Background:
Even though I grew up in this house and visit often, I have never before attempted to record any disembodied voices. Only on rare occasions have voices from "the beyond" been heard in the house. It is not as common as noises, smells, apparitions, etc.
With a regular tape recorder and a brand spanking new audio cassette tape, we decided that since we were going to visit my mother on this particular day anyway, we might as well try to capture some evidence on tape.
And somehow I got it into my head that while this was going on in an upstairs bedroom, why not whip out the Ouija board downstairs and really try to contact someone on "the other side"?
Important to Note:
I realize there are 2 sides to the Ouija board argument so to speak...my mother has always had one and we have messed around with it over the years. There have been some intriguing and scary results, but never anything "evil". Please respect the fact I have on occasion used it, and I will respect your side of it if you are anti-Ouija board for whatever reason. Not long ago, I lost all faith in the Ouija board due to a blindfolded experiment; however, after today I may have to re-examine all of that. You may think the Ouija board is just a game, downright evil, the scariest thing on the planet, or the dumbest thing on the planet. The point of this piece you are reading is not to determine what it is. I just want to relay to you what I experienced today. Conclude what you will.
What Happened:
We began our recording in the living room. The house was quiet. My mother had reported that nothing out of the ordinary had been happening lately, except for a few bumps in the night sometimes but she cannot say with certainty that it wasn't one of the cats.
While recording in the quiet living room, I asked (out loud to no one in particular) if there were spirits among us, could you please let us know you were there, what is your name, please say something...that sort of thing. After a little while, we stopped recording (not knowing if we captured anything--we would discover the results later during playback). We then proceeded to the upstairs spare bedroom that is known to have paranormal activity in it. Incidentally, we sat the tape recorded on a very antique rocking chair--the very same chair that my mother used to hear rocking by itself, nearly 70 years ago when she slept upstairs and the chair was downstairs in the kitchen. (Sidenote: my parents thought it would be a grand idea to put this rocking chair in my bedroom when I was a kid. How I ever slept through a night waiting for the thing to start rocking by itself, or worse, waiting to see a ghost rocking in it, I'll never know, but I digress...)
So as I was saying, we started recording and asking the same sort of questions we did downstairs. After a while, we stopped recording, and took the tape player downstairs to listen to the playback. To my surprise, there were no EVP voices, just mine on tape. This brings us to what we in the investigation world like to refer to as Plan B.
Plan B was to leave the tape recorder recording in the haunted spare bedroom by itself (Creepy, isn't it?!!) We recorded for about 45 minutes while we were downstairs and it was about this time that I had the grand idea to try to contact someone on the Ouija board. When you use a Ouija board, it can be very fickle. Sometimes you can't even get the planchette to move, other times you can hardly keep up with it. I suppose I expected to get the attention of a spirit who I might be able to coax into speaking into my tape recorder. Hey, it was worth a shot.
The first "person" (and I use the term lightly) I believe we might have contacted was an elderly man who used to live there in the house when my mother was a child. He revealed his name, his nickname, and games he played with my mother when she was young. He told us a little bit about his past, which confirmed to us who he was. We then asked him if he had any messages for us. He spelled out the following: WE MUST NOT PULL STUNT WTMOWRM.
What we assume this means is "We must not pull stunts with mom." The reasoning is my son Scott has this lovely habit of sneaking around our non-haunted house and jumping out at my unexpectedly, thereby scaring the living crap right out of me. It is lovely... NOT!
I am assuming the contact on the Ouija board was handing out advice to an otherwise fine young man, suggesting he stop doing that to me. This is my interpretation, as Scott really doesn't pull any other "stunts".
Suddenly, in the middle of this, the contact spelled out "Murray wept." This is interesting as my deceased father's name is Murray. The planchette began to move faster around the board from what it had been, indicating perhaps we were with a different contact. I asked the name of whom we were talking to, and it spelled my deceased brother's name. The "Murray wept" would be a confirmation that he did indeed weep when his son died.
I needed more proof. I asked where I had been this very morning in relation to all of this. The planchette spelled "wreath". We had been to my brother's grave this morning to remove the Christmas wreath we had put there. Okay! Now we were getting somewhere!
I asked if he could speak into our upstairs tape recorder. He said no. I asked for a sign he was with us in the room. A few moments later we heard a thump on the side of the house, of which no other source was found. I am not definitely saying it was my brother communicating from the other side, but I AM definitely saying no other obvious source for the noise could be found.
We asked my brother if he had any messages for my mother (who was there with us). The answer was "Am ok." I asked what it was like on the other side. The answer: "other world". I asked him what kinds of things he did there. The answer: cubs, boy, work. When he died he was a cub scout, which he loved.
At this point, I left the table but remained in the room to cook dinner. (we were at the kitchen table) My son and my mother continued to use the Ouija board, maintaining contact. After just a few moments I walked into the nearby pantry to get a measuring cup. In those few steps, I suddenly smelled a very obvious scent of roses, like I was suddenly in a blooming flower garden.
Concentrating on my recipe, the smell didn't even register with me at first. I walked back to the stove to cook. My son got off his chair, stepped toward my mother, then toward me. He asked, "Don't you smell that perfume?" At which point I realized I had indeed smelled it. We discussed the scent, which had dissipated at that point, but we both agreed it was a rose garden smell. No one present was wearing perfume. This was further confirmation to us, because we had asked for a sign. The other two in the room did not smell anything (other than the spaghetti).
On the drive home, we popped the tape into the stereo and listened to the recording we had made. After about 5-10 minutes of silence, you can very clearly hear a knock on the tap recorder. We had placed the recorder on the bed in the spare room before leaving the room. The noise is very obviously a tap or knock against the tape recorder itself, like someone rapped on it with their hand or an object. It is the only odd noise we captured on tape. Remember, no one else was in that room and the door was shut tight. If someone had decided to go in during taping, you would have heard the door opening. It is impossible to open the door and enter the bedroom silently.
Someone or something hit the tape recorder. Unfortunately no voices came through, though.
Result and Conclusion:
The Ouija board is not proof of anything paranormal but while I can't prove it is concrete evidence, no one can disprove it, either. Also, something hit the tape recorder. It could not have been a live person. This concludes me to believe it was possibly a spirit. I did not necessarily need this to happen to prove the house is haunted...remember: I grew up there. Many people in my family and even visitors have had paranormal experiences in the house. We could fill a book. Hey, what a good idea! A book!!
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