Eerie Encounters : Haunted by a Ouija Board Friend "From Hell"

 In the spring of 1988, an El Salvadorian family of five moved into their new house in Houston, Texas. The family was made of a 13-year-old Mel Trejo, her mother Chavez, her father Jose, her younger sister Jackie and her older sister Maria. Because of the house’s small size, the sisters did not have separate rooms. Thus, all three of them had to sleep in a single bedroom and they were not particularly excited about it. Jose, however, was extremely happy when they moved into this house as he believed he could carve a better future for his wife and daughters by staying in the United States.

Mel gets hold of a Ouija Board

 A few weeks after moving into the house, while the family were having their dinner together, Maria talked about a board game that gave answers to every asked question and this board was called the Ouija Board. She insisted that the family could play it together and pleaded with Chavez to get the board for her. Although Chavez did not know much about how this game worked, she decided to get it for her daughter since all of them could play it.

 When Chavez finally got them a Ouija board, the girls ran into their room with excitement to play with it. Maria had a blatant idea about how to play this game and the three rules that should be followed but she was not particularly sure about what these three rules were. So, she read out loud the rules on the sheet that came with the board. This sheet had three rules and they were “Never play alone”, “Always say goodbye when you’re done playing” and “Never play in your own house”. Despite reading these rules, the girls instantly broke the third rule as they started playing with this board in their own house.

 They placed the planchette on the board, placed their fingers on the planchette and Maria asked the board, “Is anybody there?”. As they did not get any response, Maria asked the same question for the second time and even this time nothing happened. By then, Chavez also came into their room and she watched the girls play with their new game. Maria asked the same question for the third time and the planchette started moving towards the word Yes on the board.

 As everyone kept staring at the board in astonishment, Jackie started laughing and revealed that she was the one moving it. As the board did not seem to work, the sisters lost interest in it and left the room after pushing it under Mel’s bed.

A New Ouija Board Friend

 Mel had just gotten into middle school and she was finding it really hard to make friends. To make it worse, a girl named Erica was terribly bullying her and she was scared to walk out of her classroom. Every day after school, Mel would go back to her home feeling extremely sad and she felt like she had no one to open up to about her situation. As things were getting worse day by day, Mel decided to use the Ouija board to open up.

 When Mel greeted the board, nothing seemed to happen at first but within a few moments, the planchette started moving around the board and it spelt “Hi”. After this, Mel asked if it could help her get rid of her bully and the planchette moved to YES. The next day when Mel when to school, she heard her teacher announce Erica’s permanent exclusion from the school.

 After school, Mel rushed back to her room and asked the Ouija board if it was behind Erica’s expulsion. To her surprise, it replied yes and the next moment, the planchette moved around the board all on its own to spell out “I AM YOUR FRIEND” without Mel asking any questions. Mel was happy that she finally had a friend.

A Demon in The House

 That night, Mel’s parents went out on a date leaving their daughters all alone in the house. As they kept watching TV while sitting in the living room, Mel started feeling a sharp pain in her head and she went into the kitchen to take a painkiller pill. While Mel was about to walk out of the kitchen, she started hearing footsteps from the house’s fenced backyard and they kept getting closer and closer only to suddenly stop. As Mel slowly peeked out of the kitchen window, a terrifying demonic face suddenly appeared right on the window.

 Mel screamed her lungs off and ran to the living room in fear. When Maria asked her what happened, Mel told her about the demonic face. To see what this face was, Marie gathered up her two sisters and slowly walked towards the kitchen. On their way, they started to hear footsteps coming from the floor above them and the ceiling above started to creak. It appeared as if someone heavy was walking upstairs. Thinking they had an intruder, the girls grabbed their shoes as weapons and slowly walked upstairs.

 Following the sound of the footsteps, they reached their parents’ closed bedroom. As Mel started twisting the doorknob, the footsteps suddenly stopped and when the girls turned on the lights after entering the room, they found no one. As they stood there staring at the empty room, Chavez and Jose returned home. The girls rushed to their parents and told them about what had happened but Jose’s eyes rolled back and he uncharacteristically shouted at them asking them to go to bed at once. Jose had never acted like that before and it appeared as if something had taken control of him.

Pulled under the Bed

 The time Mel spent with the Ouija board increased gradually with time and at one point all she cared about was spending more time with it. Marie and Chavez were getting worried about her obsession with the board but they were not able to stop her from using it.

 As this kept continuing, one night, Mel woke up from her sleep because of the sound of loud dragging footsteps in her room and these footsteps seemed to be walking towards her. When slowly got down from her bed to see who was walking in her room, something grabbed her leg and started dragging her under the bed. Using all her strength, Mel escaped its clutches and pulled herself onto Maria’s bed.

A hand-made Ouija

 Hearing Mel scream, her parents rushed to her bedroom. When Mel told her mother about what had just happened, she felt that her daughter was imagining things. According to Chavez, Mel’s obsession with the Ouija board was the reason behind this occurrence. So, with the help of her husband, she grabbed the Ouija board from her daughter and threw it into a dumpster outside their house.

