Short horror stories

Stephen

One summer my college roommate and I got obsessed playing with a Ouija board she brought from home. I had never had one because my mom was very, very superstitious. One time (in the '80s) I wore my (huge) hair with two barrettes in front. It cast a shadow that made them look vaguely like devil's horns and she literally freaked. Anyway...

I made up for lost time, asking the board everything from what kind of drink I should have, what takeout. I even took out the fall semester class list and asked Oui (nickname. We were close, man). Usually the answers were easily attributed to our state of mind and cravings. But every once in awhile we'd get some shitty answers. Or rather I would. "Does my boyfriend love me?" NO. "Is he cheating on me" YES. "Will I ever get married?" "Never." "Will I have children" "DEAD" so on and so forth. Of course I accused my roomie of working out some passive-aggressive overflow. Which she denied. So we decided to get to the bottom of it.

"Are you a relative?" "YES." "Of Astrid's" "NO" "On my mom's side or dad's side" "NO" (huh???) "Are you evil?" "VERY" "Can you make things happen?" "ALREADY HAVE." After a couple of "conversations" went pretty much the same way, we stowed the board and didn't give it a second thought. But we did ask one final question: "What is your name" "STEPHEN."

Flash forward about three years. I'm in a car with my mom, one of my little sisters and her friend, right around Halloween time. Somehow the conversation turns to Ouija boards. My sister is trying to challenge my mother on the silly ban. Normally I would be on my sister's side regardless of the scenario but I remembered how spooked I was so I decided to share the story. When I get to the final part, the identity of the entity, my mother gasps and pulls to the side of the road. It took at least a full minute before she calmed enough to talk.

Stephen was the name of my biological father's father. According to my mother he absolutely hated her, had discouraged the marriage, disinherited my father when she got pregnant, challenged her on paternity. And died in the same hospital I was born in... three hours before my birth. His last words to my father: "Now you'll have to live with your mistakes forever."

They divorced when I was 18 months old and I never knew any of the history.