Ouija Board

From: 
Story type: Ghost
Location: German Displaced Persons Camp
Source: Form Submission

After WW II many people were homeless. Many had traveled around occupied Europe to evade the Nazis and many to just find work or a place to stay.

When the war ended the Allies gathered up the homeless people and put them in Displaced Persons Camps. A woman who had been one of these camps told this story to me. In the evenings after dinner there was nothing to do. Read, talk and entertain one another. One of the entertainments was to take a large sheet of paper and put the alphabet above and the numbers below with yes in one corner and no in the opposite corner. Then an unglazed plate was turned upside down and then marked with a pencil stroke at a point on the edge. The plate was placed upside down on the paper and everyone put a finger on the plate. People would take turns asking questions. The plate would always move, but moved best when the storyteller's sister would put her finger on it.

One of the questions regarded a favorite uncle of the storyteller. They asked where he was, as the location of your scattered family was a much-discussed topic at that time. The plate moved all over the board, but didn't really come to a letter or any answer. Much later they found out that he had been dead at the time they asked.

A question the storyteller asked was where she would be in 20 years. The plate spelled out the Lithuanian word, Syracuse. Why in heaven's name would she go to Greece she thought when this was revealed. Twenty years later she was living in Syracuse, N.Y.