The Ouija Board's Warning

Table of Contents

The Beginning: When They Touched the Forbidden

It started as a dare on a rainy Friday night. Four teenagers in a dimly lit attic, a dusty Ouija board laid out on a crooked table, and a single candle flickering as wind howled outside. Nothing about it felt safe—but maybe that’s why they did it.

“Alright,” said Claire, brushing her red hair behind her ear. “Everyone ready?”

“This is so cliché,” said Marcus, rolling his eyes. “We’re going to summon some poor ghost who just wants peace.”

“That’s the point,” Jenna grinned. “Besides, we’re not really contacting spirits. It’s just subconscious muscle movement. Proven science.”

“Still,” muttered Ethan, the quietest of the group, “let’s not mock anything. Just... follow the rules.”

Claire nodded. “No letting go of the planchette until the spirit says goodbye. Got it?”

Everyone placed their fingers on the small triangular planchette. The candle dimmed, as if acknowledging their attention.

“Is anyone there?” Claire asked aloud.

For a few seconds, nothing happened. The wind outside shook the windows, and Marcus let out a fake gasp.

But then the planchette moved.

Slowly. Deliberately.

It slid to the letter Y... then to E... then to S.

Jenna blinked. “Who’s moving it?”

“Not me,” Ethan said, voice tight.

“What is your name?” Claire asked, her voice steady.

The planchette began to slide across the board: R... E... N... T... O... N.

“Renton,” whispered Jenna. “Doesn’t sound familiar.”

“Are you from this house?” asked Marcus, now intrigued despite himself.

N... O.

“Then why are you here?” Ethan asked.

There was a pause. The planchette didn’t move.

Suddenly, it jolted to the word "W-A-R-N", then stopped.

Claire leaned forward. “Warn us about what?”

The board was still again. Then slowly: “D-O-N-'-T—L-E-T—T-H-E—F-I-F-T-H—S-P-E-A-K”

“What the hell is a ‘firth’?” Marcus muttered.

“Maybe it meant 'fifth'?” Jenna suggested, brow furrowed.

But before anyone could ask more, the candle blew out. Total darkness swallowed them.

Someone screamed—Ethan—and in the scramble, Claire’s elbow knocked the board off the table. When the lights came back, the board was gone. Only the planchette remained, cracked down the middle.

“I’m out,” said Marcus, grabbing his coat. “This was fun until it got weird.”

But Ethan was pale, shaking. “No. You don’t get it. It said ‘don’t let the fifth speak’. There are four of us. Who’s the fifth?”

Silence. Claire glanced around. Four people. But the room felt... crowded.

They left the attic in silence, none daring to speak of what happened.

—

Two days later, Marcus disappeared.

No trace. No call. Just gone. The only thing found was his phone—still recording—in his car parked near the woods. The last few seconds of audio were muffled breathing and a whisper: “Five… Five… I see them now.”

The remaining three gathered in Jenna’s basement, avoiding the attic at all costs. The air between them was heavy.

“You think it’s connected?” Jenna asked, voice barely a whisper.

“He was mocking it,” Ethan said. “The board. The warning. What if this thing meant it?”

Claire looked at them. “We have to go back. We need to ask again.”

“Are you insane?” Jenna snapped. “What if we’re just making it worse?”

“It’s worse if we ignore it,” Claire replied. “Whatever we contacted—it didn’t want to hurt us. It tried to warn us.”

They returned to the attic that night. The board was exactly where they left it—on the floor, dusty but untouched. Claire repaired the planchette with tape, then lit the candle again.

“Let’s try,” she said. “One last time.”

They placed their fingers on the board.

“Renton,” Claire whispered. “Are you still there?”

The planchette hesitated, then slid to Y-E-S.

“What happened to Marcus?” Jenna asked, her voice shaking.

The answer came slower this time: “T-H-E—F-I-F-T-H—I-S—N-O-T—Y-O-U-R—F-R-I-E-N-D.”

“Is the fifth one of us?” Ethan asked.

“N-O.”

Then: “A-M-O-N-G—Y-O-U—B-U-T—N-O-T—O-F—Y-O-U.”

They looked at each other. The candle flickered wildly, though there was no draft.

Then the planchette slid rapidly: “C-H-E-C-K—T-H-E—M-I-R-R-O-R.”

Jenna turned toward the old wall mirror behind them. Her reflection stared back—except something was wrong. Ethan’s reflection wasn’t moving. His real body was trembling, but the reflection just stood there, smiling.

“Ethan,” Claire whispered, grabbing his arm. “Your... your reflection.”

Ethan looked—and froze.

“That’s not me.”

As if on cue, the reflection blinked and moved... but not in sync. It stepped forward—out of the mirror. The air grew ice-cold. The candle blew out again. In the pitch black, there was screaming, and the sound of glass shattering.

When Claire opened her eyes, she was lying alone in the attic. The board was gone. Jenna was gone. Ethan was gone.

Only one thing remained: a new planchette, carved from bone, with a single word etched in it—"RUN."

But Claire didn’t run. Not immediately.

Instead, she searched for Renton. Night after night, she tried again. New boards, new candles. No answer.

Until one night, weeks later, the planchette moved again.

“Is this Renton?” she asked.

“N-O.”

“Then who?”

It spelled slowly, deliberately: “T-H-E—F-I-F-T-H—S-P-O-K-E.”

Claire dropped the planchette in horror. She understood. The warning hadn’t been about preventing the fifth from entering. It was about stopping it from speaking. And now, it had.

From that moment on, whispers followed her. Shadows stretched longer than they should. The mirror in her room cracked from the inside out. One by one, everyone she loved forgot her name. Her house grew colder each night. The candles never stayed lit. The fifth wasn’t among them anymore—it was inside her.

And yet, something else changed. She began to hear Renton clearly—not through the board, but in her dreams.

“There’s a way,” he whispered. “But the cost is high.”

“What cost?” she asked, again and again.

Finally, one night, she saw it—a choice. Return the fifth to where it came from... by replacing it with another.

Claire stood on the roof of her old school the next evening, wind howling around her. She had brought the board and planchette. She lit five black candles. One for each soul lost: Marcus. Jenna. Ethan. Herself. And the fifth—unnamed.

“Take me instead,” she said to the shadows. “Let them go.”

The planchette moved with terrifying speed: “A-C-C-E-P-T-E-D.”

Darkness fell.

The next morning, the attic was empty. No trace of Claire, no board, no candles. But Jenna and Ethan awoke in their own beds—alive, unharmed, and without memory of the game.

Marcus’s car was found parked outside his home, keys still in the ignition. He swore he never left the house.

No one remembered Claire Morgan.

Except the mirror. In every one of their homes, the same crack appeared across the center. And sometimes, just for a second, they could see her—watching, waiting, mouth silently forming one final word:

“Don’t…”