“There is no other power than the one others do not believe you possess.”
-Luis Marques
Once upon a time, I found myself in a room painted white with blue stripes, multiple fluffy pillows, a tiny mirror, a TV, journals all around me and a giant black cat at the head of my bed; usually asleep. It is what I lovingly call the “Blue Room.” A room that once was my childhood bedroom but, I moved back in after living away for a few years due to the loss of my job. My mother had been using it as a spare room to entertain friends and family from out of state. (Between you and me I think she was happy to be rid of her youngest).
It was so usual and ordinary that when I look back, I find it strange that I had a Ouija Board on my lap balling my eyes out at some story they were telling me about my future. I say “they” because if you think you are talking to one at the same time you are blindly mistaken (let that be your first lesson).
In the movies, they make the iconic Ouija (Spirit) boards be these mystical things that when you use them; strange and horrifying things happen. In truth, a Spirit Board is no more dangerous than driving a car (like drivers, you can be awful at using a Spirit Board).
Let me start at the beginning before I get too far off track. You see, I grew up believing that the occult was the devil and anything that it touched was going to send you to hell. I was what you would call a Free Will Baptist, and I sang in the choir every Sunday as a teenager singing solos for Jesus because I loved to sing and I loved music. I was beginning to experience my first love of rock music, the dangerous kind, listening to songwriters like “Tori Amos” who sang songs about “Lucifer” being her friend and while my religious upbringing made me think that was anti-godly, I understood it was a form of expression.
I was beginning to become skeptical from my teenage years onward. The church started to wear on my mother, who felt as though every Sunday she was getting yelled at rather than given a positive message. It was when we stopped attending church regularly. I began to find that religion and spirituality are two separate things, and it took me a long road to get where I am now. Not everything is black and white or good and evil.
I held off for years telling friends this story let alone strangers on the internet. I have decided to come out and tell my story because I find that maybe there is someone out there just like me that needs to know they are not alone in their discovery of one’s spiritual self. Also, this is not a promotion of Ouija Boards either. Just needed to get that out of the way!
Three of you reading this will know the truth already as we have spent many nights into the early morning hours discussing this trying to figure it out over wine and coffee. The rest of you are about to learn who I am. Most importantly, what happened to me that changed my life forever.
My story begins because I fell in love with a guy who didn’t know how enamored I was with him. He worked at a local business I frequented, but as many times as he waited on me, I was 23 and terrifyingly shy, I could never manage any meaningful conversation with him. Until the week I was set to leave for a trip to visit my sister. It was late March, and my sister asked me if I could take two weeks off work for vacation and come to Jacksonville, Florida to help her with some things she had going on at the time.
So, the day before I was to leave, I woke up having this strange feeling that something about this trip was much needed. I had new confidence I can’t explain.
That day I had some errands to run, and one of them was to go into this local business as I had hundreds of times before. This time he was all by himself, and it was just he and me. He laughed when he saw my Roswell Alien t-shirt and asked if I had ever been there before. I told him I had. Then he proceeds to ask me where I went to school that I looked familiar, and he never had the chance to ask me. We had a brief conversation about where I attended college and how I was going on vacation the next day. When our conversation was over, I left feeling pretty good about myself.
The next day I was dropped off at Cleveland Hopkins airport and settled into the scariest flight I have ever taken. The turbulence caused the emergency lights to come on, and the oxygen masks were used on a few individuals who were having near panic attacks.
I’ve never been very keen on heights and being thousands of feet in the air at the mercy of the pilot was frightening. When my plane landed in Jacksonville, I bulldozed my way off the plane.
I had never been so excited to see land in my entire life! That was just the beginning of this weird trip I was now on. It was late when my sister picked me up from the airport, but there was something alive in the air, like an electric charge, that I cannot explain.
We arrived at her house, and my 11-year-old niece and her best friend greeted me at the door. It was late for them to be up, but my niece was being homeschooled and had a bit more freedom due to that fact.
I had barely put my suitcase down when she excitedly asked me if I wanted to play with her new Ouija Board. I shook my head no, and she whined.
“Maybe later, Nicole.” I had told her.
