Don’t Play with Ouija Boards Kids: All spirits are not the same: Receiving the Holy Spirit Part 1

Hands perched on the plastic guide, my sixteen year old brother was determined to prove the Ouija board was nothing more than a modern-day superstition. As a budding engineer and mathematician, if it’s wasn’t measurable by science, it was a fanciful fairytale or snake oil trickery. The four of us had been playing with the Hasbro board game for nearly an hour; even though our parents had strictly warned us never to play with a Ouija board, we figured it couldn’t be that dangerous since it was sitting right there on our cousins’ bookshelf.  My older cousin Terry and I had used up our turns asking the Ouija board questions about friends, who we would marry, and what we would do when we “grew up;” my brother finally had enough. “You’re moving that thing, I can see you moving it,” my brother cried out. “I saw your hands pushing it over letters to spell ‘dolphin trainer!’” But no matter how much we objected or even when we tried it as a group all together, my brother would still claim, “Someone here is moving it.”

My brother was going to put an end to this nonsense once and for all, assured he would prove  the Ouija board operated through ‘power of suggestion’ or flat out fakery on someone’s part. Pairing himself up with my pre-kindergarten cousin, he determined there could be no variable for cheating since my cousin couldn’t spell.  Because he wasn’t trying to trick himself, and his partner was incapable of pulling one over on him, he predicted the outcome was going to be…a lot of nothing.  He scanned the room for a question that could have no subjective answer. He couldn’t ask the Ouija board about his future or what someone’s favorite color was, because that too could be a manipulated answer. He spotted a stack of magazines on the coffee table and randomly formulated a question, “In the third magazine down, on page, um…twenty four, what is the forth to the last word on the page?” The planchette began to move, my little cousin was under suspicion.  As it glided across the board, through the round window it paused for a moment over, “G.” Then it quickly slid over the letter, “O.” From there it highlighted, “L” and finally, “F.” Eyes wide, we all became suddenly sheepish. My brother pushed the top two magazines off the pile and picked up the third. Opening to page twenty four, we all crowded around to see the results…”and golf was her passion.”

Screaming, there was lots of screaming. I feel like we all jumped to our feet so quickly we almost hit the ceiling; someone grabbed the Ouija board and flung it across the room. Terrified, we fled to the hall and trampled each other down the staircase; no one wanted to be “last”…that’s always the one in the movies that gets taken.  After that day, we didn’t speak about the incident; not only was I sure my brother and I would get in deep trouble with our parents, I was freaked out to discover there was something outside myself that I couldn’t see and couldn’t control. Yet, while we wouldn’t talk about the incident again for another twenty years over a Christmas dinner, as a child of eight years old, little did I know this event would cause huge issues in my life with receiving God, receiving part of the Trinity…His Holy Spirit.