Ouija

The weather is perfect tonight. I’m not cold and I’m not hot. It’s dark and there’s only the three of us. I’ve seen how this usually goes in movies: three girls walking alone at night and the next morning they’re found dead. Hopefully, that won’t be us, right? We’re walking along Nassau Street, the main street in Princeton. No sign of life except for the “Public Safety” car we saw a few minutes ago. The street lights are on and honestly, it’s so beautiful. Nassau Street without the bustle of Princetonians is almost colonial and eerie. Appropriately, we planned to do a Ouija board on the Princeton University campus so we walked along the road that leads to the fountain with the creepy Chinese Zodiac animal heads. We didn’t quite make it as far as the fountain but where we ended up was far more interesting and perfectly fitting for my secret plan.

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We saw two students existing building and Isabel and I, introverts at heart, smiled at them, but Emma, bubbly and outgoing, lured them in a conversation. Honestly, I was zoned out for most of it anyway, I didn’t really care much to talk to them since I was enjoying the peace and serenity of Princeton at this strange hour. Somewhere in the conversation, Emma mentioned our Oujia board and after pointless small talk about how they like their education at Princeton University, and how they wanted to wish us luck in our educational futures, they walked us to a creepier place to toy with the spirits.

It was pretty but in that creepy and haunted way. Behind two bushes, in a sort of alcove by the church, there was a little stone bench and what I assumed to be a little fountain or something like that. It was getting colder and the wind chilled me through to my bones, but we continued with our Ouija board, which was quite literally a sheet of printer paper with letters drawn out in black sharpie. Emma and Isabel taped it to the stone bench and sat down either side. I crouched in front of it, kneeling on the bricks on the floor. We each put a finger on the quarter that we used for the spelling then looked up at each other signally that we were ready for something spooky to happen.

Side note: I’ve never done an Ouija board before and don’t believe in supernatural spirits so this all seemed kind of ridiculous to me. I wasn’t quite sure what was going to happen but I certainly knew that there wasn’t going to be any spiritual intervention this evening. Back to the story…

Emma began this speech that involved telling the ghosts and spirits that we meant “no harm no unto them, and hope they [meant] none unto us.” It was a long speech and she was very serious about it. I wasn’t really paying any attention to the words. I found it far more interesting to watch their faces as they waited in fear of the potential spirits. Finally, we began our questions.

“Are there any spirits here who wish to make contact with the living?” said Emma, looking around the little area. The quarter moved toward the YES on the upper left-hand corner of the board. Emma thought that Isabel was moving the coin, and Isabel thought that I was doing it. Emma apologized to the spirits for her moment of doubt and reset the ritual by sliding the coin back and forth across the word FINISHED at the bottom of the board. She began her speech again and we started over.

The coin moved toward the YES. I was moving it a little and I think Isabel was too. Emma believed it was real so there was no harm in our little tricks. We all looked up at each other and then back at the board. Look around again, Emma asked,

“What brought you to the foreground?” and the coin began moving to spell out E-M-M-A.

Just to set the mood a little more, a perfectly timed gust of wind blew through the bushes and brushed up our backs like hundreds of little spiders or that fuzzy pins and needles feeling. Emma was a little terrified and I believe Isabel was too, though it was hard to tell if she really believed it. Before we could ask another question, the coin moved. D-I-E. And we all retracted our hands from the devious coin.

She was flustered, to say the least. It's quite sadistic to play such tricks on believers but I just couldn't resist. Emma spoke rather quickly saying something along the lines of how we need to leave and ran the coin back and forth over the word FINISHED. She hurriedly removed the tape from the corners of the paper and apologized to the spirits for her hasty departure. We ran out of there and didn’t slow down until we got to Nassau Street. I had to keep a straight face and act like I didn’t do anything. It took all my willpower to not laugh and tell them it was me who moved the coin.

We walked quickly back to Isabel’s house and I acted as though I believed it too. I didn’t want to upset Emma when she was already worried that a spirit was after her soul. We finally reached the safety of Isobel's house and we watched Emma throw away the board after ripping into lots of little pieces.