I began by hugging my brother-in-law and my nephew, who was too excited to sleep because he wanted to see me. Finally, I sat down and had something to eat after being on a plane for what seemed hours; it was the first thing I had all day. My niece now bored because her friend had to go home, came, and sat down next to me.
“You need to check out this Ouija Board. Miss Annette that lives next door uses one and teaches us how to. Lauren and I used it in the dark, and we saw a man appear in the mirror!” she laughed.
I laughed at her, and after some prying, I thought what the hell? I figured even if it was idiotic, it was a way to spend quality time with my niece by entertaining her ideas before I went to bed. She got me to sit down with her and so we went to the sun porch, and I sat on the floor, legs crossed, and board on our laps and our hands gently touching the planchette.
I waited and then waited some more.
“Do you feel that?” she asked me excitedly.
“No,” I said bluntly.
It began to move slightly, and I was sure she was doing it herself. I let it go.
“Are you sure you know what you are doing?” I teased her.
“I’m going to call Miss Annette so she can show you.”
I knew Miss Annette; she was our neighbor before I moved back to Ohio. She was quiet and very friendly. She and her husband had three boys around the same age, and my niece and nephew.
I said this evening was strange and it only got stranger from this point on. Miss Annette came right over to my sister’s house and didn’t even bother to knock. It was a familiarity that was not strange between my sister and her. They had become very close in the near two years since I had lived there.
I recall it like it was yesterday, Annette standing in the doorway looking at me. It was so odd the way she stared at me. It was like Annette wanted to say something but wasn’t entirely sure what she should say. Annette stood there grinning, and then she laughed at me. “Nicole got you playing with the Ouija Board? I keep telling her she needs to be careful using it. She and Lauren kept playing with it and did she tell you about the bathroom?”
It was a lot to take in, but I laughed too. “Yes, she did.”
“You think it is crazy don’t you?” she laughed and grabbed the Ouija from my niece, who was holding it in her hands while we were waiting on Annette to come over and sat down on my sister’s couch without a care in the world.
“What do you want to know? You’re in love, aren’t you?”
I looked at her and then I figured my sister had said something about my massive crush.
“I like this guy, but I am not sure if he even notices me.”
She sat the board down and moved it around very quickly. I couldn’t help it. I thought she was making it up, and I held in my laugh. Then she said something strange.
“It says you finally talked to him. You need to keep talking to him.” She moved the board in a figure eight motion. “You have to be friends with it.” She said, referring to the Ouija Board.
I had not mentioned the day before to anyone. I hadn’t had time to, as I was too busy planning my trip.
I sat down next to her then eager to learn more, and I asked when his birthday was. She went to the numbers at the bottom of the board, and it said 10-12, and then some years later I found out his birthday was December the tenth.
That is pretty much the only thing she did that night with the board. She then told me she could read my tea leaves to call me the next day.
I nodded and went to bed a little while after.
It was the next morning; the sun was out brightly shining. My niece and nephew were still asleep. My brother-in-law was at work, and my sister had left shortly after the sun came up. I had the entire house to myself. I rose from my bed and went down to the kitchen and made myself some coffee.
There in front of me on the kitchen table like a beacon was the Ouija Board. I ignored it and drank my coffee reading a bit of the paper. There it was. I kept looking at it. Curiosity got the better of me, and I opened the Ouija Board box took out the board and the planchette and went to sit on the couch.
I placed it on my lap the way Annette had done the night prior. I held on to the planchette in the center of the board. I recall my hands trembling a bit, and I said out loud, almost like a prayer, “Please don’t possess me.” I laughed saying it out loud not even sure why I would assume that would happen. I had seen the Exorcist too many times.
Finally, I took a deep breath and closed my eyes to concentrate on a substantial question.
“Can you help me?” I asked out loud as it was the only solid thing that came to mind at the time.
I felt it then, something like an electric charge something I could not control, nor was I controlling it. It moved so quickly it felt like someone else had taken hold of my hands.
It slid quickly to the left-hand corner of the board; the feeling was like a scream. As though it had finally found me and I found it.
YES.
That was the beginning.
KB HURST & Her Menagerie 