As a kid, I was obsessed with supernatural stories. I loved all sorts of tales of ghoulies and ghosties and long-leggity beasties...Also Snoopy.
But mostly, the kind of stuff that would leave me afraid to put my foot over the edge of the bed at night. (Y'know, because every kid is innately aware that Evil has a serious foot fetish.)
My best friend Josette felt much the same way as I did about the things that go bump in the night. Together, we exhausted the mystery, horror and occult sections of our elementary school library...
Plus, Josette also owned a Parker Brothers Ouija board.
Now, I'm a pretty practical gal these days. I mean, I still love tales of the strange and unusual. But I also know the Salem Witch Trials were a result of mass hysteria and a need for attention...
That psychic Miss Clio and her chums won't enlighten me to anything but the missing money in my bank account...
And that Ouija boards work on the scientific principal of idia... ideo... er...
Subconsciously pushing the triangle thingie with your own hands.
So looking back, I'm amused at how very serious we were about this.
I believe it all started with the idea that we would contact Josette's Grandfather's ghost Beyond The Grave. Because that sounded good and dramatic, and Josette was really into watching "Dark Shadows" at the time. Everything's dramatic when you're 12 and watching "Dark Shadows."
Heck, grilled cheese can take on mysterious, ominous tones with enough imagination...
"Look!-- at the CHEESE! Do you see it? It's... MELTING! I've never seen cheese behave that way before. What does it mean?"
"It must be... HAUNTED!"
(insert scary organ music here)
So initially we asked the Ouija questions in the general "Josette's Grandpa, can you hear us? Is that you?" sort of vein, because we'd seen that done on various thriller Movies of the Week and it was usually really effective within the first few moments of the scene.
But surprisingly, the Ouija wasn't forthcoming with any real answers.
Mostly it seemed to wander around the board in a confused, unspecific way, like an elderly person in a shopping mall parking lot who forgets where the car is parked.
Then we decided that since it probably wasn't Grandpa-- or if it was, he didn't know where his car was, so he was unlikely to be of much help from the Spirit World on other topics-- we'd better just ask general questions of things we wanted to know.
And to demonstrate to ourselves that we weren't running the Ouija board ourselves subconsciously, we wanted to choose questions we couldn't possibly know the answers to.
So we conferred a bit and came up with the question that had been plaguing us both for a few years now.
Was it about the potential for world peace? Or who our True Loves would be? Maybe about the possibility of life on other planets? Or whether we'd live long, healthy lives?
Are you ready for it? To hear The Question that would be a true test of the Ouija board's vast supernatural powers?
Because this gives a lot of deep insight into the mind of a 12-year-old in the early 80s, I think...
Okay, here goes. The question that we most wanted to know, and felt the spirits on the Other Side could tell us was....
"What does the P. stand for in Sheriff Rosco P. Coltrane's name on The Dukes of Hazzard?"
Yep, that's right. We'd drag a spirit presence all the way from some other realm to ask them questions about a lisping, bumbling television cop's middle name.
Ah-- but this time, the triangular planchette quivered under our fingers! It began to move! Josette and I exchanged wide-eyed glances as it rushed to the first letter.
"P..."
"Oh, my gosh, it's going to tell us!" Josette breathed.
Then the next letter.... "A!"
We were going to get our answer, finally, after all these years! The tension was almost unbearable. What was it? Patrick? Payton? Paul?
And another letter... And another letter! And another!
And there, the planchette settled into the middle of the board, seemingly exhausted. It's work now done.
Hearts pounding in our chests, we exhaled with excitement and we put the letters together in what, to this day, never ceases to send me into fits of giggles when I think about it.
Because according to the Ouija board, the answer to "What does the P. stand for in Sheriff Rosco P. Coltrane's name on The Dukes of Hazzard?" was...
"Panda."
Rosco... Panda... Coltrane?!
It was a little disillusioning.
Well, at the time, once we stopped laughing, we decided we'd better to turn back to more serious matters. You know, to call forth the spirit of Jon-Erik Hexum or someone else we thought was cute who'd passed on.
And so renewed were we in our activities-- trying to put the unfortunate "Panda Incident" out of our minds, I believe-- that we'd neglected to notice a summer thunderstorm rolling in, dark clouds pressing down on the house from above.
So when we asked the Ouija board to give us a final sign regarding some critical point-- which, I'm afraid, is now lost to the memories of both Josette and me-- well, thunder clapped loudly overhead in a entirely coincidental but perfectly-synchronized moment.
Which rattled the blind of Josette's room enough to cause it to flip and roll skyward.
That was enough. We shrieked and leapt away from the Ouija board like it was a some giant hairy spider, never to dabble in the Parker Brothers' occult again.
But even in spite of the well-executed meteorological activity, as I returned home sleepy and watching the rain steam down the windshield of my mother's Family Wagon, I realized: the Ouija board had taken a real hit on its authority for me that day.
Panda... Honestly!...
Sometimes the supernatural wasn't quite so super.
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