My experiences with Ouija boards...

This is probably way longer than it needs to be, but I like to add detail when telling stories. All of these accounts are 100% true and involved me. 

********************************************************

I was always fascinated, and terrified, of using this board. Since that night at the campfire, I had seen them used in movies and heard stories from my friends. I never never knew anyone who owned one, and they were definitely not available for purchase anywhere near my small town.

When I was 14 years old, I became close with one of my cousins, Clayton. He was dating one of my best friends, his friend was dating my other best friend, and he had another friend, Marc, who I was infatuated with. Marc was 18 and clearly off limits. Not only did his age separate us, but he was also gay. We ended up becoming great friends and were inseparable. He would drive my cousin and his friend to my town, 20 miles away from where they lived, and we would all either hang out together or the boys would go see their girlfriends while Marc and I hung out and waited for them to be done.

One night in October, Clay and Mark were at my house and we somehow got on the topic of the Ouija board that Marc happened to own and they had recently used. We decided we would try it out together. Our plan was to go to my local cemetery on the 30th of October... Devil's Night. We planned for a few days, asking other friends if they wanted to join us. The others said yes, but most backed out before the time came.

On October 30th, 2003, Marc and Clay were going to come to my house and then we were going to wait until about 9 pm to go to the cemetery and begin. I was so nervous and scared... Wanting to believe it was just a stupid game that someone you are sitting with controls. Well, we never got to go to the cemetery that night... We didn't get to play then or ever.

On their way to get me, about 6 miles from my house, with the board in the trunk of Marc's car, they ended up in the ditch. Marc swerved because he swore there was a deer standing in the middle of his lane staring at him, while Clay swears he was paying attention to the road as well and there was nothing there. They were fine, physically, but Marc was clearly shaken up over what happened. He ended up throwing the board in the ditch and leaving it there.

They left my house after a couple hours, and when they returned to Clay's house, Marc called me and told me they saw a dead deer laying on the side of the road in what seemed to be the exact same spot they had ditched the board after landing themselves in the ditch. Marc was absolutely terrified, and I decided I would more than likely never attempt to play with an Ouija board.

Fast forward two years later, I had my 3 friends I was always with... Casey (my gay best friend), Brittney and her boyfriend Allen. We lived close to each other and were always together. One day I was cleaning out my apartment and I found a working voice recorder, the kind you used with tapes. My stepdad is a big hoarder of electronics, so there was always random stuff like that in storage boxes. Allen absolutely loved it and I told him to keep it. There were a few unopened, brand new blank tapes that I found as well so I gave them to him.

For the next two weeks, he recorded almost everything we did together. We were getting big into marijuana and drinking, so he'd record our convos while we smoked and drank and then we'd play them back and laugh over all the goofy conversations .

One day, Casey found an Ouija board in his basement. We decided to give it a go while we sat in his bedroom. Allen, of course, turned on the recorder and we started playing. I was suspicious the whole time, thinking Brittney was doing most of the moving around. She had a history of using them before and had a ton of unbelievable stories of paranormal experiences that happened to her.

So we played for a good half hour, Brittney awing and gasping at certain answers... Allen playing along and saying "holy shit babe!" to amuse her, while Casey and I sat quiet and stole glances at each other. Nothing significant happened, and I was honestly relieved it turned out to be nothing.

When we were finished, Allen did what Allen always did and rewound the tape so we could listen. He had put in a fresh tape earlier that day and we had used it a couple times and it was working fine. We got to the part where we were getting ready and we could hear ourselves perfectly. About 3 questions in, it was no longer an audible conversation... It was this weird sound I wouldn't really describe as static, but it did sound like what you see in movies when people tinker with radios and two way radios and there's the different frequencies of a "woooWwooOoww" sound. That went on for the rest of the time we had been using the Ouija board. It stopped and went back to us talking right before Allen had stopped recording. We tried to record more of us talking after that, and it didn't work. It didn't make the same noise, it didn't make any noise, it just never worked again.

That had all of us on edge for a long time. Casey's house was our regular hang out spot, and weird things started to happen randomly for the next few weeks. Things getting lost, showing up in odd places... The thing I recall the most was when we were playing a card game and we all went downstairs together and a few minutes after we went back in his room, we noticed the Queen of Spades was sticking out of the trim on the top of his closet. None of us had done it, I was the only one who could reach it and I had to stand on my tip toes to get it down. I don't know if that card has any significant meaning in the paranormal world, but I always think about that moment whenever I see the queen of spades.

********************************************************

Again sorry this is so long, but it's my whole history of Ouija boards. I put real in quotations in the beginning of the story because that was how it was told to me, that there are real ones made out of a certain wood that will not burn, I want to say she called it something like Devils bark or wood, and then there are the cheap cardboard versions where you can buy at places like Toys R Us... That's where Casey's had originally came from. I have no idea where Marc got his or what it looked like since I never ended up seeing it nor did I think to ask at the time. 

Needless to say, I haven't had "amazing" experiences with them... But the experiences o did have are enoug to make me never want to use one again and they were bad enough to make me feel uneasy for many weeks after it occurred.

If anyone knows the answer to what makes an Ouija board "real", I'd love to hear it! I'm enjoying this group... I love hearing all of this stuff!