Okay! I promised some people I’d do an “occult” post today, although it’s probably more like a “knockout” post! 😳😏

Somewhere along the line, when my kids were young-ish, we acquired a Ouija Board. I really don’t recall how that came about, but there it was, and my daughter (11 at the time) and I found it to be quite entertaining! You’d ask if it were going to rain today, and “it” said No. Or… “it” might say Yes. It could spell out words letter by letter, or tell you numbers. Hard to predict, and harder still to figure out how it worked.

For those who aren’t familiar with Ouija Boards, they look a lot like this:

You “play” this “game” with another person. Generally you sit on opposite sides of the board, with the “planchette” – that heart-shaped pointy thing – on the board in between you; then you each let your fingers lightly rest on opposite sides of the planchette. When you ask it a question, the planchette seems to move all by itself to spell out (point at) letters, or simply rest on Yes or No. The players swear they’re aren’t the ones moving it! The planchette has a “life” of its own!

So it was interesting, if you like this sort of thing – fun and a bit of a mystery. A cut above the old Magic 8-Ball of my childhood.

So there we were one evening, my young daughter Kathryn and I, sitting cross-legged on the living-room carpet, with the Ouija Board before us. We asked it a few nondescript questions, and then one of us had a brainwave. “Hey,” one of us – I forget – exclaimed, “let’s ask it who it is!” We were in agreement over this neat idea!

“Who are you?” we asked, imbuing the question with a serious tone.

There was a bit of a pause. Then, slowly and deliberately, “it” spelled out:

I. AM. DEAD.

EEK! HOLY MOLY!! Okay, that’s enough of that! When I could bear to touch it again, I tossed the board in its box and threw it into the back of a storage closet. A few years later we had a big garage sale; I took it out and placed it among other rejects – er, objects. Someone bought it. I did not keep track of its travels elsewhere.

But I’ll tell you this. Neither Kathryn nor I will ever use a Ouija Board again. 😬😬😬