Subject: Spooky Story

 Okay, this happened to my friend Matthew. And like I said, I've never
 known Matt to lie, so if he tells me something, I believe him.

 Now, there are two things you should know about Matt. They don't
 figure materially into this story, but they make you think when you know
 them. First, he is the great-great-great-great grandson (I think that's the
 right number of greats) of Devilanse Hatfield, the first half of the Hatfield
 and McCoy feud. Second, Matt had, during the course of his childhood,
 no less than 13 people who were close to him die or suffer horrible tragedy.

 His sister Janet died of hepatitis, his brother fell off a mountain when they were
 mountain climbing and is now a paraplegic; his best friend's parents went out for
 the evening and left the boy and his four brothers and sisters asleep in the cabin
 (this is the Appalachian Mountains in West Virginia). Well, there was a gas leak,
 and somehow it caught a spark and blew up the whole house; two friends came
 to watch Matthew play Little League baseball, and while they were sitting on the
 hill on the edge of the field, a guy in a car on the road behind them had a Dick
 Cheney at the wheel, the car went out of control and ran off the road and plowed
 over Matt's friends. The driver and the boy were killed, the girl was left a vegetable.

 Now, Matt and his lifelong friend Charles put some shoes on, left the Appalachians,
and struck out for the University of Florida in Gainesville to get "edicated".

 One night, Charles came home with a Ouija board and suggested they try it out.
 So Matt and Charles took the Ouija board into the lounge at the end of
 the hall in their dorm and set it up.

 For the first few minutes, it was typical Ouija board stuff. Matt and Charles
 scratched out their questions on the board with the little white triangle and the
 triangle scratched out its answers.

 "Will I win a million dollars?"
 "Yes."

 "Will Charles and I be friends forever?"
 "Yes."

 "Will I get to fuck Kelly Lewis?"
 "In your dreams."

 Then the triangle scratched out Matt's name. Matt played along, figuring it was Charles.
 So he asked who this was speaking. The white triangle scratched out the name Janet.
 Matt looked up at Charles, pissed. "That's not funny, Charles."
 Janet, as you'll remember, is Matt's dead sister. Charles said, "I didn't do it."
 So Matt asked a question only Janet would know the answer to: "All right, if this is
 Janet, what did you say to me the night you died?" And the triangle scratched
 out, "I'll tell Momma you broke the pitcher." A reference to Matt's guilt
 over breaking his mother's favorite pitcher that she got from her grandmother
 and never telling her. She died, and he always wished he had told her.

 So now Matt knew this was real, and he started to cry. He asked
 Janet questions for awhile and she answered through the triangle. Then the
 triangle spelled out, "Somebody's here."  Matt asked her what she meant.
 The triangle started to answer, then came to an abrupt halt, shuddered a minute,
 and was still.

 Matt called out to Janet, but there was no answer.

 Then all of a sudden, the white triangle started tearing around the board
 frantically, jerking back and forth and sometimes jumping off the board.
 Matthew said, "Come on, Charles. I know that's you doing that."
 Charles said, "It's not me, it's not me."

 Matthew could see now that Charles was really scared. Then the lights started
 cutting off and on, then Matt says he felt what could only be a blast of cold air
 and the temperature in the room dropped about twenty degrees. He called Janet's
 name again, but still there was no answer. He turned to Charles, but Charles's face
 had changed, and he looked at Matt oddly, then said, in a voice not his own,
 "Janet isn't here anymore, but I am with you always."

 Well, needless to say,  Matt was freaked. He stumbled out of his chair, backed up
 to the door and turned to run. But the lounge doors wouldn't open. They were
 swinging doors that had no lock and no latch,, so this wasn't possible. Matt started
 banging on the doors and yelling for help. A few of his dorm mates appeared in the
 windows of the doors and tried to open them, but to no avail. They started pushing
 and throwing themselves against the doors, but they wouldnÕt open.

 Just then, Matt was tackled from behind and fell to the floor.
 Charles was on top of him, choking him. Now this is Matt's lifelong friend, remember.
 Matt tried to force him off, but couldn't budge him, and couldn't get his hands off his throat.

 So the lights are cutting off and on, Matt's on the floor, Charles is choking him,
 and the guys are outside the door trying to force their way in.

 Just then, there was a sound like a whoosh, and Charles pulled his hands from
 Matt's throat and sat ramrod straight, like he had been electrocuted.
 The lights came up, Charles collapsed on the floor unconscious, and the guys
 burst through the swinging doors. They grabbed Matt and Charlie and dragged them
 out of the room. They all ran to Matt and Charle's room.

 They were all shaking like crazy, so they lit up a few blunts to calm down.
 After about half an hour, they felt a little calmer. Then a friend of theirs
 walked in carrying the Ouija board. "Hey, you guys left this in the lounge."
 The guys all jumped in and started yelling at the kid to get rid of it.
 He threw it in the closet. "Relax, relax."

 After they had told him the story, he was scared, and they all agreed they were all
 done with Ouija boards. They were also all freaked out and nobody wanted to go
 back to their own room, so they all crashed in Matt and Charles's room and
 turned out the lights.

 A few minutes later, in the dark of the room, they heard a noise coming from the closet.
 A scrape, scrape, scrape. It was the triangle scratching something out on the Ouija board.
 They jumped up, threw on the lights and flung open the closet door. They grabbed the
 Ouija board and the triangle and ran out of their room, out of the dorm and across the quad.
 They took a metal trash can and put the Ouija board and the triangle in it, threw in some
 newspaper, lit the whole thing on fire and watched as the flames burned. They
 didn't leave until the flames had gone out, and there was nothing but a little
 seared material left in the bottom of the trash can.

 Well, that's the story Matt told me. Now I ain't sayin' it is true, and I ain't sayin' it ain't.
 But like I said before, I've never known Matt to lie.
 
 

 Christian Mitchell