Black Balled - Rachel Lamb

Most children play with dolls or toy soldiers; go out with friends to the movies or the mall, but my mother once toyed with something outside our realm. She and her close friend played with a Ouija board.

My mother, Tammy was in eighth grade and was enticed by the promises of magic and spiritual happenings. She and her friend Diane saved for weeks and bought a book witchcraft. An article they had read in the newspaper had promised they could have anything they had ever wanted, as soon as they wanted it. They had been reading this book for a few weeks before Diane introduced my mother to a Ouija board.

The Ouija board was a dark wood with the usual markings on it, yes, no, goodbye, and letters in the center. In the middle of the board was a perfectly round, cold, black ball. Diane and my mother sat down on either side of the board and looked at each other. Neither one of them had ever even seen a Ouija board, so they definitely didn’t know how it worked.

They started to formulate guesses on how to use the board. They came to the conclusion that it was played like 20 questions and the ball would roll to the answer of their question. They began to ask simple questions and as they assumed, the ball did roll. After a few questions the girls became wary.

My mother didn’t see how this connected them to spirits or unknown beings. As they voiced their opinions about the board the ball began to lift up above the board. Diane noticed it and both the girls got quiet. The ball began to rotate around the Ouija board. Slowly at first but faster as it kept going. Neither one of the girls had any idea what was going on and were both scared that they had made a mistake. So my mother kicked it into the closet and Diane slammed the door closed. Immediately the girls retrieved the book on witchcraft and threw it out into a fire dumpster in the woods where the book would burn and never be seen by the two girls again.

Weeks later, after going nowhere near the closet, My mother and Diane decided that they needed to get rid of the board just like had done with the book. They made Diane’s brother cookies and asked him if he would get it out of the closet and put it in a burlap sack for them. He agreed, but only because he received a plate of homemade chocolate chip cookies. They took the sack containing the Ouija board and put it in the same burning barrel they had placed their magazines in.

Afterwards the girls made a promise to each other to never involve themselves in magic or dark spiritual things again. They held each other to that promise, remembering how that perfectly round, cold, black ball had risen and spun around their first and last Ouija board.