Ouija Boards and Keyboards

I'm sure it's the fact that Halloween's coming up, but I've had the song "Thriller" stuck in my head lately. I've also been thinking a lot about Ouija boards.

It seemed like every slumber party I went to, right after we crank-called all the boys in our class, someone would haul out the Ouija board and want to have a seance. Even at the age of eleven or twelve I was a huge skeptic.

Me: "This is so stupid."
Friends: "Let's just try it."
Me: "How about we put 'Off the Wall' back on the record player and make up a new line dance?"
Friends: "You're scared to try the Ouija board!"

And they were right. Wasn't it tempting fate to hope someone from the spirit world would drop by and answer our questions by physically moving our fingers across the board? I'd seen the Exorcist, and wasn't keen on the idea of my body being possessed by anyone for any length of time.

Anyway, I bring this up because as I go back and read pages of stories I've written, I sometimes experience that weird Ouija feeling of "Did I really write that? Because it doesn't sound like me." And then I realize, it's really not me. It's my heroine, or my hero, or my villian. But instead of communicating by gliding a planchette over a Ouija board, they're moving my fingers over the keyboard. [Insert creepy music here.]

Yeah, maybe it's a stretch. Apparently, I've watched one too many episodes of the Ghost Whisperer.