---

It's only a game, isn't it?( continued...)

"I remember a slumber party at a friend's house," she said. "The board told us there was a ghost on the uneven parallel bars at a local gym. We all got frightened, threw the board and ran into another room where her mom was."

Remembering slumber parties when she and her friends tried to hold seances and hypnotize each other, she added, "We tried bizarre things as young children."

Although Kuszmaul said those experiences were funny, she added, "I won't play with Ouija boards any more because they do scare me."

Third-year College student Pat Setji related a story about some of her friends using a Ouija board.

"The board kept spelling out 'Kat,'" the name of a girl nobody thought was in the house, Setji said. "Then the board kept spelling out 'phone.'" Sure enough, although none of the girls claimed to have known, "Kat was upstairs on the phone," she said. When Kat came downstairs to participate, the board successfully spelled out her mother's maiden name when asked, she added.

"I don't know if I believe it or not," Setji said.

Setji admitted to having played with a Ouija board once, but she said, "I knew my friend was moving it."

Many students have Ouija board stories to laugh about. Third-year College student Shannon Campbell said she did not believe in the power of Ouija boards.

But she also admitted she got "really freaked out" a long time ago while she and some friends were playing with a Ouija board.

"We put it in the closet," she said. "We never touched it again." Given her skepticism about Ouija boards, such a strong reaction is curious.

Maintaining her disbelief, Campbell probably spoke on behalf of many hesitant skeptics when she added, "It's weird that we can get freaked out by something in which we don't even believe."



---

By AMY NAGLE
Cavalier Daily Associate Editor
This paper was published on February 1, 1995 by The Cavalier Daily, Inc. at the University of Virginia.

---