Ouija…

Aware of my discomfort and desire to never know the spirit who resides in my home, the children slid it under my daughter’s bed leaving it forgotten when her friend packed to go home the next morning. Then, during the night, as my daughter lay restless in her “no seriously Mom, Oija Board’s don’t freak me out” bed, she suddenly remembered the cursed thing and freaked… promptly moving it to the hall.

We came to an impasse. “I don’t want it in my room” she said. “Well I don’t want it in my hall” I answered. We stood there. Perplexed. At a turning point with neither one willing to budge and the Quija board stuck between us needing a place to reside for the day until she had a chance to return it to her friend.

Suddenly, without thinking, I opened the nearest door as my eldest lay sleeping and kicked it across her carpet, firmly closing the door behind us with a “we’re heading skiing for the day have a nice sleep” remark. 

Problem solved.

My fear of the board goes way back.  I don’t know how old I was, who I was with or what adult freaked. Somehow I think I was with my cousins at my Grandmother’s house… though I think I was only about six or seven and could have been at a friend or neighbours… I really don’t know. All I truly remember was the Ouija board thrown into the fireplace where it never burned. The words OUIJA shining brightly through the blue and red blaze and getting more vibrant the more we stared… no one daring to look away as flames licked the wood that never turned to ash.  Everyone excitedly proclaiming the evils in the fire… still in awe of an adult stopping our game, tossing it violently into the coals and lecturing us on its mysterious powers.

While the details are sketchy at best, the image stayed with me to the point that when various friends threw sleepovers involving the satanic object… I wimped out with the remembered knowledge that there was something horribly wrong with the board other’s were so fond of befriending.  Yet, much as I tried to avoid them, I did attend one sleepover where Oija was the focus of the night. Six of us in a friend’s bedroom… lights down low, candles lit, a black cloth thrown across a TV tray with the infamous board placed upon it in preparation for a séance. The girls looking to ask the questions of who would be the next to be kissed and other ridiculous statements better left to a Magic 8 Ball.

We sat in a circle… hands pressed lightly on the planchette with the purpose of communicating with the spirits when all of a sudden a cross, hung on the bedroom wall hit the floor with a mighty bang. Both board and heart shaped wooden thing went flying as six screaming, neurotic thirteen year olds ran from the room… opting to shut the door locking all of the demons inside and choosing instead to sleep in the living room, daring each other to re-enter the bedroom as the evening wore on, hoping the candles would see fit to blow themselves out.  Me with the unspeakable knowledge that we might catch the place on fire but the board would never burn!!!

The agony far too much for this fragile flower to endure… I went home.

Later I discovered my friend had strung invisible string from under the table to the cross on the wall but I’d bought it… bought into the powers of the evil plank and never changed my feeling towards the horrid game.  So much so that this morning, faced with the thing outside my bedroom door, I kicked it out of my way.  Hid it in my daughter’s room where hopefully, before I return home, it will have disappeared… never to be seen again.

If she asks, I’m claiming innocence and the power of the board… making it’s way into her room in search of spirits.  Never will I admit that her psychotic mother was the freak that put it there.

If she wants to know the truth she has the means on her bedroom floor… go ahead… ask the Ouija.