This is about my experience with Ouija boards, since it’s close to Halloween I thought I’d share. This also relates to Columbine and the killers, Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris. Matter of fact, I started lurking in the Columbine community because of this experience.
I have been too hesitant to say anything because I’m pretty sure that I’m going to sound bonkers. (Though I figured if anyone would be interested in hearing something like this, it would be the Columbine community).
I can’t blame anyone for being sceptical. I would say I’m sceptical but open minded, too. Also, this is quite a long read. Sorry, you’re going to get bombarded with back story. But I do apologise in advance! You can always skip through to any parts you find interesting. If you’re reading for the Columbine part, you can find it about 10 or so paragraphs down, I think :) If you’re reading because you’re interested in Ouija boards, here is my experience!
When it comes to Ouija boards, I’ve only ever played them with my best friend, who I’ll call R. I’ve used the Ouija with a handful of other people over time but the board just doesn’t work as well with them, as it does for R and me. We started messing around with Ouijas at 15, and over a decade later, we still, but rarely, play them. So, let it be clear, I am no Ouija expert, by any means!
About a year ago, I decided I’d attempt the Ouija on my own. Yes! All on my lonesome! I’d never done this before, because, honestly, I was a complete sook about playing Ouijas solo. I’ve read all the stories, I know what happens! Possession – spirits stepping out of the board and making themselves at home in your house – spindly, decayed arms shooting out between the letters and numbers and dragging you down to hell! You know, standard stuff.
R is like a source of comfort and protection when we play the Ouija, if anything got really, really spooky, I’d look to her to handle things – because I admit, I’m a wimp. However, after much debate, I pushed all of the superstition aside, and decided that if I were to go in with a positive mind, maybe things might turn out okay?
The number one thing I do is to make sure to keep my mind absolutely clear. I don’t want to influence the planchette or the spirit by having any assumptions as to what it’s going to say, or worst of all, what I want to hear from it. It’s actually quite hard to do, but I think it’s the most important thing to do when playing the Ouija.
Lazily, I scrawled out the Ouija in the back of one of my writing books. I also used a coin as a planchette. I placed the coin in the middle of the “board” and… nothing happened. I waited for 15 minutes, nothing. I gave up, and tried again the next night. And the night after that. And so on. A few ideas went through my mind about why it wasn’t working for me alone. Maybe I wasn’t strong enough to summon the spirits. Maybe, R and I had been fooling ourselves all these years and we’d been talking to each other through the board instead. Ha! Maybe, the spirits didn’t want to come to the party when it was just little ol’ me. How sad!
I decided to try again, this would be the last time, I decided. I turned the lights off in my room, switched the TV on – to Cartoon Network, it comforts me, don’t judge – I sat on my bed, and started the ritual. I recited a prayer (which I recite after every session is complete too). I kept my mind clear, and radiated positive thoughts, positive intentions. Patiently I waited, and was temporarily distracted by Steven Universe (it’s a great show!) That’s when it happened. The coin forcefully moved itself down the board to ‘hello’. The forcefulness of the coin startled me. It had a mind of its own! The planchette in the past had never been so energetic, not even with R! I calmed myself, kept positive, and waited for the coin to continue its journey across the lined paper. To be honest, I couldn’t even speak to ask questions. It just started spelling things out.
The first spirit that came through was called, Pin. He claimed to be a writer. The coin was zipping across the page so fast that I couldn’t decipher a whole lot. He claimed that a long a time ago I was sawn in half by a very nasty man, who lived in Baghdad. For a while I felt like I was on spirit Tinder, it kept telling me that I should start believing that males are capable of loving me. I half expected it to start saying, I’m not like those other guys, let’s hook up! Another thing it said was, evil lives down the road, be careful. I decided to end the session there because I felt tired and drained.
Pan kept spelling out B-A-M during the session. At the time, I didn’t think much of it. But when I spoke to R about what’d happened, she said, ‘If you remember, like almost every time we’ve played the Ouija over the years, whatever spirit comes through spells out B-A-M’. I didn’t remember.
R was surprised that I’d decided to play the Ouija on my own. I wasn’t going to even attempt to try it again. I thought, I had a good experience with the first attempt, I didn’t need to ruin that. It was just a one off thing, for the sake of curiosity. But a few weeks later, on a sleepless night, I found myself whipping out the writing book with the Ouija drawn in the back pages. I surfed through the TV to Cartoon Network, this time Regular Show. After I’d said the prayer, cleared my mind, and sent out positive intentions, the coin slowly made its way to ‘hello’.
