Back when I was eleven or twelve, my brothers and I used to hang with a group of neighborhood kids. The area where we lived used to be know as "Alice's Pitch-in", because supposedly decades ago it was all farmland owned by a woman named Alice, who would have a big party once a year, where everyone "pitched in" and brought something. Of course, my older brother, M, was always a creative fella, and he came up with a new story. Alice was a witch, who had a giant fire pit in her back yard, and after neighborhood pets and small children went missing, the locals tracked the disappearances to Alice's fire pit, where she had "pitched them in" and burned them. Honestly, I always preferred M's story.
Our neighbors who lived in the house behind us had a big, fancy, custom built tree house in a wooded area. It was really just a small patch of trees, about an acre or so, but we thought of it as "the woods". There were trails running through it (made by the neighborhood kids' foot traffic), and we liked to play flashlight tag there in the summer.
One summer night, we were all hanging out by the tree house, and my older brother got the idea that we should try out the Ouija board in the woods. We took the board up into the tree house. There was me, my older brother M, my younger brother B, Michael (who was B's age) and his sister Lindsey (a year older than me), Heidi (Lindsey's age) and her brother Nick (a year younger than me).
Now according to tradition, or legend, or the back of the Parker Brothers box, the board is most effective at contacting the dead when it is used by one male and one female, preferably unrelated and of similar ages (gee, I wonder why Ouija boards are so popular at parties??
). It was decided that Heidi and I would be the ones with our fingers on the planchette. M, as the oldest present (and most imaginative) would ask the questions.
When I was twelve years old, I didn't yet call myself an atheist, mostly because I'd never given much thought one way or another to questions of religion or afterlife. If someone had asked me then if I believe in God, I probably would have said "Not really". But I was somewhat more open to the idea that ghosts or spirits might exist, and when you're sitting in a dark and spooky tree house at night, lit only with flashlights, in the middle of a wooded area, you can't help but think that anything could be possible.
I remember that Heidi and I sat across from each other, put our fingers on the planchette, and for a minute or two, the tree house was silent save for the sound of breathing. Then M began asking questions; "Is there anyone with us?" "Are there any spirits present?"... those kinds of things. At first there was nothing. You are supposed to have your fingers resting gently on the planchette, just barely touching it, and I know that's how my fingers were. It was dark, and I couldn't see very well, but I could see that Heidi's fingers were also relaxed, and didn't seem to be putting any pressure on the device. M continued to pose questions, and nothing continued happening. I don't remember any of the specific questions asked that night, and I don't remember exactly how long M had been asking with no result, but I specifically remember glancing up at Heidi, at the exact same time she glanced at me, and then the very slightest twitch of a smile touched the corner of her lips, and a twinkle, perhaps a stray flashlight beam, crossed her eyes. And suddenly, the planchette began to move! At first, it was a slow, creeping movement, drifting up the board to point to "YES", and I remember hearing Nick, Lindsey, Michael, and B start to giggle. I remember M looking at me with a nervous smile, and asking me if I was moving it. He asked Heidi the same, and though we both said "No", I secretly suspected that Heidi may have been doing it, because it certainly seemed to move as though some purposeful force were behind it.
The planchette drifted back to center, and M asked again "Is there a spirit here?" This time, the planchette moved swiftly to "YES", and the other four stopped laughing. I was becoming more and more convinced that it was Heidi having a laugh, but when I glanced up, her face was very serious. M began asking more specific questions, and the planchette revealed that the "spirit" had died in 1786, had been a soldier, and had been in his forties.
After several minutes, I glanced around the tree house, and could see that Michael and B were nervous, but that Lindsey and Nick, while having a good time, weren't really buying it. I couldn't tell if M was genuinely intrigued, or just having fun being in on the gag, but he certainly was acting like a believer. For my own part, I was believing less and less, because it felt to me like Heidi was moving it, and I even wondered if I myself was adding a bit of propulsion without being entirely aware of it. Besides that, the story that was emerging of the dead soldier seemed increasingly fantastical.
Finally, M thanked the "spirit", and gave it leave to return from whence it came. The planchette stopped moving, and Heidi and I dropped our hands, exchanging a very brief smile in the near total darkness. M asked us each again if we had moved it, imploring me to "swear to God I wasn't doing it", and we both replied in the negative. As far as we were concerned, something unexplained, if not unexplainable, had happened in that tree house one summer night, and none of us who were there will ever really know for sure if we talked with the dead in the woods of Alice's Pitch-in.
