By KEN KORCZAK
Three college students use a Ouija board to contact The Doors frontman Jim Morrison and get a lot more than they bargained for. A true story.
(Author’s note: This is Chapter 2 of my forthcoming book, “Secrets of the Lost Ouija Board Files.” It documents my 50+ years of Ouija board use. This chapter stands alone, but readers who wish can gain more context if they visit and Chapter 1 which I have presented in two parts on my Medium site. You can find Chapter 1 on Medium here):
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Remember that my Ouija session with Tiny Smyth (see it here in Chapter One) took place when I was about nine years old — now I invite you to jump ahead with me some 10 years when I was age 18 or 19 and a freshman in college.
Yes, I kept a Ouija board in my dorm room.
By this time, I had about a decade of Ouija practice under my belt. In those 10 years, I had developed a bag of tricks for dealing with Ouija contacts consisting of a wide variety of beings and entities — including so-called “trouble makers.”
So, without further ado, here is how my first true “demon session” played out:
First, some background to the session:
The year was 1977. I was a freshman living in a 14-story dormitory at a state university in the city of Moorhead, Minnesota, which is the sister city Fargo, North Dakota. The latter is just across the Red River of the North. It forms the border between North Dakota and Minnesota.
I lived on the sixth floor of my dormitory. Our rooms were randomly assigned by the college housing administration. Thus, my next-door neighbor was someone I had just met upon arrival. We would soon become great friends, however. He preferred to be called his nickname which was “Arlo.”
As an ominous preview of the eerie events that were about to take place, it just so happens that Arlo had been randomly assigned a room number that was the dreaded “Number of the Beast,” 666. I was next door in 668. (Room 667 was across the hall).
My new friend and neighbor Arlo was into a lot of things. For example, he was obsessed with Jim Morrison, the frontman of the iconic ’60s rock band, The Doors. As you probably know, Morrison led a short, tumultuous and tragic life. He was already dead by 1977, my first year of college. He died apparently of a heart attack in a bathtub in Paris, France, in 1971. He was only 27 years old.
(Note: No autopsy was ever performed on Morrison’s body to determine the actual cause of death. This in turn spawned a number of conspiracy theories involving murder, suicide and the suggestion that Morrison is not dead at all but faked his death.)
My friend Arlo expressed his own uncertainty as to whether Morrison was truly dead. These conspiracy theories were floating around in 1977, six years after Morrison’s death. Unlike me, Arlo was on the cutting edge of the music scene. He listened to a lot of punk rock, which had just emerged in those days. Of course, he listened to a lot of sixties-era rock, and The Doors were his supreme favorite from that amazing decade of musical innovation.
Anyway, Arlo thought it was cool that he was assigned Room 666. He felt that this was more than a coincidence, and perhaps a synchronistic event. That’s because he had been interested in the topic of demonology since his junior high school years. Arlo was amazingly well-read and versed in demon lore. He was familiar with the opposite, as well — angelology, the study of angels.
Arlo was something of a genius. For a young man of 19, he could speak with remarkable intellectual authority across a wide range of topics. He was also a terrific artist. As for myself, a person who can barely draw a decent stick man, I was impressed by Arlo’s natural ability to create striking illustrations with colored pencils and ink markers. Think of the kind of art you see in some of the more exotic superhero comic books or the avant-garde graphic novels of today. Arlo could have easily worked as a professional in those mediums. He was that good! A natural!
Arlo was a frail, slender young man with longish thin brown hair that was tinged a natural brick red. His face was pale, and his eyes were large, sad, yet luminous. He was a careless, almost shabby dresser. Arlo and I were from different regions of Minnesota, but we became fast friends after becoming dorm neighbors and discovering we had a lot in common. He was especially interested in my 10 years of opening channels with the Ouija board, partly because he had never had any luck in making it work himself, despite his deep interest in demonology.
One day, Arlo suggested we conduct what he called an “Ouija Seance” in his dorm room, No. 666. He was keen to leverage my Ouija experience in contacting demons since he had never been successful in his own similar efforts. Arlo wanted to see if some demon somewhere might know something about the ultimate fate of Jim Morrison, wherever he might be in the afterlife, if he was anywhere at all.
Arlo may have been into things like demonology, but he was also something of a hard-nosed skeptic. In fact, he described himself as an atheist. That suggests his interest in supernatural beings like demons and angels was more academic than anything else. However, he also possessed an open mind that was flexible enough to explore cutting-edge possibilities.
