chochiyo_sama

The Se'ance: Or, The Denizens of the Ethereal Realm Do Indeed Have a Sense of Humor 

            When I was a young girl, probably ten or eleven years old, my sisters and I created elaborate stories about Oliver, the ghost of our Grandma Harpel’s brother, who had died of pneumonia in my bedroom about 50 years before we were born. He was only twenty-one years old at the time of his death.
            We lived in a very old house which had been built by my Great-Grandfather. It was the first house in Steele Country with indoor plumbing. In its day, it was quite a mansion. By the time we moved into it, it definitely was not a mansion.
            Like most old houses, the stairs creaked, wind moaned through cracks around the windows, and floorboards mysteriously made loud popping noises that sounded like someone invisible was stomping their foot hard on the floor. For some reason, the electricity flickered for no apparent reason from time to time as well. However, there was also some Thing in that house. People heard violin music, faint, distant violin music, from the attic at three o’clock in the morning. Sometimes the television would turn off and on, all by itself. The closet door in my bedroom would open all by itself. Even if I had piled boxes in front of it before I went to bed at night, the boxes would be moved away and the door would be open two or three inches when I woke up in the morning.
            Whenever anything weird happened, we blamed Oliver, the ghost. Was it really Oliver? Who knows. No matter how creepy and freaky these incidents were when they were actually happening, we turned them into good fun when telling the stories to our cousins. Our cousins were so terrified of “Oliver” that they would wet their pants or pee behind the shed in the weeds rather than go upstairs to our only bathroom—which was located right next to the dreaded attic door. (It was our contention that Oliver lived in the attic.)
            One day several of our cousins had come out to the farm to spend the day. One of them had brought a Ouija board. For a few hours we asked it stupid questions like “Who will I marry?” and “How many children will I have?” Then we were bored and decided to do something a little more daring.
            “Let’s have a séance!” my cousin Rhonda exclaimed. She was a very spoiled and prissy girl two years younger than me. She was from the big city of Rochester and considered herself far superior to us farm girls.
            While everyone scampered to find candles and a card table to add to the ambiance of the room, I hid in my sisters’ closet. We had conferred quickly amongst ourselves and decided to scare the hell out of my cousins. My sister Kim would conduct the “séance,” and I would deliver ghostly moans and deep, scary messages from the closet. I was the oldest of the cousins and the most theatrical, so I was the obvious choice for the job.
            The shades were pulled and the curtains drawn to shut out all light. My sisters lit three white candles, which we learned was the appropriate thing to do by watching Dark Shadows on television. To feel more mysterious, my sister draped an old sheer curtain over her head. (Angelique, the witch on Dark Shadows, had worn something similar during the séances she conducted.)
            Our efforts to create a creepy, scary atmosphere were successful. The room was gloomy, and the candles cast flickering shadows on the walls. The yellow-red flames elongated incredibly as my sisters and cousins discussed which spirit from the other world they should try to summon. Finally, they decided on our mother’s father, Grandpa Neitz (short for Neitzell). He had died of a heart attack when he was fifty-two years old. I was only nine years old when he passed away.
            Kim, Joni, Rhonda, Lee, Roger, and Tammy all put their fingers on the wedge shaped Ouija tool. “Grandpa Neitz,” my sister said in a weird ethereal voice. “Grandpa Neitz…..” She stretched the word out like a low howl. “Speak to us, Grandpa Neitz.” 

            After a few minutes, I started to play my part. I moaned, a deep, growly sound.
            “Is that you, Grandpa Neitz?” my sister asked in her weird séance voice.
            “Yesssssss,” I groaned.
            “Can you speak to us, Grandpa Neitz?”

            “Yesssss,” I repeated.
            My cousins were freaking out. Rhonda started to cry. Even Tammy, my littlest sister who was about four, was scared, though she knew it was all a prank. Four year olds are notoriously scared-E-pantses.
            “Do you have a message for us, Grandpa Neitz?” my sister asked.
            Before I could answer, a very strange thing happened. Clouds covered up the sun outside, making the room much darker than it had been. Everything outside seemed to go dead silent, like it does just before a big storm. The candles, which I could see through the tiny crack in the door I was watching through, flared up so that the flames got long and skinny and reached almost to the ceiling.


            A sudden wind blew the curtains and the shades straight out—this happened on both windows, even though one was on the north side of the house, and one was on the west side. The candles were snuffed out. Everyone at the table screamed. The Ouija board fell to the floor. The little metal “spirit pin” popped out and rolled under the bed. First one window, then the other slammed shut, as if a powerful hand had forced them down.
            The closet door slammed shut next, after the windows had slammed down. I could hear my sisters and cousins barreling out of the room and down the steps as I struggled to find the door knob in the pitch black closet. I was screaming and crying. When I found the knob, first it would not turn, then it turned but would not open. I was sure the devil was in the closet with me. I could almost feel his hot breath on the back of my neck.
            Finally the door opened, and I tumbled out of the closet, following my screeching sisters and cousins out into the yard, where we clustered together, weeping and terrified.
            Needless to say, that was my last séance. Not long after that, we took the Ouija board out to the burn pile at midnight because we had heard from one of the kids at school that the Ouija board was inhabited and controlled by a demon which would scream as it burned. The only thing that we heard screaming that night was my cousin Rhonda, who had stepped in a pile of doggie doo.
            And that, my children, is my spooky story. I have the feeling that a whole bunch of denizens of the spiritual realm were laughing their ectoplasmic asses off as we scattered like leaves in a hurricane, screaming our corporeal heads off.