Ouija boards are a source of fear for some and laughter for others. Keep listening to hear a story of my own experience with the supposed “game.”

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Welcome to the PEEP Podcast! I’m your host Nicolle Morock, and I’m grateful you’re here! The two big ideas behind the PEEP Podcast are to show that the paranormal is more normal than most people think and to connect the science to the psi, including ESP, psychokinesis, and intuition! Today we’re diving into the creepier side of the paranormal as I read a chapter from my book, “Please, don’t call me psychic: stories from my paranormal life,” about an investigation that I still think about to this day.

But first, a quick writing update: The editor did her job, and my revisions are complete! I’m awaiting the finalized cover from my designer, working on formatting, and planning the rewards tiers for Kickstarter. I plan to launch the project in June, assuming I have everything together by then. The Kickstarter will be the only way to buy a hardback copy of the book and the only way to receive an early copy in any format. June may sound like it’s far away, but I’m having a hard time believing it’s already mid-April! Time flies when you’re planning a book launch!

Now, back to this episode’s topic. I’m reading Chapter 9 from my book about my experiences and lessons learned from over a decade of investigating the paranormal with the National Society of Paranormal Investigation and Research (NSPIR, for short). This story is one I talk about in my library presentations every year because I got one of my more interesting EVPs from it. And I will be playing that EVP during the reading, when I mention it in the story.

Skeptics say that no harm can come from a board that’s sold as a game, and I’ll agree with that if they’re talking about Sorry or Monopoly, unless you’ve played with sore losers, then you might think differently. However, the Ouija Board is not a game. It was initially devised as a way to communicate with the dead, and the results you get with the board depends on your intention. But I’ll leave the soap box for later. Let’s dive into Chapter 9: It Started with a Ouija Board.

Geographical location: Johnston County, North Carolina

Location type: private residence

Claims of activity: upset dogs regularly barking at the bedroom wall at 3:00 AM, growling coming from the walls, creepy feelings in other rooms, too

Lessons learned: Intent is as important as the action it’s behind.

EVP captured: yes

For a while there was a TV show on one of the cable channels about haunted pets. At that time, NSPIR went through a phase in which people were calling us because their pets were reacting to things that they could not see. There is a belief that because pets are more sensitive – their hearing, sense of smell, and eye sight being better than ours – they are more sensitive to paranormal situations, meaning they can sense spirits in their vicinity.

One of the calls we received was from a couple who had two large dogs, a few smaller dogs, and a room full of cats. They lived in an area south of Raleigh in a neighborhood made up of relatively new houses. So, whatever was going on was unlikely to be associated with the house they lived in.

As usual, I asked George not to tell me much about the situation before we arrived because I wanted to do a cold walk-through. When we arrived, we asked them not to tell me anything until after I toured the house and got a feel for it. They followed us through the house to see what I had to say about it.

The house was a split bedroom ranch style, meaning the master bedroom and bath were on one side of the house, the main living area and kitchen were in the center, and the other bedrooms were on the opposite side of the house. There was a back deck and their yard backed up to some woods. While I was doing the walk-through, I did sense a different kind of energy in the master bedroom. I was not able to go into one of the rooms on the other side of the house because that bedroom was full of cats and the lady of the house was concerned it wasn’t clean enough for company. The little dogs were gated in the kitchen. The big dogs were roaming free, which was fine with me. I like big dogs.

When I got to the front corner of the dining area, I paused because there was a yucky energy there. I can only explain it as that familiar pressure and tingling in the center of my back mixed with a sense of dread. I looked at George and said, “There's something going on here,” and pointed to where I was standing. He said, “What is it?” I answered, “I'm not sure, but I don't like it.”

We finished the walk-through and nothing more stood out to me. So, we went and sat in the living room and spoke with the couple.

They told us that the reason they called us in was because one of their big dogs would wake up at three o'clock in the morning, look at the wall above their bed, and start barking. It was a regular thing, and it was cutting into their sleep almost nightly.

