Spiritualism and the Paranormal

[ The following story is a first-hand, cautionary account about the Ouija board and does not promote it’s casual use. It is NOT a game. It is NOT a toy. If you decide to use the board, please take spiritual precautions such as saying a prayer before use. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED! All names are fictitious to protect the identities of those mentioned in the story. ] After contacting Ya-Ya we used the board less and less often. What we thought was fun and a curiosity at first start started to become serious. Yet, because of that same curiosity, we would ask Ya-Ya questions if something were to happen that we could not explain. One such reason was when one of the other cousins, who was not participating, came down with “something”. Background Although the Philippines is for the most part Christian and predominantly Catholic, each region’s animistic and shamanistic folk beliefs still continue until the present day. Aside from being religious, Filipinos tend to be very superstitious as well....

[ The following story is a first-hand, cautionary account about the Ouija board and does not promote it’s casual use. It is NOT a game. It is NOT a toy. If you decide to use the board, please take spiritual precautions such as saying a prayer before use. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED! All names are fictitious to protect the identities of those mentioned in the story. ] English Spirit Board In a previous post ( Part 1 ) I mention how my cousin Wilma and I began using the Ouija board one summer. This is a continuation of those events. We make contact… We came in contact with several “spirits”, but none as memorable as what we found out was a female spirit named “Ya-Ya ___”. I’ve left out her name because after that summer, we agreed to never mention her complete name. Even as I write I’m a bit anxious. One night back at Auntie Pat’s, we were in the room Wilma shared with a couple of other female cousins of ours. We asked a few questions, again, they were typical of teen-agers. We never ...

[ The following story is a first-hand, cautionary account about the Ouija board and does not promote it’s casual use. It is NOT a game. It is NOT a toy. If you decide to use the board, please take spiritual precautions such as saying a prayer before use. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED! All names are fictitious to protect the identities of those mentioned. ] During one summer when I was in middle school, my cousin from New York, Wilma, came to visit with her mom. They were staying at another aunt’s house in Port Orchard, Washington, where our Auntie Pat ran a berry farm. The early  part of the season was raspberry season, so my cousins and I would stay at Auntie Pat’s to pick berries. Considering that I have over twenty cousins around my age, this was free labor for my Aunt Pat. And, it was a good time to bond with the lost of them. In addition, it was a good time to get to know Wilma. Previously, I had met Wilma briefly when they first immigrated to the US in the late 1980’s be...

In the early 80s, I lived with my aunt and grandmother on a small, 5 acre berry farm in Port Orchard, Washington . I moved in with them to fulfill a promise that I had made with my late uncle. He asked if I would like to live with my aunt if something were to happen to him. Being a child of three or four I didn’t know what death was, so I agreed. One rainy day he was tending to the berries and caught cold. He died of pneumonia a few weeks later. Living there, I always had an uneasy feeling going to the bottom floor of that split-level house. It was my uncle’s refuge, his “man cave” as they could call it now, where he spent much of his free time in his recliner watching basketball games on his large Zenith TV when he wasn’t tending to the berries. After his death, my aunt had the TV moved up to the living room on the upper floor sometime after I starting living with them. A small jar of Vick's VapoRub One night my aunt and I were watching...