The Ouija Board

Hollywood loves to make adaptations.  It loves adaptations of television shows, books, video games, author's lives, etc.  The recent rage in adaptations appears to be board games.   This summer the first of many board game based movies was released in the form of Battleship.  The duo that directed Alvin and the Chipmunks will be directing an adaptation of Candyland.   A movie adaption of Monopoly is supposed to be about the sub prime mortgage crisis and finally a low budget adaption of Ouija will round out the board game movies. I could care less about the other movies, but the Ouija Board is always interesting in movies and it has been in many horror movies.  It has already been the primary focus of a Filipino horror film called Ouija.  From the Exorcist to Paranormal Activity the Ouija Board has brought doom on the masses, but is it really as evil as it is in the movies?

The Ouija Board was first created during the spiritualist movement of the late nineteenth century. It was designed as a tool to help communication with spirits. Elijah Bond and Charles Kennard were the first to patent the device. In 1966, the device's patent was sold to Parker Brother's who still own it. Ever since its creation the Ouija Board has been controversial. The most famous case of demonic activity with Ouija Board was the case that was later the inspiration for a book The Exorcist. I've blogged about this case before. A little boy named Robbie and his aunt attempted to contact a deceased relative and the resulting demon possession was legendary.

I remember my first experience with the Ouija Board was fairly typical. I was at a slumber party and one of the girl's brought out the board. We all took turns asking questions. I can't remember them all. They were mundane girly questions like "will Billy Bob ask me to the dance," or "Will I be a doctor when I grow up." At the end, the girl who brought the board out told the spirit thank you and said that she would give it all her Halloween candy as a way of saying thank you for all its help. She put her bucket of Halloween candy by the board and we went upstairs to play light as a feather stiff as a board. When we returned, all the candy was gone. The wrappers were still there. They were still sealed, but the candy was gone. I'll admit, this could be some kind of slumber party prank, but I don't know how this girl, who was pretty clueless pulled it off.

Almost everyone you talk to has a Ouija board story and almost all of them are bad. Mine was quiet and stupid, but almost everyone I talk to about the board agrees that it opens doors that shouldn't be opened. My grandmother passed away a few years ago, which had lead to much contemplation on her life. She was a woman who always dabbled in the supernatural and believed firmly in ghosts. In fact, she had a relationship with a ghost named Alonk that lasted years via the Ouija Board. She forced my mother and her sister to help her continue this relationship. Alonk told her he loved and sent her love stories. It really creeped my mother out, although my aunt grew fond of Alonk.

There are a million Ouija Board stories. One local story, involves a teen that used the board regularly. One night the sofa he stored the board under burst into flames, burning down the entire apartment complex he lived in. Another story I found in a book, describes a young man's interaction with a spirit via the board. During this interaction, the spirit said the board was specifically designed to communicate with those in hell. Only spirits that had been damned could be contacted using the board.

I have heard a few good stories about the board. One woman at a paranormal meeting I went to said she talked with a playful girl spirit that had lived in her house before her. She said the interaction was positive and helped bring peace to herself and her daughter who had been afraid of the ghost before the conversation via the board. I know that some people must be having positive experiences with the board, because it still sells very well. There is even an online version of the game now that allows you to play alone using your mouse. However, the overwhelming bulk of the stories are terrifying. Which brings me to the question. Is the Ouija Board a gateway only to evil or can it be used for good? Are people being swayed by the abundance of negative stories or are there any possible good uses for this tool?

An English Cottage

I met an old woman the other night.  She was scattered and talked too much.   Her hair was disheveled and all of her clothes seemed to be slightly askew. She was the type of lady that many people ignore, but if  you stopped and listened to her, her stories were some of the most mesmerizing I had ever heard.

Years ago, this woman had a small cottage in the English country side.  It wasn't much.  It used to be a gardener's cottage.  It had been used for the servants, but this woman adored her cottage and loved everything about it.  She described it in that way that only those who truly love a place can.  She described all the textures colored by the memories of the happiest years of her life.  She spoke of her children playing in the field outside and the steal gray color of the sky.  All these memories poured out of her with utter and complete joy.

She also spoke of the ghosts that had lived with her family and she.  These ghosts had been children and they had appeared to her children first.  She had found her children playing with them and had asked her children who they were talking too.  The children had explained that they were playing with children that had lived in the cottage many years ago.  Of course,  the woman had to research the cottage's history at this point and she found out that the cottage was once occupied by a family and that their children had been lost to influenza around 1900.  This had fed the woman's curiosity and she went out and purchased a Ouija board.   Together,  the woman and her children had used the board to talk to the ghost children and the woman insists that everything that came out of that experience was positive.  She says that the board was a good thing and doesn't understand why anyone would say anything bad about it.   She felt as if her children and she were able to help the ghost children come to terms with their death and cross over.

Of course,  there was a dark side to her story.   The cottage had once been part of a larger estate.  This estate had included an enormous stable for the wealthy owners of the nearby manor house.  The woman says that every time she walked into the stable she was crushed by a feeling so malevolent she never let her children go near it.  She felt that something dark lurked inside the shadows of that building and although she loved her cottage and its pleasant ghosts, she knew that there was a dark side to the spirit world.

Abenor: The Ancient Word for Love

My father used to call my grandmother a witch.  I never listened to him because he never had anything nice to say about my mother or her family.  I took what he said with a grain of salt.  It wasn't until much later that I realized their was a grain of truth in what my father said.  

The women in my family have always had a strong connection with the paranormal and this connection was at it's strongest with my grandmother, Kay.  Kay was a passionate and needy woman who was afraid of being alone.  She was a beautiful woman that was used to being adored by the men around, so after the first few years of marriage ground the edges off of my grandfather's, Raymond's, adoration, my grandmother found herself lost in loneliness.   Raymond was a good man, but he never knew what to do with his beautiful and slightly melodramatic wife, so he retired to his study at the end of every day to find peace.  

Kay couldn't stand her loneliness and she turned to the ouiji board to find some answers to her condition.   In order to use the ouija board she enlisted the assistance of her young daughter, my mother, Robin.  It started slowly.  My grandmother would ask the spirits questions and they would answer.  Robin hated it.  She fought it.  She felt that something was wrong in the core of her being and the ritual terrified her, but Kay persisted.  It wasn't long before one spirit in particular started a dialogue with Kay.  His name was Alonk and Kay and he spent their lonely evenings together with little Robin trapped between them.   Every night the two met  and spoke over the ouija board and every night they drug Robin with them.

Alonk loved Kay and he told her that the ancient word for love was abenor.   Abenor was their secret word for love, more powerful than any English word.   So the lovers met as often as they could, but Kay was encountering a problem.  Little Robin hated Alonk.   Little Robin hated the ouija board and refused to play.   Kay was not deterred.  She turned to her youngest daughter, Kathy, to play with and the love affair continued with a frantic passion that consumed Kay and her new assistant.

My mother still remembers my aunt, a little girl of five, sitting on the bay window looking out, waiting for Alonk to come for her.  She still remembers little Kathy speaking with fire of her mother's love.   Life moved on and even little Kathy grew up, taking with her Kay's connection to Alonk.  Raymond and Kay were divorced and Kay remarried.  She married a man that adored her and gave her the love she wanted.   Alonk vanished. 

But Robin's scars remained in a deep fear of the supernatural, especially the ouija board.   Kay is old now, very old ,and alzheimers has taken many of her  memories.  She forgets who I am and who Robin is.  She forgets everything, but she insists that she was married three times and she remembers Alonk and the ancient word for love, abenor.