 After her mother snatched away the Ouija board from her, Mel started to miss her newly found friend who communicated with her through it. So one day, she decided to make her own board with cut-out letters and she used an inverted drinking glass as the planchette. When she tried communicating with her mysterious friend using her handmade board, her new friend responded. When Mel asked this spirit about its gender, the inverted glass moved around and spelt “Female”.

The Family Splits

 One night, when Mel was walking towards the kitchen to grab a glass of water, she heard eerie nonsensical chanting coming from the living room of the house. When she walked to the living room to see what was making these chants, she saw her father. He was making these chants with his eyes rolled back and it appeared as if he was under the control of someone else. That night onwards, Mel’s father’s behaviour completely changed.

 The very next night, when Maria and Jackie were in the living room, their father stormed into to house and walked up straight to their mother to start an argument. He was extremely aggressive and his voice made Mel tremble in fear. So, she immediately used her handmade board and asked her spirit friend if she could make him go away and the board spelt “Yes”.

 The very next moment, Maria started feeling intense heat and she started to feel extreme rage. Possessed by this unknown rage, she grabbed her father's loaded gun and pointed it towards her father. With her father saying that she did not have the guts to shoot him, the situation started to grow tense and it made Maria pull the trigger. Luckily, her mom pushed her arm up and the bullet hit the ceiling instead of her father. Hearing the gun’s sound Maria came back to her senses and claimed that something took over her. Chavez felt that something evil was there in the house and thus, she along with her daughters moved away from their house and settled in another apartment.

The Possession 

 Mel was finding it hard to adapt to life without her father and this pushed her more towards the Ouija board. One afternoon, while playing with the board, Mel asked her friend from where she had come and the moving drinking glass on the board moved around spelling “From Hell”. This answer freaked Mel out and she ran away from the room after putting all the cut-out letters inside the drinking glass.

 Just after taking a few steps, Mel heard a loud shattering sound from her room and it stopped her. When she walked back to her room to see what caused this sound, she saw the drinking glass that she used as a planchette shattered in pieces and the cut-out letters she used for her Ouija board were shredded and flying around. Mel’s mysterious spirit friend started showing her violent side.

 As she stood in the room, Mel heard whispers in her ears and they asked her to check under her bed. When she anxiously slid her hand under her bed, she found the original Ouija board that her parents had previously dumped.

 Later that night, Chavez was woken up from her sleep because of feeling extremely cold. When she opened her eyes to correct her blanket, she started hearing footsteps in the hallway. The door of Chavez’s room did not have a knob fitted in the designated hole and thus it had a small opening in the place of the knob. So, she slowly walked out of her bed and peeked through the hole in her door to see who was walking in the hallway.

 The moment she peeked through this hole, the footsteps stopped but the very next moment, the demonic face of a woman suddenly appeared in front of her. Chavez fell back on the floor in fear but she gathered herself up and peeked through this hole again only to find the demonic face missing. She immediately rushed to her daughter's room to make sure they were safe and much to her relief they were indeed safe.

 One evening, while the family were getting ready for dinner, Mel suddenly got a feeling of being watched by someone. When she told her mom about it, she immediately shut her down thinking she was trying to escape from helping her prepare the donner. After she finished cooking, Chavez asked Mel to get the dinner plates. When Mel walked towards the shelf to get the plates, she saw a demonic creature standing in the living room and before she called her mom to show it to her, it disappeared. A few minutes later, she was pushed onto the couch in the living room by something invisible and she passed out because of falling short of breath.

 As Mel’s mom was trying to bring her back to consciousness, she suddenly sat upright and with her eyes closed started gesturing with her hands wildly. Her skin started turning purple and it appeared as if she was being possessed. Mel fell unconscious again and when she woke up, she had completely forgotten the events that preceded.

The Exorcism

 After this event, Mel became really sick and despite Chavez taking her to multiple doctors, she was not able to have her daughter cured. A family friend suggested taking Mel to a witch doctor named Alice and Chavez obliged. After examining Mel, Alice concluded that something evil was breaking Mel down. She made Mel sit in front of a mirror, made her close her eyes and asked Chavez to look at her reflection. When Chavez looked into the mirror, she saw the same demonic face she had seen previously through the hole in her door appear instead of her daughter’s reflection. This figure screamed and the mirror shattered into pieces.

 When Alice asked her if she had any recent interaction with something paranormal, she told her about her new friend from hell whom she communicated with using her Ouija board. Alice told Chavez that an exorcism should be performed on her daughter and she instructed her to burn the board. So, Chavez called Jose, told him about the location of the board and asked him to burn it immediately.

 Alice began the exorcism and she started sprinkling holy water on Mel. For Mel who was covered under a cloth, however, these hitting water droplets felt like painful punches. Meanwhile, Jose got hold of the board and set it on fire just as Chavez asked him to. When the board was burning, Mel felt as if she herself was burning from the inside and this pain was unbearable for her. Finally, when the Ouija board completely turned into ashes, Mel collapsed on the floor and she was back to her original self. The paranormal events that followed her seized after burning the Ouija board.