10 Creepy Stories From Seances That Seemed A Little Too Real
A Seance Gone Wrong Inspired The Conjuring Movie
If you've seen The Conjuring, you have some idea of what happened in the life of Andrea Perron. But the film didn't tell the whole story.
In 1971, Perron and her family moved to a house in Harrisville, RI. They soon discovered that the house was filled with spirits who hadn't yet passed on due to continuous unexplained phenomena happening. Scared for their lives, the Perron family called upon paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren for help. They promised to try to help the family get the spirits out.
When a medium performed a seance, it went dreadfully wrong. She summoned a spirit that went after Perron's mother, Carolyn, throwing her around the house with such force that she sustained a concussion. Perron said, "It was the most terrifying night of my life." After the seance, the family no longer experienced severe supernatural events. Andrea Perron has written three books about the hauntings experienced by her family in their Harrisville home
Britain's Last Witch Revealed A Military Secret
In 1941, psychic Helen Duncan was approached by a mother looking for news of her son, a soldier in the British Royal Navy. Duncan held a seance to conjure up any spirits with news of the man. She revealed that the young man had been lost in the sinking of the battleship HMS Barham . Remarkably, the ship's sinking hadn't yet been revealed to the public to prevent a loss of morale in the difficult days of WWII.
Among the people at the seance were two lieutenants of the Navy. They were immediately suspicious of Duncan, prompting two undercover police officers to attend another seance. The officers promptly detained her, and Duncan was tried under section 4 of the Witchcraft Act of 1735, which forbade deceitful spiritual activity. She was the last person to be tried for witchcraft before the Act's repeal in 1951.
Reports Of 'Zozo' Have Appeared Around The World
Individual stories of spirit contact are creepy enough, but even more eerie is the number of people who claim to have contacted an entity named Zozo. The spirit is most known for having intimate knowledge of people's lives and for its ability to manipulate people and objects to cause harm.
The entity's origins are murky, but people around the world claim to have interacted with it during seances while using spirit boards or while practicing auto writing. Sometimes, Zozo is a mere trickster, while other times it has reportedly possessed people and caused harm. The entity is a special interest to paranormal researcher Darren Evans, whose website and blog have become a hub for reports of Zozo activity.
Whatever the cause, if a spirit identifies itself as Zozo, it might be best to slide that planchette over to "Goodbye."
A Ouija Board Experiment Almost Doomed An Album Release
Experimental rock group The Mars Volta almost canceled an entire album due to a supposedly cursed spirit board. After guitarist Omar Rodríguez-López picked up a Ouija board in Jerusalem and the band used it, they started experiencing strange happenings, including tracks disappearing from the computer, two floods in the studio, equipment ruined, and a valued engineer quitting.
True to form, the band channeled the strange events into their album "The Bedlam in Goliath," released in 2008. Rodríguez-López buried the board to avoid any future incidents, and the band released two more albums before breaking up in 2013.
A Fake Seance Got Unexpectedly Real For A Magic Shop Employee
Bradford J. Angers, a magic store employee and psychology student, got more than he bargained for when a customer paid him $100 to perform a fake seance complete with sounds and visuals. With the aid of a partner, Angers set out to create an entirely fabricated seance that appeared real. Angers pulled it off without a hitch, with disembodied voices speaking predictions about the attendees's loved ones from a mist that formed in the center of the table.
Once it was over, Angers went to help his partner disconnect the equipment they used to produce the special effects, only to find that his partner and the equipment had been locked outside the entire time. Whatever happened during the seance had nothing to do with their plans.
A Ouija Board Connected Users To Heaven And Hell
Some Ouija board experiments are fun ways to spend a harmless Saturday night, but others can be eerie. This Reddit user described an experience on an army base when dabbling with a Ouija board led her and a group of friends to contacting a spirit named Sheryl.
This spirit said she perish in a car accident and was searching for her boyfriend. After continuing to use the board, they managed to get in touch with the boyfriend, who said he was sorry and he loved her very much but couldn't explain why he was sorry. The group contacted a third spirit who said that the reason the boyfriend was sorry was because he was in hell and the girlfriend was in heaven. At that moment, all of the candles in the room flickered out.
Holding A Seance Opened A Door To Demons
Growing up in a creepy, seemingly haunted room can force anybody to take drastic measures. For this unidentified man growing up in Michigan, he knew his room had a bad vibe. When he allowed two occult-dabbling friends to hold a seance to find out the cause of his eerie visions and unexplained voices, things went from bad to worse. The seance backfired - his girlfriend started angrily shouting for the friends to leave. After they left, the man found her trapped in the room, unable to move. Once he pushed a dresser out of the way to gain access, he tried to pick her up but found that she was heavier than normal. Once he got her out, they escaped to the home of his friends where she revealed that she felt like she had been possessed.
The friends returned to his home to try and rid his room of the evil entity. They ended up contacting a demon named Enlil who told them it had been using the bedroom as a gateway and the seance had enabled him to escape, along with a host of other terrifying spirits. The friends managed to close the gateway and rid the room of spirits. From then on, the room seemed to be normal.
An Eerie Prediction Turned A Skeptic Into A Believer
While you can't trust everything a Ouija board tells you, this Reddit user discovered there might be more truth to a prediction than meets the eye. According to the post, the Redditor asked the spirit they connected with to make a prediction about a future news event, to which the spirit replied, "DI DIE DI DIE DI DIE DI DIE" and then "PRINCESS DI." When asked how this would happen, it responded "CAR ACCIDENT." When asked where this would happen, it gave the answer "PARIS." When asked when, it replied "OHIO." The Redditor ended up going to Ohio, but nothing happened, so the spirit's message was dismissed as irrelevant.
A month later, the Redditor went on another trip to Ohio. During that trip, Princess Diana of Wales lost her life in a tragic car accident in Paris.
A Late-Night Spirit Visitor Sought Solace
Sometimes, you don't realize you've experienced something inexplicable until after it's over, as this Reddit user found out when dabbling with a Ouija board on New Year's Eve. A spirit, identifying itself as Eugene, said it was afraid. It directed the poster and their brother to the radio, which was playing a song by the band Heart. The board then began repeating the word "heart," following up with cryptic statements like, "don't go" and "church."
It wasn't until the next morning that the encounter made sense. A distant great-uncle named Eugene had suffered a heart attack overnight, and after passing on the hospital table several times, being revived, and then regaining consciousness, said he'd been terrified he'd end up in hell for not attending church in 20 years, just as the board had indicated.
A Spirit's Warning Predicted A Skeptic's Mishap
Proving the existence of the supernatural to a skeptic is often futile, but that didn't dissuade Cindy Lawson's mother from trying to make her friend Ricky a believer. Lawson's mother was part of a singing group, and the troupe wanted to prove to Ricky - a non-believer - that spirits were real. They held a seance and asked for a series of escalating signs, including slamming doors, strange smells, and knocking sounds.
The night culminated with a visit from a spirit identified as Lorenzo de Medici, a famous patron of the arts in Renaissance Italy, who predicted the skeptical Ricky would soon suffer an accident during his act as a trick cyclist. Though Ricky laughed at the prediction, he did in fact suffer a significant mishap several weeks later, perhaps prompting him to reassess his skepticism about the supernatural realm.
