Tales of the Ouija

SUMMONING HITLER

Before Ouija boards were sold in toy stores, people used to make their own "talking board" for their séances. This is what Denise's mother did a number of years ago, Denise tells us. The setting is a small town in Germany called Tittmoning , which lies near the Austrian border. It's an old town with a dark history. It suffered the plague twice and was virtually burned to the ground on three occasions in its past.

Still, it features a castle, old buildings and, of course, cemeteries. Important to this story, too, is the fact that Adolf Hitler was born in Austria, then ruled Germany, much to the world's dismay.

The story begins on a chilly summer evening in 1985 when Denise's mother, then a 13-year-old girl, and her friend decided to have a little fun together while their parents were gone.

They took a blank sheet of paper and a black marker, and started to neatly write on it the numbers 1 through 9 and 0. Below them they wrote the alphabet, drew a sun and a star, and finished it off by adding "Good Bye" to the right and "Hello" to the left. They set a little wooden desk and two chairs in the middle of the room and placed the paper on the table. They lit six candles around the room, then placed an inverted drinking glass on the table. They switched off the lights off and sat at the table. The two girls moved the glass to "Hello" and lightly pressed one finger each atop the glass.

One of the girls addressed their homemade Ouija board. "Hello? Is anybody there?" she asked. After a moment of silence, the glass slowly started to move toward the letters and spelled out YES.

As the evening slowly turned into night, the girls had asked the spirit a variety of questions. They were enjoying this activity until one girl suggested, "Let's ask him his name!" They asked. Two seconds later, their talking board pointed out the letters L-H-E-I-T-R-D-O-F-L-A. At first the girls were puzzled, but then realized the letters were out of order.

It was an anagram.

"Are you Adolf Hitler?" they asked. Silence for nearly two minutes. Then suddenly the glass shot across the room and shattered against the wall into millions of pieces. The girls went screaming out of the room and refused to go back in. The next day, strange things began to happen in the house: footsteps, a weird laughing sound... one of the girls even swore she saw Hitler's face in a corner, grinning at her.

Eventually, they were forced to return to the room to clean up the glass. As they entered the room, they found their self-made Ouija board ripped into pieces on the table. The girls picked up the shredded paper and buried it in their backyard. They have never touched another Ouija board – homemade or store bought – to this day.