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The Open Door Of A Ouija Board

 

There are several cautionary accounts here on YGS of bad experiences people have had using a Ouija board. My experience isn't necessarily bad but a bit on the freaky side.

Around thirty years ago, when I was between the ages of eighteen and twenty one, I experimented actively with a Ouija board. Initially I did this with one or two other people but soon I was using the board alone.

At eighteen I had moved (along with my brother) into my first place away from my parents. My brother and I rented a rather large two story condo in the town of Westmont, Illinois (the town I presently live in but at the northern tip). Initially my brother's wife and new born baby also lived there (he had married for the first time at eighteen) but their rocky relationship soon led to his wife and baby moving out.

Soon, in classic bachelor pad fashion, the condo became "party central" and there was literally a party of varying size going on every day. People came and went at times as if it was a bus terminal and I believe we had four different roommates over the course of the three years we lived there. I just know the neighbors were thrilled with the young and rowdy new renters!

I mention all of this to highlight how surprised I was at my brother's reaction when he discovered I was experimenting with a Ouija board. He became very animated and insistent that he didn't want it in the house. In an attempt to calm him down I assured him I only used it in my room but he was adamant that I should get rid of the thing. It has never been clear to me why he was so strangely averse to the Ouija board, as he was then a staunch disbeliever in all things paranormal, and I have wondered if at some point he had had an unpleasant experience with one. He never wanted to state anything on the subject other than, "Get rid of it!" I remember finding his reaction at the time both surprising and somewhat amusing.

Being a young, inexperienced guy, ignorant of the darker side of the physical world around me (much less the paranormal world), it certainly didn't dawn on me that there could be any real negativity associated with the Parker Brothers Ouija board I had!

A year or so after we had moved in, some friends brought over to one of our endless gatherings the girl I would end up marrying a few years down the road (it will be twenty four years this May). We hit it off right away and had many things in common. Paranormal subjects was one of them and we did use the Ouija board together several times. We received intriguing but generally vague messages and I decided to try it alone. In retrospect it is interesting to me that I did, for a short time, seem to become absorbed by it. I commonly would use the board before I would go to sleep.

At the time I worked driving a truck for a newspaper and had to get up, five days a week, at three in the morning to get to the warehouse which was around fifteen miles away. At that age I never had a problem getting two or three hours sleep before heading out for a full day of work. My then girlfriend (now wife) would commonly stay with me until I left for work and would regularly take a snooze with me.

One night she had left around eleven in the evening and I decided to try a single Ouija board session before getting a couple hours of sleep. Doing these single sessions intrigued me immensely at the time, as I knew that when the planchette moved beneath my fingers, another human participant wasn't moving it on purpose. It's very interesting to me to note that I remember very, very little of the actual sessions. I know I was regularly making contact with something, as words were spelled out, "yes" and "no" answers were given and I remember feeling enthralled, maybe spellbound is a better word, when the planchette would move under a power unseen. Vaguely I remember communicating with both a male and female spirit. At least they presented themselves as such. It is frustrating that clear details seem to have evaporated from my brain. What I do clearly recall about the night in question is finishing a session (and as usual for me not saying 'goodbye' or 'closing' the board properly) and falling asleep.

My alarm went off a little before three in the morning and upon awakening in the dark I could feel the torso and legs of another body pressed right up against me. I reached over this body, which I assumed to be my girlfriend, to switch off the alarm and turn on my bedside lamp. While reaching over this body, I remember having to slightly sit up to reach over it as it was pressed so firmly against me it made this otherwise simple action a bit awkward. The second the light went on I was stunned--There was nobody there! Quickly it dawned on me that Julie had left late the night before! It was discombobulating to think I had been laying next to an entity that had almost certainly gained access through the Ouija board. That said, I had to get to work and besides bringing it up to Julie later that day, I have to say that I never felt threatened or that whatever the entity was had any malice towards me (although that was the last time I ever used a Ouija board).

This incident elucidates why I feel (at least in this one case) the Ouija board could be described more as a briefly open door, or focal point, than as a portal. A few weeks ago there was a bit of a discussion on YGS about "portals" and how certain objects, the Ouija board among them, may serve as portals for entities/spirits, allowing an easier access point to the land of the living. Although the experience I had did freak me out a bit at the time, in retrospect I feel that whatever it was certainly showed no evil intent. Maybe it just wanted to briefly be close to a living person or even, literally, wanted a lie down.

