About the time I played with a Ouija board.

In 2010, on the eve before my 19th birthday, I wrote a blog post about my childhood encounter with my older cousin’s Ouija board. Eight months later, Amanda passed away. Now, shortly after the 13th anniversary of her death, I’m finally finishing the story I started.

The story in question begins here. But for those of you short on time, I’ll briefly set the scene: Two cousins, 11 and 19 years old, together after dusk for a sleepover. Amanda was like a sister to me, and we spent many an evening at her house, watching Unsolved Mysteries and swapping ghost stories. (She told the best ghost stories.) This particular night, to add fuel to our mutual fascination with the strange and mysterious, she pulled an old Ouija board out of the game closet and asked me to play. It’s just a children’s game, she assured me. What could go wrong? The board was consulted, only to give one haunting prophecy: I, the younger of the two, was fated to die in eight years. Needless to say, little old me was terrified, and I quit right then and there. I specifically remember falling asleep repeating Hail Mary after Hail Mary, hoping to ward off any malevolent spirits we’d foolishly summoned.

Skip ahead to October 2010, the month I wrote the aforementioned blog post. I was a freshman in college at UT Austin and on the precipice of turning 19; Amanda was living in my parents’ Downtown Houston apartment, constantly in and out of the hospital from her complications with Cystic Fibrosis. I had spent the latter half of my childhood either oblivious to the memory or making fun of it, and I failed to connect the unfortunate timing to Amanda’s worsening condition. She lost her battle with CF in the summer of 2011, a few days after her (golden) 27th birthday. Even then, I wasn’t at all focused on the board’s silly prediction; in fact, it wasn’t until my 20th birthday almost four months later that the significance of the year became clear.

This chilling revelation was thanks to my mother. The morning I turned 20, she called to tell me about a confusing dream she’d had the night prior. “Amanda was there,” she started, causing my ears to perk up. “It was strange. She handed me something, and told me that you were going to be okay.”

That’s when it finally dawned on me, the daunting discovery that I had made it past Year Eight—but Amanda hadn’t.

“What did she hand you?” I asked, already suspecting the answer.

My mom went on to describe a triangular object, with rounded sides and a clear hole in the middle.

“A planchette,” I said, before she finished. “To a Ouija board.”

◊ ◊ ◊

Why am I writing about this now? Everyone knows I love a spine-chiller (largely due to Amanda’s influence), but I suppose the reason I bring this up all these years later is to give this experience the respect it deserves. When I first blogged about that night in October 2010, I was flippant. Irreverent. In denial. Not about whether the occult was real, but about my involvement in it. No one had died, and no one was going to. We were completely innocent, because it was all just a silly game.

My opinion on that changed last year, when Scott and I started tuning in to The Exorcist Files, a podcast with (former atheist) Father Carlos Martins about his 20-year run as a Catholic exorcist. It became evident to me then, as I listened to the frightening accounts of demonic activity he’d seen firsthand, that any amount of occult participation—whether it’s visiting a fortune teller, sitting in on a seance, or consulting a Ouija board—is giving the devil permission to be there. By playing a seemingly harmless game, Amanda and I unwittingly welcomed darkness and deception into our lives, the impact of which we may never fully realize.

Did our midnight shenanigans lead to demonic possession? Not that I’m aware of, no. But even Fr. Martin considers possession to be rare. What it did do, however, was open a door to spiritual warfare and perhaps even diabolical oppression that neither one of us had the authority to close by ourselves. While I can’t claim to have any proof, the end result speaks for itself: The board’s prediction came true, just not in the way it made us believe it would. I’m convinced that that was its intention. Whatever spirit we conjured up in our 15 minutes of “fun” was out to mess with our heads and play tricks on us, because that’s what demons do, isn’t it? They deceive, lie, distort the truth. It wanted to plant a seed of fear in my heart, fill my head with chaos, and draw me away from the love of Christ—without making itself fully known. After all, the potential of evil’s power over us is much greater when it goes unnoticed, or when we doubt its very existence to begin with.

I dabbled in the occult, just for one night, and I lived to regret it. But Amanda’s life was cut short, a reality that will always torment me.