I asked, who am I talking to? The spirit answered, Bam. So, here was Bam. The elusive spirit who swam in the distant background all these years, finally emerging. Bam spelled out, love knows no bounds, which was strange because that phrase had popped up a few times in the past – once from a spirit I had assumed was called Ben. In retrospect, maybe I’d assumed the wrong name. Bam isn’t your average name, after all.
Bam claims he is my spirit guide and that we knew each other in a past life. I asked him, why have you never come through, properly, before? He replied, you weren’t ready. Then he gave me a message to give to R, and added that I shouldn’t use Ouija boards too much. He made sure to keep repeating, love knows no bounds, so I would remember it. Quite honestly, Bam is extremely pleasant to communicate with. And this started a string of nights where I kept going back to the Ouija, to Bam’s exasperation. He was adamant that I keep the Ouija to a minimal, but even so, he was happy to bring spirits through to talk.
Bam would be the first to come through. The way he made his way around the board became familiar. He would always take the coin to 7 and 0 when the session started, no hello. Or he would choose to spell out, love knows no bounds. The feeling when Bam spoke through the board was calm. Once, there was a time a spirit claimed to be Bam – and subconsciously I knew it didn’t feel right.
Since Bam was the first to come through each session, he took control of the board. Spirits came through only if he allowed it, as if he were weeding through the good and the bad. The way he explained it, I imagined a line-up of spirits waiting their turn. Some nights, there was no one but Bam, other nights, he claimed that there were hundreds of spirits trying to get through to communicate with a living person. Not because it was me, come on! I’m just a random chick. I think, if I’m to believe all of what happened during my sessions alone, it is because, for the spirits who wanted to talk, they had something to say and desperately needed to get it out, whether I was the right person to hear it or not.
You’re probably wondering where Columbine comes into it. Let me explain, I’ve always had an interest in true crime. But before I continue further, I want to make it clear that this Ouija experience happened before I’d truly delved into the devastating, heartbreaking shooting at Columbine. Of course, I knew of it. I remember watching news footage, with my dad, of terrified, crying teenagers running from Columbine High School. Vaguely I remember Dad mumbling, “bloody America, something something ban guns something something Port Arthur Massacre.” I was 9 years old at the time.
But that year, in my world, another crime was brought to light: the Snowtown Murders. I lived close to Snowtown, and I still do. I have visited Snowtown a few times before. I can’t remember what for, exactly, a school excursion, maybe with my older sister and her boyfriend. The town’s off the main highway. It’s your typical, small Australian town, with a local pub, a primary school, and now there’s a giant wind turbine blade on display. And of course, its home to the infamous bank, where the bodies in the barrels were found – partly due to the killers lack of consideration for odour control.
Anyway, I believe the Snowtown murders is what sparked my interest in true crime, mostly serial killers. From then on, I would hunt high and low for books on anything from Jeffery Dahmer, to Ted Bundy, to Rose and Fred West. I wanted to get inside the monsters heads, to understand them, but never truly comprehending how they could be so evil. I’d spend hours on Crime Library, or scrawling through the internet reading anything I could find on serial killers. To be honest, school shooters, mass shootings, they didn’t register on my true crime radar.
One night, several months back, Bam said, I have someone for you to speak to, a new experience. I prepared myself, with the usual positive thinking, sending out positive intentions, asking for the same in return, clearing my mind, etc. Bam went to goodbye, as he usually does when he’s sending someone new through. The coin leisurely made its way to hello. It then spelt out:
Y-O I-M D-Y-L-A-N K-L-E-B-O-L-D
I knew the name, immediately. And I started to freak out. My heart raced. I wasn’t sure if this was a good thing. This person had killed his classmates in an infamous school shooting, and then himself. What the fuck, Bam?!! Of course, I can’t be 100% sure this spirit is who he says he is, and I can never prove it. This is the Ouija board we’re talking about. (Note that I take everything the Ouija says with a grain of salt).
