The Planchette’s Promise

It was the tail end of February, 1978, and I was sixteen, sitting in the common room of Cedar Ridge, a boys’ reformatory tucked into the pine woods of northern Wisconsin. The snow outside was deep enough to swallow a car, and the wind moaned through the eaves like a homesick ghost. I’d been there for eight months, long enough to know every creak and groan of the old building, but not long enough to forget what freedom felt like.

The week before, I’d gotten a letter from my mother, along with a package of homemade cookies and a brand-new deck of playing cards. The cookies were gone in two days, but the cards I kept in my pocket, shuffling them absently when I was bored. Most of the other boys were still on their mid-winter break, so the place was nearly empty. Only three of us were left: me, a scrawny kid named Danny who’d been caught stealing a car, and a bulky, quiet kid named Marcus who’d supposedly set fire to his school gym. We were the only ones in the whole dormitory, and the silence was thicker than the frost on the windows.

It was Marcus who brought out the board. He’d found it in the basement, tucked behind a pile of old textbooks, its surface covered in a layer of dust. ‘You ever use one of these?’ he asked, holding it up. The board was old, the letters and numbers faded, but the planchette was still there, heart-shaped and smooth. Danny and I shook our heads. We’d heard of them, sure, but never actually seen one in person. The idea of talking to the dead seemed like something out of a horror movie, not real life.

We set it up on the low table in the common room, the only light coming from a single lamp in the corner. The fire in the fireplace had died down to glowing embers, and the room was cold enough that our breath fogged in the air. Marcus put the planchette on the board, and we all placed our fingers on it, barely touching. ‘I’ll ask first,’ he said, and I could see a smirk on his face, like he didn’t take it seriously.

‘Is anyone there?’ he asked.

For a long moment, nothing happened. The planchette sat still, and I could hear my own heartbeat in my ears. Then, slowly, it began to move, gliding across the board to the word ‘YES.’ Danny pulled his hand back like he’d been burned. ‘Whoa, that’s freaky.’ I kept my fingers on it, feeling a weird tingle, like a low static running up my arm.

Marcus asked, ‘Who are you?’ The planchette moved again, faster now, spelling out a name: M-A-R-Y. ‘Is that your real name?’ Marcus asked. It moved to ‘YES.’ I asked, ‘What do you want?’ without giving him a chance to continue. The planchette slid to ‘M-O-N-E-Y.’ I laughed, a nervous laugh. ‘We don’t have any money.’

The planchette moved again, this time with a force that took all three of us to hold. It spelled out: ‘L-O-O-K – I-N – T-H-E – C-E-L-L-A-R.’ Marcus’s smirk vanished. ‘The cellar? Everything down there is old junk.’ But even as he said it, we all felt it, a cold draft that seemed to come from nowhere, and the faint smell of something burning, like smoke but sweeter.

We were all scared now, but we couldn’t just leave it. Danny whispered, ‘We should see what it wants. Maybe it’s a prank.’ But I knew it wasn’t. The board felt alive under our fingers, humming with a low energy.

We went down to the basement, the only light from a single bulb that flickered. The cellar was a maze of old shelves and boxes, dusty and forgotten. There was a furnace that clanked and groaned, and piles of old school records, moldy textbooks, and broken furniture. We started looking around, not sure what we were searching for. Danny kicked a box, and something rolled out, a tin box, rusted and dented. He picked it up, opened it, and inside were bundled papers, tied with a string.

We brought it back upstairs, sat by the dying fire with the tin box between us. Marcus untied the string, and the papers fell open. They were letters, dated from the 1930s, written by a boy named Samuel. He was a resident there, and the letters were to his mother, but they were never sent. They told a story that got darker with each page. He wrote about a girl named Mary who used to live there, who was always sad. He wrote about how she disappeared one night, and everyone pretended she never existed. He wrote about the basement, and a fire that started down there, and how he’d never tell what he saw.

The last letter was different, a note written in shaky handwriting: ‘I found her. She’s in the brick wall. I can’t tell anyone, but I can’t leave her. She promises to help me if I help her. But I’m scared, Mama. She wants me to come with her.’

We looked at each other, the fear on our faces reflected in the dim light. ‘The brick wall,’ I said. ‘We need to check the basement again.’

We went down a second time, more cautious now. We searched along the walls, feeling every brick. At the back, behind a stack of old wood, we found a section that looked different, the mortar newer. We made ourselves touch it, and as we did, the planchette from upstairs started moving on its own, we could hear it scraping against the board, faster and faster.

Danny panicked and ran upstairs, and we heard him scream. We rushed up to find him standing over the board, which was now on the floor, the planchette spinning in circles. ‘It kept saying ‘COME, COME, COME,” he shouted, and his face was pale.

That’s when the fire alarms went off, a loud, piercing wail that echoed through the building. But there was no smoke, no flames. The alarms were just screaming, and the whole building felt like it was shaking. Marcus grabbed my arm. ‘We need to get out of here,’ he said.

We ran out into the snow, the cold biting at our skin. We stood in the yard, looking back at the building, expecting flames, but there were none. Instead, we saw a face in the window of the common room, a girl’s face, pale and streaked with soot, staring at us with hollow eyes. Then the glass cracked, and she was gone.

We didn’t say a word. We just stood there, shivering in the snow, until the authorities came to investigate the false alarm. The next day, a construction crew came to do a routine check, and they found a hidden cavity in the cellar wall. Inside were bones, small and delicate, wrapped in a moldering blanket, and a locket with the letter ‘M’ engraved on it.

They never determined who she was, or how long she’d been there. But I knew. And I never went near another Ouija board again. Sometimes, late at night, I still feel a cold touch on my shoulder, and I hear a girl’s voice, soft and pleading, saying, ‘You helped me. Now I’ll help you.’