I guess this will probably get lost amongst all the other great stories but this is something I’ve never really fully told anyone else or been able to explain.
This happened about 40 years ago, when I was 14. A good friend of mine, named Julia, had gone on holiday to her old family home in Scotland. When she returned, she told me that she’d gone to the local library to look up her family records and had read of an ancestor, also called Julia, who had been burned at the stake as a witch, back in the 17th Century. She told me that there had been an illustration depicting this witch and that she had been shocked by the incredible resemblance to herself.
Telling me about this, it was clear that she was pretty disturbed and she went on to say that since that time, she’d been having nightmares almost every night, in which she was being essentially hounded by this ancestor. She was clearly upset, just telling me about it and said that she was convinced that this Julia from her past was trying to communicate to her.
She told me that she wanted to try a ouija board to see if anything happened. Now, I personally was extremely skeptical; I didn’t believe in such things and thought it was just a joke but she was so adamant and obviously distressed that i was willing to go along.
We didn’t have a proper board or anything so I simply cut up bits of paper for each letter of the alphabet and the words yes and no, and numbers one to nine. We then went downstairs into the basement of my house and, trying to create a mood of some kind, i lit about a dozen candles to light the room. This room, by the way, was where our washing machine was and it just had a simple concrete floor and apart from the washing machine and dryer, was otherwise empty.
She seemed very serious about it all, while I was, in all honesty, trying not to laugh and spoil the mood - it all seemed so ridiculous...
Anyway, she started to simply say the name of this woman, again and again. I won’t say her full name now and for reasons that will soon be apparent, have never ever since uttered her full name. Anyway, after a while, with me still trying hard not to laugh, I became aware that the room had suddenly become a lot colder. I mean, it had suddenly become fucking cold down in that basement and I began to feel that maybe, just maybe, something odd was happening.
Julia then said that we should try to use the board. We’d arranged all the bits of cut up paper in a circle and had an upturned glass in the centre. We each put a finger on top of the glass, with our fingertips touching. Had either of us been pushing the glass, the other would definitely have known...
She said the name again and asked, “Are you here?”
At that point, the glass started moving. I will go to my grave knowing that neither of us was moving that glass. I most definitely didn’t and if she had, I would have felt the pressure. That glass just moved slowly on the concrete floor to the word Yes.
We were both terrified at this point. I looked at her and saw that she was feeling the same as me. I had chills like you wouldn’t believe and told her that we should stop... this was all a bit too much.
She however, wouldn’t hear it and insisted we continue. She told me that she was totally convinced there was a message fher and she wanted to know what it was...
So she said the name again and asked, “What do you want from me?”
The glass moved again. It moved to D, then to E, then A, then T and finally to H. At the point it reached H, every single candle in the windowless basement immediately snuffed out and sitting there in the complete darkness, we knew, beyond a shadow of doubt, that there was something else in that room with us.
The two of us just completely freaked out and ran upstairs as fast as we could. I slammed the door to the basement shut and we both were crying and shaking. She was in a terrible state and just curled up on the floor, hugging herself and wailing.
Upstairs, away from the basement, I eventually calmed down enough to call her mother and tried to explain what had happened but as soon as I mentioned the ancestor and the ouija board, her mum just shouted at me to stop, do nothing and she would be there asap. She did soon arrive and whisked Julia away.
I spent the rest of the day in a daze and when my own parents came home that evening, tried to explain what had happened but they just thought I was making it all up. They went down into the basement and saw all the papaer and candles so did believe that we’d done the thing but didn’t believe anything out of the ordinary had happened.
The next day, I tried to call Julia but her mother refused to let me speak to her. This went on for several weeks and when I did eventually make contact, Julia herself refused to talk about it. She just said that it was all a mistake and I should forget it and never mention it again. It was hard to go through something like that and have the person I’d shared the experience with refuse to accept or talk about it and after a time, our friendship just withered away and we lost contact. I never saw her again and never learned what happened to her.
Although this happened a long time ago, writing it out now has brought it back to my mind and I’m sitting here in the heat of an early Japanese summer with chills like you wouldn’t believe. I have never ever tried a ouija board again and will never say that woman’s full name ever again.
Reading this back, I know most people will think it’s bullshit but it happened exactly as I’ve written. This is my story.