Megan Crewe – another world, not quite ours

Strangely, given that I was a pretty imaginative kid in general, I never had any imaginary friends. For about a year, though, I did have an entire imaginary world.

I don’t remember exactly how it came about. Some time beforehand, I’d read and adored THE CHANGELING by Zilpha Keatley Snyder, in which the two main characters make up a fantastic world where they act out an intense and intricate storyline, simply for their own enjoyment. And in fifth grade I became close friends with a classmate who did have imaginary friends, and loved making stuff up just as much as I did. She also loved unicorns. (I was more of a dragon person, but willing to be flexible.)

Somehow that combination of factors resulted in the creation of Unicorn Valley.

Unicorn Valley (or U.V. as we usually referred to it, for simplicity’s sake and also to be mysterious when talking about it among others) was a world of myth and magic that conveniently existed on a parallel plane with our school yard. We entered it by jumping onto the storm drain in one corner of the yard and exited the same way. While there, we and our unicorn friends had great adventures and battled all sorts of fiendish creatures.

We spent just about every recess in fifth grade in U.V. We’d even come by the school yard to play there if we got together over the weekend.

But then in sixth grade we were in different classes, and started hanging out with different people, and U.V. started to fade. I remember one time, I think toward the end of that year, we were hanging out on the weekend and I suggested returning to U.V., hoping to recapture the excitement of it. But for whatever reason it fell flat. I couldn’t suspend my disbelief enough any more to get wrapped up in it. That was the last time we went. But I still have fond memories of that year when the magic worked.

That’s my story — I’d love to hear yours! Did you have imaginary friends as a kid? Worlds? Tell me all about them.

When I was about 15, I bought myself a Ouija board. It wasn’t one of those nice, old-fashioned ones, but at least it was wood, and I figured it was good enough.

One evening I took it over to my best friend’s house. I was sleeping over, and the two of us were alone in the house. We turned off most of the lights and sat across from each other over the board, and waited for the ghosts to come. When the planchette started moving, we asked tons of questions–about who the speaker was and their life, and about things in our lives (mostly about boys).

The scariest moment was when the lamp that had been lighting the living room abruptly turned off. I think we both jumped about a foot in the air. Then my friend remembered that the lamps were on an automatic system to turn on and off (for when her family wasn’t home, to discourage burglers by making them think someone was home), and it wasn’t so scary any more.

Nothing the “ghosts” told us that night actually came true. And I wasn’t entirely surprised. After I got home the next day, I got out the Ouija board and tested the planchette. And I discovered that I could very easily move it without feeling like I was moving it. I knew I was directing it, but the sensation was as if my hand was being pulled. (This presumably is because of how smooth the board and the bottom of the planchette are.) So I’m sure neither of us cheated that night, but I’m equally sure we were in fact the ones moving the planchette.

How about you–got a Ouija board story to share?

Camp’s always a great place for ghost stories, isn’t it? The day camp I went to a few summers when I was a kid had one sleepover night each year. On that night, we’d go on a hike with our group through the dark across the fields, and then the counselors would tell us the story of the ghost train.

According to the story (to the best of my memory), near the camp grounds there’d once been this mansion where a rich and mean-spirited man had lived. He felt nearly everyone in his life had betrayed him in one way or another, so one evening he invited various friends and family members over for a dinner party. During the party, he went crazy and turned on them, murdering all of them. Then he ran from the house, fleeing the scene of his crimes.

But he didn’t get away. As he was running through the night, he heard a sound like a train’s whistle, even though there were no train tracks in the area. Dismissing it as his imagination, he hurried on. But he heard the sound again, and the whir of its passing over the tracks, and it was getting closer. As he ran, the lights of the train appeared, and the ghostly engine hurtled into him, killing him. And that was his punishment for his murders.

I’ve tried to find the source for this story (though it’s possible it was something the camp made up)–if you know one that you think might be the same story, or one this one was based on, let me know!

What ghost story do you remember best from your childhood?

When I was in grade six, one of the popular stories going around was about Bloody Mary. According to a close friend who claimed to have attempted this herself, what you had to do was go into a bathroom, close the door, and turn off the light, then say “Bloody Mary” three times while looking into the mirror. She’d tried it once on her own and once with friends and both times she’d seen some sort of blurry image that had freaked her out so much that she ran right out of the bathroom shrieking.

She tried to convince me that we should give it a shot, but being somewhat more timid than her, I figured that I’d rather let this Bloody Mary person rest in peace.

Apparently this tradition of calling Blood Mary (or Mary by other names) in the mirror had been going on for quite a while: see articles at Wikipedia and Snopes.

How about you all–have any of you ever called Bloody Mary? Did you see anything?

What other ghost “games” have you played or heard of?