Never been a big fan of the Ouija board, any type of Ouija board – Milton Bradley/Hasbro or homemade. I don’t like ’em, I don’t trust ’em and I would just as soon put a wet finger in an electrical socket than use one.
An analogy, for me, would be; using the Ouija is akin to putting all your valuables in your front hallway, turning on a strobe light with accompanying siren, then leaving your front door wide open. I don’t care who you think you are – a Ouija board is Occult for Extreme Dummies. You will never control who does or does not respond. You will never know what you have contacted. Whatever is out there can lie as well as any politician and then some. Without exaggeration, I have never known the regular use of a Ouija board to turn out well.
Just to prove my point and as Ouija is popular sport come Samhain, a few tales that have come my way over the years….take ’em or leave ’em but don’t go crying to anyone should something “bad” happen. The warning is given – do what thou wilt shall be…you know the rest.
Some years back, I used to throw my doors open to the Pagan community and host various events; workshops of different sorts, group meetings for practitioners of witchcraft, I was even involved with a school – Horn and Crescent, for a bit. During that time, I came into contact with a variety of folks with their own stories to tell. To a person, everyone who felt the compulsion to pull out that stupid board ran into problems of the unexplained sort.
Example #1: A young person had lost a relative and wanted, understandably, to find out if the deceased loved one had made it to the other side. She had a few friends over for an evening and the talk turned to death and contacting the other side. A few days prior to the evening, the young lady had picked up a Ouija board at a flea market. It wasn’t a new board but was in good condition. She brought the topic up to the group and it was decided that it would be interesting to try the thing out. After a few false starts, fits of giggling and general frivolity, the group settled down and took to the task of summoning a spirit in earnest. They achieved, what they felt was the desired response and after some accusations of someone or other moving the planchette, they felt confident that they had, in fact, made contact. Questions were asked, primarily yes or no but then they started with more complex questions, requiring spelling.
The girl reported that the room, as expected, became cold but not everyone felt it. The group began to feel uneasy. They had lit the mandatory candles and a couple went out. They asked if the entity was the girl’s deceased relative and the answer came back affirmative. This wasn’t proof enough for one of the young men in attendance and he asked the relative’s name be spelled out. The name was spelled and it wasn’t the relative’s name. The name made no sense to the group but they were all rather unnerved and called an abrupt end to the session. Lights were, hastily, turned on but the fun had gone out of the evening and the group dispersed.
Now, if you are familiar with summoning of anything, you will note there were some important precautions that were not taken. There was no protection work done, the group was diverse and had never worked together in matters of the occult before. And? Probably the two most important errors were as follows – they asked a name and never dismissed what they had summoned. Not that I believe a normal dismissal would have worked in this case.
As should have been expected, the young lady started to experience unnerving incidents as early as that evening. Even with everyone gone, she felt like she was not alone. Her cat, normally a friendly little fellow, had disappeared (don’t worry, he was fine – he was hiding in her closet and refused to come out). She was so off balance that she left the lights on in her apartment. It took her a long time to fall asleep that night. When she woke in the morning, the lights were off. She was also missing a small silver ring. Not unusual, we all misplace jewellery, except, she reported that it had been on her finger. It wasn’t something she ever removed, in fact, she told me it was hard to get over her knuckles and that’s why she left it on.
Her cat remained in the closet and she was forced to move the litter box and the cat’s food next to the closet door. Yes, the door started closing. She would leave the bedroom, come back and the door would be closed, her cat mewing at her from behind the door.
Other pieces of jewellery started to go missing, always her silver pieces. The gold and the costume plated were left untouched. This continued for a week. Then the dreams started – there would always be a stork but it would have red eyes and was never a positive representation of the bird. She felt fear and found herself trying to run away from it but it was always there. In her dreams, she would turn a corner and the bird would be there, staring at her and screeching.
She was told to give me a call by a mutual acquaintance. After flitting around the real reason for her call, I invited her over. She looked like hell (pardon the pun). She looked exhausted and totally strung out. We sat down and had some coffee, she started with the flitting about but I don’t have much patience for mundane coffee klatch stuff so I told her to cut the crap and get to the point. She related the story to me and pulled out a piece of paper with the name that had been spelled out that night. I’m relatively familiar with angels and demons but this name didn’t ring any immediate bells. I hauled out one of my books and sure enough, there he was. A demon. Not one of your common ones and definitely not a name with which many would be familiar.
Take this for what it’s worth; this demon is known to be (surprise, surprise) a liar with a penchant for silver. He is also represented as a stork with a loud, unpleasant voice. Not terribly difficult to dismiss but it should never have happened. Messing about with things we don’t understand that can have unpleasant consequences in, in a word, stupid. I told her what to do and apparently, it was successful. She told me after dismissing the demon, she put the board in a green garbage back, tied it up tight and tossed it in the trash.
I have a few more examples for you but it’s the Witching Hour and I’m exhausted.
