I can divide my childhood into two epochs: the years before I found Zilpha Keatley Snyder’s books and the years after.

The Headless Cupid by Zilpha Keatley Snyder Still, that was my first hands-on experience with spiritualism, Reader.Īnd by that time, I had a little more knowledge on the subject that I’d gathered via books. After a while we put it away and played Twister instead. But the board didn’t spell out anything much: certainly nothing interesting or memorable. The planchette did move around a bit-in a very shaky manner, as if our hands were trembling (and small wonder if they were, considering the threat hanging over our heads). While everyone else watched from a wary distance, we put our hands on the planchette and summoned the spirits. After her remark, nobody was willing to play except me and the owner of the board. I still bear that young woman** a grudge, Reader. So was almost everybody else-until one of the guests remarked brightly that she’d heard about some girls who were playing Ouija one night at a party, and a lightning bolt came through the window and struck them all dead. I was very interested in trying the Ouija board. Which is, by the way, where I first learned Ouija wasn’t pronounced “Oh-eye-jah.” When I gave a slumber party for my tenth birthday, however, one of my guests brought hers along for us to play along with Twister and Mystery Date. I put it on my Christmas list, but Santa never brought me one ☹ Who wouldn’t want to have regular access to an oracle? I was introduced to them in second grade, thanks to a laboratory school language arts program that centered around the Roman gods and goddesses.* It was clear from the catalog description that the Ouija Board didn’t use the same technique as the Pythoness at Delphi, but it still sounded fascinating. Penney Christmas catalogs, which featured among their board games Ouija: the Mystifying Oracle. It’s hard to remember exactly when the subject first came across my radar.Īs nearly as I can remember, my first exposure came via the Sears and J.C. It seems I’ve been interested in spiritualism all my life. “How did you become interested in the subject?”

“You seem quite knowledgeable about Victorian Spiritualism,” she noted. She was doing a review of the Seraphina Fox books, my mystery series set in Victorian London that features a fraudulent medium. Recently, I was interviewed by the book editor of The National Spiritualist Summons Magazine.

A Smart Kid Like You by Stella Pevsner