TABLE TAPPING SEX MAGICIANS

     TEMPT GHOSTS FROM THEIR GRAVES

Johnson: The house at 507 South Linn Street in Iowa City was home to a small group of sex magicians during the late 1980's. For our purposes we will call them Melissa, West, and John. These are not their real names. But what they did is very real.

     It all started innocently enough. Melissa was a theatre student at the University of 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. The three found they had many similar interests beyond their academic studies, and spent a lot of time together. In fact, 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. John, who was from Hopkins Grove, noticed some of her occult paraphernalia and tarot cards.

     "Hey, do you know how to do this? Divination magic, I mean?" he asked.

     "No, they were a gift, I don't know how to use them. I like the pictures, though," she answered.

     "I know how to use them. I can teach you. The first thing you have to do is keep them under your pillow. You have to sleep with the cards and let them become attuned to you, a part of you, an extension of yourself."

     "Sleep with them?"

     "It is absolutely vital. I'll teach you all about it....West, too, if he's interested."

     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. She later learned that John was giving similar lessons in magic and sexual freedom to John. Eventually engaging as a full trio in sex rites became a nightly practice. Orgiastic parties were often held at the house to cast spells and create elixirs.

     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 the spectral entities to interact with the real world, but could also be a portal for two-way travel between the two worlds.

     With the help of Alex, strong drink, and illegal drugs, the trio became obsessed with using this "novelty item", and attempts to open this gateway their sole interest.

     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 thinking that Alex was just coming on to her, 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 consider 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 sense of desire and 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.

     "What am I going to get on my acting final?" She asked the board.

     "CMVFF NO ANZWER UNLSS U TIKE OF YOURRR SHIRD" It replied.

     "Hey, what the hell is that about?" asked West.

     "Nothing, just ignore it." She said, "Board, tell me if West is going to get in the Playwrights show he wants to be in."

     "SHHT TIK OFF SHIRRR OR NO INFO"

     "I'm not taking off my shirt. Answer the question."

     "Melissa, it this thing coming on to you?"

     "Don't be stupid, West. It's just a piece of wood."

     "Don't you be stupid! It's a hell of a lot more than just wood! Board, do you want to fuck my girlfriend?"

     "YES!"

     "See, Melissa! The board wants you. You've been leading it on, haven't you!!"

     ""West!! You moved it to 'YES' yourself. The Board didn't say that."

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

     "West, stop fucking around!"

     "I'm not doing it!"

     "Yes you are!!"

     "BORD WNT WATCH."

     "This is freaky."

     "West, I don't think this is funny. Did Alex put you up to this? Or John?"

     "No....What has Alex got to do with it?"

     "MISSA FELL HIMM, TEL WST WHT LEX WANT"

     Melissa flung the board across the room and started to cry. West comforted her and coaxed her into telling him what Alex had proposed. West wanted her to try it. He told her not to be afraid, he would watch her masturbate on the board. If it got too freaky, he'd intercede...but he was actually excited by the idea. Finally she agreed. While West 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.

     "Now we must make the magic elixir on the board....together! The mingling of our male and female essences!" he told her. 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 suffers 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 N. 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. The new tenants refused comment as to whether they still retained possession of the board.

     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.