Who’s There
On a recent clear out of old board games my children had outgrown that were missing pieces I came across a box I hadn’t seen in years. The box was broken at all the corners and as I lifted it, the pieces inside fell to the floor. I stepped back in surprise because what had landed at my feet was a planchet and its accompanying Ouija board. I’d had this since I was a teenager and hadn’t realized that I’d been holding on to it all these years. Not sure why that was but I’m pretty sure I was worried that tossing it in the trash would bring bad luck on my head. Still hesitant to toss the thing upon it’s discovery, it ended up in a box of things being taken to a charity shop. For someone else to deal with.
That board had seen quite a bit of use when I was about the age of fourteen, but it wasn’t the last time I’d spend an evening with the spirit world. I recall a hockey tournament one snowy Saturday night in downtown Ottawa. Three mothers bored while their sons were meant to be watching a movie as a group (more than likely playing mini sticks instead of paying attention to the movie), sitting in a hotel room, with some Smirnoff Ice and one of the mothers bringing out a Ouija board that she’d brought along, asking if we’d like to have a go.
What could be the harm? A little innocent fun that did in fact produce a lot of serious focus on ridiculous questions. It seems we’d gone from being fourteen year olds asking what boy might have a secret crush on one of us, to one woman who kept asking about whether or not the team would win the tournament. Riveting. Trying not to laugh while keeping two fingers each on that small planchet as if the spirits were clamoring to tell us the score of a children’s sporting event. Slow to start but soon getting into gear, as the planchet would move, spelling who knew what, I was given the pad of paper & pen provided by the hotel to write down whatever letters were spelled out. None of it made sense and at one point I suggested (tongue in cheek) that we ask what language this particular spirit was speaking because it wasn’t English. One answer was very unpleasant and one of the mothers told the spirit that she was sorry, but we didn’t wish to speak to him or her. I laughed more than the others and was admonished that if I wasn’t going to be serious it would never work (honestly, that team, that year I could have told them we were not winning any tournament). These two mothers were hard core Ouija users. That’s not to say that I don’t believe it’s possible or that spirits exist – I am open to the fact that just about anything is possible. But I can’t see 3 women, drinking Smirnoff at the Delta Hotel on a Saturday night as the best location and conduits for contacting the spirits of those who have moved on. We didn’t get the answers to the tournament’s conclusion, and our team didn’t even make the semifinals. Maybe I should have been a little more committed.
The first time I opened this box to what might lay beyond my knowledge was on my 14th birthday. It was a gift that I had asked for and while my mother was skeptical, she did buy one. I was having a sleepover party on the Friday night of my birthday week – 3 girls from my grade 9 class were coming over, and we discussed our plans in depth for days before classes began.
As we settled in with junk food and eager fingers we started. A couple of rocky beginnings of too much chatter and shifting for better positions on the cushions on the floor, the planchet began to move. And out of nowhere the window in the rec room began to bang. Repeatedly. Screaming ensued, feet went clattering up the stairs to the kitchen, nearly knocking over my little sister who had been eavesdropping at the top of the stairs, to my mother wondering what on earth was going on down in that basement. Breathlessly we told her that spirits were knocking on the window. My mother, more sensible than 4 young teenage girls, stepped outside to find two boys from our class standing by the lawn, laughing hysterically. And the four of us in our pajamas standing on the front porch yelling at them for frightening us half to death.
Seems that what we thought were private chats about our Friday night sleepover became the plan of the boy I had a crush on and his best friend to do what boys of fourteen do best.
All of this reminds me that we often feel we are unseen or unheard. We don’t always know who is listening or watching over our shoulder because they are more interested in us than we realize. That boy and his friend had never said a word that they even acknowledged the four of us in any way other than sharing the same classroom space. But who knows – maybe there was more to that Ouija board than I could ever have imagined.
