“I died in a fire.” The Ouija board slowly scratched out as Susy and I communicated with a very angry spirit. Her name was Betsey; she came across as a much older woman, who didn’t live such a happy life. She told us she wanted to hurt us and that if we didn’t help her she would never leave us alone. Talking with her made us vow never want to try the Ouija board again.
Hours earlier, it was an ordinary boring winter weekend. “Ugh, why is it so boring living here?” I complained Susy lazily sat in my room trying to think of something to do for yet another weekend night. We had already walked all over the small New England town, gotten hot coffee at Dunkin Donuts, black as I always order it, played in the snow, making igloos and snow angels, and watched a blockbuster horror movie. We were all out of ideas.

“Hey, what about that creepy old glow in the dark Ouija board you got for your birthday a few years ago?” Susy asked with a toothy grin on her frail little face. I hadn’t thought about the game in years. It was hiding somewhere in my board game closet. We dug through many various board games including Monopoly and Dominos, before we finally found the torn up box crumpled underneath the game Don’t wake daddy! We both looked at each other silently for a minute, “what, I mean these things don’t actually work, right?” Susy was nervous. “I mean it’s just a stupid piece of cardboard and plastic. What’s the worst thing that could happen?” I assured her. We proceeded up to my room with handfuls of candles and a box of matches. Once the candles were lit, the lights were out, the door was closed, and Ouija board paced in the center of my room) we were ready for our séance.

I started by asking questions, “is anyone here?” “Can anyone hear me?” Finally the small plastic piece began to move. I couldn’t help the feeling this gave my hand; my hand was freezing and shaking a little bit. Was it Betsey on the board doing this? At first all we could not make out what the board was saying. The words were mixed in with scribbles and numbers, but after a couple of minutes the spirit clearly spelt out Betsey. I though maybe it was just Susy doing all this, maybe she was just trying to scare me for fun or something. Until she became very scary talking on the Ouija board about how she wanted to hurt us by burning us.
We finally decided it would be best if we flipped over the Ouija board and started over. We began to talk to what we though was another spirit, “Why did you flip the board?” The spirit asked. We soon realized that it was still Betsey. She quickly started violently moving the piece back and forth from word to word. We gave each other a look. Should we stop, is she even real? I could tell Susy was thinking the same thing. We continued our séance by asking questions, “How did you die Betsey?” and “Where did you live?” She scratched the plastic board around spelling” I.N A F.I.R.E” This freaked us out. I needed to determine whether of not she was real or not. Grabbing a candle I told Betsey, “if you’re real, then blow this candle out!” A few seconds passed, all we could see was the flickering candle sitting there, until finally it just went out. We started screaming and quickly ran to turn the lights on. This was when we had enough of Betsey. We had to get rid of her; we decided it would be best if we called my Aunt Jayne. She had experience talking to spirits through her angle board.

I picked up the phone and dialed her number; I knew she could tell something was wrong immediately by the tone of my voice. After I shakily explained the terrifying events that had occurred, she sounded disappointed. She told me to put the Ouija board away and to never play with it again. It was dangerous; she explained “you never know who you’re letting into your mind.” This still left a problem. What should we do about Betsey? We already let her in. My Aunt Jayne could only tell us one thing, “burn sage”. I was in high spirits when I found a dried can of sage downstairs in my moms spice cabinet. We took it upstairs and lit it in a large metal bucket. All of the sudden it caught fire and began to raise flames two feet tall. I tried to blow it out but the small pieces of sage just blew everywhere, still lit all over my room for a least a minute. All I could hear was Susy in the background screaming. “She died in a fire. Betsey died in a fire!” After I stomped the last of the sage pieces out, we both talked about how we had never thought spirits were real and therefore, we vowed never to do the Ouija board ever again. What we had thought to be a fun game that would pass the time, turned out to be a deeply spiritual experience that left me scared.