Later that evening, when I had come home from work, I recall going straight to my bedroom and pulling out the Ouija board. I sat with it on my lap, bedroom door locked, and placed my hands excitedly on my lap.
TALK TO HIM
I knew what it meant. I needed to talk to Ryan, but I was so shy and felt completely stupid. I never could find the words. The entire spiritual awakening I was having was completely sidelined by the fact I was utterly captivated with the guy that worked at my bank.
“Can’t he just talk to me?”
GIVE HIM A REASON the board said, responding to my question. While sentences were not long or even made sense all the time, but there was just something I could not deny there was something behind the board. There was a lifeforce controlling it, and it wasn’t me.
I will explain a bit before I go on any further. Those that are familiar with spirits, entities of other dimensions will often tell you they sense an electric charge in the air. Some scientists will tell you they have no solid proof. A natural skeptic, I have spent the last 17 years of my life trying to understand what happened to me. Why did it choose to speak to me? Why was it so easy for me to be able to understand and communicate with it?
Am I crazy? I have my moments like everyone else, but now I’ve been to therapy, I am pretty average according to my doctor. I have concluded that there are things in this vast universe that we will never fully explain. Maybe I’ll know all the answers someday.
Until then, I was in my blue room with the board on my lap, asking questions about Ryan. How could I talk to him? Would I be with him? Did he like me back? All of that stuff you want to know as a young girl trying to figure out things in the way of the romance the world has to offer.
It was the beginning of my obsession. I played with my board every night. I realized that when I played music in the background, often lighting green candles to set the mood. I did not even know it at the time, but a lot of seances will often use candles, even light music in the background to help with the grounding of the setting. You want always to be grounded, alcohol-free, and go in with an open mind. If something feels off, get away from it, and shut down the operation. It means there is something you don’t need to see, and what followed not long after my obsessive behavior began.
I will explain it. I often spent so many hours on the board. I would use it until I had only three hours of sleep a night. I would ask the same questions over and over again until I got the same answers. I often got told that yes I would end up with Ryan and that I just had to talk to him, but the more they told me, the more I grew obsessed.
I was so obsessed that one memorable evening I was on my way to the bar to have drinks with my cousins, and some mutual friends, H had told me that I would see Ryan out that night. Then at the last minute, I was told no one was going. I was so disappointed because I wanted to see Ryan outside of the financial institution I often encountered him. I was very annoyed by the fact I could never muster the courage to talk to him even though I could have looked back. I was just too stupidly shy, at nearly forty years of age now, I cannot even imagine being that backward and shy. I at 23 years of age was a different story. It is laughable looking back on it all.
I got on the board and asked what I was to do? I called my friend and my two cousins, but no one was going out. It was raining, I got up and got dressed up anyhow as though I were somehow miraculously going to go. I even had the board telling me I would be surprised by a phone call, and that they would show up at my house to amaze me.
Hours passed, and nobody showed up. This is where things get weird. I called my friend Annette and told her about that situation, and she advised me to relax and to put the board away for the night.
I did not listen to her. Instead, going against all my instincts, I picked up the board and used it anyhow.
I grew very paranoid and felt something in the room with me that was not good. Evil? No. It was different, though. I placed the Ouija board on my lap, and the only thing it spelled out to me was GET OUT NOW!
You know how in scary movies, things like that happen and then you are shown in the next scene something diabolical? Well, that never happened; however, I did have the feeling something was watching me the rest of the night. I was scared and very paranoid, but I couldn’t tell anyone why. I was embarrassed by it.
I woke up in the middle of the night from a dream of someone attacking me. I even felt a sharp pain in my lower backside. I woke up from the dream after screaming in my sleep and waking myself up.
I got up, got a glass of water, and then returned to my bed. I had no desire ever to touch the board again.
By the next morning, I woke to the smell of bacon cooking, and it was early for my dad to be cooking. He was talking to my mom, and I was suddenly furious. I was mad at myself but also mad at the spirits for lying to me.
