The world of hauntings and the seeming undead has fascinated and terrified mankind for centuries. Even in the Bible man is warned by the Lord not to attempt contact with the dead. Crossing that line between the deceased and the living is expressly condemned, and for good reason. What comes from the either side has many times been proven evil and destructive. It has been shown that demonic entities cross over to antagonize the living as impostors of loved ones who have passed. This leads, for example, to a widow unknowingly communicating with an evil spirit disguised as the soul of her dead husband. This kind of mischief can quickly transform into demonic possession or what are known as “Doppelgangers” a German term for an evil twin.

A curious hobby

A woman I once dated had a flirtation with the Ouija Board along with several of her friends when she was attending high school in Dallas. The girls delighted in slumber parties where the teenagers anxiously posed questions that no one else could have known the answers to. With amazement they found that someone or something seemed to have a forbidden knowledge of the unknown. At first, the girls who were largely church goers asked innocent questions to verify authenticity. Questions like, “what is my mother’s maiden name? How old is my brother? What was my first pet puppy’s name?” The answers came fast and were uncannily accurate.

Menacing twist

So, each Saturday or Friday night she and her girlfriends would get together for a pajama party and another session with the Ouija board. Soon the questions began to lose their subtleness and the girls began asking more serious and personal questions. A sinister quality to the Ouija inquiries began to emerge and strange coincidents began to happen. It seemed that whoever was behind the answers from the board began asking questions themselves. Some people have been known to allow the Ouija to rule their lives and they become addicted to consulting the unseen forces who interact with the players. These people lose control of their lives and usually end up in tragedy.

From fascination to horror

One evening the girls were poised for another sleep over and looked forward to another night of weird questions and intriguing answers. However, something was in the air that didn’t seem quite right. With 5 girlfriends clustered around the board waiting for their chance to ask some question they wanted answered suddenly Ouija exploded! Throwing all the teenagers backwards in frightened surprise, the evening took on a very different tone! The experience was so electrifying that they all immediately concluded their flirtation with the unknown never attempting another Ouija session again. At first, they had thought one of the girls had accidentally or intentionally kicked the board up in the air, but they were seated at a card table with an octagonal shape with their legs beneath the top of the surface. There was no way any one of them could have caused such a terrifying event. The stylus used by the players to touch and allow to glide over the board’s surface simply disappeared. Their fascination with the unknown was over. Years later once she and I began dating she told me about her experience wide eyed and nervous as though it had just happened yesterday.

Cinematic enactments

There are many tales of those making contact with the dead and suffering terrible fortune as a result. Even in the movies dating back to the Universal Pictures black and white classics filmed in the 1930’s and 1940’s in the movie “The Devil Commands” Boris Karloff plays a grieving husband who builds a soul vortex machine that he attempts to use to make contact with his deceased wife. It does not end well for him and those who try to help him.

Horrifically revisited

In the movie “Pet Cemetery” a Steven King novel adapted to film, a man tries to hold onto his family through a number of tragic deaths laying to rest his loved ones in an unholy burial ground that Native Americans warn is sour soil and unfit for disposing of the dead in. The deceased come back to life alright but under the command of evil spirits and behave like blood thirsty zombies rather than the familiar loved ones so desperately missed.

Water spirit

White Rock Lake in Dallas has a paranormal spirit of its very own known as the “Lady of the Lake” supposedly a teenage girl of about 16 years in age who dies an untimely death drowning in the lake while out on a date. Seen hitch hiking alongside the lakeshore from time to time in the middle of the night, an elderly couple, parents of the unfortunate girl, were often awakened from there sleep by a motorist who would say they had picked up a young girl by the roadside that night and were directed to drive her home giving them the address. The teenage apparition is described as being dressed in a prom gown, being soaked and wet, staring fixatedly after giving the address of her parent’s home, then vanishing upon arrival leaving only a puddle with perhaps some vegetation from the lake water as the calling card of her ghostly visitation. The story seems to have originated in the 1930’s or 1940’s and continues to crop up again from time to time when a new incident takes place!

Disturbing presence

Yet, there is something else looming on the shores of White Rock Lake not anywhere near as seemingly innocent or conventional as a teenage girl that was encountered by a close friend of mine. It was evil and scared him out of his wits! It had little to do with a child and seemed to be a lot closer in similarity to the Mothman hovering over the water in the shadows with bright red eyes than anything else. So, it seems as if there is more than one entity frequenting the shoreline of White Rock Lake waiting to terrorize the unsuspecting. Over the years the area has been plagued by late night crime and attacks upon women in contrast to a once affluent residential area where two of the Hunt Brothers had built mansions not far from the scenic waters of the lakefront. In a world of conflict and power struggles, we are best advised not to seek out the dead or those entities who seem to have come from the other side. We may not be able to accept what passes through that door.