Boggle during a séance.
Now, I know what you’re thinking. It’s the exact same thing I was thinking when my girlfriend thought it would be a good idea to cure my insomnia.
“That sounds like the dumbest and most boring thing I’ve ever heard.”
She cocked her head and smiled at me. “Well, if it’s so boring, then you’ll go right to sleep!”
Flawless logic but I didn’t know what I was more afraid of: actually contacting a ghost or turning into one of those couples who has “game nights” and invites all their friends over (don’t hate on me I’m just being honest).
Turns out it was neither. Let me explain.
She went all out with the séance. Candles, dark room, mirrors. Even wore this weird purple silk bathrobe. Won’t lie, I was kind of into it…the Boggle. Wait, I mean the séance. Yeah.
Anyway, we got started. She brought out this old boggle set that her grandmother had instead of buying a new one off the internet.
“Precious items to those who have travelled to the great beyond have a greater connection to the spirit realm.” My girlfriend said with overly dramatic arm gestures.
“How is this going to help me sleep again?”
“Would you shut up and do something fun for once?” She snapped back.
It was a simple setup, we were in the dark in the front living room of our house rental, the room had a couch and two windows with a view of the street. In the center of the room she lit a circle of (scented…yeah I don’t know why either) candles around us and we sat on either side of her grandmother’s old Boggle set. We placed our hands on the box and my girlfriend spoke out to seemingly no one in particular, “Spirits, hear us. We beseech, you grant us your knowledge during this darkest of hour. Also, hi grandma.”
“This may be a bad time but I don’t actually know how to play Boggle.” I said.
She gave me the ‘you cannot be serious’ look.
“It’s simple, you connect one letter to another in any direction to make a word. The same letter can’t be used again. This allows the spirits to convey messages to us. Now just shake it.”
We did and when we placed the boggle cube down, the letters read:
| B | E | W | A |
|---|---|---|---|
| R | E | T | H |
| E | S | H | I |
| M | M | E | R |
We both stared at it until I realised what it said.
“Beware the shimmer? Is that what it says? Do I win?”
She looked at me incredulously, again. “We’re not-“ She let an annoyed sigh. “We’re not playing here. This is a serious method of communicating with the spirit realm. Besides, those words aren’t all connected to each other, so no, you didn’t win.”
“Well that sucks.”
With that petty remark of mine, there came a sudden chill over me. I could see my breath condensing in the cold air, the candlelight seemed to flicker all around us, and with a small thud the Boggle box in front of us jolted, by itself I might add, jolted up into the air maybe a foot and landed.
Both of us reflexively lurched back, frightened.
“Did you do that?” I accused my girlfriend.
“No. No, no I, I uh- I didn’t…” I could see with the worried look on her face that she was just as scared as I was.
I waited a few moments just to regain my breath and then I stared down at the letters.
| L | K | O | U |
|---|---|---|---|
| W | O | O | T |
| O | D | T | E |
| N | I | W | H |
“Uh, does this mean anything? It doesn’t look like it says anything.”
My girlfriend slowly edged towards the letters, shuffling forward slowly on her knees, then with a slow and strained motion she craned her neck downwards. “It doesn’t say anything. Yet…”
She stood up, walked over to the small table beside the couch and picked up two pens and two sheets of paper. Handing a pen and paper to me she said, “Well, mister I want to win at Boggle, looks like the spirits have heard your request. Now we have to find out what they say.”
While I was freaked out about the box moving on its own, my girlfriend was having the time of her life.
“I’m up to thirty-two words now, what about you?” She stared at me innocently.
“Isn’t this supposed to be a message from the dead or something?” I asked.
“Well, yeah. But I’ve only got words like, “do it” and “look out”. I don’t think it means much. Maybe the spirits just want to play word games.”
“Well they used all sixteen letters the last time to say something didn’t they?”
“Yeah, they did, before you mocked them. You need to respect the dead.”
“Sure. Whatever.”
To be honest, I thought she was playing some weird trick on me. But it’s not like I had somewhere else better to be so I played along.
‘Look out’. I could see where she got that now. But what if…look out…the window?
“Look out the window.” I said as I traced the path with my finger.
My girlfriend stared at me with a blank face. “That’s pretty freaky.”
“No. You know what, I’m done playing around.” I got up and made my way to the window, walking around my girlfriend sitting on the floor, tiptoeing between the (scented) candles. “This is a neat trick you’ve set up, really, it is. I don’t know how you did it. But you got me.”
“I really didn’t set up anything. I actually didn’t think this would work either…”
“You know what, I’ll humor you. I’ll look out the front window, probably get some silly jump scare, you’ll laugh about it, but then you’ll owe me a-“
I really wish I didn’t look out the window.
Even in the dark of the early morning, I could still see that shimmer. That glint of the streetlight reflecting off the large butcher’s knife, carried by a haggard man in our front yard. I couldn’t see in the dark clearly, but he was probably a few inches taller than and almost twice as thick, and that shimmering silver knife seemed to be as long as half his arm.
Slowly backing away from the window, hoping not to catch his attention, I retreated from the view of the window and whispered to my girlfriend, “Call the police. Call the police now.”
“Why what’s wrong?”
“There’s some lunatic in our front yard holding a large shimmering knife.”
