Grandmother and the Ouija
My grandmother, Annie, was a very spiritually sensitive person, although she never wanted to believe it. She told me of an incident from her childhood in Sweden in the 1880s when she was warned by her mother not to take flowers from graves at a local cemetery. Annie, being the strong-headed young girl she was, did take some flowers and upon returning home claimed she had picked them. Her mother was not fooled, and accused Annie of doing what she was not supposed to do. "Look!" her mother said, grasping my grandmother by the arm. "The spirits have marked you!" On her bicep were bruises in the form and shape of fingerprints, as though someone had gripped her arm with great force, although she felt no pain or sensation of having been touched.
Her mother advised her that the only recourse was to return the flowers to the grave, which Annie did with great haste. When she returned home, the bruises were gone.
A devout Mormon, Annie was very uncomfortable with her psychic abilities. After immigrating to the US and settling in Portland, she had numerous unwanted paranormal experiences. I recall her telling me about a Ouija board session she was reluctantly involved in with some friends. Unresponsive until Annie took over the planchette, it then went crazy, much to her discomfort and the delight of her friends. Frightened, she asked the spirit to identify itself, and the answer she received was: LEGIONS. Shaken now, she asked, "Are you from the Devil?" The board immediately replied YES. Well, that did it. She slammed the Ouija board shut and swore never to mess around with the unknown, and her psychic gifts could go take a flying one.
Annie told me many stories of weird happenings in the old house she and her husband and children lived in on Morrison Street in downtown Portland, but I can't recall enough to tell. She died in 1958 at the age of 83.
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