Tales of the Ouija

BROKEN BARRIER

Many paranormal researchers who have experience with the Ouija board advise that if you're intent on using the board that you should first perform a cleansing ritual or create a psychic barrier of positive energy around you. Rena knew about this practice, but it doesn't always work.

Rena was just finishing her sophomore year in May, 2007 when one of her best friends invited her to her house to spend the night.

As sometimes happens when teens get together, they began to have a conversation about ghosts, demons, and scary things they had experienced. "I've always seen things," Rena says, "so I had plenty of stories to tell. As I was telling one story, I saw a little black dot floating in front of me... kind of like a fleck of dust, but it caught my attention.

When I asked my friend if she saw it, too, the dot started to float up to the ceiling. I kept my eye on it all the way, and then it was gone."

Apparently, that got Rena in the mood for something even more thrilling, and she convinced her friend to try the Ouija board with her. "We weren't stupid and we knew how dangerous they could be," Rena remembers, "so we opened a circle and set up a barrier to keep out evil spirits. I don't know if either of us really thought it was going to work. We didn't even have an actual board, so we made our own out of a Scrabble game set and a cup as a planchette.

"We asked the question that everyone asks: 'Is anybody here with us?' As soon as I asked that, the cup moved.

We both looked at each other in silence for a moment. When my friend recovered, she asked how many people were present. We went on that night for about two hours, and when we finally closed the circle, we were completely exhausted. I ended up staying with her another night and we were fascinated by this new thing that we were doing."

Rena and her friend were consumed by this strange phenomenon. They talked about it on the phone and told other friends about their experience. One friend in particular was also very interested, and the next time Rena got together with her, they gave the mystic oracle a try. "But this one didn't go so smoothly," Rena says. "Our barrier wasn't strong, and something ended up getting in. My friend started crying. You could feel the evil in the room. That's not a fun thing to feel, by the way. I went home to bed."

Rena carried that creepy feeling home with her, it seems. "I woke up at three in the morning with a nightmare about a door," she says, "just looking at a door. I don't know why it scared me, but it did. I still had that oppressive, ominous feeling in my heart. I woke up again at three-thirty, hearing a loud breath in my left ear, but went back to sleep after saying a little prayer. The last time I woke up was four, and I had had another nightmare. I was so freaked out that I told my parents and we all got together and prayed. It went away."

Despite this experience, Rena hasn't shunned the Ouija board completely. "It's made me more cautious," she admits. "I didn't turn away from it because I know that just like in the physical world, there are good and bad spirits. But I'll never forget that night."