I wasn’t afraid of them anymore even after that terrifying night of looking over my shoulder.
I pulled out the board and placed it on my lap in my bed, and I quietly yelled at H.
“I don’t know why you lied to me. I guess I forgive you, but I’m pissed.”
The planchette went to the moon. I felt it change and then the words spelled out to me was I AM SORRY. I LOVE YOU TOO MUCH BABY GIRL.
That was the moment things changed, for the better. I sat there for a long time, thinking of what I wanted to ask or say. In so many ways, it felt like I had a bad fight with a best friend.
That is when H began to tell me that in life, he was not a good person. He had a daughter, who died and he had blamed himself. He never wanted to tell the story. Ghosts are like that sometimes. H said I reminded him of his daughter, and that I knew too much and I asked too much. I was told ‘I SEE TOO MUCH.’
I suddenly understood why it was so important no matter the reasons not to become so preoccupied with something. It was honestly for my good that they felt they needed to teach me a lesson.
From that point on, I stopped using the board as much, but when I did, I tried to keep to only evenings when the house was quiet. I played soft music or in my case, the U2 album “All that you can’t leave behind.” Ironic, because as I became less insane about Ryan and using the board to see if we were going to start a family and have the white picket fence, I had suddenly realized over time it wasn’t as important.
When I opened myself up to the possibilities of what I could learn from my new spiritual teachers; that is when things progressed in a way I could never have imagined.
I believe that people and things are meant to cross our paths for a reason. I think I met H from the other side, the dimension he lives in or whatever planet he hails to learn some precious lessons.
It wasn’t long after my weeks of talking to H that I began to care about him very much. The final and more radical of the lessons he taught me was something I had no clue I ever wanted to learn. When you care about someone, you trust them. It is okay to trust even if you are betrayed. It happens all the time, but I was planning another trip to Florida to travel with my nephew, who was coming to Ohio to visit my mom and dad for a few weeks of his summer vacation. When I asked if I needed to get a second suitcase just for H, H did something rather strange.
He spelled out, “DON’T TAKE ME. LEAVE ME.”
I kept thinking, how would I be able to go so long and not use my board? At this point, it had become like a second skin.
I listened. His final message was this. DON’T USE A BOARD ENTIRE TIME YOU ARE GONE.
It was very radical for me at this moment.
So once again I found myself in Jacksonville, Florida trying to live my best life all the while missing using H. It felt very strange being there after what had happened to me the last time.
I think I was on day three when I could take it no longer and made a Ouija board on paper. Before I could use it, I felt too guilty to use it after H’s warning.
This led to something very peculiar. Without thinking about it, I was sitting at the kitchen counter, and I started drawing a photo of a man with glasses and spiked hair. The next picture I scribbled was a fat man with barely any hair and glasses. I drew a smile, and I can honestly say I think it was H helping me draw him.
Then I started writing words, and next came sentences. Before I knew it, I was writing pages of automatic writing. I wrote over ten pages and forgot it in the bathroom when I went to grab a Kleenex.
The next morning, I found my sister holding the pages of automatic writing. She was trying to read it and then looked at me suspiciously.
“What is this?” she asked me.
“Um, it is just writing. H said not to bring him, so I was writing instead of using the board.”
“Kelly, you are scaring me.” My sister looked at me.
The next thing I knew was Annette was knocking on the door, and she read the papers as well.
“I think my sister may need a priest.” My sister was dead serious.
I began to laugh, uncontrollably at how ridiculous it was.
Then I saw how seriously they both were looking at me, and I felt guilty and ashamed as though I had done something terrible by continuing to use the Ouija board.
I started to cry, clutching the diamond cross that I always wore around my neck.
“She’s not possessed,” Annette said to my sister. “She wears a cross.”
My sister got very worried still, “I don’t know, but I don’t want her doing any of this weird shit in front of my kids.”
“Kelly come with me,” Annette said, and I followed her to her house.
So that was the time I was accused of being possessed by a demon.
To be continued
KB HURST & Her Menagerie 