that the board acts as a trigger to the activity, but the activity is more about the board than the ghost itself. Several ghosts seem to come into the user’s life over a short period of time, and only by getting rid of the board does the activity stop. The board is not a way to communicate with the haunting: the board
is
the haunting.

Looking back, I am not sure when my first board became haunted. It was used for years with no negative activity. My parents kept it in the linen closet and every once in a while took it out for laughs. I was certain it was more powerful than others because it had come from Salem, Massachusetts, home of the infamous witch trials. Years later, I discovered most Ouija boards had a similar label, although few modern-day boards are actually produced there.

The trouble seems to have started when an old girlfriend of my mine, who practiced witchcraft, conducted a special ritual blessing the board and preparing it for our use. The fact that we were using it in one of most haunted buildings in Boston, the old Charlesgate Hotel, made us believe the things we experienced there were due to the location, not the board.

The night of the ritual, we used the board and contacted a spirit that said it was an old sorcerer. I allowed the spirit to try to channel through me, and an hour later I had to be restrained as I tried to choke myself. We felt the whole incident was a case of overactive imaginations, too little sleep, and intention impacting reality. We continued to use the board, although the woman who had blessed it refused to ever put her hands on the planchette again.

We used the board frequently over the next few months, always getting more responses and having more odd things happen than most other people. One of our strangest experiences has become part of the lore of the building and is still told on ghost tours through the city.

A spirit who referred to itself as Federal Government took over the board and demanded we talk to it while we were trying to communicate with other spirits. Over a long period of time, unexplained things happened in our room—items went missing, radios and alarms went off and on, and dark figures were seen out of the corners of our eyes. My girlfriend refused to enter the room.

The whole situation centered on my roommate, a womanizer who the spirit was determined to kill because he treated woman badly. It seemed ridiculous when viewed logically, but there were too many coincidences for us to ignore. We kept using the board through it all, and Federal Government kept communicating with us.

One time while we were using the board, my roommate was in the shower. As Federal Government pushed the other spirit we were speaking to off the board, running over the words ACDC over and over again, my roommate watched as the lights went out above him. His first instinct was to screw the light bulb back in—an unwise idea, as he was covered in water.

A short time later, an ex-girlfriend with whom he had a destructive relationship, confirmed our suspicions that whatever Federal Government was, it was not to be taken lightly. A spirit with the same name had contacted her years earlier, claiming to be a demon. The spirit said it would kill anyone who wronged her or interfered with its relationship with her.

One of several variations of Ouija, or spirit, boards.

I always assumed it was the ghosts we came into contact with that caused the chaos and the board was just a background piece in the story, not the main character. That changed when I moved out of the dormitory and into an apartment with a friend for the summer.

We rarely used the Ouija board, but whenever we did, it dominated our lives for a few days. Our conversations revolved around it, and we spent most nights hunched over it, trying to make sense of the random letters it pointed to. Then, for whatever reason, we stopped using and talking about it, and stored it in a closet. But the board would not leave me alone.

I started having nightmares almost every night. Each dream started with me involved in a normal daytime activity, and then it would change. In one, I was preparing food at the deli where I worked. A wind began blowing all of the equipment and containers around, breaking glass around the restaurant. Spiders came pouring out of the refrigerators and freezers, covering my legs. An unseen hand cut the woman I worked with, and she turned to me, crying, “You have to use the board and get them to stop.” I woke up and the board was on the floor next to me, the planchette on top of the smiling sun symbol.

All of the nightmares followed the same pattern. I was walking the streets of Boston in one, and people started to chase me. Someone said they would give me shelter, but I had to use the board. In another, a beautiful woman and I were kissing, and she suggested we use the board before we made love. After each dream, I woke up to see the board either out of storage, or the door to the closet, where it was stored, standing open.