George, being the skeptical one, was thinking that it was probably the dog wishing he was looking through the wall because there were deer on the other side in the backyard. I admitted that was a possibility. I'm not sure how active deer are at three o'clock in the morning or why the dog would not just go to the back door facing the deck and bark there. But whatever the reason, the dog had the habit of waking up very early in the morning and barking at the wall above their bed.

We asked when all that started, and the lady of the house told us that a few years before, she was sorely missing both of her parents, both of whom had died. In a desperate effort to get some sort of closure, or whatever peace she was looking for, she tried to contact them through a Ouija board. We asked if the big board was still in the house, and she looked at me with a strange look on her face and said “yes.” Then, she led us to the corner of the dining room where I was standing and had noticed the yucky feeling and opened the door of a china cabinet in that spot. There was the Ouija board. That revelation gave me a little validation and gave George one more reason to tease me about my hatred of Ouija boards. I am not a fan.

Side note: I truly hate Ouija boards. People will say, “Oh, it's just a game.” No, it isn't. People say, “Oh, it’s just a board. There's nothing to it.” Yes, it’s just a board, but the intention is what matters. You can draw a Ouija board for yourself, or you could buy the thing in the toy section of a big box store, which really upsets me. You can bring it home, set it down and just “play” with it. The problem is, depending on your intent, and whether or not you know how to protect yourself, it's very possible with one of these things, these stupid little “games,” that you open up a revolving door to the other side. So please, my friends, do not play with a Ouija board. Now back to the story…

Based on the icky feeling I had with Ouija board, the personal experiences that the couple told us about, and the way the animals were apparently reacting to things that have been happening in the house since she used it, we decided to bring the entire team in for a full investigation. So, one weekend night, six of us arrived, including Derek, who was probably the biggest skeptic of the group.

At that point, when we did our investigations, we were still using the K-2 meters to do baseline readings before we got started, video cameras, and lots of other little toys. Derek went through the master suite, setting up video cameras and doing the K-2 baseline sweep, basically trying to see if there were any crazy fluctuations where the outlets, alarm clocks, TVs, etc., were located. When his head was near the wall over the bathroom counter in the master suite, he got a puzzled look on his face and seemed a little startled. I noticed, and asked, “What?” He said, “I swear I just heard growling coming from the wall.” I said okay and gave a nervous laugh. That was not normal for Derek, so I made a mental note that we needed to spend a little time in the bathroom as a team doing an EVP session.

We had some experiences during the EVP sessions that night. In the master bedroom, we were talking about how the big dog would wake them by barking at the wall around 3:00 AM nightly. I asked “Why that time?” When I reviewed the audio later on my digital recorder, there was a male voice on it with a five syllable answer. I will not put what I think it says here but I will play the clip right now so that you, dear reader, can listen to it and decide for yourself. One of NSPIR’s rules is not to influence the listener in advance when it comes to EVP.

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In that same bedroom, we also heard a knock that was clear and unclaimed by anyone in the room. It also appeared on my audio recording.

In the master bath, where Derek had earlier heard a growl come from the wall over the counter, he had another personal experience. I have a clip in which I interrupt George’s question to ask if anybody just heard a cough while he was speaking. George confirmed he also heard it. Then, Derek said, “Oh, oh! Wow! I just got a really sharp pain in my left eye.” The pain was brief, but notable given that we were dealing with something in the house that seemed less than pleasant.

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As usual, when the investigation was over, we went back to our respective homes and went through all the audio, photographs, and any video that we captured. Eventually, we reported back to the couple. They told us that since we had been there, they had even more experiences and the dogs were acting crazier than ever. They asked what we could do to calm things down.

A friend of my sister’s is a medium and a little fireball of a person named Phran. With the couple’s permission, we called her and asked if she could help us clear this house. We gave her the information we had, including how everything seemed to start with a Ouija board. And she agreed to meet us there.

