Read This If You Don’t Mind That You’ll Never Want To Play With A Ouija Board Again
Producer’s note: Someone on Quora asked: What is the creepiest thing that has ever actually happened to you? Here is one of the best answers that’s been pulled from the thread.
When I was a young teen – about 15, I think – I had a slumber party with some friends on my birthday. We did all the usual “slumber party” type-things, including creepy games like “Light as a Feather, Stiff as a Board”, and playing with a Ouija board.
Now, let me preface this by saying that I had requested and gotten the Ouija board for Christmas and never thought of it as anything more than a cool, creepy game. We were living in Hawaii and there’s a very strong sense of mana in the islands – a spiritual quality that allows for supernatural happenings.
There are ghost stories a-plenty. So, I naturally believed in ghosts and was going through a phase where I was devouring books by Stephen King and reading about ghosts and possessions and all manner of things that I – being a highly imaginative, creative young woman – probably should not have been so eager to read.
Anyway, we got out the Ouija board, turned off the lights, put our fingers on the planchette and started asking questions. We were asking all the usual questions, “Is there anyone here with us?” “Are you a boy or girl?” “What’s your name?” etc, etc.
I admit I was influencing where the planchette was going – it was my party, my birthday, and I could mess with their heads if I wanted to, dammit! – so I was pushing and pulling it a bit here and there. Pretty harmless stuff.
We kept asking dumb questions, getting dumb answers. Then it stopped moving for a moment. I got back in there, giving it a little shove, and got the game started again. Pretty soon I was fighting against one of the other girls, again, so I stopped trying to control it, again.
Then someone asked if it was actually a ghost talking to us, and the planchette slid over the word, “NO”.
Someone asked, “Are you good?” The planchette moved away, then back to, “NO”.
“Are you bad?” It slid to “YES”. We all started getting nervous at that point.
“Why would you do that?” It slid all over the place, finally spelling, “CAN”.
Yep, I was just about done. We were all just about done, when someone else asked, “What’s your name?”
Holy fuckballs, my friends did not know when to shut up.
The planchette started sliding around again. “D”. “E”. “V”.
Now I was done. I jumped up, turned on the lights and said, “That’s it. No more!” I took the board, packed it all up and shoved the thing onto the top shelf of the second closet. (My room had two closets. One I used, the other had things like coats and boxes in it. The whole family used it.)
The rest of the night was spent with us alternating between screaming at every little noise and then giggling about it.
But this isn’t a story about a sleepover and stupid Ouija board game. This is a story about what happened afterwards.
I started hearing tapping sounds from the closet.
Little ones, kind of quiet, but there. Tap…tap…tap…tap. Not every night, either. Just sometimes. I would go weeks without hearing anything, then suddenly one night after another, taptaptap. Tap. TAP. TAP…TAP…TAPTAPTAP.
I started jumping out of bed and running from the room whenever it started up, and my mom caught me sleeping on the couch several times. There were nights I would drag her or my sister into the room to try to make them hear it, too, but the sounds would stop the moment someone else came in.
Then one night, one glorious night, my mom made it into the room in time to hear the tapping. She was dumbfounded that I had actually been hearing something this whole time. She was also braver than I, because she promptly opened the closet to identify where the sound was coming from.
I’m not real clear on what exactly happened after that, but my mom says I became hysterical and wouldn’t calm down until she took the box out of the closet, out of my room, and out of the apartment. She had to lock it in the trunk of the car.
She took it to a swap meet to get rid of it, but when a woman picked it up and asked if it really worked, she said, “My daughter says it works too well. That’s why I’m trying to sell it.” The woman put it down and walked away. No one would buy it, because my mom was a really honest woman (still is) and would tell the truth whenever anyone asked her about it. I love my mother, but jeez!
I refused to have it back in the apartment, so she ended up stopping at one of those Goodwill bins and putting it in there. I used to wonder what happened to it, and hoped that it got beat up and damaged and eventually burned up in a fire. Somewhere else.
I stopped hearing tapping noises.
I had other experiences over the years, but I will never forget that one.