These weird dreams and unusual activities fed my enthusiasm for the paranormal. It was 1995 and I had already started documenting paranormal activity and investigating haunted sites. I began to wonder if the board itself contained something unreal and dark. Using it wasn’t as fun as it used to be. Instead, the board acted like a jealous lover, unable to deal with the fact that I had moved on.

It was not only during nightmares that the board tried to press itself back into my life. Although we lived in a studio apartment, my roommate and I did not see much of each other. We were both working long hours, and she had a new boyfriend with his own place. However, we both felt a heaviness in the room whenever we entered it, and at night we often felt we were being watched.

One time I came home to find the Ouija board in the middle of the room. That in itself didn’t raise an eyebrow—it was becoming a regular occurrence. Hovering over the board, however, spinning around and forming a tornado-like cone, were dozens of flies. I tried to swat them away, but they wouldn’t leave until I returned the board to the closet.

Another time I had some female friends over. They insisted we play with the board and I hesitantly agreed. We took it out and spoke to several different spirits. I was impressed by how powerfully the spirits came through and how clear their messages were.

It grew late, so I agreed to walk the women to their car, but the apartment door refused to open. The lock was jammed in one position. The planchette, which we had returned to the box, was now sitting on the “No” corner of the board. I moved it down to “Goodbye,” and we heard the lock click. The door opened slightly and the women ran through, saying I didn’t have to walk out with them.

I left the board out and went to bed. A few hours later, my roommate and I were jarred from sleep by the fire alarm. The alarm, positioned above the board, was going off even though there was no fire.

My final night with the board pushed me over the edge. A week after the fire alarm incident, I was awakened by a barking dog—extremely odd considering pets were not allowed in our apartment building and the noise seemed to be coming from right inside the room. I propped myself up in bed and saw a dark figure, like a man in an all-black body suit, sitting on my roommate’s bed and moving a hand over her as if stroking her body.

In my head, I heard a voice say my name. It then said, “You will use it or I’ll kill your whole family.” At that moment, the closet door slowly opened and the board fell off the top shelf. When I looked back at my roommate’s bed, the dark figure was gone.

I got the board, ran out the door, and threw it into the dumpster behind the building. I ignored the pounding on the metal as I walked back to the front door. I had no desire to see it ever again.

The decapitated body of a foreign woman was found in the same dumpster a few weeks later. Some police friends not involved in the investigation told me they were recommending I be put on the short list of suspects because it was the second time in as many years a body had been dumped on a property where I was a resident. I laughed it off because it was so absurd.

Although I have used many other Ouija boards over the years, I have never felt the same intimidation or heaviness as I did while using that first board. Logic tells me the Ouija board had no connection to the murder, but there is a tiny voice that always questions the possibility and makes me pause.

Sarah Finds a Board

It is rare to find anyone who has actually purchased an Ouija or spirit board. Boards usually just seem to “be there,” perhaps owned by a longtime family member or picked up at a long-ago yard sale. Ask people where they got their boards and they will usually shrug their shoulders. They have no memory of the acquisition.

Boards seem to be one of the last true artifacts handed down from generation to generation. You can visit the board game aisle of the local toy store to find a new glow-in-the-dark version or you can buy one at your local occult dealer, but the casual user won’t do either. Instead, spirit boards are discovered in the attic or basement of parents’ or grandparents’ houses, under a tattered quilt, on top of old books, or next to the old game of Operation with the funny bone long lost.

People take boards out of storage and breathe new life into them, sometimes asking the former owner if any paranormal activity occurred when they used it, but more often not knowing its history. Many people associated with the paranormal condemn any use of the spirit board because of this kind of “blind” communication, which is like walking along a dark street in the worst part of town, tempting fate. For others, not knowing a board’s history is part of the thrill.

Sarah knows the history of her board and the colorful path it took to her is as interesting as the events she witnessed with it. She now admits the unusual things she experienced with it may be linked to the road it traveled to get to her, although part of her wonders if the board itself caused some of the sad things it saw.