Foretelling the future

I had never heard this word before and had to look it up. After reading Martha’s post about her experience with an Ouija board I thought I would add my own memories. This all happened more than forty years ago so I may be shaky on some of the details.

In her family mum had a bit of a reputation for seeing things that others couldn’t see so we grew up with open minds about the supernatural. Anyway, that meant that mum was always asked to participate in calling on the spirits using the board especially when her sisters came to visit us. They would want mum to call on their deceased parents or older sister to talk to them.

I first saw a Ouija board when I was a child. It was in the window of the local newsagents. Mum explained to us what it was and how she and her sisters had used a home made Ouija board made of cut out letters and a glass to answer questions when they were young. She never did tell us where they learned about it as far as I can remember. Anyway, we ended up buying a board and the whole family would use it from time to time. We kids were young enough to think of it as a bit of a game.We’d ask it things like “Will we win the lottery?”, “Will we travel overseas?”.

As Naomi and I grew older we rather turned away from the idea of calling up spirits. We didn’t feel comfortable with it, it was not a game anymore. We might be messing with things we didn’t understand. Mum only used the board if someone asked her and we said that we preferred not to which she was fine with.

I can’t recall any supernatural incidents involving the Ouija board or any predictions it made that came true. What I do recall is an incident involving one of my aunts which still, to this day, makes me cringe with embarrassment. My aunt was turning 50 and she was not happy about it. In fact she had a major meltdown, crying and carrying on demanding that mum get out the Ouija board because she “wanted to talk to mum”.

Naomi and I were in our late teens, early twenties and we just didn’t know where to look. We’d never seen an adult behave like that. We wanted nothing to do with it and we left poor mum to do the best she could. I think that it was after that incident that we asked mum not to use the board again and after that if her sisters asked her she’d say it was lost. I think that Naomi disposed of it to make sure.

Although my story is not really about the supernatural or directly even about scrying I did feel that it was not healthy to rely on contact with the afterworld for comfort.