While human curiosity is how we grow, it can often lead us to trouble.

There are several ways people use to contact ghosts and spirits. From chants to rituals, and Ouija boards, there is an unexplained fascination with the great beyond.

Whether you believe in life after death or not, it’s hard to discredit first-hand accounts of paranormal encounters.

The following are stories from people who decided to see for themselves, what it’s like to be in contact with the unseen.

“In high school, a couple friends, my friend’s mom and myself were talking about a local building being haunted (soil conditioners that sell dirt, bark, and other landscaping goods, rumored to be the location of a murder years before). The mom worked there so we decided to break out the board and give it a shot. I had never used one before so I was skeptical from the jump. The place is essentially a large warehouse with tall metal racks (think Costco or home depot) stacked with bags of dirt, manure, bark and other things like large ceramic flower pots. The board was glow in the dark so we kept all the lights off. Once we got going it started moving around and I was freaking out already.

“We asked if something was there to let us know and there was a loud bang that seemed to come from the rafters on the other side of the warehouse. Every question that followed was met with a similar bang from a various location in the warehouse (sometimes close and sometimes far). The last question asked was if it meant us harm and the thingy already on the ‘no’ answer did not move. The question was repeated and immediately followed by the closest noise yet (seemed right on top of us) so we decided to [get out.]

“As we were rushing out we flipped on our flashlights and saw one or two large pots fall from the racks and heard what we would later find to be 40lb bags of bark dropping to the ground. There was also a slow/low grinding noise that when my friends returned the next day was a sledgehammer that had been dragged through the dirt covered cement floor standing straight up in the air with drag marks but no footprints near.

“I pretty much believe in ghost now and slept with the lights on for a week.”

“Doing the board with six or seven people, only one of my friends knows Latin and he is not touching the oracle. The contact starts speaking to us in [what our friend identified as] Latin. This same friend later pulled his hand back from the oracle having received what looked like a small scratch on his wrist, not bleeding but bright red as if fresh. His girlfriend at the time was plagued by a contact they had made and would wake with strange bruises on her legs.”

“Played with a Ouija several times many years ago. Got mainly dark and scary replies with names we didn’t know. One claimed to be my Uncle though. We started to do it all the time, every day with a homemade board.

“A few weeks later I was in a club, saw a friend I hadn’t seen for maybe 2 years from across the room. He literally came running over to me with a strange look on his face. He said ‘I can’t believe it’s you! I have something strange to tell you but you have to listen to me.’ Before I could answer him he went on.

‘I went to see a reader, she told me that she had a message for a friend of mine. A woman…she said your name!! She told me to tell you to stop playing with the Ouija board because you are going to get burnt! Does that make sense to you?’ I was speechless and really scared.

“I don’t know if that was for real, or how else it could have happened. But I sure as hell never touched one again.”

– Anonymous

“Only did it once when I was like 17. In a roomful of people and one kid said something like ‘this is all fake, I need pr….’ before he finished the word “proof” the lights in the entire house went off. If that was a coincidence, it was the oddest one I’ve ever seen. No one else was in the house and the fuse box was buried in the back of a closet. The kid’s dad had to come home and turn it back on, said it never happened before (entire circuit tripped).”

“Me and a close friend have used the ouija board a handful of times over the last few years. Every time we have played and asked who we were speaking too it tells us Alison. Our good friend Alison committed suicide 8 years ago. Most of the questions we ask her answered with her spelling out “mom”. Most of the time the vibe feels good and nothing weird happens. One night we were playing and all of a sudden the mood switched. The vibe in the room was eerie and something didn’t feel right. We both sensed it and I asked if Alison was still with us and it said no. We decided to end the session when the planchette started moving very fast around the whole board…if our fingers hadn’t been planted firmly it would have flew right off the board. We said our closing saying and said goodbye to whoever the hell we let it. We put it away and eerie dark feeling in the room went away.”

“A girl brought her authentic ouija board made out of maple straight from Salem. Ironically, she was very Catholic, but loved her board, it and was a very interesting few nights in the dorm with it. I think the second night we were playing with it, and it was going slow, not much movement, meh. I had my hand off the planchette because I still wasn’t so sure about the thing. Suddenly, it was like cold fingers grabbed into my shoulders ever so slightly, and this terrible feeling in the back of my mind just came to the surface. I looked to the board and the planchette started moving in a demonic pattern, I think figure 8s this time. I looked at the girl and said “I have a bad feeling about that” in time for her to realize what was happening. She stopped the movement and bid the spirit good bye. In that moment, the icy grip loosened and all was well.

“Everyone was like ‘woaah’ when the girl explained that the figure 8 meant that something was trying to get out of the board. (This is common lore that goes with Ouija usage.)”

“I was about 12 or 13 spending the night at a friend’s house, goofing around with the Ouija board with him & his sister and we were getting all sorts of gibberish plus words spelled out, just kind of scaring ourselves for fun not taking it very seriously when we got the message ‘I can see you through the window’ and then ‘I can see you through his eyes’ or something like that… there was just a small window in the basement room where we were, and just the back yard and woods past the driveway visible through that window… We asked it more questions and it said ‘I’m under the car’ so we somehow got up the nerve to go out with a flashlight and peer under the car, where we saw a huge black stray cat which was hissing.

“We ran inside freaking out and at that exact moment the power failed and all the lights in the house went out. We just about actually shit ourselves. Few minutes later the power came back and we sat up till dawn that night scared and never played with the board again.”

“My GF told me this story about an experience she had with a ouija board while in high school sometime in 1986. She had a friend named Johnny who was suffering from CF or some other debilitating illness, who had recently been hospitalized as a result. Both she and her friend Shelly visited Johnny regularly in the hopes of keeping his spirits up and for a quick recovery. One night after visiting Johnny, they were at Shelly’s when they decided to try out a ouija board. After a while, they started communicating with a spirit who seemed to know a lot about them that it really shouldn’t. After some banal questions about boys and general questions one would expect teenage girls to ask, my GF decided to ask about Johnny and his condition. The board quickly spelled out ’24 June 1987 Johnny wont have to worry anymore’ and went to ‘goodbye.’ My GF and Shelly were so convinced that board was giving them a date for recovery that they actually wrote the message down and sealed it in an envelope. The following year on 24 June, it turned out that Johnny indeed no longer needed to worry about his condition.

“It was the day he died.”

“When I was in my first year of uni we started playing with a home made oujia, there were like 5 of us. We contacted some spirit whose name I’m glad to have forgotten, and as we were talking to it, the doorbell rang and one of my friends had to go as her dad was there to pick her up.

“We didn’t ‘close’ the session by saying good bye to the spirit as we had no clue, and just threw the paper away.

“Now the girl that had to leave early started acting strange and didn’t hang with the rest of us as much. A few months after, she told us she went to get a ‘cleansing’ as she wasn’t feeling like herself, and told us that the moment she stepped in the door, the witch-lady that was going to cleanse her totally freaked out, and told her she had a spirit with her (and used the VERY SAME NAME that we had seen on the ouija many months before). She told my friend that the spirit was ‘following’ her as we didn’t close the session and attempted to cleanse her without any success.

“She tried to commit suicide about 3 times after this, dropped uni and went to live somewhere else so I’ve lost touch with her.”

These stories illustrate the power of Ouija boards. If you want to know the answer to a question, or you are just looking for a creepy activity, you’re sure to experience something strange. Perhaps these stories peak your curiosity, or they deter you entirely. That is up to you.