Are Quija Boards real?

All of my life I have questioned whether Ouija boards were real or not. Are they a toy? Are they real tools for channeling? The answer I received after years of questions changed my perspective toward the spirit world forever.
The story began back in the mid-1980s when my parents had purchased a home from an elderly couple who were retiring to Florida. I was a child at the time and as children do, my first priority was to explore this new home. One day, wondering around the basement, I stumbled upon what I thought was an old board game crammed behind the staircase. As it turns out, the game was actually a very old, dusty, Ouija board. I had no idea what it was and when I showed my parents, they too had never seen one. I suppose at this point I should mention that they are from another country and never heard of such a “game”. I remember taking the board out of the box and wondering why there was an alphabet on it – then I took out the triangle. Here I was, ten years old, thinking to myself why would anyone want to play spelling games at home? So, I sat there, read the instructions, put the triangle in the center of the board, put my little fingers a top of the triangle and asked a question. Nothing happened! I asked again. Still nothing! I thought the game was broken so I threw it out…or at least I thought I did.
Approximately two years later I was emptying out my toy box…after all I was a pre-teen now and didn’t play with toys anymore. Well, to my surprise, at the bottom of the box I found the Ouija board. How did it get there? To this day I still don’t know. But, I decided since it was there again, to try it out one more time now that I knew what it was and what it was supposed to do. So I took the board and triangle out of the box, reread the instructions and put my fingers on the triangle again. This time I sat and took my time really thinking of a good question. What was the question? Well, I simply asked, is this board for real? To my shock and amazement the triangle moved to the “Yes” position. I yelped and removed my fingers from the triangle. Remembering the instructions clearly stating not to do that, I put the triangle back in the center and asked the question again. Once again, the triangle moved to the “Yes” position. Well at that point, I was very excited and started asking all kinds of questions, with the triangle responding each time. Naturally I had to tell my girlfriends about this. That entire summer we had a blast playing with it. The board seemed to enjoy our childish questions and responded favorably each and every time. We even encountered a spirit of a little boy who came out to talk to us each time we “played” with the board. But, by the time school started again the board was forgotten and replaced by thoughts of boys.
It wasn’t until four years later while in high school that the board was brought out of the closet one more time. This time things were slightly different. The “game” was the same, but I was different now and the little boy that we had invoked all those years ago was gone. By this time, I had started dating a boy from a few towns over and was having a general great time with him and our friends. One night, we were all sharing some experiences each of us claimed to have had with ghosts or spirits, and hauntings. I mentioned having the Ouija board and everyone got excited. Naturally, my boyfriend drove me home to pick up the board; what’s a night without a haunting? While we did that, some of the others went to get beer and a party was forming. We all met later that night at an old Indian burial ground for drinking and playing games – Ouija games that is. No one believed me when I told them I was able to bring spirits to our world, until that night. As we all sat there, each of us with a finger on the triangle and me calling out to the spirit of the board, some unusual things started happening. First of all, the night grew very quiet. The air was still, but you could feel a coldness weaving its way around us. Then all of a sudden the air changed and we could smell a very sweet smell. It was then that we heard a voice. It was thin but you could hear it was female and light. We all looked up and to our collective amazement, saw a beautiful Indian maiden floating between the graves singing to herself. We couldn’t make out what she was singing but it sounded so peaceful. We sat there watching her for what seemed like hours (but was only a minute or two) until someone lifted their hand from the triangle and the maiden faded away.
For all the bravado and claims of encountering ghosts this was more than most could take. So the beers were emptied and each left very quietly. For some reason our friends decided not to talk about the experience and none of us ever returned to that grave site again. It was such a lovely scene, yet so disturbing to some that they left the area shortly thereafter. I guess some can’t deal with actually encountering spirits.