Research

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Growing up, I had a paranormal experience at a very young age, which led me to start researching the paranormal. I read as many books on the subject as I could through my school and local public libraries.

I'm not going to go into the full backstory, but I will share my Ouija board experience from the 3rd grade.

My parents knew about my interest in the paranormal, so for Christmas, they gave me a Ouija board—an unusual gift for a third-grader, but I was intrigued. After the New Year, my parents hosted a get-together with their friends from across the street: Sarah, Mark, and their daughter, Sherry. That night, we had a Ouija board party, and everyone took turns using the board in pairs.

I quickly realized that every time it was my turn, no matter who I was paired with, the board wouldn’t work. No matter what questions I asked, the planchette wouldn’t move. But when I handed my seat to someone else, the board worked perfectly fine. This continued throughout the evening. Each time it was my turn, the board stopped working, and by the end of the night, I thought it was just a broken toy. Throughout the year, my parents had a few more parties like this, but the board never worked for me. Eventually, I gave the board to Sherry since it worked well for her.

When our third-grade school year started, it was a very hot August. One day, Sherry stopped me at school and mentioned how much success she was having with the Ouija board. She said she had been using it daily, particularly talking to an entity named Leo. I cautioned her, as I had read that you shouldn’t use a Ouija board by yourself, but she dismissed my concern and invited me over to watch her use it.

After school, I went to her house. To get to the room where she was using the Ouija board, you had to go through the garage, down a short flight of stairs, and into a 15x15 square-foot sub-basement. In that room, there was a piano on the right, a bookshelf on the left, and a doorway leading to the living room with stairs to the actual basement just beside it. Sherry had set up a folding metal chair near the doorway, sitting with the Ouija board. I sat across the room, far away from her. Under the piano was her pet Cocker Spaniel, and her cat was on top of the bookshelf, both sleeping.

Sherry started using the Ouija board, asking to speak with Leo. A few moments later, the planchette began moving, and she started conversing with Leo, asking him various questions about her life. About 10 minutes in, I noticed that the dog under the piano woke up, and at the same time, the cat on the bookshelf did too. As she continued talking to Leo, I watched the dog’s behavior—its ears went back, and the fur along its spine began to raise. The cat’s tail started twitching, its ears went back, and its fur puffed up, showing clear signs of agitation.

As Sherry continued speaking to Leo, both the dog and cat began to growl quietly, staring at the center of the room. Initially, I thought they were growling at each other, but they had lived together for a while, so I realized something else was wrong. I told Sherry, "Take your hands off the planchette." The moment she did, both animals stopped growling and seemed confused, as if whatever they had been focused on disappeared. The dog slunk out of the room with its tail between its legs, and the cat jumped down and quickly left as well.

I told Sherry that she should stop using the Ouija board, especially by herself, as it had clearly disturbed the animals. But she didn’t believe me.

About two weeks later, during a school break, Sherry seemed upset. When I asked her what was wrong, she said her father had gotten angry the night before because she was neglecting her chores and spending too much time with the Ouija board. In his frustration, he grabbed the board and flung it across the room, cracking it when it hit the wall. 

Afterward, when she tried using it again, no matter what question she asked, it would only spell out one word: B…U…R…N. I told her it was probably a good idea to get rid of the board.

A few nights later, it was extremely hot, and my parents told me to sleep in their room, as they had the only air conditioning unit. Around midnight, the doorbell rang, waking up my family. My dad went downstairs to check, and I heard him shout, "Susan, I’m going to the hospital!" followed by the sound of our garage door opening and our car peeling down the street.

My mother went downstairs to see what had happened, leaving the door open. A foul smell of something burnt filled the room. I followed her down and saw the front door wide open, and then the doorbell rang again. My mom answered, and there stood Sherry, in a white nightgown, covered in blood. My mom checked her for injuries, but she was unharmed.

Sherry explained, “My dad woke me up, saying the house was on fire and we had to get out.” She had followed him to our house. Looking outside, we could see smoke pouring from their garage. My mom thought she should go back to get their pets, but as she stepped outside, their house exploded, just like in a movie.

Three fire departments responded, and at one point, I remember seeing a firefighter throw something into the air that exploded on impact. Sherry’s mother arrived home from bowling to see her house on fire, and it took four men to hold her down and reassure her that her family was safe.

To skip ahead, after her father recovered from third-degree burns, he was interviewed by the ATF. It turned out he had been making homemade fireworks using a 55-gallon drum of black gunpowder, cardboard tubes, wicks, and wax. He claimed that while scooping gunpowder into the tubes, the furnace kicked on. When that happened, it caused a flash because of all the gunpowder dust in the air that caught the curtains on fire, which were near the gunpowder drum. But given the environmental temperature, the furnace shouldn’t have activated. When the fire marshal inspected the ruins of the house, they found the thermostat still on the wall across the street—it had been turned up to the maximum setting.

Going back to the Ouija board, it had repeatedly spelled out “BURN.” As a side note the explosion for that year ranked in the top 10, beating out a few chemical plant fires.