The Harmless Game

I never believed in ghosts. Not really. I was twelve, and my world was small and safe: our two-bedroom ranch on Maple Street, my mom’s endless supply of canned soup, and the comforting hum of the refrigerator at night. My older brother, Derek, was fifteen and obsessed with anything that promised a thrill. When he came home one rainy Tuesday with a battered cardboard box under his arm, I rolled my eyes.

‘What’s that?’ I asked, peeling an orange at the kitchen counter.

He grinned, his hair plastered to his forehead from the drizzle. ‘A Ouija board. Found it at a garage sale.’ He held up the box, its corners worn, the letters faded. ‘You wanna try it?’

I snorted. ‘That’s just a game. Like Monopoly, but spookier.’

‘That’s what I thought.’ He set it on the table. ‘But the old lady who sold it to me said it was her grandmother’s. Said her grandmother used it to talk to her dead husband. And that it worked.’

I bit into my orange, juice stinging a paper cut. ‘Right.’

He shrugged, but his eyes had that glint I recognized—the one that meant he was determined to prove me wrong. We had a spare room in the basement, half-finished, cluttered with boxes of old clothes and forgotten toys. That’s where we decided to test it that night.

The basement smelled of dust and mothballs. The single bulb overhead cast long shadows. Derek set up the board on a folding card table, and we sat opposite each other on creaky wooden stools. The planchette—that plastic pointer—was ice-cold to the touch.

‘You know the rules,’ Derek said. ‘Never ask about death. And never remove your fingers once we start.’

I laughed. ‘You sound like you actually believe this.’

‘Just do it.’

We placed our fingertips on the planchette. It rested in the center of the board, under the word ‘HELLO.’ Derek began, ‘Is there anyone here who wants to speak with us?’

At first, nothing. I could hear the rain pattering against the small window above the washer. Then, the planchette twitched. I felt it move—a slow slide toward ‘YES.’ Derek’s eyes widened, but I kept my face neutral. ‘You’re doing that,’ I said.

‘I’m not.’ His voice was low.

‘Then it’s a coincidence. The wood’s warped.’

We tried again. ‘What’s your name?’ The planchette moved, with more confidence this time, gliding over the letters: M-A-R-G-A-R-E-T. I shivered, but rationalized: ‘That’s your old crush’s name. You’re thinking about her.’

Derek’s jaw tightened. ‘I haven’t thought about her in months.’

‘Yeah, right.’

But the planchette kept moving, spelling out a string of numbers: 4-2-1-8. I frowned. ‘What does that mean?’

Derek shook his head. ‘Maybe it’s a year. 1842? 1984?’

The board twitched again. It sped to ‘GOODBYE’ and stopped. We both pulled back, breathing heavier.

‘Okay,’ I said, forcing a laugh, ‘that was fun. But it’s just our subconscious. The ideomotor effect. Look it up.’

‘Sure,’ Derek said, but he looked pale.

That night, I couldn’t sleep. Not because I was scared, but because the image of the planchette moving on its own kept replaying in my mind. I told myself it was nonsense. But at 3:00 AM, I heard a noise from the basement. A slow, rhythmic dragging sound, like furniture being pushed across concrete. I lay still, heart pounding. The sound stopped.

I chalked it up to the house settling. The next day, Derek seemed distant, snapping at me at breakfast. Our mom, noticing the tension, grounded him for talking back. He retreated to his room, leaving the Ouija board on the floor, abandoned.

Over the next week, odd things happened. The basement door would be ajar when I knew I’d closed it. A scent of lavender, faint but unmistakable, would drift through the house with no source. Derek grew quieter, his eyes shadowed. He admitted to me that he’d used the board alone once, without my knowledge. ‘She said she wants to go home,’ he whispered. ‘But she’s trapped here. She’s been waiting a long time.’

‘Who is she?’ I asked.

‘Margaret. She lived here back in the 1900s. The house was hers. She died in the basement.’ He swallowed. ‘She said we woke her up. And now she won’t leave me alone.’

I wanted to ridicule him, but the fear in his eyes was real. That night, I crept downstairs and found the board where he’d left it. I touched the planchette, and it was no longer cold—it was warm, like skin.

I wrote the numbers in my school notebook: 4218. Then it clicked—it wasn’t a date. It was an address. I looked up the old house records at the library, and sure enough, that was the address of our house in 1940, when a widow named Margaret Harmon lived there. She’d died of a heart attack, they said, but the neighbor’s account hinted at darker circumstances—a husband who vanished, accusations of foul play.

I returned home, my hands shaking. I found Derek in his room, sitting on the edge of his bed, staring at the wall. He didn’t look up when I entered. ‘She’s here right now,’ he said. ‘She’s angry. She says we should have left her alone.’

I felt a cold breeze, though the window was shut. The air grew thick, heavy, pressing against my ears. And then I heard it—a woman’s voice, not from any direction, but inside my own mind: ‘You will let me out.’

I screamed, and Derek flinched. We ran upstairs, both of us crying, and my mom grounded us for a month, convinced we’d snuck out. She never believed our story. But that night, the two of us huddled in her bed, and I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was watching from the basement stairs.

We hid the board in a trash bag the next morning and drove it to the dump. We never spoke of it again. But I still wonder if Margaret finally found her way home, or if we locked her out, and she’s still waiting, somewhere, for someone to open the door.

That was the only time I truly believed. And it’s the reason I’ll never touch another Ouija board as long as I live.