My own personal ghost story

I have one of those stories…

The kind of story that you feel you have to tell, even though you know very well that no one is going to believe a word of it. I myself have heard similar stories and I don’t believe them. I certainly can’t expect people to get mine better. Still, I’ll tell my story, because… it’s true.

For a while, when I was in my early twenties, I went through a phase where I only read true crime stories. Of course, while going through unsolved mysteries and violent crime encyclopedias, I came across the Lizzie Borden story on more than one occasion.

Living in Rhode Island, the infamous Borden house is right in my backyard. Periodically, over the decades, it has been open to the public as a bed and breakfast, as well as a ghoulish tourist attraction.

My wife at the time, Paula, made reservations for us as a surprise for my birthday. She booked the room where Lizzie Borden allegedly took her own mother’s life with an ax from the toolshed. It’s debatable who actually committed the heinous act, and there have certainly been enough theories, but a bloody murder definitely took place in that room. I don’t scare easily, but the prospect of sleeping there and maybe waking up to a hovering wraith and cold air definitely gave me the creeps.

When we arrived, I was a little disappointed with the appearance of the house, although I had seen pictures of it in books. It just doesn’t look special in any way, far from home, just an average looking house on an average looking street.

The way they ran the place at the time was by renting out all the rooms, as well as the attic space, to overnight guests. The couple who own the house were there for the day, giving tours and telling the story of the Borden family. They did not live on the premises and retired to their real home every night, leaving an on-site caretaker to take care of the property.

I liked the tour, and the woman pointed out interesting facts, like most of the furniture is genuine remains from the Borden family. Even the doorknobs were original… the same ones Lizzie would have touched with her possibly murderous hands. They also had some of the old style outfits they were wearing at the time on display throughout the house. Our hostess even shared a first-hand account, where she described seeing “some kind of weird mist” out of the corner of her eye once.

I must point out that there were thirteen other guests who stayed there the same night as us. At night, there were sandwiches for us, we had housekeeping, and we were free to explore. The caretaker stayed out of sight, and we all made ourselves as comfortable as we could in what was widely recognized as a legitimate haunted house. We drank wine sodas and ate our food. Then we spread out in the living room to watch The Lizzie Borden Story, starring Elizabeth Montgomery. Our hosts had mentioned that this was a popular way to spend the night.

When the movie ended, a group of four girls who had rented the attic decided to bring a Ouija board upstairs to play. I thought it was a bit more like that, and commended them for getting into the spirit of things.

I am not a skeptic when it comes to occult or supernatural forces that we cannot understand. Despite this, I am always skeptical of first-hand accounts, because I think it is very rare for humans to glimpse such wonders. I was extremely skeptical that anything otherworldly would happen in my presence.

After a while, I could hear the girls screaming upstairs, and I couldn’t help but laugh out loud, as I walked up to the attic to see what they were doing. The four of them were sitting in a circle on the floor with the Ouija board in the middle. They were hysterical and screaming that the thing was moving on its own. They were laughing too, and with the empty bottles scattered around, I didn’t take it seriously for a second.

If there is one thing that has been my consistent experience with Ouija boards throughout my life it is this… whenever you get a few people together using one of these things, there is always some clown who can’t resist trying to move it. , unnoticed doesn’t work. The moment you try to move that thing, everyone knows it’s you.

I watched.

From a distance, it seemed like it was moving on its own.

Puzzled, I studied that poster as it moved around the board, answering various questions. Not even anyone’s fingertips made contact with it! The girls’ fingertips hovered over the device, with a gap in between. I could not believe what I was watching. The last time I experienced something that made me question my eyesight was at a David Copperfield show, but this was not a staged illusion. Something was happening, and yes, the hair on the back of my neck was standing up.

I had to try it for myself. Despite what he was seeing, he still couldn’t accept it.

Like I said before, you know the minute someone starts trying to rig the thing. no one was. Our fingertips followed him, not the other way around. He seemed to be trying to communicate with us, even though the spelling was always wrong. Sometimes all he had to offer was complete gibberish. We asked if Lizzie Borden’s spirit was in the house…

The closet shot into the “yes” space.

We ask… where?

It spelled something that resembled the word “kitchen.”

We asked again… Where’s Lizzie Borden?

HEL, answered.

I will never forget that one. I remember feeling like I was in over my head, and I just wanted to get in my car and go home. Of course, those thoughts were fleeting and I couldn’t help but be a typical human animal and flirt with disaster. For a few more minutes, we interrogated…something.

A couple of times the thing went off the board and stopped working. Repeated questions elicited contradictory or unintelligible answers. I was starting to run through different possibilities in my mind, as I continued to stare in awe at something that made no rational sense. The girls were becoming less amused and more scared. Suddenly they wanted that thing as far away from them as possible. It didn’t matter that it didn’t always make sense when he answered, because… He answered!

That was enough.

I took the evil board game from the damsels in distress, but I wasn’t done. I got my wife and almost demanded she try it on me…just the two of us. What could she say? This was my birthday present after all.

At one point, the thing said that Lizzie’s spirit was in the kitchen, so I chose that as our place to try to make contact again. We sat down, facing each other, making sure our fingers barely touched the plastic as we started asking questions. It worked…in the sense that she continued to move, very much on her own, but nothing she spelled made sense.

After a while, it seemed to weaken and eventually stopped working altogether. Any hope of a revealing conversation with the spirit world was gone. Disappointed at my missed connection, I abandoned my attempts and headed to my room with my unimpressed wife.

I must admit I didn’t sleep that night, thinking my original visions of spirits floating in the dark might be a real concern. Seriously, he didn’t want to close his eyes, because he was convinced that when he opened them, he would be face to face with something horrible and nightmarish. Instead, I lay in the dark pondering the universe and the possibility of some kind of life after death. My wife slept well, which is a bit emasculating, but it’s the truth. Paula was of the opinion that there was a perfectly logical explanation…she just didn’t have one.

Paula experienced the encounter firsthand, and she still couldn’t believe it. This also contributed to my insomnia, because I knew I was doomed with one of those stories. The kind that you have to tell even though you know very well that no one is going to believe a word of it.

I myself have a very scientific mind, open, but scientific. Because of this, I only feel comfortable stating one thing from this story as undeniable fact. An inanimate object moved multiple times without any physical coaxing. That is a fact that will never waver in my mind.

Now, as for what was moving it? Of this, I can only speculate.

If it was a disembodied entity that was driving that banner around the board, this is proof that a physical form is not necessary to exist. It is very possible that it is proof of an afterlife. This experience changed me and gave me something to consider. It tells me that death might not be the end, and that there is more to this world than meets the eye. Until that night at Borden’s house, he believed in the supernatural and in the existence of things beyond our current range of understanding.

So I ask again… Do you believe in ghosts?

I make.

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