Chapter One – The Knowing (page

As our fingers began to touch on the planchette, I looked into the eyes of each girl and boy there. One boy’s face showed something I’d never seen before. Seriousness. That concerned me. He was never serious. He was typically far from it, always getting on everyone’s last nerve because of his joking. Strange. Things in the room and the people around me looked so much more multi-dimensional than they really were. Even in my young and naïve mind, it was as if ancient souls were opening our eyes to things our physical bodies couldn’t normally see. I felt uncomfortable; almost violated. It seemed that whatever forces in the room weren’t just showing us another dimension, but like a door that swung both ways they could also see inside of us. I didn’t want anything inside of me so I broke my gaze and reminded myself that I really didn’t believe all of this. I thought of the popcorn and soda and the scary movies and laughter that came with the sleep-over after the séance. I submitted to getting it over-with as soon as possible.

My friend acted very much like a professional psychic. She was somber as she lifted her face, closed her eyes and asked a question to the air. “Are you there?” After a period of lengthy nothingness our hands began to be moved. “YES” was the answer. Sarcastically, I wondered to myself what else we expected it to say. Perhaps, “NO”?

She asked the name of the spirit that guided this Ouija board. That answer wasn’t so clear. It spelled out “old”. Another friend snickered. Our fearless leader’s head snapped to the right and her nasty expression told us all to be quiet and concentrate. We didn’t know on what we were supposed to be concentrating but we each went back to trying to concentrate on whatever it was we were supposed to be concentrating.

“Spirit of old,” my friend began. “Tell us where you come from.” We waited. “I repeat to you Old Spirit, where do you come from?”

She told us to close our eyes. We did. Yet wildly flickering shapes suddenly illuminated the darkness on the other side of our eyelids. Several kids opened their eyes – I know, because I too opened mine. The candles seemed to be blown by a breeze from several different directions at once. My mind tried to piece together what was going on. No windows open. No furnace or fan on. No one near the candles.

“Don’t take your hands off! Something’s happening!” my friend warned us. Then she repeated her question again, louder and more bold this time. The planchette began to rumble or vibrate but it didn’t move to any letters. It was happening so quickly that I didn’t have time to fear - as fear goes. It was scary and exciting and I was trying to analyze who was doing the rumbling and how. I wanted to throw my hands up in the air and flip on the lights but I didn’t dare let go. I suppressed nervous laughter.

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“I command you to answer me Old Spirit!” my friend shouted. “Where do you come from?” To our horror the planchette shot forward to the word “NO” then it flew out from under our fingers, across the bed, and it sailed end-over-end through the room. It hit the door and landed on the floor. And just as the candles flickered out, the whole Ouija board flipped high into the air and shot past us to land on the floor of an open closet. My friend’s screams mixed with ours as we raced out the door and into the living room where her mom sat watching TV.

“What have you kids been messing with in there?” Her mom, being a staunch Christian was alarmed by what we’d been doing. We all received a heavy and serious warning not to ever again “mess around” with the forces we were playing with. There was something about forces of light and forces of darkness and good and bad spirits and danger. My juvenile mind didn’t fully grasp it, and I really wasn’t sure I wanted to understand. I simply wanted to play around with it and have fun.

I believe each of us experienced varying degrees of fear that squelched any further experimentation with “spiritual forces” for a while. But in each of our homes, family members began to see or hear things in the night. Footsteps mostly, but sometimes doors squeaking open and our names being called. Sometimes things would come up missing – right under our noses.

One of my friends didn’t allow any of this to stifle his curiosity. He delved deeper than any of us dared. He read everything he could about witchcraft and the occult. Within a short time, his choice of music changed and his countenance soon followed. He became sort of a dark, occult icon among our group. Before long he started drinking and then taking psychedelic drugs to “enhance his spiritual awareness”. He began to attract a darker group of friends and after some time he completely stopped going to our church and hanging around with us.

I became certain that I had some form of special ESP. I had an uncanny way of perceiving things and seeing things that others could not see. I started telling my friends what I felt was going to happen or what a teacher may say. I was correct a good percentage of the time. My school friends started saying that I was a “witch”. Although I did nothing witch-like, I made no attempts to shrug that mantle. It was fun knowing that people believed I knew things and had a mystique about me. It brought me a sort of respect that I’d never before experienced. I had no inkling that our dabbling in occultism as youngsters would impact any of our lives (and the lives of those around us). Without understanding it, a spiritual door had really been opened.

That door invited in a powerful and evil demonic enemy that had an age-old agenda to thwart any plan that our Creator had for our lives. This demonic force wished only to destroy us one-by-one.

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