As quietly as I could, I locked all the doors and windows shut. As quietly as she could, my girlfriend called the police and said there was some crazy person wielding a large knife. When I was sure the crazy guy couldn’t get in the house, I went to the séance room.
I was just about to tell my girlfriend to follow me upstairs when the Boggle box shook again. She leaned over and obsessively studied the letters.
“Game’s over Peggy Hill. Time to go upstairs.” I said.
“The shimmer. That’s the knife. My grandma, or somebody, is trying to warn us.”
“Look, babe, it’s a neat trick, I get it, but it’s just a coincidence. Now, we need to go upstairs and wait until the police arrive.”
“No, the letters, look.”
| S | I | E | O |
|---|---|---|---|
| O | H | O | F |
| H | N | R | R |
| T | E | N | U |
“I’m not playing boggle right now, seriously, let’s go.”
I had to practically carry her upstairs, but not before she scribbled the letters on a piece of paper.
I locked the upstairs bedroom door and we sat in almost complete darkness, save for the faint glow of the streetlights seeping through the window and the light from my girlfriend’s phone as she was messing with the letters on her piece of paper. We rested against the back wall underneath another window looking out onto the roof.
“Really, I wish you’d wouldn’t do that.” I whispered to her as she scribbled away.
“Shoe. Foe. Shorn. The letters are a sign. They’re trying to tell as something.” She said as if almost in a trance.”
“You can’t-“ I stopped myself before I got too loud. I was too frustrated with everything happening right now. “How long did the police say they were going to be?”
“Ten…sorry they said five minutes. Run. Roof…”
Stuck in silence with nothing better to do, I looked over to her hastily drawn grid.
“He.”
“Is.”
“On.”
“He is on the roof. Run.” I said to our astonishment. We looked at each other, waiting for the realisation to hit us. We then looked out to the window in front of us but could only see the streetlight shining through.
In total silence, sweat beading down our necks, she clasped my hand tight as I slowly craned my neck to the window above us. There it was: the shimmering light of the knife pressed against the window.
I didn’t even think. I pulled my girlfriend by her arm and we ran out the bedroom door as we heard the window glass shattered behind us.
Those moments were kind of like a blur. I remember stumbling down the stairs and then fiddling with the front door lock. Then we ran for our lives down a dark suburban street when the cop car pulled around the corner and found us.
It took some convincing for the two police officers to believe we weren’t on drugs when they walked into the front room of the house with all the candles set up for a séance.
“You two getting freaky or something?” The more senior officer remarked when he saw it. But he was completely serious when he saw the shattered glass in our upstairs bedroom. Both officers did a complete sweep of the house as we stood in the middle of the candles, now with all the lights in the house on.
They searched every room and the backyard but found nobody, nothing was stolen but we were left frightened for our lives.
The only thing I could do to take my mind off it was play Boggle.
| E | M | V | E |
|---|---|---|---|
| N | H | T | A |
| X | E | S | O |
| T | D | O | R |
I double checked with my girlfriend’s scribbles and it was definitely different from last time. Maybe it got knocked around by that lunatic? Came up with about twelve words before the police came in to give us the all-clear.
“We’ve searched the house twice and found no one. Whoever it was, it looks like he’s left. Probably didn’t find any valuables he was after.” Said the more junior officer.
“But you can’t be sure. Have you checked the roof? What about underneath the house?”
“Trust us. We’ve checked. We won’t leave the neighbourhood with a potentially violent criminal around but we’ll just patrol the streets for now. Rest assured we’ve done all we can.”
They took some of our personal details, our account as far as we can recall, and even asked a few questions about the séance. The more junior officer chuckled when my girlfriend mentioned it was a precious keepsake from her late grandmother but a stern look from her prompted a quick apology.
We followed them out the door as they left and watched as they got in their police cruiser.
I looked up and down the street, both hoping and not hoping to see that shimmer from his knife. But I breathed a sigh of relief when I could only see an empty street.
We went back inside and I slowly walked up to the Boggle box and just stared at the letters. Then it hit me.
I ran back out to the front yard and looked left and right frantically, scanning the neighbours’ houses.
SAVE THEM NEXT DOOR.
I ran out to the cop car without saying a word, both the officers stared at me in silence as I turned around to look back at the right neighbor’s house, and then the left. And on the roof of the left house, just beside their chimney, was the shimmer. The shimmer of the butcher’s knife in the moonlight.
It took about ten minutes for the police officers to get that lunatic down from the roof, woke up the entire neighbourhood (as well as the household that lunatic was stalking). The whole street lined up to watch the police try and corral that psycho down from the roof. Eventually two more police cruisers rolled up and they brought him down.
Later on we found out that he was linked to two previous grisly murders, knife wounds consistent with exact same knife he was carrying.
When it was all done, everyone wandered back inside as if nothing had happened.
My girlfriend blew out all the candles and we both slept on the couch that night. Ironically the best sleep I’ve had in ages.
Next morning I walked into the room and found the Boggle box still in there. Asked my girlfriend why it was still there and she said that she couldn’t move her grandma’s stuff.
I shrugged my shoulders and took a photo with my phone. I’ll leave this last game of Boggle with my girlfriend’s grandma for someone else to solve for now. I might do it later.
| P | M | A | R |
|---|---|---|---|
| A | U | N | E |
| M | N | H | R |
| D | A | R | Y |