Halloween Countdown - Oct 12
Oct. 12th, 2013 08:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
vivienA nice and spooky Ouija board story from The Awl!
We'd gotten one for Christmas once, but we were asked to burn it by our grandmother, who was certain, on the advice of The 700 Club, that it was an instrument of the devil and not such a good thing for our moral development. But we were not to be prevented, so we took an old piece of plywood and tarted it up with a lipstick alphabet and YES and NO and such, and then wadded up a piece of aluminum foil to use as a planchette. We'd sit in the backyard—it was summertime—and call up all sorts of interesting spirits and have facile conversations with them.
During this period of time, I came in from mowing the lawn one early evening, and my mom informed me that I'd had a phone call. A girl. I was at an age where phone calls from girls were desired but rare, so I was taken aback. Who had called? "Kay," Mom said, "her number's on the fridge."
This was weird. There were no Kays in my junior high circle of friends, in fact no Kays at all that I could think of. But, the previous day, my sister and I had Ouija'd up a Kay, supposedly dead at a young age. This was very weird.
So I hustled up to the parent's bedroom, which was the place to make daylight private phone calls, and dialed the number. Kay answered. The connection was fuzzy and full of static, like in a wind tunnel, but the voice was clear. "Do you know who this is?" she said. I responded that I had a pretty good idea.
So what did we talk about? I wish I could tell you. It happened pretty fast, and I, in my boy detective ways, would press her about where she was calling from and that kind of thing, but she was glancing, almost flirty. I don't recall her answering any questions directly. I do recall at the end of the conversation, she broke off by saying that someone was coming and she had to go. And there was a change in timbre, a swelling, of the background noise, and she clicked off and was gone.
Now, surely this was fake, a prank played by my sister. Best I can tell, no. I established my sister's whereabouts, playing in a different backyard. And I called the number every day for two weeks, thinking that if it were a pay phone or someone's parents' phone, some one would pick up eventually. No one ever did. And at a certain point I stopped trying. Probably school started, or I had a crush on a girl, or both of those things. My brief episode of lilting Ray Bradbury subsided into my otherwise bucolic youth, when there were worlds to conquer and/or to pine for.
And that would've been the end of it, a funny story for one-upping spooky stories. But, as the years went by, the three times I was near a Ouija board, at parties, in the dorm, Kay would ring in and ask for me. And I was never part of the Ouija team; I swore it off. But Kay didn't, and she wanted to speak with me, and I never did. It's pretty much only now that I'm curious about what she wanted. Back then, I was creeped out, and then irritated at being bothered.
I don't know what it all means, or if it means anything at all. I've always been mildly interested in the paranormal and the occult and general high and low weirdness, but oddly I've divorced that specific event of weirdness from the reading that I've done. It was what it was, and still is, I guess, so I don't know if that was a phone call from the other side, an overactive adolescent imagination, or even a prank played by my sister that somehow took on a life its own.
I don't know. But isn't it neat?
We'd gotten one for Christmas once, but we were asked to burn it by our grandmother, who was certain, on the advice of The 700 Club, that it was an instrument of the devil and not such a good thing for our moral development. But we were not to be prevented, so we took an old piece of plywood and tarted it up with a lipstick alphabet and YES and NO and such, and then wadded up a piece of aluminum foil to use as a planchette. We'd sit in the backyard—it was summertime—and call up all sorts of interesting spirits and have facile conversations with them.
During this period of time, I came in from mowing the lawn one early evening, and my mom informed me that I'd had a phone call. A girl. I was at an age where phone calls from girls were desired but rare, so I was taken aback. Who had called? "Kay," Mom said, "her number's on the fridge."
This was weird. There were no Kays in my junior high circle of friends, in fact no Kays at all that I could think of. But, the previous day, my sister and I had Ouija'd up a Kay, supposedly dead at a young age. This was very weird.
So I hustled up to the parent's bedroom, which was the place to make daylight private phone calls, and dialed the number. Kay answered. The connection was fuzzy and full of static, like in a wind tunnel, but the voice was clear. "Do you know who this is?" she said. I responded that I had a pretty good idea.
So what did we talk about? I wish I could tell you. It happened pretty fast, and I, in my boy detective ways, would press her about where she was calling from and that kind of thing, but she was glancing, almost flirty. I don't recall her answering any questions directly. I do recall at the end of the conversation, she broke off by saying that someone was coming and she had to go. And there was a change in timbre, a swelling, of the background noise, and she clicked off and was gone.
Now, surely this was fake, a prank played by my sister. Best I can tell, no. I established my sister's whereabouts, playing in a different backyard. And I called the number every day for two weeks, thinking that if it were a pay phone or someone's parents' phone, some one would pick up eventually. No one ever did. And at a certain point I stopped trying. Probably school started, or I had a crush on a girl, or both of those things. My brief episode of lilting Ray Bradbury subsided into my otherwise bucolic youth, when there were worlds to conquer and/or to pine for.
And that would've been the end of it, a funny story for one-upping spooky stories. But, as the years went by, the three times I was near a Ouija board, at parties, in the dorm, Kay would ring in and ask for me. And I was never part of the Ouija team; I swore it off. But Kay didn't, and she wanted to speak with me, and I never did. It's pretty much only now that I'm curious about what she wanted. Back then, I was creeped out, and then irritated at being bothered.
I don't know what it all means, or if it means anything at all. I've always been mildly interested in the paranormal and the occult and general high and low weirdness, but oddly I've divorced that specific event of weirdness from the reading that I've done. It was what it was, and still is, I guess, so I don't know if that was a phone call from the other side, an overactive adolescent imagination, or even a prank played by my sister that somehow took on a life its own.
I don't know. But isn't it neat?