I believe I was around the age of 12 - 13 when my group of friends decided to give a Ouija board a try. I'm not definite of my age, as I tend to be pretty bad at timelines of my past, but that doesn't hinder my memory of the event itself, as it has had a long and lasting impact on my life and indeed, changed my beliefs entirely. I would mention at this point that my mother was in the early stages of understanding her own spirituality and would later become a spiritual healer.
We were in my friend's dining room. It was dark outside, so would have been late evening. She had a circular dining table, so it was easy to make our own board out of scraps of paper for the alphabet and Yes, No answers. We used a small whiskey glass as a planchette. We were all naive and mischievous children, who knew no better. Although, my friends parents knew what we were up to and didn't prevent it. But I guess that was out of lack of knowledge more than anything, they must simply have thought it was an innocent game. After all, you can buy the damned things from toy shops!
The friend whose house we were in asked "is there anyone there". She did this a few times and after a minute or so, the glass started to move. We all burst out laughing (nervously!) as we were all convinced someone was moving the glass. We tried a childish experiment and each took turns to take our fingers off the glass to try to eliminate the trickster, but to no avail. We continued to ask fairly innocuous questions about ourselves, nothing of which was unknown to anyone in the room. Then we asked, "what's your name" to which the response was "Hoi", spelt out for us. We then started to take the whole thing more seriously and started asking questions about our futures. "Will I marry", "Will I have children", "Will I have a happy life", "What will I be when I grow up". We each asked many different questions, also some about relatives that had passed. All stuff that, as a child, seemed so real and the thought that this could be the work of one of the group really left us.
Although, looking back now as an adult, most of which was asked could very likely have been one of us playing around, but... The time came for me to ask my questions and I tried to ask the same sort of questions my friends did. My first question was "will I have a happy life". To which the answer was "NO". At this point I lost my sense of humour and a sense of foreboding came over me and all my friends went rather quiet. "What will I be when I grow up" was my next question, to which I had no reply. The glass just spun randomly around the table, not spelling anything. Now all my friends had asked how long they will live and all got nice well into old age answers. Me, 19 was the end for me and that was the end of our session. My friend swept all the letters onto the floor and that was that. Of course, we had no idea of the implications of what we had done and certainly had no idea that you should close down the session properly, so as to ensure the "door was closed" so to speak.
I was terrified and fairly convinced I was going to meet an unfortunate end in the not too distant future. I went home, having pretended I wasn't bothered, typical kiddie bravado, but I was totally petrified. My parents weren't home, but my older brother was. He had a room with two beds, as my other brother had moved out into his own home. I had a room to myself, being the only daughter. My room was a box room above the stairs, so there was a big space that was taken up by the headroom to our staircase. If you can imagine a square room, with a big cube in one corner that was half the height of the room, leaving the actual floor space an L shape. My bed was tucked between the outer wall of the house and the side of the cube.
I lay down to try to sleep. I have my eyes closed tight, but sleep is evading me. I suppose I am too scared. I had a night light on, as I wasn't too fond of sleeping in the dark. We lived in the country, so dark is dark, not like living in the suburbs where there is always street lighting. I hear a noise, like someone came in my room. I think it's my brother, so I open my eyes and look up. On the far wall (opposite the other exposed side of the cube) was a shadow of a person, it looked very tall, it started to move towards me. As my stomach did a flip I ran into my brother's room. Now he must have realised that I was truly very, very scared, as he let me sleep in his room. Normally, that would have been unheard of. I was the pain in the butt sister who he avoided if possible.
When my parents came home, they checked my room, as they always did, to come in and kiss me goodnight. I would sometimes hear them and pretend to be asleep. They came straight into my brother's room on finding mine empty and were shocked to see me asleep in there.
I told my mum the next morning what had happened and she was less than pleased and rang the mother of my friend and told her off. The next night, I could not sleep in my room. It felt different. There was something there. I couldn't see it, but it was tangible. I remained in my brother's room for about a fortnight, until my mum said she would sit with me in my room, until I fell asleep. After several nights, I finally felt brave enough to go it alone. After all, mum and dad were only in the next room. Our house wasn't massive.
That first night alone, I fell asleep fairly quickly, but the next thing I remember is being stood in my parents' doorway, looking into my room through the open door. My door was on a 90 degree angle, next to my parents' door. I wasn't seeing my room though, what I saw I can only describe as a medieval market scene, lots of people walking around old wooden stalls, in medieval dress, carrying baskets and the sound of the distant chatter of a crowd. It wasn't scary, but I was transfixed. I wasn't aware of my mum by the side of me at first, although she tells me she was trying to get my attention for quite some time. I was pointing at my bedroom and making a low mewling sound. I cannot remember that. Maybe I was still asleep and it was a dream? Nothing more happened in my room after that, although my life has been full of experiences I cannot explain.
I am now 48, so clearly Hoi was a bit of a naughty spirit, who was having some "fun" with some mischievous kids. My mum told me years later that the only thing she could think of doing was to recite the Lord's prayer, over and over again. She would handle it rather differently these days, but it seemed to work back then.
I know I have some of my mum's abilities and as I said, I've experienced many things that cannot be easily explained away. I am sensitive to spiritual presence and am made aware of them as soon as I enter the space they occupy, but I don't fear it anymore.
The only thing to happen in my 19th year, was that I moved out of my childhood home, into a flat with my then fiancé. I've had a somewhat turbulent life, so maybe Hoi was actually referring to a big change in my life, I will never know. But, what I do know is this, NEVER, NEVER participate in a Ouija board session if you do not know what you are doing, better still, just NEVER. Spirit do not understand may earth bound traits, such as time, so our questions can be misinterpreted. That's our problem, not theirs. They may not be inherently evil, just mischievous kids like we were, but how we chose to deal with what we are told, can have a huge impact on your life. Almost a self fulfilling prophecy I suppose. Steer clear people and stay safe!
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