Tales of the Ouija

THE SALOON OWNER

The first time I ever saw a Ouija board being used, I was the only male in the room. I wasn't using it; I was standing there, watching. I didn't see anything to indicate that the little plastic thing with the window in it was moving on its own. I would have sworn that my girlfriend and her friend were moving the thing.

We were in my girlfriend's house; they wanted to talk to the person who lived in the house when it was first built. They got an answer: J. McGillicuddy. I thought they were full of it, making it up as they went along, but then again, there's no way that they could have both come up with the same fictitious name. And I know they didn't plan it ahead of time because up until an hour prior, they didn't even know the board was in the house. (I had found it up in the attic when I was weathersealing a drafty window.)

They got a second answer: the house was actually built at another location in 1913, then moved to its current location. I had noticed on the outside of the house that there were these big round things still attached to the house that looked like big round chain links. Those were to strap the house down when it was moved.

I checked out some of the information at the county courthouse, looking at archives of census figures, etc. Indeed, there was a J. McGillicuddy who lived there and operated a saloon that had long since burned down. He died at the age of 33 -- stabbed to death when he tried to intervene in an altercation between two of his patrons. To this day, I don't know if the girls were making it up. If so, it was quite a hoax, and they're both better tricksters than I ever gave them credit for being. ~ THISNAMESTAK