Around 1984, when I was at the tender age of 14, a group of school friends and I decided to attempt a Ouija Board in a friends garage. It was a pretty dark night, so we set up had candles to light a little chess table with scrabble letters arranged in a circle and used a whiskey tumbler with a coin on top to ensure that no-one could move the glass, the rationale being that if we pushed the coin it would slide off and the tumbler would stay in place.
The self appointed 'controller' of this experiment was a mature lad called Jason who assured us that he knew all about how we should go about getting it to work. He started the proceedings by asking the standard, 'is there anyone there?' question. On the third attempt he picked up the glass from the table and visibly flinched. When we asked him what the matter was he said the glass seemed to split in two. Anyway, this was odd enough but we carried on regardless. Returning it back to the board and continuing with the questions the board slowly started to answer our questions. Obviously, this was a long time ago but I do remember that we asked it if there was a true God and it spelt out 'bullshiat'. Despite none of us being particularly religious this did have a bit of an impact.
What ever we were talking to claimed to be an uncle of one of the participants, who, unknown to us had died in a motorcycle accident some years previous. Towards the end of our questions I noticed that the energy of the tumbler seemed to increase to the point that the glass would shoot towards the scrabble letters and knock them off the table. We asked if he'd like us to visit his grave (our friend had told us where his grave was) and he answered 'yes'. We said we'd take flowers and then asked him which flowers he would like. Now, throughout the experience a few of us seemed to tire and intermittently close our eyes, seemingly involuntarily and then 'come to' again. At the point where we asked the question about flowers I too had my eyes closed and in my minds eye saw a crystal clear image of a yellow daffodil. Directly after this the board started to spell out 'daffodil'. The connection between my mental image and the spelling out of this word unnerved me and I felt like this what ever was talking to us wasn't my friends uncle at all and decided I wanted out. To my mind this is when things began to change but it could've been my fear kicking in. The table seemed to get knocked once or twice but it was dark so we couldn't be sure if it was being knocked accidentally and there were a couple of bangs on the side of the garage too (It's nearly 30 years later as I'm writing this and I'm getting shivers) and we asked the 'uncle' if we could stop and it spelt out 'no'. At this point my friend Paul and myself took our fingers off the tumbler and left the garage to sat in my friends garden. I remember we were both pretty distressed, but it seemed that our remaining friends were fine to carry on.
After a short while, Jason came out of the garage and said that the 'uncle' had threaten Paul and myself (something about hurting our hands and face), it wasn't clear why this had occurred or even if it was true but we went back into the garage and apologised but didn't return to the board. They had all told the 'uncle' they'd do another board soon but had seemed to come to some agreement that they had had enough for that evening. I have no idea if this is the correct protocol but we carried the table, scrabble letters, tumbler and all and smashed the glass in a gulley that ran behind the friends house. At that we all ran off to our homes. Literally, we each without any warning to the other just ran away without saying goodbye. This seems odd when I look back on it.
A few days later at school we all discussed trying it again, I agreed but dropped out at the last minute along with Paul who had left the garage with me on the first occasion - We'd both seen enough and been freaked out enough to not want to repeat this experience. That night, Paul and I ran into the rest of our friends on a main road near where we lived. They'd just tried again and got through to the 'uncle' who had again answered their questions, knocked the table AND mentioned my friend and myself. Obviously, this could have been a bit of BS just to frighten us and I'll never know that. However, what happened next has always stayed with me.
I was eating a bag of crisps we'd just bought from a shop further up the road and I offered one to my friend, as he went to take one I felt what I can only describe as a sort of physical or electric jolt. I'm not talking about an electric hand buzzer, or anything so localised here, I'm talking about a powerful sensation that surged through me eventually settling in my jaw/cheekbone area. My mouth instantly became bone dry and I nearly choked on the crisp I had in my mouth. I remember swearing at him and stepping back and he seemed genuinely surprised at my reaction and even a little frightened by it. We spoke to them about their experience a little longer but I was pretty shaken and the sensation in my cheekbones had turned to sort of ache. Later on that evening the same thing happened when I touched a metal fence on my walk home and had a similar effect on me. Again, this really frightened me and it's not a sensation I can accurately describe to this day.
The following weeks I had night sweats and sleepless nights and for a long time afterwards became convinced that something, or some energy had transferred hit me that night that I just can't explain or fathom. I still ponder on what Ouija Boards could be, spirits, collective energies of people involved or something even more exotic or elaborate we can't really conceive of but one thing I do know is that I will never sit in on one again.
Loading comments....
