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The first time I had an experience with a Ouija board was when I was in college. I was a freshman and, having grown up a Christian, I had an aversion to the idea. Nevertheless, a friend and I started talking about it and agreed to set up a 'scientific session'. I do not recall exactly how we set it up but the main idea was that I would be a casual observer (I refused to touch the board). The participants would be my friend and one other trustworthy mutual friend. My friend's girl-friend, K, was also there (as an observer) and she was the only one who had done a séance before. We asked K about her experience before we started. She explained that her previous experience was unpleasant, part of the reason why she did not want to participate. She went on to explain that she had used the Ouija board with some high school friends. They had contacted a woman who claimed have been murdered by her husband. Throughout the experience the 'spirit' was very hostile, but only towards K. It frightened her quite a bit and she asked to leave. She had been told that the participants in a séance cannot leave until the spirit indicated its permission by pointing to the GOODBYE. She asked permission to leave but the spirit refused, again being very hostile but only towards her. When she asked what the spirit did not like her, it replied by explaining that K believed in God while the other girls apparently did not. The spirit went on to explain that when she died she did not believe in God and that her afterlife experiences (in limbo) had made her hostile to those with faith. But this is all background ... I don't recall exactly what happened with the first session but curiosity overcame me and I decided to try it for myself. I also convinced K to be the other person on the board. At first we started by asking the normal questions and wanted to get a name at least from the spirit. The spirit gave its name as something like Sarah. K got very nervous at this and asked if it was the same Sarah as she had spoken with before to which the answer was YES. Sarah went on the say that her communication at the previous séance had given her a calming change of heart and that she now followed K around as a sort of guardian angel (although I am quite sure it was understood that Sarah could not physically interfere in K's life). Sarah did not strike me as overly bright, at times it was difficult to understand the answers to our questions. When she said that she had a friend that she had met in 'heaven' we asked if we could speak to him. This spirit immediately seemed different. He appeared intelligent, articulate and concise. His name I remember exactly - Oscar J Harrington. We began what developed into a bit of a relationship as he readily answered all of our questions. Over the period of a few sessions we asked many questions, primarily about the nature of the board and the spirit world, religion and his life. Obviously the spiritual stuff could have come from anywhere, true or not. I was the details of his life that proved most interesting. We asked him about where he lived (in Southern California), his job (he owned a used car dealership), his family (he had none that he wanted to talk about) and, most importantly, the nature of his death ... and this is where it gets real interesting. Oscar explained that he died in a plane crash (by the way, every spirit that I have spoken to has claimed to have died violently). We asked about the crash and my friend carefully wrote down the details. He said that he was flying Delta in 1985 and he gave the exact date, which, infuriatingly, I cannot recall. He was flying between Fort Lauderdale and LA via Dallas and that it crashed in Dallas. (I think that was the one where the plane did a cartwheel and was caught on video tape - sk) We took the details and went to the library and pulled up the New York Times from around the date that he had given. It was all there with the following exceptions - he had given the direction of the flight incorrectly (he mixed up coming and going) and his name did not appear on the list of dead. When we asked him about this he could not explain either discrepancy. The way the indicator moved on the board everytime we did a séance, there is no way that K could have been controlling it without me knowing. At times, when Oscar was excited or felt strongly about the topic, the indicator moved so rapidly that both of us had trouble keeping our fingers on it. Also, K did not seem to be quick enough to make up such a story and keep it so consistent, let alone know so much detail about a plane that crashed when she was twelve! Oscar also had his own personality, gentle and at times humorous, that was distinct from K's. I later conducted two more 'scientific séances', one with my college room-mate (a confirmed skeptic) and the other with my sister who had the same impartial curiosity as me. I trusted both of these people. Both of them wanted to do it to find out if it was real and we had success with both sessions. Unfortunately, neither session seemed as interesting as the first but they confirmed for me that there is something to the Ouija board. I don't claim to know what that something is but Oscar said that there are three things that are able to communicate through the board: spirits (the dead), demons and the living. skeptika's note: I liked this story for two reasons, LZ approached the séance with the same frame of mind as I did and he uses the word 'nevertheless'. I do note that he had the pretty much same experience as I did where the spirit provided detailed information and later this sort of fit but details were skewed or couldn't be confirmed. We were given a phone number to ring - one that from the conversation should have been in South Africa but ended up being in Poland and didn't seem to get through to the person I was told to talk to (the spirit's daughter). |
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