Chances are that you’ve played with a Ouija board at some point in your life, as part of a childhood slumber party, slightly inebriated college gathering, or Hallowe’en dare. Typical of the majority of spirit board sessions, the answers to your questions were probably disappointingly vague, a “yes” or “no” interspersed with a bunch of random gibberish.
In The Complete Ouija Interviews, author Sarah Becan shows how interesting conversations with the dead can be when you’re lucky enough to make contact with ghosts who have good communication skills. Even more compelling, Becan reveals, “The collected stories in this book all come from actual Ouija board sessions, which occurred during the three years that my brother Jeff lived and worked at a hostel on Nantucket Island.” Who needs an Interview with the Vampire when you can read interviews with real otherworldly spooks?
The Complete Ouija Interviews was originally published as a short series of handmade mini-comics:
- Ouija Interviews #1: Theo (20 pages)
- Ouija Interviews #2: Chip (32 pages)
- Ouija Interviews #3: Naomi (25 pages) — nominated for “Outstanding Minicomic” at the 2005 Ignatz Awards
- Ouija Interviews #4: Mack, Agatha & Samantha (48 pages)
Sample panels from the mini-comics are posted at each of the links above, and an excerpt from the Ouija Interview #1 mini-comic is also available to read online, serving as a preview of the Ouija Interviews.
Assisted by a 2009 Xeric Foundation Grant, the mini-comics were then collected into one volume by Becan’s Shortpants Press, “an independent small press from Chicago dedicated to making unique, interesting, and really cool minicomics, zines, prints and art books.”
At the beginning of The Complete Ouija Interviews is a foreword written by Becan’s brother, Jeff, in which he gives a brief history of the Ouija board and the time the Becan siblings spent on Nantucket, including a description of a Ouija board session that may convince some readers that the toy really is a conduit to the deceased. The four Ouija interviews then follow, in the order that they were published as mini-comics. In the first interview, we’re introduced to Theo, who was murdered after getting caught cheating on his wife with a woman he gleefully describes as having “big knockers”. Despite being an unrepentant womanizer, it’s hard to dislike the villain in this tragic romance, as he claims to have sincerely loved both women, and takes full responsibility for the transgressions that led to his untimely demise. Next, we meet Chip, a young, gay ghost who’s a smart aleck with a penchant for telling truly tasteless jokes. It’s difficult to tell whether anything Chip says is serious or truthful, especially when he claims to have been reincarnated as a strawberry, but he does reveal some potentially intriguing information about the afterlife. Chapter three features a conversation with an adorable little girl who was murdered when she was only ten years old. Becan and her brother David sat at the board during this session, and Naomi indulges in a bit of shameless adolescent flirtation with David, telling him that she loves him. Naomi’s story becomes less light-hearted, though, when she’s asked about the identity of her murderer, and her answers imply that she was killed by a pedophile who was known to her and her friend. The fourth installment in the Ouija tales, the longest and most in-depth of the interviews, takes up about a third of the book, and is also the darkest and saddest of Becan’s stories. The brother and two sisters interviewed were murdered by their father, who killed their mother, as well. As if that weren’t horrifying enough, it slowly becomes clear, to the reader’s discomfort, that murder wasn’t the only crime committed against one of the sisters. It’s Agatha’s story that will haunt readers most, long after the final page of the book is read.
In addition to the main stories, the book includes a half dozen mini-interviews, bonus material brand new to The Complete Ouija Interviews. Scattered throughout the compilation, these vignettes spotlight ghosts who pop in to offer brief, yet poignant, comments or words of advice to the living.
The Complete Ouija Interviews is a very professional-looking independent publication, the perfect-bound volume covered in a heavily textured feltweave paper that feels hand-made and is embossed on the front with an image of Theo. While it resembles, in size, the cute novelty gift editions sold as impulse items at bookstores, The Complete Ouija Interviews is distinguished by its elegant sepia-toned art and meaningful content. The presentation is deceptively simple, but effective: Pages consist of single panels with narrow caption boxes containing Becan’s interview questions running unobtrusively across the top. The interviewees float against a plain background that approximates a Ouija board with the numbers and letters wiped off, their answers printed in traditional comic strip speech balloons. Like in Peanuts, the characters manage to display a remarkable range of expressions and emotions with very few drawn lines. The minimalist ghosts, using slight head tilts and subtle eye and mouth shifts, are far more expressive than the fully rendered superhero figures found in big-name comic books.
If you’re looking for a comic that will truly touch your heart, then passing over The Complete Ouija Interviews would be a grave mistake, since reading it is sure to lift your spirits.
Recommended Reading Level: Young Adult and up (12+) for implied violence, adult themes, sexual content, and crude bodily humour.
Order directly through the Shortpants Press website, or check with your local comic book store.
The Complete Ouija Interviews is distributed by Shortpants Press. For more information on the book and its author, visit jakze.com. Shortpants Press may also be followed on Twitter.