Tales of the Ouija

THE LITTLE WITCH

In 1974, Marie also was young – just 11 – when she was introduced to Ouija board weirdness. She was living in Los Angeles at the time. "A new girl came to our grammar school, and I was asked to be her friend and show her around school," Marie recalls. "My mom thought it would be nice if I asked her over after school, since all the other kids thought she was strange. She came over and we went to my room.

She started looking through my closet for some kind of board game and we found a Ouija board. I told her I thought that it was the stupidest game ever since it took a group of people to sit around it with fingertips barely touching it, and then it was supposed to move to spell out answers. In my opinion, it never worked and was just a gimmick.

Someone inevitably always ends up pushing it around the board."

Marie's new friend laughed at this. Apparently she was more familiar with the Ouija because she told Marie that she hadn't been using it correctly. She and her mother were witches, she told Marie, and that she could conjure up real spirits with this board.

"I didn't believe her," says Marie. "She told me to sit in a chair in the middle of my room. She then placed the board on my lap. She took my hands and placed them on the Ouija and started forcing them to move quickly in a circular pattern. She then uttered some weird words. As soon as she released my hands, the Ouija flew out from me and raced to the letters M-A-R-I-E. I screamed and threw the board on the ground."

Marie was more angry than frightened. She confronted her new friend and demanded to know what kind of trick she was trying to pull. But the girl only laughed in response. Marie said, "Let me see it move again, but this time no one goes near it or touches it." The girl agreed and calmly told Marie to place the board on the floor where she had been sitting and to put the planchette in the middle of it.

Marie did so, and the planchette began to move again – spelling her name!

"This time I freaked," Marie says. "I ran to my mom. I told her what had just happened and that I wanted the strange girl to go home. I really was frightened of her and that board. My mom didn't believe me, but did take the girl home."

Later, when she had calmed down and had mustered some courage, Marie returned to her room. The Ouija was still there, resting silently in the middle of the floor. Marie just stared at it for awhile, then carefully approached it. "I looked it over," she says, "trying to understand how a piece of plastic with what looked like a pin in it could possibly move on its own. So I did something stupid: I challenged it. I put the board back on my lap, did the circle thing... and the most horrifying thing happened.

"I felt an entity so strong and so forceful that it literally threw the board across the room and knocked me out of the chair. I was terrified. I ran out of there and went sobbing to my parents. Again they didn't believe me, but I couldn't bear to go back to my room and touch that board. So my mom promised me she would get rid of it."

Later that evening, when it was time to go to bed, Marie refused to go near her room. She curled up on the couch with her dog. She was so frightened of her own bedroom that Marie slept like this on the couch every night for nearly a week. Fed up with this nonsense, her parents forced Marie to sleep in her own room, but she made sure that her dog was with her.

On the first night back in her room, Marie woke up in the dark to the sound of her dog growling and scratching at the door. "She was very upset," Marie says. "My room was ice cold. I knew I wasn't alone. I was scared, but strangely indifferent. I was mad. I was angry. I slowly got up – almost as if I were in a trance – and walked to my parents' room. How dare they force me to go to a room with an evil presence! I was going to wake them and make them deal with the entity in my room.

"I went to their room, turned on their lights, and just stood in the doorway. My mom was very startled, and my dad was more than a little annoyed. But something in my face said it all. There was fear in their voices, and I vaguely remember them saying my name. I was in a fog. Later, my mom was comforting me on the couch and washing me with a cool cloth. I don't remember exactly what happened. My parents said I wasn't myself. I had awakened them and then stood in the doorway pointing at something under their bed. I had a faraway look, and frankly I scared them."

What was under the bed? The Ouija board! "My mom had told me she had thrown it away, but she had lied," says Marie. "She thought I had been grossly exaggerating and that it was a harmless board game. She thought she would just hide it away until I had forgotten about it. When they tried to make me go back to my room, they noticed it was very cold. The dog was also acting crazy. That's when my parents finally believed what I had told them."

Was Marie's new friend really a witch? Had she really conjured up something? Marie is convinced that the answers are yes. "My mother took the Ouija board and really threw it away," Marie says. "When she did, she swears she heard it scream. I know no one else would believe her, but I sure did."