The Alphabet Game

It was the autumn of 1978, and I was a ninth grader at Cedar Heights Junior High, a school known for its accelerated science program. Our teacher, Mr. Aldous, was a gaunt man with spectacles that seemed to magnify his eyes, making him look perpetually surprised. He had a reputation for unconventional lessons, but nothing prepared us for the unit on ‘psychic phenomena.’ He claimed to be an automatic writer, and to prove it, he let us test him with foreign phrases. My friend, Lena, who was fluent in Portuguese, wrote a question on a scrap of paper, and Mr. Aldous, without reading it, wrote an answer in perfect Portuguese. The class was stunned, but I was more intrigued than frightened.

One afternoon, Mr. Aldous announced an optional after-school session to try ‘table tipping.’ He said it was a Victorian parlor trick that could contact spirits. I stayed, along with two other students: a quiet girl named Priya, whose aunt was a famous Bollywood actress, and a lanky kid named Marcus, who wore a perpetual smirk. We pushed the desks to the walls, and Mr. Aldous produced a small, round table with a single claw foot. It looked antique, with a dark wood surface scratched and worn. He instructed us to place our hands lightly on the edge, fingers spread, and to ask questions silently in our minds.

For a long while, nothing happened. The only sound was the ticking of the wall clock and the distant hum of a lawnmower. Then, a slight vibration—hardly perceptible—passed under my palms. The table gave a faint creak, like a floorboard settling. Marcus snickered, but Priya became very still. Mr. Aldous hushed us, his eyes closed. He muttered, ‘It’s here.’ Then, one edge of the table lifted, just a few inches, and thumped down. It was an answer, Mr. Aldous explained: one tap for yes, two for no.

We were skeptical, but we played along. Someone asked if there was a spirit present. The table thumped once, a sharp rap that vibrated through our fingers. I asked if it had a name, and the table tapped three times—not a yes/no. Mr. Aldous frowned, ‘That’s not the code.’ He took out a notepad and drew an alphabet circle. ‘We’ll use this instead. You point to letters, and I’ll record.’ The table began to tilt toward letters, spelling out a word: A-N-A-S-T-A-S-I-A. Priya gasped. ‘That’s my grandmother’s name,’ she whispered. ‘She passed away last year.’ Marcus rolled his eyes, but I noticed his smirk had faltered.

Then the table started to move more erratically, as if agitated. It began to tap out a rhythmic pattern, over and over, like a heartbeat. Mr. Aldous looked alarmed. ‘It’s trying to communicate something urgent,’ he said. ‘But the alphabet is too slow.’ He proposed a faster method: ‘I’ll recite the alphabet aloud, and the table will knock when I reach the right letter.’ That’s when the lights flickered. We all jumped, and the table shuddered violently. A cold draft swept through the room, and the windows rattled. The table then went still.

Mr. Aldous swallowed. ‘Perhaps we should stop.’ But the table lifted off the floor—all three legs—and spun in the air for a second before crashing down. The noise was like a gunshot. We stumbled back. The table began to tilt, not gently, but angrily, tapping out a furious staccato. Mr. Aldous started reciting the alphabet, his voice trembling. ‘A… B… C…’ On ‘D,’ the table rapped hard. ‘E… F… G…’ On ‘H,’ another rap. ‘I… J… K… L… M…’ Nothing on N. ‘O… P…’ On ‘Q,’ another. He continued, ‘R… S… T… U… V… W… X… Y… Z.’ The table rapped on Z as well. It spelled: D-H-Q-Z. ‘What does that mean?’ Priya asked.

I stared at the sequence. ‘It’s not a word,’ I said. ‘It’s an encrypted message.’ Mr. Aldous went pale. ‘That’s the last thing my automatic writing produced before I stopped… before I stopped doing it.’ He looked at us, his eyes wide. ‘I never told anyone this, but I used to practice in the abandoned asylum on Maple Street. There was a presence there. It gave me a message in a code I couldn’t break. It said, “I will find you when you are ready.” I thought it was my imagination.’ The table then went wild, tapping out a rapid pattern that we couldn’t follow. The lights flickered again, and the table seemed to be pushed by an invisible force, sliding across the floor until it slammed against the blackboard.

We were in a daze. The door, which had been open, suddenly slammed shut. The lock clicked. We ran to it, but it wouldn’t open. The windows were painted shut. We were trapped. The table began to spin in the center of the room, slowly at first, then faster, like a top. It rose into the air, spinning, and we could see a shadow beneath it—a dark shape on the floor, as if something stood there. The shadow had a shape, like a hunched figure, but it was only blackness. Mr. Aldous stumbled backward. ‘The alphabet game,’ he said ‘It’s a gateway. We opened it.’

The table dropped, and the door burst open. We didn’t wait. We fled, leaving our backpacks behind. That night, I couldn’t sleep. The next day, Mr. Aldous didn’t come to work. The school sent a substitute. When we asked about him, the substitute said he had resigned. I tried to find him but his phone was disconnected. Years later, I learned that Mr. Aldous was committed to a mental institution after claiming that a table had spelled out the date of his death. He died exactly on that date, of a heart attack, at the age of 42.

I never touched another table without fear. And sometimes, when I sit at a table, I feel a faint tapping under my palms, and I hear a voice in my head, reciting the alphabet, slowly, deliberately, waiting for me to respond. I know now that when you play the alphabet game, you’re not just asking questions. You’re inviting something to speak. And once it speaks, it never stops. It’s always there, just beneath the surface, waiting for you to ask again.