October...what a great time to tell you about my Ouija board adventures.

Being a big hard rock fan in general and Led Zeppelin fan in particular, I had to dabble in the occult at some point. Parker Brothers opened the door. One day in the early `90s Scott showed up at band practice with a Ouija board.

For a time the Ouija board was a fixture around our band. One night we were in our drummer's room, and we started asking the spirits what they thought of our band. They said we were all right. I asked them what our weakest link was, and they said the singer. The spirits didn't pull any punches. I started wondering if there might be something to this ouija board stuff.

I was curious where this particular spirit we were talking to had come from. He said he had died in the street and had been hanging around the house ever since. Darren, our drummer, said a construction worker really had died of a heart attack outside their house as he was laying asphalt when the house was being built! Hmm...the dead construction worker was really nice. Not only did he give constructive criticism of our band, he also confirmed that Jimmy Page had never had anal sex with another man. That was good to know.

---

Ouija took center stage at another gathering of our extremely-small clique of friends. As Darren and a friend of ours' girlfriend moved the pointer around the board, our friend had to continually protest, "You know that's not real. I don't know why you guys are bothering with that stuff." He had an idea to prove it to us.

"Ask it who told me I could go on my break today." We asked. The Ouija board nailed it. Our friend went into a fury and grabbed his girlfriend and blazed a trail home.

Though his girlfriend lived probably 20 miles away, within 30 minutes he had already gotten her home and was back at his house, calling us at 2 a.m. He wasted no time with "hellos" before saying, "YOU KNOW THAT SHIT'S NOT REAL!"

---

After everyone was asleep our singer and I were at Scott's kitchen table quizzing the Ouija board further. I was asking if aliens had ever landed on earth, and were they among us? Ouija said yes, they were called the Eight-eyed H People. Could we call them on the phone? Yes, and it gave a number.

The singer and I mused how to best handle calling the Eight-eyed H People. We decided to use a corner payphone and to use *67 to further hide our identities. Now what was the number again? We went back to the board to ask.

We confirmed that there were aliens that could be called by telephone. I asked the board, "Who is this we'll be talking to again?"

"NME," it slowly said.

What did that mean? The singer and I mulled it over, then the singer said, "Say those letters fast, the way they sound!"

N...M...E? NME? Enemy? (Gasp!) ENEMY!

AAAAAAAAAA!!!

Though we were 18-year-old men, we determined we couldn't be alone that night. The singer was coming back to my parents' house and we would sleep in the guest bedroom, him watching the left side of the room and me watching the right. As we went down Scott's back steps the singer swore he heard something growling underneath them.

Before retiring for the night I had more questions, but no Ouija board, so I drew one on notebook paper. The singer and I tried it, and it worked! "You've made a tool to contact the spirits!," the singer exclaimed.

Though I had a Gibson Les Paul and a knack for communicating with the dead, I never became a big star like Jimmy Page.