Fun with Ouija with Exclusive Excerpt

Greetings and welcome to the blog tour for You Can Do Magic: Carnival of Mysteries! I’m your host, Ro, and I’m here to tell you, I have a complicated relationship with Ouija boards. I put one to use in this story in a couple of unique ways and I enjoyed doing some research into the world’s most mysterious board game, The Ouija.

The board’s origins come from the Spiritualists movement in the 1800s. Folks had a very different view of death at the time, it was much more a part of everyday life, so mediums did a lot of business helping their customers communicate with family members on the other side. The board, then, became a way for ordinary people to bypass a “professional” and find the answers themselves. There are many fascinating bits about the men and women involved in getting those boards out into the world, and many stories about how they were used. When Parker Brothers took over the boards in 1966 they continued to sell the boards like hotcakes until a sweet little girl named Regan played with the spooky little board in a terrifying little movie called The Exorcist in 1973. Then, it became a tool of the devil.

Others still claim the board can teach us things, such as how the subconscious deals with information. Psychology researchers have done studies throughout the years that seem to suggest that the board can heighten communication. As a person with a master’s degree in counseling psychology who loves horror and the occult, you can see why this intersection has me tickled, well, pink.

Here’s one scene from the book that utilizes the Ouija board left behind by Hush guitarist Gavin West, who died two years before the action in this book. A little background, our hero Kal begins the story with limits to his ability to speak, which we soon learn is likely due to a head injury he sustained. Things are beginning to come back to him after a traumatic experience earlier in the evening…

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He looked around the bus. “Hey, can you write?”
That was a good question. I knew I could at one point.
Ryan found a piece of paper and a pencil and he handed them to me, but my fingers didn’t know what to do with the pencil. I tried wrapping them around, but I kept dropping it. As I bent over to retrieve the pencil from the floor, I spotted something familiar on a bottom shelf and reached for it.
“A Ouija board?” Ryan laughed, and I shrugged. I set the board up on the couch in between us and gestured for him to ask me a question. It was an older board, and the paper covering it was frayed at the edges. The planchette was made of lightweight wood stained black and it had designs burned into it.
“All right. Swore I’d never use one of these after seeing the freaky-ass Paranormal Activity movies, but I suppose this is safe.” He tapped a finger against his chin. “How about, how old are you?”
I frowned at him. How did I explain that time had been different for me since I’d joined the carnival? Instead, I moved the planchette around to the right digits.
He watched my hands move and mouthed the numbers to himself. “Twenty-one. Really? You seem much older. Okay, how about, I know speaking is hard for you and I know you had a head injury. Is it…do you have memory loss?”
I moved the planchette to Yes.
“I see. How bad is it?”
I hesitated because the truth would likely make him think I was mentally ill. Not sure.
“Okay. How about how long were you with the carnival?”
I moved the planchette to the number one.
“A month?” I shook my head. “A year?” I nodded. “Wow. That’s a long time to be traveling around. Did you like it?”
I shrugged. I didn’t know how to answer that. I thought for a minute and then started moving the planchette.
“Nothing…to…compare…it…to. Oh. Because you don’t remember before?”
I moved the planchette to Yes.
“Wow, okay. So your…injury happened at least a year ago, yeah?”
Technically that was the truth. I didn’t want to lie to him.
Yes.
“That is awful. I mean, there are things I’d like to forget, but not my whole life. But you remember how to play instruments. Did you learn at the carnival or have you always played?”
I moved the planchette to say yes, and he laughed. “Yes to the first or second part?” I moved the planchette to the number two. “Awesome. Different part of the brain, I guess. That calliope thing was pretty amazing.”
I moved the planchette to say I built.
“No way! You built that thing?”
I moved it to yes.
“You’re a craftsman, then, too.”
I moved the planchette to yes.
“Cool, so you, like, rebuilt it?”
Hmm. That must have been what he thought possible. Yes.
“That must have been a big job.”
I started moving the planchette rapidly.
“Had…a…lot…of…time. Right on. Do you remember where you’re from?”
I frowned. A pain stabbed in the top of my head but not as bad as before. It was as if the man who attacked me unlocked a deluge of memories, and the more that came through, the less it hurt.
I had a flash of a radio, sitting in front of it. My uncle’s voice. I moved the planchette before the memory faded.
“K…T…N…T What, like a radio station? K-TNT?”
Yes.
He grabbed a flat black rectangle-shaped device off of the table and touched it, bringing the screen to life. Ryan tapped on it several times and then frowned. “It says there are… Well, there’s a few listed here. Oklahoma, Tacoma, Washington…wait…Muscatine, Iowa—”
I touched his arm and nodded.
“Huh. Iowa boy. Explains the clothes.”
It was my turn to frown at him.
He grinned. “I don’t know, when I first saw you, you seemed like you were from another time, but Iowa’s kinda behind the times, right? It makes sense.”
I rolled my eyes and he put my hand back on the planchette. “What else do you remember?”
Flashes of things, peoples’ names…I started moving the planchette again.
“Herbert Hoover?” Ryan’s expression was confused. “Oh, yeah, wasn’t he born in Iowa? I don’t know my presidents very well, and that was a long-ass time ago.”
I didn’t know how to respond. I knew time had passed, but I had no idea how much.
I moved the planchette to Yes. What else could I say?
“Wow. What about family—”
No.
My hands jerked the planchette, and Ryan flinched.
“Ah. I get it. Don’t remember, or off limits?” His voice was soft. If the circumstances were different, I knew Ryan would absolutely understand my familial woes. I didn’t want to go there. Not yet.
Yes.
He waved his hand. “Whatever you don’t want to tell me, I’m fine with that too.”
The thing was, I wanted to tell him. But how to do it without giving away the fact that whatever happened to me happened a long time ago?
“Left behind. Left me.” Those words had been reverberating through my head since the attacker had grabbed me at the carnival. Pieces of my story had come together, and I felt like a huge bubble of pressure was under the surface of my skull, waiting to spill over. Like if I closed my eyes, it would all be there.
“Who left you? It’s coming back, isn’t it?” Ryan placed his hand on my knee. “Sometimes a traumatic incident can unlock memories you’ve hidden to protect yourself. Maybe that’s what happened tonight? It’s okay, it’ll come back to you.”
I shook my head. “Don’t want it. Bad things, Ry-an.” My vision blurred, and I sucked in a breath.
“Hey, shhh.” Ryan put his arm around me and squeezed my shoulder. “Let’s get some sleep, okay? It’ll be easier in the morning.”
I wasn’t sure I agreed with him, but I nodded.

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The board has quite a significance in the story, but that’s all I’ll tell for now.

I don’t think we’ll see the end of the boards for a long time, though my kids have forbidden me from bringing one into the house. Little do they know that Third Grade Ro and her friend used to make them out of cardboard pieces. There was a reason my mom never wanted me going to friends’ houses when their parents weren’t home, which was cemented by the time this friend and I were playing with a homemade Ouija board and thought we saw a spirit in her house, which we were in alone. Of course we armed our eight-year-old selves with ginormous butcher knives and went on the hunt…and when my friend turned quickly and caught her hand on my knife, our secret life was up. She had to get stitches and all of my spooky stuff was tossed out “until I had a better understanding of reality.” Or something like that.

Thanks for checking out You Can Do Magic: Carnival of Mysteries. I hope you enjoy! For more fun, check out the other stops on the blog tour and pick up the books in my adjacent series, Summer of Hush and Brains and Brawn, both in KU for a limited time. And Stay Tuned for More…