Ouija Board, Ouija Board and a Non Seance

In the late nineteen fifties my mum and dad bought three derelict cottages, which had been ransacked by nomarks who had used the doors and floorboards for firewood, but they knocked them together and built a decent family home, although the original dwellings dated back to the sixteen hundreds..

I grew up there with my mum and dad and brother and sister and being away from estates, we read lots and let our imaginations run wild.

Now all this is based on my very dubious memories so apologies for anything that seems untrue or ludicrous, but am doing this due to a small prod from a Vocal friend.

My dad got hold of a very old book on Preston which mentioned that Oliver Cromwell had stayed in some cottages near here which may have been “Fiddlers Fold” our house , although it was unclear whether that was certain.

But up til the end of the seventies when I left home extensions and improvements were always ongoing.

So to the point of this , our house became quite big and there were instances of “supernatural” events occurring which probably had rational explanations , like the time I was home alone and heard our dog Simba wandering round upstairs opening doors and then half an hour later barking at the front door to be let in.

There were unexplained candles in trees and lots of odd things happening but we were all capable of setting up things like that. My mum said she once heard someone walking downstairs but it never stopped and then a cowled monk walked through the kitchen and out through the closed back door.. I once thought I saw someone standing by my window one stormy night and then a window that was painted shut flew open and smashed.

So there were a group of lads and girls and we would gather round the big kitchen table to drink , play cards and sometimes darts (the kitchen was big enough) with the odd Party Seven and other drinks and cigarettes, though I never smoked cigarettes but partook in the odd spliff.

One day a Ouija Board appeared and like all teenagers do we decided to give it a go and some really strange things came out. It was also during a power cut so we just had candles and torches for light. It told us there were two Monks , Father and Son both called Edward Young ,who had been murdered by Oliver Cromwell's men by drowning them in the well. We had no well. So that was probably made up by someone pushing the planchette harder than the rest.

One other thing was hidden treasure at a specific place in the attic. This was something else we checked up once we had power back , and sure enough we found a box where the treasure was supposed to be , but it was empty. So had the board worked. I'm not sure.

I think we checked up the monks’ story but were unable to verify it.

So we had very little to show (nothing) from our Ouija Board Non Seance.

My mum was very unhappy that we had used the Ouija Board so it disappeared and we never used it again, but…

The following year we started another extension at the back of the house and started digging the foundations and discovered an old stone well. The well had a little water and no bodies , but it actually existed, so there may have been something to the Ouija Board after all.

The lead in music is “Ouija Board, Ouija Board” by Morrisey, I don’t have any time for the man put some of his music is still good.