By Brian Sousa, Opinions and Editorials Editor

I’ll never forget the day my Physics teacher in high school told us the story of how he and his friends proved the existence of apparitions.

It was my senior year, and my teacher (who I’ll call Mr. K) was known to answer any physics-related questions we had after lab.

One day, someone asked him if he believed in ghosts. To our classes’ bewilderment, he had a long story for us.

When Mr. K was in high school, he said, his best friend’s brother had died. Soon after, his friend bought a Ouija board to communicate with his dead brother. Every day after school, Mr. K and his friends would go to the house where his (now dead) brother once lived to use the board.

The board worked. My teacher was not impressed with the fact the board could answer questions so perfectly – he was skeptical of the whole thing. He thought his friends were messing with the board.

Mr. K thought it would be wise to prove it. So what he proposed to his friends – to make sure no one was cheating the board – was to ask a question only he knew the answer to.

Mr. K told the board that he was going to go into a bedroom, close the door behind him, and hold a specific amount of money in the air.

His friends were to ask the board (with Mr. K out of sight and the door shut) how much money he was holding.

To their astonishment, the board was correct. At that very moment, Mr. K told our class that he and his friends closed the board, and never used it again.

They were absolutely convinced it was real – and they were scared.

Mr. K was a well-respected teacher at my school, and he had no reason to fabricate this story to our class (in fact he did not bring up this subject, a student did).

I believed every word he said to our class that day, and I still get the chills thinking about that moment as I write this.

Months later, still not have used the Ouija board myself, I am living in my first-year at UMass Dartmouth at Chestnut Hall.

I decided to buy a Ouija board around this time of year, and had several friends gather in my room at night to use the board.

We adhered to specific rules which I made sure everyone followed.

I researched everything before I did it, and I made sure that we took several precautions: No electronic devices were on in the room, no lights were on, everyone had to sit quietly without speaking for a several minutes, and only one person could ask questions.

We began our session by asking simple questions. Things like age, names, jobs, etc. To our amazement, the board was working. I don’t think any of my friends were messing with the board, as we all had agreed not to.

Our questions were indeed being answered – the only time the board stopped answering questions was when one of my friends got so scared, she got up and left the circle. 

Only then did the board stop working.

Although we didn’t do a test like Mr. K did, at the end of our session, we were too scared to ever use it again. To this day, I’m not sure if our experience was valid, but if I had to guess I’d say it was.

One thing for sure I hope you learned from my tale: Oujia boards are real and can very well open a door to somewhere we as humans cannot fully understand at this time, if ever.

The question is: Do we risk opening this realm? What scientific studies have been done on Ouija boards?

Photo Courtesy: Moviefone