(lights up on Todd, seated as though about to do a memoir piece, but with script and music stand, which should indicated to those who know the convention that it is not one. To be read very fast, with slight mania.)

This is a true story.

Some of you know I just went back to Iowa City, and I remembered something that happened while I lived there all those years ago. There was this house at 507 South Linn Street back in the 80’s and some people I knew lived there--Melissa, West, and John.

Melissa was a theatre student at Iowa. Young and pretty, but not terribly social, she had been dating West for a while and moved in with him and his roommate John. After a while, Melissa began to have a romantic interest, and then a sexual relationship with both men.

Melissa was taking a Feminist Studies course and her study group introduced her to Wicca and witchcraft. She was intrigued by the way that sensuality and physical pleasure blended with powerful manipulations of energy.

Melissa was just playing around with this stuff, but the roommate, John, was really into it. He offered to teach her some stuff, talked her into sleeping with her tarot cards under her pillow.

This was the catalyst that began to change everything. John became a tutor to Melissa in the dark arts and helped her to increase sexual pleasure and personal power through what he called "sex magic," carnal rituals based on the teachings of Anton LeVey. They never actually had sex with each other, that is, until She learned that John was giving similar lessons magic and sexual freedom to West. There were some interesting arguments, but eventually the three of them were engaging in sex rites as a threesome and orgiastic parties were often held at the house to cast spells and create elixirs.

Not everyone in the Theatre Department believed in this stuff, they just thought they were nifty little goth parties...with sex. I knew better. And so did others. This sort of thing attacts a bad element...John knew a lot, there was earth in what he taught, but there was a lot of air too...and as much as John knew about black magic, there were others in town who knew a lot more.

At one of these carnal carnivals the three students met a new player named Alex. Alex had a deep interest in the occult and claimed to have unlocked the secrets of the Ouija Board. He said that the board was a cosmic connection between the spirit realm and the physical world. The board was not only a conduit for spectral entities to interact with the real world, but could also be a portal for two-way travel between this realm and the spirit world.

With the help of Alex, strong drink, and illegal drugs, the three roommates became obsessed with using this "novelty item" to open a gateway. On one evening in early October, Alex informed Melissa that the energies of the Ouija might be charged to higher levels if sex rites were conducted on top of it.

He suggested that with his demonstrated ability with the board and her prowess in sex magic, a conjugal union between them on top of the board would energize it in ways that simple table tapping never would. This would be the only way to open that portal which they sought.

At first, she rebuffed him. She enjoyed sex with her two roommates, but was not anxious to add Alex into the mix. He asked her try masturbating on top of the board to see what happened and then reconsider his offer.

She laughed and dismissed the notion as ridiculous.

The thought had been implanted, however, and each time she looked at the board she felt a profound physical longing for sexual release. She took to sleeping with the board, and found that the spirits contacted through it were becoming very interested in her sexual exploits with her roommates and other partners. They refused to answer her questions unless she traded tit for tat with information on her sex life. This made her sessions with John and West uncomfortable.

She’d ask "What am I going to get on my acting final?" The board, in a poorly spelled answer would refuse to tell her unless she took off her shirt.

West started getting jealous of the board’s come-ons to her. She told him it was just a piece of wood. West said, "It's a hell of a lot more than just wood! Board, do you want to fuck my girlfriend?"

The pointer on the board jumped straight to "YES!"

Then started spelling out:

"BORD WANT FUK MISSA ALEX WANT FUK MISSA ECVBODY WNT FUK MISSA BORD WNT WATCH."

Melissa flung the board across the room and started to cry. West comforted her and she told him what Alex had proposed. John wanted her to try it. He told her not to be afraid, he and West would watch her masturbate on the board. If it got too freaky, they'd intercede...

Finally she agreed. While her room mates watched, she brought herself to orgasm on top of the Ouija in shuddering convulsions. It was as Alex predicted. The board did seem to make more rapid and effective contact with spirits, and those spirits seemed better able to communicate.