I H-A-V-E A L-O-T T-O S-A-Y
I asked him what he would like to say, he replied:
C-A-N Y-O-U P-L-E-A-S-E D-A-B-B-L-E I-N T-H-E P-O-L-I-C-E L-E-T-T-E-R-S
He went on to say a few things relating to myself, which I won’t mention here – it’s not that interesting! I started to get tired, very drained. I’ve never been so drained while communicating with a spirit before. Eventually, I couldn’t stand it. I wanted to stop. I needed to stop. The spirit went to goodbye, and Bam came through again.
I asked Bam, why did I get so drained, because I was scared?
His reply was, you aren’t strong enough yet, his spirits on a higher land.
This intrigued me because Dylan Klebold committed a crime, he took people’s lives. My first assumption, at that time, was to believe that this spirit drained me like it had because of negative energy. I assumed he’d be on a lower frequency.
Bam said he wanted to speak for someone else, as I wouldn’t be able to speak directly through the board with this spirit (not sure why?) I asked him who the spirit was, Bam spelt out:
Bam told me that Eric wanted to “tell me what he hates”. There was a list of things that Bam spelt out. I honestly cannot remember them all because I was starting to get restless at this point. I wanted to finish up the Ouija and go to sleep, with Cartoon Network turned up loud, and the lights on. It wasn’t that these spirits put fear into me. As I’ve said, with Bam in control of communications, everything felt safe. I just couldn’t get my head around it.
The next day, I had a look at the Columbine crime, and came across the Columbine community. It spun me out when I found Eric’s ‘you know what I hate’ list because that is what Bam brought up when he was communicating for the spirit claiming to be Eric Harris ‘he wants to tell you what he hates’.
A few weeks later, when R was visiting, we tried the Ouija board together. Started with the same routine, and Bam came through. At first Bam was in control of the board. R was asking the questions that she was curious to know. When we wanted to finish up, Bam said, one more spirit would like to come through. R sighed resignedly. The coin travelled to hello, and I asked, who are we speaking to? The spirit spelled out: Dylan. R raised an eyebrow. I asked, what would you like to say, Dylan?
He replied: J-U-S-T B-E Y-O-U-R-S-E-L-F
I asked what he thought about the community dedicated to him and Eric on Tumblr:
E-R-I-C L-O-V-E-S I-T B-U-T I A-M N-O-T S-O S-U-R-E
B-E-C-A-U-S-E T-H-E-Y K-N-O-W W-H-A-T I S-A-I-D
I told him that these people can identify with how he felt during that time, before the shooting, not necessarily what he did, but his inner thoughts humanised him; he replied:
T-H-I-N-K W-H-A-T Y-O-U L-I-K-E I A-M E-M-B-A-R-R-A-S-E-D
This made me really think about the issue for the first time, whether we like to admit it or not, we relate to the anger, the alienation, the inferiority, feeling like you don’t belong, feeling that people misunderstand you, and that it’s never going to get better.
I understand because the bullying, for me, started when I was 5 years old, and it didn’t stop until I left school at 17. Kids are fucking cruel, teenagers even worse. I was bullied so much that the effects have carried over into my adult life. I can’t comprehend what Dylan and Eric did, or why they chose that path, of ALL paths, and stuck to it. I do not condone it, nor do I romanticise it, or dream of recreating it. I don’t believe bullying is an excuse to take peoples lives either. BUT I DO get how they felt during their time at Columbine. And I’ll say it again: you can’t deny that we can all relate to that unfortunate part of school life – even the people who call you crazy for finding a connection to a pair of killers. Everybody experiences bullying at some point in their lives.
Getting back to the Ouija: I was drained the second his spirit came through. I wanted to cry, which I have never experienced before. Dylan said: its best I go. And the coin zipped to goodbye. Bam came through, and told R and I that we should stay away from the Ouija board (the usual warning). And the session ended.
I haven’t played the Ouija since. I don’t think I will go back to it, not for a while at least. Maybe, in a few years’ time, when R visits and we have nothing better to do.
There’s still that voice in the back of my head that says, you don’t really believe all of this, do you? And maybe I don’t. I know Ouija boards are unreliable at best, and spirits lie. There are thousands of different theories and beliefs about the Ouija that it makes me dizzy thinking about it. And I’ve not the slightest clue why, if they’re who they claim to be, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold decided to come through. If anyone has a theory, I’d like to know!
All I know for sure is that playing the Ouija on my own wasn’t so bad. I’m still here! I wasn’t dragged down to the depths of hell. I wasn’t possessed. And there are no spirits chillin around the house like they own it – that I know of…
*Queue spooky horror music!*
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