The Wrong Signal

In the winter of 1978, Margaret and four of her colleagues from the county clerk’s office were pulling an all-nighter to finish filing a backlog of property records. The old courthouse, with its peeling paint and flickering fluorescent lights, felt especially oppressive after midnight. To break the monotony, one of them, Dorothy, produced a battered ouija board from her bag. She claimed it had belonged to her grandmother and had ‘authentic energy.’

Margaret was hesitant. She had heard stories, warnings from her own grandmother about messing with things you don’t understand. But the others, fueled by coffee and boredom, insisted. They cleared a space in the records room, a dimly lit area filled with dusty boxes and the smell of old paper. They placed the board on a wooden table and set a small, chipped glass in the center. Each of them placed a single finger on the glass.

At first, the session was playful. They asked simple questions: ‘Is there a spirit with us?’ The glass slid to ‘YES.’ ‘Are you a man or a woman?’ It wavered between ‘M’ and ‘F’ before settling on ‘M.’ Margaret felt a cold draft despite the sealed windows. She tried to laugh it off, but her fingers tingled.

After about fifteen minutes, the atmosphere shifted. The glass began to move erratically, darting from one letter to another as if confused or angered. Dorothy asked for the spirit’s name, and the glass spelled out ‘B-E-T-H’ but then violently swung to ‘K-I-L-L’ before Margaret snatched her hand away. The others followed, except Dorothy, who kept her finger on the glass, staring at it with wide eyes.

Suddenly, the glass began to spin clockwise, faster and faster, until it lifted slightly off the board. The lights overhead flickered and went out. In the darkness, they heard a low, guttural rasp, like something breathing right behind them. Margaret fumbled for her lighter, and when it sparked, they saw the glass had shattered into tiny shards, and on the board, in a fine white powder (later identified as dust from the ceiling), was the word ‘WRONG.’

They fled the room, locking the door behind them. But as they stood in the hallway, catching their breath, they heard a faint, rhythmic tapping from inside the records room, like a finger tapping on glass. It continued all night, even after they called a security guard who found nothing.

Margaret never spoke of it again until she told me, her grandson, decades later. She warned me never to use a ouija board, not because of the spirits, but because sometimes you might contact something else entirely. Something that is not a ghost of a person, but a signal from a place that should not be called. She said the board was like a telephone, and that night, they had dialed a number that connected to the wrong side. And whatever answered had been listening ever since.

Three months after Margaret died, I moved into her old house to sort through her belongings. In the attic, I found the same battered ouija board, wrapped in a cloth. Taped to it was a note in my grandmother’s handwriting: ‘If you ever find this, burn it. Do not use it. There is a voice on the other end that knows your name.’

I didn’t burn it. Instead, I set it up in my basement, just to see if it was real. I placed my fingers on a new glass, and before I could even ask a question, the glass flew across the room and shattered against the wall. Then, from the empty corner, a voice as clear as my own heartbeat said, ‘You should have listened, Margaret’s boy.’

I haven’t slept in days. Every time I close my eyes, I hear that voice, and it’s getting closer. I’m writing this now, but I fear it’s too late. The signal has been received, and it’s coming through.