weegee, weegee, are you with us?

The summer between my sophomore and junior years of high school, I went to a nerd camp called Summer Ventures. You had to apply to get in, and it was geared toward students with an inclination to math and science. It was held at several college campuses all over the state of North Carolina, each one hosting about 90 students or so. I was assigned to the Summer Ventures held at Appalachian State University.

The funny thing about Summer Ventures is that the total group at each campus is small enough so that people quickly group off into the little friendship circles that they will maintain for the entirety of the 4 week program. By maybe day 3, I was a part of a group of 5 girls. By day 5, I could've sworn I'd known those girls for forever. You could be yourself at Summer Ventures, or at least the self you'd always wanted to be, because everything was temporary. You only had to see these people ever again if you wanted to. And so we shared with each other like we never did with people back home, because what did it matter? The worst case scenario was that they would go home to their high schools across the state and tell everyone your deep dark secrets.

Penny was not in my tightly-knit group, but she lived on our hall and we all knew her and liked her well. She was part of some other group, but she hung out with us from time to time. She was a bright and bubbly cheerleader from a one-stoplight town in the foothills, but Penny had had some rough times. She had just recently been in therapy for bulimia. Her mother had also died in a car accident several years back and her father had remarried.

One night, a couple of the other girls, Penny, and I decided to play with the Ouija board that was held downstairs in the game room. We borrowed it and brought it back up to one of our rooms, dimmed the lights, and started to play in a circle on the floor. We weren't allowed to have candles, so I think we found some small desk lamp to set the mood. Penny had never played with one before, but the other girls and I all had, so it wasn't really anything new. I'd played with one with a bunch of girlfriends back in the seventh or eighth grade, and despite all the creepy stories and supposed coincidences, I had long ago decided they were crap. I suspect the other girls had, too, but Penny wanted to play, and even if it was silly, the Ouija board did tend to be a good lark.

The reason an Ouija board works is because the people who play with it want to believe it. There's a lot of power of suggestion in it. There's also probably someone pushing the little indicator around the board. No one would ever admit to controlling it, of course. I never pushed it when I played. There may be something in the theory about the hand's natural vibrations moving it, I have no idea. But when you get a group of teenage girls who think they are dealing with the supernatural, they're going to interpret the board in any way that works.

Nervous parents in my town often forbade their kids from using an Ouija board. I think my mother disapproved of it, but never said I couldn't play with it (or if she did, I conveniently forgot). My father, had he been consulted, would probably have said it was a stupid waste of time, kids these days. Some people said it was a Satanic tool, as if bored kids were trying to ask the devil who the cutest boy in class was. There were lots of rumors about people we knew who knew other people who had tried to throw one out, but found that the board mysteriously kept reappearing within their homes. All of this controversy only made it more exciting and appealing to us and ended up giving the Ouija board a lot more credit than it deserves.

We started out with four girls playing: me, Penny, Sarah, and Liz. We were all dead tired from having gone hiking that day, and Liz quickly got bored and dropped out to just watch. We started out with some of the typical silly questions about boys and people we knew. Then we all just kind of looked at each other, at a loss as to what to ask next. Sarah and I probably would have both been content to be done with it, but then Penny said, "I want to talk to my mom." Sarah and I looked at each other, thinking maybe this was dangerous territory, but it's not like we could say no. So we "summoned" Penny's mom. We started getting some movement on the board and we thought we had "contacted" her.

The questioning started shyly, because, really, what does a girl say to her dead mother talking through a board game? Sarah and I were both bored and exhausted, but this was obviously important to Penny, so we continued. I told Sarah she could drop out if she wanted and I would stay and play; you need two people. So I sat on the floor with Penny while she continued to talk to her mom. The questions started to get a little intense, accusing even, and more specific about both the car accident and the man who had been in the car with Penny's mom.

"Were you drunk?"

"Why were you with him?"

"How could you do that to Daddy?"

"Were you upset when Daddy got married?"

"Do you miss us?"

"Why did you let Daddy marry that woman?"

Oh man, it was scary. I just closed my eyes and spaced out, trying not to think about what was going on, trying not to fall asleep. I just let my hands rest on the indicator as it scooted around the board. Penny was crying by now. Then the indicator moved over to the corner onto the word "Bye." Penny begged her not to go, but the indicator was still. All of a sudden, Penny collapsed across the board into me, sobbing and hugging me. I was pretty good at consolation, but this was way out of my league, so I just hugged her back and didn't say anything. I looked at Sarah and Liz helplessly and they rejoined us on the floor to try and soothe Penny. She calmed down after a few minutes, we talked softly, I told a couple of lame jokes to lighten the mood, and then she went off to bed.

I don't necessarily believe that Penny's mom was actually talking to her. It was obvious that the poor girl had a lot of unresolved issues dealing with the whole situation, and she was likely desparate for anything to hold onto. But I can't make myself dismiss the possibility. I still believe that Ouija board experiences in general are a sham, but this was way different than having some unknown spirit of a little girl who died of polio in the 50s telling us the initials of our future husbands. I won't dismiss the dead trying to communicate with the living, and if they want to use the product of Parker Brothers, let them. If, when I am dead, I get the opportunity to scare the devil out of some stupid teenage girls playing with an Ouija board, you better believe that I am going to do it.

In any case, none of us ever mentioned the incident to Penny for the rest of the summer, and we all lost touch with her after that. I don't know what she thinks about it, whether she believes it was real or just some unfortunate night where her emotions caught up with her. Clearly, I have no conclusions. But even if Penny was just interpreting what she wanted to believe her mother would say, even if the dead laugh at us every time we pull out an Ouija board, even if some random spirit is in charge of amusing stupid teenage girls, I hope that Penny got what she needed out of the experience, some closure and resolution. Maybe it was God Himself realizing that Penny needed comfort and was ripe for listening to Him that night; I hear He works in mysterious ways. Who knows? Even if it wasn't real and even if Penny herself dismisses the whole thing now, it was very real to her that night, and that counts for something.