Date: Wed, 3 May 2000 23:48:03 -0700 (PDT)
To: stories@ghosts.org
yourname jacki
email venus1968@aol.com
Location: DeKalb, Illinois, USA
This story a part of Obiwan's UFO-Free Paranormal Page. Please do not copy or distribute without permission from Obiwan and/or the original author!
In 1986, I was in my Freshman year at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb, Illinois. I lived on the 4th floor of Grant Towers South, commonly referred to as "The Wall" because of a mural painted near the elevators that was taken from the Pink Floyd movie of the same name. It was a Coed floor and rooms were alternated. My roommate, Cynthia, and I were just hanging around the room one night with a few of our "brothers' (that's what we called guys on our floor because they were like brothers and you didn't date them!) when another girl came in and said that someone down the hall had a Ouija board and was getting ready to play it. We figured what the hell since we had nothing else to do, so we went down.
The room that it was set up in was occupied by a Goth girl (back then though we didn't call them "gothic" just "freak" but I think you get the picture.) I had heard rumors that she claimed to be a witch but she was too weird for my taste so I never paid much attention to her.
The room was adorned with black candles, black sheets over the windows and white Christmas lights that zig zagged across the ceiling. When a big enough crowd gathered (about 10 of us in a small room) the lights were turned off. The Goth girl and a guy began asking the board questions. It contacted an old man who said that he had died in a farming accident. That made sense since DeKalb surrounded by cornfields that go on forever. He seemed harmless enough and they continued to "play" with him.
I had left a message on the dry erase board on my door saying where I was and it wasn't long before the guys that lived to the right of me came knocking on the door. It was about 1:30am, they were headed to the 24 hour gym to play racquetball and were looking to see if Cynthia and I wanted to go.
The guys, Lou and Dan, were about as "macho" as they come and were very skeptical of our ghost. They stood and watched for a few minutes, all the while making comments under their breath about what a bunch of crap it was. The Goth girl began to get upset and said that if they didn't believe in the Ouija they had to go so they wouldn't upset the spirit.
Dan just laughed and said, "If you are real, then give us a sign." The phone rang. The Goth girl picked it up (the kind of phone that came BC, Before Cordless) but said nobody was there. She hung it up and a few seconds later it rang again. This time Dan grabbed it. Still nobody there. He hung it up. Again it rang. He picked it up and began to shout into the phone at whoever was on the other line. The phone continued to ring in his hand. I have never seen so many people move so fast in my life. Cindy, Dan, Lou, myself and 2 others ran down to my room and shut the door. The phone rang. I refused to answer it. Lou picked it up....nobody was there. We ran next door into their room, unplugged the phone and didn't fall asleep until after 6am.
That was the first and LAST time I was involved with a Ouija board.
Jacki, Travis AFB, CA
Obiwan notes: Interesting story. The phones ringing could be a coincidence (stranger things have happened) or, if you want to attribute it to the paranormal, it could be a result of latent psychic energy brought out by the spooky atmosphere of the seance. I am not convinced that an actual spirit was present.