◊ ◊ ◊

If this all sounds outlandish and cliché, like the ramblings of a gullible Catholic girl, I understand. It’d probably be much easier to file this incident away under mere coincidence than it is to entertain as a consequence of some paranormal force. That idea is a tough pill to swallow for many, maybe, but not for me. My faith, and the lens through which I view the world, has evolved since I was a teenager in college: For one, I rely less on a set of rigid rules and principles to guide my moral compass and aim instead to view every conundrum I come across as unique and worth exploring on a case-by-case basis—a method of moral reasoning inspired by Saint Ignatius that Journalist Malcolm Gladwell describes as a “descent into the particulars.” (Read that article, if you have time, because it’s good.)

But the one thing that’s never changed is my earnest conviction in the presence of God, Satan, demons, and angels. I’m not a skeptic when it comes to the supernatural, and I never will be; even during a crisis of faith in my late 20s, I still held tight to the fact that good and evil exist in this world, and not by accident. That core belief is what ultimately led me back to the Church; and if I had to guess, I’d say I think it was for Amanda, too.

The week that she passed away, her mom witnessed something she couldn’t quite explain. While drifting in and out of consciousness, Amanda came to for a moment, suddenly alert. Looking beyond her parents (at what my Aunt Sonya now believes to have been an entity in the hospital suite that no one else could see), she took off her oxygen mask, pointed a finger in the direction of her intent gaze, and vigilantly commanded whatever she saw to leave. “You don’t belong here,” she said, as her wide eyes followed a path across the room and out the door. After that, Amanda was calm. The lurker was gone.

◊ ◊ ◊

Amanda’s life was hard. In the eight years that would follow our ill-omened sleepover, she would battle major illness, drug addiction, abusive relationships, and depression. Those struggles didn’t define her, though: She was the strongest person I’ve ever had the privilege of loving, and one of the best. Everyone stopped and payed attention when Amanda had something to say, because her commentary was irresistible and her one-liners could make you laugh so hard you’d either cry or hyperventilate. Even in the midst of pain, her laughter (complete with a snort or two) lit up your soul, and her appetite for adventure was infectious. Amanda knew exactly who she was, and she was unapologetically herself until the end.

And when death knocked on her door, she literally (and courageously) ushered out her demons and reclaimed her spot in Jesus’s open arms—arms that, I imagine, had been waiting all along for her return.

In processing the events connected to our sleepover, I found that the number “eight” came up three different times. (Four now, if you count the date that this blog post was published: 9-1=8 and 2+0+2+4=8. I definitely didn’t plan that, or even realize it until 24 hours later. Weird.) So I did some research: Eight represents finding a balance between the spiritual world and the material one. In Christianity, it symbolizes a new beginning or renewed life in Christ. What Amanda and I did was dangerous, both spiritually and physically, but what it has taught me is that there is redemption for those who choose it. Amanda died far too young, but she belonged to Christ when she left us. Now, 13 years later, her life is a testament and reminder to me of how powerful His love is, and how far-reaching His mercy.

Every so often, I do allow the more wistful side of my imagination to wonder if the Ouija’s prediction had been right all along—if Amanda somehow sacrificed her life for mine, or at least played a hand in protecting me from harm. Of course, that’s purely speculation; I can’t ever know for sure. But it is obvious that she’s stayed close since 2011, looking out for me and my oldest brother. Since her death, Amanda has revealed her presence on occasion by visiting me in my dreams or popping up in my thoughts at significant times. (Most notably, on the morning I found out I was pregnant with Jude—a morning I’ll never see as anything less than miraculous—it was Amanda’s voice in my head that encouraged me to take a pregnancy test.)

She remains a big part of my life, and I’d like to think it was her gentle push that gave me the inspiration to finally conclude our story. Whether it’s received as a cautionary tale or redemption narrative (or both) is up to you, I suppose, but my hope in writing it is to honor in some small way the memory of my beloved cousin and the master storyteller herself. You’re forever in my heart, Amanda Claire.

Still to this day, I love all things spooky: haunted houses, eerie movies, witchy vibes. I was a Halloween baby, so I simply can’t help my (Scorpio) self. Not to mention, it’s all very reminiscent of my formative years with Amanda. But now I proceed with caution where the mystical is involved, because he who seeks shall find. My advice? Be careful what you seek.

Photo by Aron Visuals.