I realize some people emphasize the need to perform certain steps to properly "close" the board and to even perform a cleansing or purifying of it and the house itself after it has been used. As I stated earlier, I was blissfully unaware of such thinking and never did anything other than put the board in a drawer. I would live in that condo for another two years without any paranormal incidents.

This is not to suggest that there are situations when it is probably necessary and helpful to perform some type of purifying/cleansing after contacting an entity/spirit through a Ouija board. I simply didn't know of such things when I was nineteen. Like most teenagers, I was in most ways naive and ignorant of any "bigger picture".

As a footnote, many years (and four houses later), on a snowy Saturday night, a good friend of me and my wife's had come over to hang out for the evening. Very late, and a number of drinks later, conversation turned to the Ouija board (which I still had) and my experience with it many years earlier. She said something to the effect of "we totally should burn it", whereupon we trudged out into the snowy night and burn it we did. That was the final end of my Ouija board.

Although I never had a bad experience with one (freaky but not bad), I have never used one since sharing a bed with an unseen entity. I suppose I was lucky, as my visitor could have turned out to have been something more menacing than a spirit trying to catch some z's! My experience is still something I would consider a cautionary tale however. If I had what felt like a solid person laying in bed with me, who knows what else could potentially be conjured and what attitude might accompany its visit.

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Comments about this paranormal experience

The following comments are submitted by users of this site and are not official positions by yourghoststories.com. Please read our guidelines and the previous posts before posting. The author, Manafon1, has the following expectation about your feedback: I will read the comments and participate in the discussion.

Rex-T (5 stories) (288 posts)
+1
6 years ago (2017-12-10)
Hi Manafon1,

I was skimming over some older posts and came across 'Ouija Board' and 'Parker Brothers' which set off a string of memories of my (rather naive) early adolescent years.

I quickly realized that putting this into a comments post was not the right thing to do, so I'll submit my experience and see what happens.

Thanks for the inspiration.

Rex-T
Manafon1 (6 stories) (712 posts)
+2
8 years ago (2016-07-25)
Tweed--I think I might try talking out loud more often to see if I can get reactions to direct statements. I already talk to my cats and the odd inanimate object so it's not out of my normal routine 😜.

Roylynx--That experience your father had is strikingly similar to the case study I read! I gotta say I love the idea that our loved ones are reunited with their four legged friends after passing over. Cool!
roylynx (guest)
 
8 years ago (2016-07-25)
Oh, I should add this, Tubby was an old black cat in my grandmother's house, I think it was the mother of Henrique's father, but Henrique never met Tubby.

E.Lynx
roylynx (guest)
+1
8 years ago (2016-07-25)
Wow! Nice experience! Somehow my father told me a similar story 3 days ago but it's an old cat not a dog. Not exactly the same but my father was at my grandmother's place and our granduncle appeared and told my father that Tubby had come to them. These days we (as my family) kept having strange things happening to us, I wonder what's going on?

Love from SΓ£o Paulo

E.Lynx
Tweed (33 stories) (2475 posts)
+2
8 years ago (2016-07-25)
Manafon, this just PROVES ghosts read over our freaking shoulders! πŸ˜†

Wow, this is so cool! I can tell why that case study had such an impact. 😊 Maybe you should speak out loud more often, or not, that might be weird, but good weird. What an awesome encounter, love it!
Manafon1 (6 stories) (712 posts)
+2
8 years ago (2016-07-25)
Hey YGS community,
I had a paranormal experience two weeks ago (as of tomorrow) and wanted to share it here in the comment section of one of my old accounts. I was reading a paranormal case study book (as I love to do) and had just finished an interesting case. A man was staying with a business associate in Switzerland, having flown in from England. After a long day at the factory they were both working for, they returned to the associate's house for dinner. The guest was put up in the associate's recently deceased wife's room. In the middle of the night the man awoke to the apparition of the dead wife and her dog and, telepathically, the man received a message to tell her husband.

It turned out the dog, who had been returned to the breeder after the wife's death had just been put down. Hence, the apparition was conveying to the husband they were now together. A veridical, or truth telling apparition. At any rate, the account reminded me of my deceased parents and how we all used to take long walks on the beach with the family's two dogs. I spoke out loud, "I hope you both can walk with Wally and Shiela (the name of the dogs) once again wherever you are." Instantly there was a loud knocking like sound from behind me. I then saw that a framed photo of my parents, on a buffet full of pictures (ten or so) was laying on its back. Dropping this picture from about six inches reproduced the sound perfectly. I should state that it had to have been dropped as it was closely placed between two other framed pictures that were undisturbed. It was a very nice validation for me that my parents are together with the old family pups. It is the fourth time my parents have made contact since dying. Just wanted to share this and see if anyone here has ever had anything similar happen?
girl25 (5 stories) (28 posts)
+1
8 years ago (2016-07-11)
interesting story, I didn't know someone could do the Ouija Board alone. Good for you to stop it and burn it.