I don’t know why he thought that Morrison should be hanging out with demons in the afterlife, or if he even believed in such things. On the other hand, if anyone was a likely candidate to have an association with “Darker Forces,” Morrison was a likely candidate. Incredibly handsome, brilliant, charismatic and adored by millions of fans, he was nevertheless a deeply troubled and tormented man. His severe alcohol and drug abuse seemed driven by hinted-at dark secrets stemming from his childhood and strict upbringing.
His father, George Stephen Morrison, was a tough, by-the-book Rear Admiral in the U.S. Navy. The elder Morrison was instrumental in nothing less than sparking the Vietnam War.
Admiral Morrison and his wife did not believe in physical disciplinary techniques for their children, such as spanking, but they may have overcompensated for that by meting out severe verbal dress-downs fit for military recruits, not children. Whatever the case, Jim Morrison was a deeply haunted man and known for his interest in what might be on “the other side” of normal reality.
The name of his band itself, The Doors, is an homage to the idea that there are “doorways” to other dimensions of reality. Morrison was inspired by Aldous Huxley’s book “The Doors of Perception” which referred to alternate-consciousness states or perceptions gained through the use of psychedelic drugs.
(Note: I did not learn until many years later that Jim Morrison was also deeply interested in demonology. As a young man, he searched out and read numerous obscure books on the topic. Morrison’s high school English teacher provides this information in a book titled, “No One Here Gets Out Alive”)
No One Here Gets Out Alive was written by Jerry Hopkins and Danny Sugarman. In it, they quote Morrison’s high school teacher:
“Jim read as much and probably more than any student in class, but everything he read was so offbeat I had another teacher … check to see if the books Jim was reporting actually existed … they were books on sixteenth- and seventeenth-century demonology. I never heard of them, but they existed.”
So, there back in my college days, I agreed to conduct an “Ouija seance in search of Jim Morrison” as Arlo suggested. As a demon expert, Arlo insisted that we take stringent safeguards to protect ourselves from any evil beings we might contact. I considered this to be nonsense, but I went along with it to humor my friend. I thought he might have been just playing the whole thing for melodrama, although I wasn’t entirely sure.
Because Arlo and I both had been raised in Catholic families, we both had access to certain ecclesiastical implements. For example, Arlo had a bottle of what he called “uber-powerful holy water.” Its vaunted potency came from the fact that his bottle was filled from none other than the famous grotto spring of Lourdes in France, an extremely sacred site for Catholics because apparitions of the Virgin Mary occurred there.
(Side Note: I suggest you read more on the events said to have happened at Lourdes. The phenomena there is a fascination to both traditional religious believers, but also UFO buffs and those who subscribe to other paranormal theories. In addition to Christian miracles, Lourdes is associated with the sightings of fairies. It is an area held sacred in ancient pagan belief systems as well.)
Arlo’s parents had been to France to visit the holy site and brought back several bottles of water. One of these they gave to Arlo as a gift. The water had been further fortified with a blessing by an old and well-regarded Italian Catholic monk by the name of Brother Arcuri. I won’t go into details as to why the Lourdes water had also been blessed by the saintly Brother Arcuri, but let’s just state for the record that this was some pretty potent stuff!
I jokingly said to Arlo: “It’s like the plutonium of holy water!”
Arlo suggested that we wipe down the Ouija Board with this Lourdes-caliber Holy-H2O, and then also lathe the planchette before we started our session. He further suggested that we should both take a sip of the Holy Water. I agreed to this as well, enjoying the whole process. For me, ever the cynical skeptic, a swig of vintage Lourdes was an amusing lark. Arlo used a white cloth — which he had purified with the smoke of burning sage — to wipe the board and planchette. Arlo then purified the interior of his Room 666 with sage incense and sprinkles of holy water.
As it happens, I also had a religious artifact to contribute to our effort.
I owned a pair of candles made of beeswax. These were bound in the form of a cross. The bindings material was palm fronds, and these palm fronds were sourced from Jerusalem itself. This very cross of candles had been used during the Celebration of St. Blaise at my church back home. During the Celebration of St. Blaise, everyone gets their throats blessed because St. Blaise is the saint who takes care of throat ailments. (If you are a Catholic, you may know all this).
