“Alright, let’s come up with a name…” Edward said, writing down “Name:” on the yellow notepad on the table.

“George…” Lizzie suggested.

“No, Clarence!” Mary countered.

“Oh, I like that better!” Lizzie said.

Edward wrote “Clarence” down then asked, “Middle name?”

“Spencer,” Dan suggested. “No, Clifford.”

“Clarence Clifford?” Mary asked quizzically.

“We’re looking for something that no one would actually name someone, aren’t we?” Dan said.

“Okay, Clarence Clifford what?” Edward said writing down the middle name. “Last name? Annie, you’re being quiet.”

“Because I think this is a bad idea,” Annie said, crossing her arms.

“You think we’re going to summon some demon or something, right?” Mary said.

“I just don’t think we should play around with this,” Annie said.

“I understand your concerns, Annie,” Edward said. “The whole point here is to prove that Ouija is just drawing on our collective subconscious.”

“I know what we’re doing, Ed,” Annie said. “I just don’t think we should play with Ouija.”

“O’Donnell!” Lizzie said. “Clarence Clifford O’Donnell!”

“I like it,” Mary agreed.

Edward finished the name on the notepad and underlined it. “Okay, where was Clarence born?”

Over the next 45 minutes they hashed out an entire history for Clarence Clifford O’Donnell: born in Cork, Ireland in 1820 and left Ireland for America in 1848 because of the great potato famine, though Mary thought that was a little cliché. Dan suggested that Clarence landed in New York harbor before making his way out west to look for gold.

“He’s a 49er?” Lizzie asked.”

“Why not?” Dan asked.

“Well, that would probably play into his death, right?” Edward scribbled notes.

“Yes, yes, yes,” Mary said. “Killed in a squabble over a claim!”

“Not killed in a shootout!” Dan suggested.

“What about just like, I don’t know, he got run over by a horse or something?” Mary asked.

They finally decided on the squabble over a claim and filled in the rest of his life story – the wife and son he left behind in Angel’s Camp, California. Edward jotted down all the details about Clarence Clifford O’Donnell’s life and death.

Finally, he said, “Okay, I think we’ve got a good idea about who this fictitious person is. Ready to see if we can contact him?”

“Let’s do it,” Dan agreed. “Annie, are you going to help?”

Annie rolled her eyes, “I guess, yeah…”

They cleared the table and took the cardboard Ouija board and plastic planchet out of the box. Edward dimmed the lights, and everyone gathered close and made sure their hands were touching the planchette.

“Are there any spirits who would like to communicate with us?” Edward asked.

Nothing happened. Everyone exchanged glances.

“We would like to communicate with a spirit. Is there anyone out there who would like to communicate with us?”

The planchette moved slowly from the middle of the board up to the upper left and stopped on “Yes.”

“That’s a good sign,” Dan said.

“Shh,” Mary hissed.

“What is your name?” Edward asked.

The planchette moved smoothly to “C,” then “L,” “A,” “R,” “E,” “N,” “C,” and stopped on “E.”

Edward nodded smugly.

“Do you have a Last name?”

O-D-O-N-N-E-L-L.

Quietly, Annie took her hand from the planchette and moved away from the table.

“Annie, what’s up?” Dan asked quietly.

“I just don’t feel comfortable. I’m sorry.”

“Let’s keep going,” Mary said to Dan.

“Can we continue?” Edward asked. When everyone still around the table nodded, he asked, “Where were you born, Clarence?”

Annie went to the living room of Edward and Lizzie’s house and sat heavily on their couch. She pulled out her phone and decided to Google “Clarence Clifford O’Donnell” just out of curiosity. Her eyes widened as Google returned several mentions of a Clarence Clifford O’Donnell. One was a story in the San Francisco Morning Call with a byline by none other than Samuel Clemens. Preceding the images of micro-fiched stories was a description of the Call as an “inexpensive paper aimed at working-class Irish – the ‘washerwoman’s paper.” She scanned through the different images of Clemens’ clippings and finally found the piece mentioning O’Donnell. It was a colorful description of a shootout above Angel’s Camp in Calaveras County between “a scurrilous cur, and degenerate cheat, one Clarence Clifford O’Donnell” and an unknown miner. Clemens went into great detail about O’Donnell having immigrated from Cork, Ireland to escape the famine only to lie, cheat, and steal his way across the county. The last line in the article made Annie’s blood run cold: “While O’Donnell’s body lies cold, if his life has been any indication it’s certain his death will be not be peaceful and I wouldn’t be surprised if he lied and cheated from beyond the veil.”

Annie leapt from the couch and ran back to the other room.

“Do we invite you?” Edward read the question the planchette had just spelled out. “Yes, of course we invite you to communicate with–”

“Wait!” Annie yelled. “Clarence Clifford O’Donnell is real, he existed!”

“Annie,” Dan said, “We made him up. You were here!”

“Look!” she showed Dan the phone and everyone gathered around.

“Holy shit,” Lizzie said.

The room fell into heavy silence as they all strained to read the grainy story on the phone themselves.

“But we made him up?” Edward said.

A scraping of plastic on cardboard drew attention to the abandoned planchette on the Ouija board. With no one touching it, the planchette started spelling something out”

T-H-A-N-K-Y-O-U-F-O-R-T-H-E-I-N-V-I-T-A-T-I-O-N.

The planchette stopped on the final “N” and all the lights in the house went out.