So, one beautiful North Carolina afternoon, we met at the house, and Fran did a walk-through and confirmed the place was full of energy. She said it was like somebody opened a portal to the other side and all the nasty things were coming in and out through the portal, and many of them were deciding to stay. So, she had the lady of the house and me stand outside on the deck while George and she went through the house. She smudged it and blessed it. Her job was to send the nasty things back to where they came from and close the portal. My job was to stand outside of the house, and if I felt like anything was trying to escape, send it back in so she could take care of it. Being that I’m a scientist as well as a sensitive, I wasn’t exactly sure how my part of the job would work, but I accepted the challenge.

I decided I would just stand on the deck and have a spiritual conversation with the lady of the house about what she needs to do after we finished, including letting us take the Ouija board and her filling the house with positive loving energy to help keep the negativity out. While we were talking, something told me turn around and look at the side of the house. So, I walked to the end of the deck and I looked around the corner of the house. Of course I didn't see anything, but mentally, I said, “Get back in there!” and I threw a little of my positive energy at the side of the house. Then I went back and I told the homeowner who was looking at me a little strangely that I thought that might have worked.

My intuition told me something was going on over there. Still, I didn't want to seem overly confident, and I didn’t want to seem like I didn't know what I was doing in front of her. So, I just went back to the conversation we were having.

When it was all over and we were ready to leave, Phran asked me how I thought it went from my perspective on the deck, and I told her about that moment. She said that I did a good job, so I felt like maybe there was a little something to what I felt and how I responded.

When we walked through the house after Phran was finished, the entire place felt lighter. The skeptic could say, “Oh, that's all in your head.” And maybe that’s the truth, but knowing how it felt before and knowing how it felt after, I think Phran did a really good job.

I told the homeowner again that she needed to make sure that she did not allow anything negative back into the house. Unfortunately, her first question was, “Well, what if they do come back?” And I said, “You can't let them come back. It’s all about intention and faith.” But she had already had it in her mind that even if it worked for the moment, it could fail in the long run. That worried me and I told George about my concern as we drove back to Raleigh.

You have to understand that just like with the intent of using a Ouija board, things can happen. There has to be intent to clear a house and keep it clear. Without intent, without belief, without faith, things don't necessarily stick. I was quite worried that she did not have enough faith for things to stay as quiet as we were leaving them.

A few months later, George said she called again and asked us to come back out because things just started back up. So, we went back down and gave her a visit. Her husband was not there at the time, but we sat and talked with her. Things had gone downhill, not just in the house, but with their relationship. So, they were obviously having a very tough time keeping the negativity out of the house – both on the spiritual level and on the personal level. In fact, she had told us that at one point he had locked her in a closet.

For me all the red flags went up. George and I realized that there was much more going on than a paranormal investigation team could handle, and we suggested that she contact a group in Raleigh called Interact, which is a nonprofit that helps abused women escape abusive relationships.

Whether or not he was really abusing her, or what was going on, we can’t be sure. We only heard one side of the story. I'm not making the judgment in either direction. What I am saying is sometimes negative actions on the part of the humans living in the house can help bring about negativity that affects the spiritual realm. Since they had already opened a portal, so to speak, in the house by bringing negativity into their personal relationship, bad things were happening. Either they had allowed nasty things to come back into the house or, or they were being affected by the entities that were in the house and causing the relationship to go badly. I don't know; it's a catch 22. They could have been trapped in a vicious cycle. All I know is at that point, we had to extricate ourselves from the situation because there was much more going on than just a paranormal problem.

So again, we gave her the number to Interact and encouraged her to get herself out of the house if she felt that her life was in danger.

A few years later, George and I were in our own separate houses, both watching the five o'clock news and saw the couple on the news for something that had absolutely nothing to do with the paranormal. Of course, we contacted each other and said, “Hey, did you see this?” and decided that they must have worked things out. Whether or not they got rid of the negative stuff in the house, I don't know. We never went back. But I am glad that they seem to be doing okay based on what they projected in the news story. I wish our clients nothing but the best!

Thanks for listening!

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