Here is how I happened to come into possession of this particular set of St. Blaise Candles:
Most of the time, the Celebration of St. Blaise is held on Feb 3, but one year, Sunday happened to fall on the day before, Feb. 2 — which is my birthday. Feb. 2 is also Ground Hog Day. So, the Blessing of the Throat ceremony was held on my birthday that year. Additionally, it just so happened I was acting as our priest’s assistant during the church service and ceremony that day. I was dressed in a white robe — you know — the whole bit.
When I told our priest that it happened to be my birthday, (I had just turned 16) he made a gift of the candles to me. This was after they had been used to bless the throats of about 200 people of our congregation! Thus, these candles not only had an excellent pedigree, but they were also spiritually charged! When I told Arlo about the quality of my holy candles, he was not only pleased but even more delighted to hear that my birthday was Feb. 2.
Most people in America today think of Feb. 2 as Ground Hog Day, but in the Christian tradition, Feb. 2 is “Candlemas” and also the day that the infant Jesus was presented in the Temple. Feb. 2 is also a major holiday for pagans. They call it Imbolc which is, “the day the light is reborn into the world.” Imbolc literally means: “In the belly of the mother.” Actually, the Christians swiped Imbolc from the pagans and changed it to Candlemas, but I digress.
And it keeps getting better. Listen to this:
As it happens, Arlo’s birthday was Feb 3! Yes! One day after mine! Thus, his hatch day was the traditional St. Blaise Day. We thought this was another good sign and yet another truly fantastic coincidence. It really seemed something powerful was brewing!
However, we were in for an even bigger surprise. That’s because the entity we would eventually contact during our Ouija session would tell us something that was yet even more coincidental — in fact, mind-blowing! — as you shall soon see. Please read on — you’ll be amazed!
So, anyway, Arlo had the super-powered-plutonium-grade holy water, and I had my super-double-secret-and-extra-holy candles of St. Blaise, which had not only performed the blessing of hundreds of throats, but which were also synchronized with Arlo’s birthday. Furthermore, the candles had been consecrated not just with standard run-of-the-mill holy water but also with some special kind of Catholic holy oil.
We would use these candles to illuminate our Ouija Session. I think anyone would agree that we were well prepared to confront the demon world via the Ouija board!
Yeah! Bring … it … on!
After much preparation, we were ready.
Another guy who lived on our floor caught wind of our impending session and begged to sit in as an observer. His name was Stu. I told Stu he could be present, but suggested he do something useful, such as act as the session recorder. He readily agreed to this. Arlo objected to Stu’s presence on the grounds that he had nothing to bring to the session similar to the holy icons we had supplied. I suggested Stu should partake of the Lourdes holy water and we could consecrate him with incense.
Stu refused this, however, on the grounds that he aspired to become a member of the Rosicrucian Order, even though he was barely a neophyte of that ancient quasi-Christian mystical group at the time. I must admit, I don’t understand how partaking in holy water violated the precepts of Rosicrucianism. Stu was presently at work on only his third mandamus for his journey up the ladder of the Rosicrucian system, but I didn’t question it at the time.
Still, I was sufficiently impressed that Stu was striving to ascend his personal path within a worthy mystical order. I reminded Arlo that the word Ouija is believed to come from the ancient Egyptian word which means “Good Luck” and that the Rosicrucian’s claim origins in the mysticism of esoteric Egyptian knowledge.
And so, Stu was in.
(Note: Even though Arlo and I knew that contacting demons via the Ouija Board was forbidden by the Catholic Church, we did not care, since neither of us were practicing Catholics at that point.)
That being the case, we did not consider that our holy implements would be affected by our lapsed status from the church. I suppose we still had a certain respect for the Church in terms of the mystical implements it trafficked in since this was of at least historic and sociological interest. But again, in my mind, this was all just basically theater anyway. We were just some young college guys noodling around!
At last, the big event was ready to commence. The session would start at midnight in Room 666. Present were Arlo, me and Stu, our Rosicrucian transcript recorder. The St. Blaise candles were lit. However, here is where things already started to get slightly out of control.
Let me explain:
After we seated ourselves before the Ouija board, I was surprised that Arlo had prepared for himself a holy water mixture to drink. Furthermore, I was extremely dismayed to see that he had planned to drink more than holy water.
Get this:
- In a small wine glass, Arlo poured about two ounces of Mogen David blackberry wine.