As for the body laying in the bed with you- me too, I had a similar paranormal experience- it was in sleep paralisis and I felt the male entity next to me but with his feet next to my head and his head next to my feet. I can say it mimic one friend of my brother, he looked like this guy I know. The strange thing is that he had his eyes very closed like on purpose. I cannot know what it means
Jazzisepic (3 stories) (20 posts)
+1
8 years ago (2016-05-01)
Hi Manafon1
Very good story I love reading Ouija board stories.
But I am afraid to use on as I believe that you are opening a the after life with our life and you don't know who you are talking to!
Thanks Jazzisepic
Zeromaru (guest)
 
8 years ago (2016-03-04)
How could you be so calm!?
Ouija Boards are not really like what most people will consider and open gate for some demon and bad spirits.
Sure sprits will be attracted to the board, but they could be any spirits which is around.
Thanks for sharing!
Manafon1 (6 stories) (712 posts)
+2
8 years ago (2016-01-31)
Hi Helena123--I assume my "visitor" was female but that is almost certainly because my girlfriend had been at my condo only a few hours earlier. Thinking back, all I am certain of is that there was a body laying next to me. It felt unmistakably like a solid human body.

I agree, Rook's idea of a spirit "recharging" is a fascinating one. Thanks for your nice thoughts and for no longer having any interest in trying the Ouija... Especially alone!
Helena123 (25 posts)
+2
8 years ago (2016-01-31)
I know this is late Manafon1 but I just read your story and I really enjoyed it. The added idea from Rook of your body helping to *re-charge* the spirit is a fascinating thought also. I love the way you told the story, it pulled me right in and I am just glad like others, that no harm came from it 😊

I have never seen a planchette move by itself although I have family members that have said they have and I would like to witness it but, I won't try now I'm older (just in case!) πŸ˜†

I'm wondering now though whether your visitor was male or female but I guess it would be impossible to tell since you never saw it unless you have a gut instinct on that query? *AND* I'm left wondering, like you, whether your brother did experience anything with a board in the past...

Thank you for sharing, I've added it to my favourites. Take care, Helena
haunter (guest)
 
8 years ago (2016-01-20)
it was just great reading... The story does leave the remark "'coz all ghost stories are not scary!"...😊
Regards to you,
Hayden aka haunter
sds (14 stories) (1436 posts)
+1
8 years ago (2016-01-17)
Hi Manafon1, thanks for sharing your experience about OB sessions. It is also good that you have stopped using OB and burnt it actually. Not all who use OBs would end up in nightmares or get haunted. But being of that age, of course as Rook and Mac said, without expecting anything, you did use the Board but did not get any negative experience. Well, it has been a long time since you have used that Board and to verify Rook's theory just from memory is not quite easy.

Regards and respects to you.

SDS
Manafon1 (6 stories) (712 posts)
+1
8 years ago (2016-01-16)
Hi Rook-- Your thought that the "body" was possibly using me to "re-charge" is a fascinating one! I had never considered that. It certainly could have been doing that. Sadly, as this incident took place so long ago, I no longer have any memory if I was tired after my "sessions". I don't remember noting it to myself but as I then worked graveyard shift hours I was often tired. If I was tired after using the Ouija board I might have just assumed it was because of my schedule.

Thanks for commenting. I really like that re-charging theory.
rookdygin (24 stories) (4458 posts)
+4
8 years ago (2016-01-16)
It's curious how many Ouija board stories start out as...

Me and some friends wanted to see if anything would happen, or I was at this sleepover and 'so and so' had a Ouija board so we decided to try it... Then everything goes smoothly, to a point, then the board goes still then something 'bad' makes contact a 'scares' everyone.

I think, and agree with the idea, that INTENT plays a large part in how a session can go. In the cases as described above, there is as least one individual looking for a thrill/scare or at least someone's mind turns to that idea and the session goes from 'harmless' to 'scaresville'. The sessions you did, with others, or on your own, you never were seeking 'kicks' nor were you 'scared' or worried about a negative entity you had 'heard' about... So none were ever channeled.

As for the body laying beside you... Perhaps the spirit you had been speaking with was simply tucked up close trying to 're-charge'. Do remember ever feeling weak, or tired after sessions?

Thanks for sharing.

