Tales of the Ouija

EVIL PRESENCE AND DEAD FROGS

Unlike Rena, there are some people who were so terrified by their Ouija experience that they swear they will never touch one again – and warn everyone else to stay away as well. Reb, for example, begins her story with this warning: "Don't ever touch one or even be curious – they are the work of negative spirits, not benign to help you!"

What scared Reb so badly? Her tale begins in the summer of 1975 when she was 14 years old.

Reb's family was in a state of transition that year. They had just sold their house in Whitby, Ontario, Canada and hadn't yet decided where they were going to purchase a new house and settle. So until that decision was made, they lived in a small apartment complex.

One day, a girlfriend was over for a visit.

Bored and looking for something to do, Reb told her about the Ouija board she had received from her mother for Christmas. Reb asked if she'd be interested in giving it a try. "Sure," her friend replied. "If it works, I'd like to contact my grandfather."

In the basement beside the laundry room, the apartment building had a dark, dingy, nearly empty storage room with one window. Reb figured this would be an atmospheric place for their impromptu séance. The girls took the Ouija to the basement and set it between them on an old crate. Each put a hand on the planchette.

"Grandpa," the friend began, "if you are there, can you please let me know?" The pointer started to slowly slide around the board.

The girls eyed each other nervously. And although it was a hot July afternoon, the storage room suddenly became uncomfortably cold. Instead of frightening the girls, however, it actually excited them. "This is neat-o!" Reb recalls them exclaiming. "We felt some heavy energy in the room and definitely did not feel alone in the room anymore.

Apparently, it was her grandfather."

Apparently. The friends asked a few more questions and received some answers, but after awhile tired of the game. Reb packed up the board and the girls parted to their respective homes, vowing not to discuss their possible spirit contact with anyone!

"Around 7:00 p.m., I got super tired while playing in my room," Reb says, "which was unusual. So I lay down on my bed looking up at a picture above my bed, and I immediately fell asleep. But the room was spinning and I was fighting to wake up because I felt panicked, as if something else was going on. I felt like my spirit was being pulled from my body! I got really scared and, after a struggle, woke up."

Reb felt she had to talk to someone. She decided to call her best friend Ted from the pay phone just down the street and ask him for help. "I felt very depressed, almost as if an evil black cloud was around me," she recalls. "As I walked toward the pay phone, I saw some frogs on the side of the road and 'knew' that when I returned from the phone they would be dead. They were, too!

"I spoke with Ted and he said to get rid of that Ouija board immediately. They are evil. Paint a red cross on the back of it, he told me, break it in half, and throw it out. So I went back home and that is what I did. I used my red nail polish and made a cross, broke the board in half, and threw it in the dumpster by the apartment."

Reb's ordeal wasn't quite over, however. "For several years after that, even when our family moved 200 miles north, I had that same recurring fight at around 7:00 p.m. when I felt the aching desire to sleep, feeling a sudden exhaustion," she says.

That was the least of it. "Often times, the foot of the bed bounced around and shook, like something out of The Exorcist, and I'd feel 'beings' around my bed placing heavy invisible objects on me that would get heavier and heavier," she says. "It was always a very frightening experience. No matter what I did, it wouldn't go away. I had a lot of bad luck. Some very bad things happened to me, the worst of which was that my sister went schizophrenic and had to be institutionalized – which I very strongly believe is possession!

"One day, I took out the little Bible that I got in grade school and started to pray to Jesus. I begged for help... and I got it. I started to feel at peace and never had those paralyzing, fatigue-induced states again. Yes, the Ouija board is very nasty," Reb again warns. "My current best friend is a psychic 'cleaner,' and he told me that whenever he went into a home to cleanse it, he would ask the homeowners where their Ouija board or Tarot cards are, or he'd immediately zone in on them and remove them from the house."