- Into the wine, he added a small amount of the Lourdes holy water.
- But then, Arlo added about an ounce of Vick’s Formula 44 cough syrup!
- And finally, he put in — and as unbelievable as this sounds — a tablespoon of kerosene into the mixture!
He drank the concoction down in one gulp!
GAK!
Arlo began to prepare the same cocktail for me, but I stopped him short. I told him that I sure as hell (no pun intended) would not be drinking any kerosene this night, nor any night for that matter. I also refused the wine and Vick’s Formula 44. I was a total nondrinker in those days. I asked only for a sip of the Lourdes holy water straight up. Arlo complied, albeit with poor grace. Stu, of course, refused even the holy water.
After this incredible delay, I finally opened the session:
Ken: “We offer our greetings to the vast Underworld! We seek contact with certain entities known in our world as demons. We command a demon to come forth and speak!”
The planchette immediately began spinning in circles but not spelling anything. So, Arlo spoke next.
Arlo: “Demons! Stop your dithering! Come forth and beware! We command total power over you! You cannot refuse us!”
Presently, we started getting letters and words.
ANSWER: ROTTEN CRIB BABIES! WHY DO YOU SEEK?
Arlo: Our purposes are of no concern to you. We ask the questions. To whom do we speak?
ANSWER: THAT WHICH HAS NO NAME.
(Note: Arlo said demons never give their names willingly because, according to demonology lore, anyone who knows a demon’s name gains command over that demon.)
Arlo: Tell us your name, demon!
ANSWER: I DO NOT SERVE YOU, PATHETIC BUTTER MAKER!
(Note: Strangely, Arlo seemed unusually surprised shaken by being called a “butter maker.” This was exceedinlgly odd in my mind. I would not learn why until later. Since Arlo was already put strangely off-balance, I asked the next question).
Ken: Demon, why do you call my friend “butter maker?”
ANSWER: ASK HIM!
Ken: We ask the questions. You are obligated to answer. Tell us your name!
ANSWER: I HAVE NO NAME, CRIB BABY. YOU SUCK THE THUMB OF THE BUTTER MAKER!
Ken: Shut up and be compliant! It will not go well for you if you are not cooperative. We will not release you until you do. Will you comply?
ANSWER: PATHETIC CRIB BABIES WHO SUCK EACH OTHER’S THUMBS! YOUR FRIEND IS AFRAID!
(Note: Arlo and I both immediately looked at Stu, who indeed looked unusually nervous. His eyes were wide and his face ashen).
Ken: Although we are indifferent to your motivations, tell us why you call us crib babies who suck each other’s thumbs?
ANSWER: PATHETIC MOTHER’S BOYS. ASK YOUR WET NURSE!
(Arlo had recovered now, although he was a bit glassy-eyed because his holy water-kerosene cocktail seemed to have kicked in. He spoke next).
Arlo: Demon, we will give you one more chance to tell us your name or face the consequences!
ANSWER: VULGAR BRAT! SUCK YOUR THUMB!
Arlo: Demon, since you refuse to give us your name, I will hereby name you and hold you to the name I give you. You will answer to it. I name you Kax!
(Note: After he said this, Arlo wrote the name “Kax” on a slip of paper with a calligraphy pen, then held it up to our holy St. Blaise candles and burned it).
Arlo: Kax, you will now attend to our questioning, and you will not dissemble!
ANSWER: I CAST A ROT UPON YOUR SOUL!
Arlo: Do your best, Kax! Now tell us, Kax, what do you know of the deceased soul of Jim Morrison?
ANSWER: HE ROTS IN HELL LIKE ALL DEAD HUMANS!
(Note: I jumped in with the next question).
Ken: Kax, you will stop lying and stop speaking in generalities. Tell us specifically what you know about Jim Morrison.
ANSWER: WILL YOU RELEASE ME IF I ANSWER?
Ken: No! You will answer questions according to our will and for as long as we desire. Tell us truthfully about your knowledge of Jim Morrison!
ANSWER: BAH! THE DEMENTED HUMAN LIVES YET, BUT HE WILL BE WITH US SOON ENOUGH.
(Note: This really got Arlo’s attention.)
Arlo: Kax, are you telling us that Jim Morrison is not dead and that he faked his death?
ANSWER: WILL YOU RELEASE ME IF I ANSWER?
