Ouija Boards were all the rage when I was a kid. At one teen sleepover night at a friend's house, the board (I think it was mine that I brought) was pulled out. All ten of us girls scrambled into our sleeping bags in a circle, surrounding the Ouija, fanning out like colorful leaves attached to a flower head. Two of the girls sat up to begin the seance by working the board, exclaiming as they moved the "planchette" or pointer that they were getting messages and "seeing" the spirit of a dead Vietnam soldier walking around the room. I didn't believe my friends; I thought it was all phony, a big act, because I had used the board many times with friends and could tell that sometimes we cheated.
So I began slowly thumping my feet on the floor. (We were all on our stomachs in our sleeping bags, no one could see me do this, but they heard it). This started to freak the others out, except for my friend, Dina, who was lying next to me. I caught her eye and motioned that it was me doing the thumping.
She immediately squeezed herself down in her bag and started shaking with silent laughter. I kept this up until I could tell it was really scaring the others, who were feeling very sad for the soldier, disturbed by "his combat boots making noise walking around," and that they could not comfort him.
The immediate guilt I felt was horrible. I stopped doing it, indicated this to Dina, and we all spent the next sleepless night discussing this contact through Ouija for which we had no control.
Several days later at home, I searched for my board to use with my friends down the block. I couldn't find it. I knew I had brought it back home after the sleepover/seance, but it was no where to be found. Thinking back, I'm sure my mom threw it away, practical no-nonsense person as she was. She might have sensed it was a dangerous "game" for kids-- knowing nothing about my foolishness--or just that it was a waste of time for me to use. My thoughts that it had just "evaporated into thin air" didn't help my whole psychology about it at all. I chalked it up to bad Karma, which it was.

I've never told anyone about this but Dina of course, and to you guys here, so in a way it really is a secret I take to the grave.

However, in a seriously sad way, it was also Dina's secret that she took to her grave. Her body was affected by Hodgkin's lymphoma a few years after high school and she died at the young age of 19. I've always felt guilt for bringing her into my mean plot at that Ouija session, and memories of her passing are always linked to it in my mind and heart.

My advice: don't use that thing. Ever. It really isn't a funny, scary game.