"THANK YOU MELISSA....YOU ARE ALREADY BEGINNING TO OPEN THE DOOR," the board spelled out after the session.

From then on, it rarely produced an incomplete sentence and was free of spelling errors.

When she told Alex about it, he was overjoyed that she had taken this step. He told her that they must make the magic elixir on the board....together! The mingling of our male and female essences!"

West and John agreed that Melissa should engage in the ritual with Alex. The opening of the door was of more importance than keeping down any feelings of jealousy. Besides, Alex had become an important part of the little group, they reasoned, and he shouldn't be denied participation in any of the group's activities.

The four of them began a regular nightly practice of taking the board to Oakland Cemetery and copulating on top of it among the dead. Alex and Melissa engaging in the act itself while West and John chanted, observed, and videotaped the experience. Almost from the first night they felt the presence of spirits gathering around them, watching the coital acts. Alex told them that the dead were jealous of the living, and that the sex acts in the cemetery attracted them....reminded them of what it had been like to be alive. Made them long for flesh again.

As the days passed, strange things happened around the apartment. Things would go missing, and turn up in incredibly unlikely places. All the residents of the apartment claimed that they felt themselves being touched at night, awakened from their sleep by the sensation they were being kissed. Then one day Melissa came screaming from the bathroom claiming she had been physically attacked by an invisible presence in the shower.

Alex said, "It is almost at hand. The portal is nearly ready to be opened....the ghosts from the cemetery have followed us here, led by the board....come, there is no need to travel to the dead any longer, they are here, all around us! Melissa, get the board!"

They spoke over the pointer, "Board.....we are here and ready now....let us rend the bar which keeps the living and the dead separated....will you open the portal?"

"YES THE PORTAL IS OPENED AND YOU MAY CROSS OVER TO THE OTHER SIDE ALEX COME TO US MELISSA YOU WILL COME TOO AND DISCOVER WHAT YOU HAVE SO EAGERLY SOUGHT TO KNOW"

John and West watched as the faces of Alex and Melissa went utterly blank. As the two stared at each other with no spark of life between them, the pointer began tracing letters at the slightest touch of their fingers. John wrote it all down:

"BILL MAXTON ALICE DORR DON SCHULL SARAH MACCABEE HARRY JACOBSEN LISA LAROSSE"

As each name was spelled out there seemed to be a reaction in the pair holding the pointer....a look on each face of terrifying hunger....the names were now being spelled out too rapidly for John to write down. Suddenly Alex and Melissa threw the board aside and came together with a force which should have knocked them unconscious. West and John tried to pull them apart but were beaten by them, scratched and struck as though no power on earth could keep the two apart. They literally shredded their clothes and came together in a mating frenzy more like two rabid mountain lions than people. They copulated furiously, screaming unfamiliar names at each other the entire time.

West called an ambulance, and the police, but the two could not be separated until drugged. Once sufficiently sedated, Alex and Melissa were taken to Massarraty Asylum for evaluation. They remain there, separated from each other to this day. Each seems to have undergone some psychological breakdown and now suffer from Multiple Personality Syndrome, claiming to be host bodies for some 40 deceased Iowa City couples. Strangely, their original personalities seem to have been completely abandoned.

John claims to have tried several times to burn the original Ouija board, only to find it restored and in the closet of Melissa's old room each time. He currently resides in Iowa City, and washes dishes at a local restaurant. He claims to have taken the board with him when he moved to a new apartment, but it vanished. He says that the new tenants at 507 S. Linn soon called to tell him they found his Ouija board in a closet while they were moving in. John says he told them to keep it. I went by there to ask about it, but the people living there now refused tell me if they still had possession of the board.

I found out that West moved to Minneapolis where he was treated for an emotional disorder which involved hearing Melissa's voice screaming for help whenever he turned on an electrical appliance. He committed suicide last month.

(lights out)