Vanessa, Caitlin, and I have been friends since our freshman year in High School. We’d done everything together, been through everything together, and been there for each other in the hardest of times. Like every group of friends we had a special place for only us; like a secret clubhouse in Elementary School, in High School it was Vanessa’s basement. Vanessa’s basement had rules: what happens in Vanessa’s basement stays in Vanessa’s basement. I break that rule now to tell this tale.
The basement was almost another friend in our group. It had been there through everything, and the echoes of past events seeped through the walls reminding us of all we’d been through together. Day after day the three of us sat in the basement coming up with new ways to spend our time. We made candles, and bead creations, played truth or dare, and later drinking games. (I got a handicap because I’m small and a light weight) It’s a fact of life, however, that when you get older all the things you used to do start to get boring. We were too old for to be entertained by our past children’s games, and started to incur back pains from sleeping on couches in the cold basement all night. And so this was our situation one afternoon sitting in Vanessa’s basement trying to find something to do.
I don’t rightly remember whose idea it was. What I do remember was our eyes warily drifting to the stack of games in the corner. Some of these games were older than sin. They had not been looked at by us or anyone else in at least twenty years. Each game was covered with a fine layer of dust, but it wasn’t the games we were looking at. It was the Ouija board that lay there with them, torn and covered in dust. Caitlin was very nervous about trying the Ouija board. She’d had bad experiences with magic in the past, but magic was my passion and I convinced her that I had everything under control. Everything would be fine because I knew what I was doing. Of course this was a total lie. I’d studied everything on magic that I could get my hands on, and practiced much of it too, but I’d never laid hands on a Ouija board. I assumed that it probably wouldn’t work.
The day we finally decided to try it the girls had a mutual friend over, a boy named Cory. Cory insisted he’d done this before and Vanessa sort of knew the spell to summon the Watch Towers. I set up my Exodus oil in case we had any problems. (Exodus oil is used to encourage a quick departure) We set up a circle of candles and I drew a protective barrier with my ritual dagger. We circled up as we had done before, holding hands and walking clockwise chanting “Earth Air Fire Water” as we passed the symbol of each element set up at each section of the circle. Then Cory instructed us and we got down to business.
To my utter shock we were able to contact spirits. We were introduced to our spirit guardians, and even to the ghost of a young boy whom we remembered dying a couple years back. He was very playful and we loved him. We asked about our past lives, and came up with trick questions to make sure it was real. We had great fun and used the Ouija board every chance we got, but shortly after we started something unusual happened. Vanessa and Caitlin started feeling a presence in the house. He would not talk just float around watching us. One day we decided to take a leap of faith and call out this spirit to talk to us on the board.
He came. After many attempts at asking his name he introduced himself as only “R”. He was a malicious spirit unlike the playful spirits we had encountered before. He couldn’t hurt us but it very much seemed as if he wanted to. Unlike the other spirits who left the board invisibly as they went, when “R” left he took out two of our elements with him. We could feel him passing by. We decided not to speak with “R” anymore, but “R” would not leave. We could not contact our spirit guardian; instead “R” would appear. All my attempts to banish him would not get him off the board. I was eventually successful at getting him out of the house, but he was still looking through windows, and talking on the board. I decided we needed to get help from someone more experienced. So, as I had many times before, I went to the local metaphysics shop for advice. There I learned that we had not followed any of the proper procedures for the board. We’d broken almost all the rules. The leader of the coven there gave us a spell to ask for Hecate’s help in getting rid of “R”. Caitlin did not come with us to do the ritual. She was terrified. Vanessa and I went to perform the ritual.
We had a friend drive us to a crossroads, put a black candle in the middle and surrounded it by cookies and raw steak. There was much more to the ritual than this it took several days of preparation, but the most important thing was that we leave and not look back. We did. When we got home we warily stepped into the basement. I was very nervous. Hecate and I had some past history and I was worried what she’d think of me asking for help. When I stepped into the basement all my worries disappeared. Not only was the room completely void of any spirits (including “R”!) but the walls were covered like a mural in energetic marks of protection so intricate that a normal witch could not have put them up. Some of the symbols I recognized, some of them I didn’t, but as Vanessa and I marveled at the basement walls, blank to anyone else, we both saw the same thing. The next time we tried to use the Ouija board it did not work, and we haven’t touched it since.
