During that time in American history, people were especially intrigued by spiritualism, or the belief that the living could communicate with those who’ve passed away. By the 1910s and ’20s, there was huge surge in demand for Ouija boards, and its popularity continued to skyrocket in the following decades. Over five months in 1944, one New York department store sold 50,000 of them. The Ouija’s popularity must stem from the fact that it’s an eerily effective way to talk to the dead, right? Well, science isn’t convinced that’s the case, chalking the Ouija board planchette’s movement to a psycho-physiological principle called ideomotor action, or an unconscious reflex. In other words, our ideas of what should happen make our muscles move to make them happen, even if we think they’re not. Nonetheless, plenty of folks have had pretty convincing, eyebrow-raising experiences with Ouija boards. Some say they communicated with spirits who seemingly predicted historical events. Others swore they were talking to dearly departed loved ones. Read on for 15 of the eeriest, coolest, and downright skin-crawling Ouija board stories. “So anyways, it’s me and six other girls, and we’re doing silly teenage girl things with a Ouija board. I thought it would be cool to ask what my brother’s real birthday is, and to make sure the results weren’t skewed, I took my hand off the planchette and stepped away from the board, and had the other girls ask, ‘What is Caroline’s brother’s birthday?’ They knew my brother was adopted, but they didn’t know the whole backstory about his birth date being somewhat fuzzy. And there’s no way they could have known that he was brought to a hospital on March 27, 2001. “Their fingers were on the planchette, and it moved to the numbers 3262001. March 26, 2001. It’s completely plausible that he was born on the 26th, and found on the 27th. I still get kind of weirded out when I think about that. Maybe it’s just a coincidence. But it’s f***ing weird that the possibly exact date of birth of a baby born in South Africa and adopted by a family that lived in DC showed up on a Ouija board at a summer camp in New Hampshire.” — carolingianempire, Reddit “After a few more questions I asked him to move my skeleton heads on my TV, because we wanted to know if this was fake or not. Moe replied, ‘Close eyes’ [and] after a few seconds went by all of my skeleton heads were facing us. How the hell could that be faked? We were the only two in my room at the time, and all the while sitting close to one another.” — Anonymous, Reddit “I asked the board, ‘Do you have any questions for us?’ It answered, ‘Yes.’ I asked, ‘What’s your name?’ It answered, ‘Abe.’ My friends and I immediately joked that it was Abraham Lincoln. “I asked, ‘Who do you want to talk to?’ It answered, ‘Erika.’ Erika is my mother’s name, but she was downstairs and completely not involved in the game. I asked, ‘What do you want to say to her?’ It answered, ‘Wish I knew her.’ This was so incredibly specific, I couldn’t imagine what it meant. I ran downstairs to find my mom, and I asked her if she knew anyone named Abe. She said yes, her grandfather was named Abe, but he died before she was born. I didn’t know my great-grandfather’s name, and my friends certainly didn’t!” — Sarah, Massapequa, New York “One day, I challenged the board and said give me something independent to verify all the information [it was] giving me. Predict a news event. Tell me something that is going to happen. It starts moving strange like it’s having a hard time telling me something. “[I’m] paraphrasing here since it was a long time ago, but the exchange went something like this: ‘DI DIE DI DIE DI DIE DI DIE.’ I’m like, ‘Whoa, something nasty here, telling me to die.’ ‘PRINCESS DI DIE.’ Princess Di at the time was young and vital, so of course I’m skeptical. ‘Oh, yeah, sure, she dies. How does this happen?’ ‘CAR ACCIDENT.’ ‘Yeah right, like a princess could get killed in a car accident.’ ‘Where is this car accident?’ ‘PARIS.’ ‘Yeah right what the hell is the Princess of Wales doing in Paris? OK, so when is this going to happen?’ ‘OHIO.’ I had a trip to Ohio planned in the coming weeks. So, sure, whatever, Princess Di will die in a car crash in Paris while I am in Ohio. Yeah, right. “I go to Ohio. Nothing happens. I forget about it. Just one of those weird Ouija sessions that happens every once in a while. Month or so later, I am in Ohio again. I come out into the living room and everyone is watching TV, glued to a news report. What? I ask … Princess Di killed in an accident. I was stunned.” — throwawayweegee, Reddit “This thing was moving CRAZY fast, faster than I had ever seen, and seemed to be getting quite agitated by the group of guys we were with who were joking around and not taking it seriously. It essentially told them to shut up and stop talking. I told the guys, ‘Seriously, please stop being rude, I’m kind of freaked out.’ “Because I was getting nervous, one of the guys took over, he was a bit more serious about it. Almost immediately the thing spelled out, ‘Don’t open the door.’ Well, we were all in the basement, and there was only one door, so we all kind of looked over at it nervously. Because I was getting anxious, I took the blanket and kind of hid my face. Immediately it spelled out, ‘Don’t hide from me.’ Everyone was freaked out. The guy who had his hands on the planchette literally started to cry, he wanted to take his hands off, but we have this rule that you don’t take your hands off until you get it to say, ‘Goodbye.’ Everyone wanted to stop, but it took about 10 minutes of asking dumb questions until the thing finally slid to goodbye. “Some of the guys speculated afterwards, that it meant don’t open the metaphorical door of the spiritual world. The reason being is we told them to never ask for a sign or else it kind of lets the spirit roam free outside of the board. Before that guy took over, they kept asking for a sign, only for me to cut them off mid-sentence and tell them to knock it off. So this made some sense.” — strangeobjects123, Reddit “My best friend and I asked if anyone was speaking to us. The answer was yes. I asked how many ghosts were present and the answer was 7. My cat K.C. came up to us at that point. He stopped just beyond where we were sitting. He looked around and slowly weaved his way past us as if stepping around people. Then, the planchette quickly dragged our hands to spell out ‘happy to talk.’ As soon as that sentence was spelled out, a blinding streak of light that looked like a shooting star flashed from one side of my living room to the other. It was one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen. It lit up my living room with an intense silvery light.” — Lalybi, Reddit
