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Tales of the Ouija
Is the Ouija just a toy... or a device that can open windows to a dark, shadowy world? Before you place your fingers on that plastic planchette, you may want to read these five stories.
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• Page 2: The Ouija That Wouldn't Go Away, and more
 
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"My name is Vicky. I'm 26 and I work as a security agent at the Children's Hospital. I'm not a big believer in ghosts and stuff, but I wanted to try the Ouija just because people told me not to. I guess I wanted to see if it's true. I'm not even sure all this happened because of it..."
Read Vicky's experience
 
  Related Resources
• Ouija: How Does It Work?
• How To Use a Ouija Board
• More Tales of the Ouija
 
 Elsewhere on the Web
• Ouija: Not a Game
• Theories of Ouija
 
 

Some of the strangest, most haunting paranormal experiences that readers report began with the casual use of a Ouija board. While skeptics maintain that such experiences are merely reactions to our own overactive imaginations, many paranormal experts insist that the Ouija can be a dangerous tool if not used properly. Here are five tales that will keep you wondering who's right.

The Ouija Opens a Dangerous Door
Several months ago, I was at my best friend Holly's new apartment. Her boyfriend Dale and I helped her move her stuff in; Holly was at work. Dale and I got bored, so we decided to mess with Holly's Ouija board, thinking like total idiots that it wouldn't work. We set it up in the laundry room with lights out and lit candles. The first thing the board spelled out was APT. We figured that meant "apartment," so we asked if it meant Holly's apartment, and it said yes. Dale asked, "What about the apartment?" It spelled out BODIES.

We started freaking out just a little right about then. "What about bodies?" The answer: 7... 7 BODIES... 7 BODIES IN THE SHOWER. Where?, we asked. HERE IN APT. When? 3 DAYS AND 25 HRS.

By then we were tripping out, so we left, leaving the Ouija board set up and the candles burning. Bad idea. Holly and another friend, a guy named Tim, came home. Tim is a practicing Wiccan and has good contact with things of that nature. Boredom hit, so we drank a bit and did a séance of sorts. During the séance, Holly started acting really weird. She started screaming for Annabelle (her cat) and her crystal, which was on a chain. Then she started speaking in a strange language none of us understood. We had given her Annabelle, then she jumped up screaming something and ran upstairs.

The upstairs in this apartment is like an open loft with a balcony overlooking the downstairs. Holly made her way to the balcony screaming things and holding Annabelle over the edge. Her speech slowly evolved to English. At first she could only say "child." We assumed that Annabelle represented a child. She kept holding the cat over the edge. We finally got the cat away from her. She could write English, but not speak anything but "child." She wrote in a childish scrawl her name, which she said was Ankarak and that she was from 2500 B.C. Japan. Her English was becoming better. She wrote that she was a slave. 

After about an hour, almost all her words were English. She said she did not want her child to be a slave like Ankarak. We put together information that she had fallen in love with this guy, Beltran (who she thought was Dale), and they had a child (Annabelle), but he only wanted her for sex and left her with a child. He was to marry a rich girl (me). She got angry when she heard me or saw me, threatening to murder me. Dale and I talked downstairs and she heard us. She screamed, "Bitch! Do you not think I can hear you talking to him? He is mine. When I see you, I will stab you through the heart!" Holly had a case of very sharp kitchen knives in a cabinet. Something told me to hide them, so I did - in the freezer. 

Upstairs, meanwhile, Tim was holding her down because she was trying to get free. He had called Tiffany, a friend of his who also dealt with this sort of thing. She talked to Dale and me, but couldn't make it yet. Ankarak screamed that Holly would die. Holly kinda came back for about 30 seconds, asking for help. The next time she came back a little longer and talked about being in a strange place in a strange body. She said she ran through streets and it was raining; that she was carrying something in her hands (a baby) and that she was being chased by large, muscular men in loincloths with strange necklaces around their necks. Then her hands flew around her neck. Beltran, who was also there, was helping Ankarak choke Holly. 

When Tiffany arrived, Ankarak was back in full force. She broke away from Tim and Tiffany, then ran downstairs and began going through all of the cabinets in the kitchen looking for something. She screamed, "Where are they?" meaning the knives. She settled for a steak knife and came after me. I managed to get it away and threw it behind a bookshelf. Tim and Tiffany finally got rid of Ankarak. Then we remembered the Ouija board. Tiffany was angry that Tim hadn't mentioned it before. When we opened the laundry room door, Tiffany dropped like a stone, as if she were in pain. We got the board out of the house and they made an attempt to cleanse the room. All the spirits were gone. 

Needless to say, I didn't sleep all night. You may wonder where the messages in the Ouija board come into play. Well, the seven bodies would have been me, Dale, Holly, Lily (cat), Annabelle (cat), Tinkerbell (rat), Chloe (my rat). And to the exact minute when everything ended, Dale and I had been at Holly's house exactly three days and 25 hours. - Autumn

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