Playing With A Pendulum

A few weeks ago, I was on holiday with my two cousins, two of their friends, and my aunt. The kids were all younger than me, and were used to staying up until all hours of the night, so once my aunt had gone to bed we would all sit in the living room and talk about everything and nothing. It was fun, but things went a little strange one night starting at about one o'clock in the morning.

When I was eight or nine I learned how to dowse using a pendulum, and during a lull in the conversation I decided to show off and played around a little using my locket. Naturally, after the first few questions were answered correctly they were suitably impressed, until one of my cousins decided that he was bored of "yes" and "no" answers and came up with the bright idea to write letters on a piece of paper and try to get longer messages.

I was a little skeptical of whether it was really safe or not (or whether it would even work, frankly), but after being persuaded by the others I agreed. We did as he suggested and laid out the alphabet as well as "yes" and "no" on the floor before starting to ask questions, with one of the friends writing down both the questions and the answers. To up the ante a bit, the other three touched my shoulders - I think they were thinking of an Ouija board and treated me as the "pointer". I've copied the questions and answers here.

Q: Who are you?

A: M-E.

Q: What is your name?

A: M-E.

Q: Are you getting annoyed with those questions?

A: YES.

Q: Are you good?

A: G-O-D-I-E.

Q: Are you being sarcastic?

A: G-O-D-I-E.

Q: Do you want us to leave you alone?

A: G-O-D-I-E.

Q: Last question - are you the same person who talked to us earlier with the yes/no questions?

A: NO G-O-D-I-E.

By this point I was laughing and trying to pass it off as a joke because I could see the two youngest ones were getting pretty panicky and scared - I didn't want them to suffer nightmares after all - and refused to ask any more questions for them. But we started to notice it was getting colder (which was surprising, seeing as it was in Spain and we'd suffered from the heat all week) and I sent them to bed. This was about two in the morning, so they weren't too upset about being kicked out.

As we were in an apartment, there weren't enough beds for us all so I was sleeping on the sofa in the living room. And it carried on getting colder until for the first night since I'd got there I used the sheets that were left spare to wrap myself up in an attempt to keep warm. It didn't take too long before I fell asleep, and I don't remember anything else of that night.

The friend who wrote the questions down, though, went through to the kitchen yet later for a drink and found something strange. Before then, he said I had been a still sleeper as far as he knew and hadn't done anything peculiar. Usually, I slept on my front with my current book and my locket in easy reach beside me, facing towards the kitchen which was open to the living room.

But, this time was different - he told me that I had a "manic grin" on my face and that I had opened my eyes and watched him as he went to the fridge. Finding it creepy but funny, he pulled my cousin out of bed to see, and apparently when they came in I was still grinning and still looking, and when they tried to talk to me to see if I was awake I kept on whispering "Go away" over and over again, no matter what question they asked, and eventually I picked up the locket and threw it at them. At that point they got spooked and ran back to their bedroom for the rest of the night. The day after I found my locket underneath the table, so there is some evidence they were telling the truth.

The other pair, whose bedroom was on the other side of the wall the sofa was against, stayed up longer than the others (they claimed it was four o'clock when they finally went to sleep, having terrified themselves with the events with the pendulum and ghost stories they were telling themselves), and told me something else. They said that there was a steady banging coming from the wall that divided us, that started about half an hour after they'd gone to bed and lasted for a good while before stopping suddenly.

Apparently it wasn't a loud banging, but more like someone was hitting the wall softly and repeatedly. Both being barely thirteen and already having scared themselves silly it wasn't surprising that they didn't come to check and see what the banging was, but I admit I am curious as to what it could have been. One of them did try to record the noise on her phone, but that wasn't particularly successful and though we could hear thumping when we replayed the video it wasn't very distinct.

After that, we didn't get the locket out for that purpose again (at least, not all together - I did ask it if there was another spirit or ghost in the apartment later, and got a positive response) for good reason - none of us wanted that to happen again, although I was still curious as to what had happened whilst I was asleep, and whether they were telling me the truth. Nor did anything else happen that was out of the ordinary as far as I know for the rest of the holiday.

A few small things went missing, to be found in strange places later, but that could just be happenstance. There was only that one incident, though we all agreed that it was enough! I did get them to apologize with me to the ghost, if there was one, for disturbing it simply out of courtesy, and if it was there perhaps that was what stopped it from taking things further whilst we were there.

I'm not sure if this counts as a true ghost story, considering that I'm relying a lot on what they told me (two were sixteen, two were thirteen) and for all I know they were playing a trick. It is interesting that both pairs told me something had happened without consulting each other, but again it might just be that they were being kids.

Normally I'm not so skeptical, it's just that I can't remember a thing from the rest of the night and as far as I know I slept peacefully, so there's no real reason for me to believe that I was doing those things. I guess it's up to you to decide.