Arlo: Kax, we tire of your insolence! I hereby fine you 10 credits! You are now indebted to us for 10 credits. I will remove one credit if you speak truthfully of Jim Morrison!
ANSWER: I HAVE TOLD YOU ALL I KNOW, BUTTER MAKER. MORRISON LIVES!
Arlo: Stop calling me butter maker! Where does Jim Morrison live? In what location?
ANSWER: TEXAS! I HAVE RETIRED MY CREDITS. RELEASE ME!
Arlo: Certainly, you are delusional! I extract only a single credit. You owe us nine credits!
ANSWER: YOUR FRIEND IS AFRAID. HIS THUMB GROWS PAINFUL!
(Note: Arlo and I were so focused on the board, we had almost forgotten about Stu. We looked at him, and indeed, he said that his thumb was inexplicably throbbing with pain. He showed us the troubled digit. I was surprised to see that it looked unusually swollen. Stu was beyond nervous. He appeared on the verge of some kind of episode. I told him to get out, but he wanted to stay. I think he didn’t want to look like a wimp, although he was probably eager to leave).
Ken: Kax, you must think we are stupid. We are not. You are stupid. We don’t care about Stu’s thumb, nor our own. I dare you to infect my thumb!
ANSWER: YOU SUCK YOUR FRIEND’S THUMB IN THE CRIB!
Ken: Kax, why do you keep saying we suck thumbs in the crib? Does this refer to anything significant? We command you to answer truthfully. We will subtract an additional credit point toward your release.
ANSWER: ASK YOUR WET NURSE! RELEASE ME!
(Note: At this point, Stu began to moan and was holding his thumb. I told him to show it to me. I was amazed to see it was about twice its normal size! Arlo stared glassy-eyed at Stu’s thumb through the dim light cast by the St. Blaise candles. Then Arlo suddenly turned his head away and vomited. At this point, it seemed to me that both Stu and Arlo were in over their heads. I decided to end the session).
Ken: Listen to me now, Kax. You are indebted to us to the count of 20 credits! I issue these additional points of bondage as punishment for your mischief. I now command you to fall into a deep sleep. You will retire to a state of unconsciousness for one thousand years. At that point, your debt of 20 credits will be paid in full, and you may re-awaken. Your name will no longer be Kax. Furthermore, when you awaken, you will disburse your energy and serve only the power of love and will never work devilments again!
I then took the bottle of Lourdes water and doused the candles with them. I poured more of the water onto the Ouija board and planchette. Then I got up to switch on the lights.
Blinking under the harsh fluorescent lights of the dorm room, Arlo looked pale and ill — after all, he had drunk wine, cough syrup and kerosene! Stu bolted out the door. Arlo plopped down in his bunk. I went back to my room to make notes about the whole event.
The next morning, I checked in with Stu to see about his thumb. Stu said he went to the campus medical center. The doctor told him his thumb had developed an infection. The doctor said it was probably because Stu was a compulsive nail-biter. It seems that a hangnail on his thumb had become infected, probably from bacteria transmitted from his mouth. He was prescribed an antibiotic. His thumb was cured in a few days. It must have been a mere coincidence that the infection flared up during our demon session — or so I theorized.
I considered the whole session to be interesting, although something of a disaster. My view was that Arlo’s obsession with Jim Morrison was a waste of effort — Kax probably didn’t know Jim Morrison from Janis Joplin.
The “demon” most likely only told us whatever we wanted to hear. However, something incredibly interesting was yet to be discovered! The next weekend, I went home to visit my family. I told my mother about my friend Arlo — whose real name or even real nickname I’m not revealing, by the way.
When I told my mother Arlo’s true first and last name, she expressed immediate surprise. Mom went over to a closet, fished through a cardboard box filled with old black-n-white photos. After some searching, she found the one she was looking for. The photo was of two, perhaps three-month-old babies sitting together in a crib.
My mom said:
“That’s you and Arlo. His family lived next door to us years ago. Arlo was born just a day after you were. His mother and I were pregnant at the same time.
“We used to walk together on the railroad tracks when we felt bloated or had sore backs. When Arlo’s mother and I got together for coffee, we would put the both of you in the same crib.
“Arlo and his family moved away when he was about eight or nine months. His dad worked at the creamery. He was the butter maker. It’s amazing that you two ended up being neighbors again almost 20 years later!”
I said: “Yes! That is amazing!”