The Night Of The Ouija

I have always been able to "feel". Since I can remember I have "seen", without my eyes, the creatures, beings and entities that are around us, whether it is a face in the paint on the wall or a shadowy figure in my room.

I believe that everyone has some form of psychic ability. I believe myself to be an Empath. I pick up on the emotions of people without them ever having to say a word. I always find myself drawn, mostly against my will, to the one person in the crowd that is feeling sad or depressed, or is experiencing fear or some other strong emotion (unfortunately I am mostly drawn to the darker emotions than the lighter, happier ones).

I grew up with a very "In-tune" mother (she is a medium). She taught me how to meditate when I was in my teens, how to protect myself while in a meditative state and how to turn away the darker things that would approach while in that state of mind. I do not consider myself an expert, but I have come face to face with a few entities in my life and, thanks to her teachings, have faced them down and come out feeling stronger for it.

This particular event occurred when I was about 14 years old. I was going through a dark time in my life, depression, parents divorce, cutting, etc. My friends all knew that my mother could read the Cards and they would always end up talking more to her, when visiting me, about strange happenings and the like.

One night, my mother had gone out with some friends and I had invited a couple of friends around. As the night wore on, the topic of ghosts and ghouls had come up. I was telling them about a story my mother had told me about this shadowy figure that had appeared to her off and on throughout her childhood. Mostly in her dreams, but on the odd occasion it would appear to her when awake.

I cannot remember now who it was that brought up the topic of the Ouija Board, but me, being the dark youth I was at the time, offered to make one. I'll admit that it was a slap-dash job, but we tried it anyway. In total, there were four of us.

One of my friends thought it was quite a laugh, and suggested that if we were going to do this, we should position ourselves at the points of the compass. We arranged ourselves, I was at the north point, and proceeded to try and contact something, anything. At first as the glass moved, the usual "Hey! You're moving it!" "No I'm not, you are!" went around. There didn't seem to be any message, just random movement of the glass. After about five minutes of this, we decided to take a break and go for a smoke.

All four of us were standing outside my front door, when one of my friends asked if anyone else had heard a noise from inside. I told him that he needed to stop freaking himself out and thought nothing else of it. We didn't go back to the board, just left it lying on my bedroom floor.

Later that night, after they had all left and my mother had come home, I was sitting in the lounge watching a movie, when I heard the sound of glass breaking. Being a little freaked out after our conversations earlier, I kept my focus on the TV and tried to write it off as my imagination.

Gently, at first, I began feel heat on the back of my head. I kept rubbing the back of my head, thinking that it was probably just a muscle spasm or some such. Eventually though, the heat was so intense, it felt like my hair was on fire. I got off the couch and went to our bathroom to see if I could see anything in the mirror. As I walked passed my bedroom door, which was open with the lights off, I thought I saw something flit across the doorway. This is where I really began to feel fear. As I moved through the flat I began to turn the lights on. I heard my mother sleepily ask me if everything was ok (the flat we lived in wasn't very big and all the rooms were quite close together). I called out that I was feeling very strange and that I thought I had heard something and was just checking it out. She had had a bit to drink that night, so I didn't want to bother her with what, I thought, was probably nothing.

The burning sensation died away while I was talking to her and I began to feel very lethargic. I whispered through her door that I was going to bed and turned off the lights as I made my way to my bedroom. The closer I got to the doorway, the more lethargic I felt. My eyelids were so heavy, I felt like I was going to fall asleep on my feet.

I stumbled into my room, not looking where I was walking, and stepped on something sharp. Immediately I was alert. The pain in my foot must have snapped me out of whatever was happening. I looked down and saw that the glass we had been using for the Ouija Board had shattered!

My foot began to bleed, dripping blood on the floor and all over the makeshift board I had made. I hopped on one foot, to the bathroom and managed to pull the glass from my foot and stem the flow of blood.

Again I went to my room, picked up the glass, and threw the board in my cupboard. I began to feel very depressed and angry, but soon fell asleep.

I don't know what time it was when I suddenly woke up, as if I had been awoken by a loud noise. I lay very still in the dark, listening for any sound that might explain what had woken me. My bedroom door was open, which looked directly down the passage and into the kitchen. Light from a street lamp outside was filtering through the kitchen window. When I looked through my door from my bed, I saw the figure of a man standing in my doorway. The figure was almost completely black and seemed to be wearing a long coat with a wide-brimmed hat on its head. The only part of it that was not black was its eyes. I will never forget those eyes. Thin, red as blood, with black slits where the pupils should have been. When this being noticed that I was looking directly at it, I felt wave after wave of fear and anger hitting me. It did not move towards me or make any threatening movements, but I felt that it was not there to make friends.

At first I found it difficult to think straight, my mind was in turmoil. Eventually though, I remembered what my mother had taught me, surround yourself in light/energy, visualize that ball of protection as being your shield against anything negative, and hold to the image. I slowly began to calm. I kept repeating that it was not welcome here and that it should leave me alone. The more "solid" my shield became in my mind, the fainter the "Shadow Man" got, until eventually he just faded away.

At this point, I jumped out of bed and ran to my mother's room. As I walked into her room, she sat bolt upright, wide awake. I told her what I had experienced, and what we had been doing earlier that evening. She then told me that she had had a nightmare about the "Shadow Man", which she had not had since before I was born, and that was what had woken her.

She then went with me to my room and asked to see the Ouija Board we had been playing with. She told me that we had opened a passage of communication while playing with it, but had neglected to close that passage, which may have allowed the "Shadow Man" to come through. She took the board to her room and told me to stay in mine. I don't know what she did, but a few minutes later she came out and told me it was fine now and I should try to get some sleep.

The next day she was extremely upset with me for playing with the Ouija, and told me that if I didn't know what I was doing, I should never try that again. To this day, I stay away from them.

I believe that I have been face to face with that entity again (read my other story "Possession, Apparitions and Terror") and succeeded in banishing it, but I do sometimes get the feeling that it didn't go far.