Respectfully,

Rook
Manafon1 (6 stories) (712 posts)
 
8 years ago (2016-01-16)
Hi gigi0147--It's great to hear that not all teenagers are like I was diving head first into everything without looking first. Glad too that my story, in some small way, has dissuaded you from messing around with a Ouija board.
Manafon1 (6 stories) (712 posts)
+1
8 years ago (2016-01-16)
Hi Mack--I would agree that a large percentage of people who use a Ouija board are "thrill seeking types" who want to feel (temporarily) scared. I imagine a large proportion of people experimenting with a Ouija board are young and, as I was, unaware of the darker elements of life.

I never wanted to be "scared" when using the Ouija board, so that is possibly why my experiences with it were mostly innocuous. Except for the incident I described in my account. Still, it is a bit unnerving to think something could manifest into what felt like a living person next to me. If this energy was directed toward some ill will who knows what the repercussions could have been. Certainly, as Tweed suggested, attitude plays a role in the results one can expect from a session with a Ouija board. Luckily, my attitude was positive. That said, in hindsight, I would suggest not putting oneself into potentially frightening situations that could be easily avoided.

Stating this is probably like telling a kid to not drink or smoke of course. The more you build something up as "bad" the more enticed many will become. Live and learn I say.
dreamer01 (1 stories) (117 posts)
 
8 years ago (2016-01-16)
the truth is you create your life with your thinking process. Yes, other things happen in between but you just have to deal with it in the best way you can. 😊 😊 😊
gigi0147 (1 posts)
+1
8 years ago (2016-01-15)
I've never used one myself. I'm glad I didn't and was informed of what can go wrong. Most of my information about them is from scary movies, and ghost stories tv shows, but nonetheless it's better to leave well enough alone. Just because it didn't seem aggressive at first doesn't mean it isn't a negative spirit. Take my incubus experience for example; he was coo as long as he had his way. The moment he didn't have his way there would be hell to pay. Usually people who use Ouija boards aren't communicating with "spirits" but demons. It's safer and sometimes dangerous (if they don't know how to protect themselves properly) to do it with a person who sees ghost. But I personally would avoid it all together. I'm glade to hear that you have learned from your experience. By the way, not all teenagers are naïve to this stuff, I'm 17 and I know the does and don'ts for the most part. 😁 😁 😁
Macknorton (5 stories) (646 posts)
+2
8 years ago (2016-01-15)
Thanks Manafon, it could be not so much the Ouija board but more so the users desires that attract? I guess it could be likened to prayer; we send out a strong vibe or desire to make contact with a higher power / Grandma / Satan etc etc and maybe depending on who we are, that's what we attract?

I guess the planchette is a way for these spirits to communicate with people or are generally deaf, dumb and blind to the delicacies of spirit.

Probably, and I'm throwing all this out there as I do, (not directed at you manafon) many people who use (d) ouija boards were the bored, thrill seeking types who see spirits as nothing more than an amusement tool in order to feel scared / terrified (a bit like people who watch horror movies). So they are then subconsciously (or consciously) attracting someone / thing who is going to give them what they want: terror. Which will be a low level spirit, close to the earth plane who gets off on scaring people...

Just a theory...
Manafon1 (6 stories) (712 posts)
+2
8 years ago (2016-01-15)
Hi Calamity--I was definitely ignorant myself! Thanks for your nice words.

Hi Tweed--I think you are right, attitude plays a big part in using a Ouija board. You are also probably right about the spirit just being worn out from so many Ouija sessions! Maybe a Ouija first 😁. Thanks for your thoughts.
Calamity (2 stories) (53 posts)
+3
8 years ago (2016-01-15)
It is refreshing to read an Ouija board story not full of doom and gloom and zozo demons. Why some of us amateurs have rather innocuous experiences and others have terrifying ones is curious.

I too used one when I was young, naΓ―ve and ignorant, (not saying you were ignorant - just me!) yet had nothing negative happen. For that I'm truly grateful.

I enjoyed reading your story and look forward to more.

Jane
Tweed (33 stories) (2475 posts)
+2
8 years ago (2016-01-15)
lol Manafon, I had to laugh while reading this because you and Julie both seem like such calm, relaxed people. I bet this had everything to do with how things went, a one time freaky encounter that didn't turn into Gremlins.

I'll always warn people against the good old Ouija. But really, I think attitude plays a big part in the nature and duration of peoples woeful Ouija sessions. Goodness only knows who the hell was beside you or why. Maybe this individual was worn out from all the Ouija sessions and, as you said, wanted a lie down lol.

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