The Demonic Voice.
True tales
of the Paranormal
5: The Demonic Voice
Date: Summer 1984
Location: Hanover, Germany
Event: Séance
This is a true account of a séance held by my best friend at the time, Claudia Siegmund and myself. Back in those days we were very much into the "Gothic" scene and frequented several dark and interesting clubs in Hanover where we knew a lot of like-minded people, some saner than others. One of the not so sane was a young man who constantly tried to impress others by inventing or embellishing stories about objects that he owned. The most notable of which must be his ‘sacrificial knife’, that was allegedly ‘not made by human hands’. On closer inspection though it became quite clear that it was in fact a very tacky letter opener with a lame deer design on it...
One day we were in a particular club, and I was observing this man, running around the place desperately trying to engage several people in conversation, who all in turn completely ignored him. So eventually he came over to me and I humoured him with a few questions which prompted him to produce a small golden cross on a chain.. He said that this cross belonged to a boy with cancer, now dead, and that he wanted to get rid of it because it was evil. He asked if I would want it, and after checking if it was real gold, I took it from him...
Being an atheist and someone with a penchant for silver jewellery over gold, I couldn't think of much to do with the cross, apart from selling it. This is what I did the following morning and because Claudia was already with me that morning, we decided to invest the money on a bottle of Rum. So by about 2:00 PM we were drunk enough to want to do something interesting. Seeing Claudia doodling on a piece of paper, the forms looked oddly familiar and we decided to hold a séance...
Now, I want to say that we weren't just stupid teenagers doing this for a laugh, but took this very seriously. Although we both trusted each other completely, we were both concerned that the other might not play fair. We wanted to find out once and for all if séances and ouija boards really worked, so we swore not to rest a finger on the glass but to hold it above or touch it only lightly. We had ourselves already both experience the paranormal and had heard many stories from friends and acquaintances. We knew that it could go wrong so were prepared to stop as soon as it got out of hand.
So we began the séance with the sun shining brightly into Claudia’s living-room, us giggling, asking again and again if anybody was there. After about ten minutes something seemed to have entered the room and we began taking this whole thing a bit more seriously. Shortly, the glass moved from its original position to a letter whereupon we both took our hands away and shouted at each other accusingly, both suspecting the other of having moved the glass. But neither of us had and were equally shocked. We were so overwhelmed by it, that we both started to cry. Being on a quest and slightly mad, we began again; and as if nothing had happened, the glass continued moving smoothly across the board and we started asking questions of the visitor.
I must say that everything that happened during the first twenty minutes could easily have been faked but then the mood of the séance changed. I decided that I would like to talk to my deceased great grandmother, Berta Mahn. She was a very colourful character and is a story in herself. Whilst alive she had owned a copy of the Seventh book of Moses, one of many interesting occult tomes removed from the original Bible. Because my father always told me that I reminded him of her, I desperately wanted to talk to her. The glass went to and fro but eventually spelled out the word "Hello", so I asked: "Is it you Nan?"
You have to know that at that time I actually couldn’t remember my great grandmothers name and therefore was curious about it. Imagine my disappointment when the glass moved very confidently from one letter to another and spelled out a completely different name - Grete Meyer. I only realised when the glass stopped whose name it was, it was my dad’s mother, my granny who had also died before I was born. It wasn’t the person I had asked for but I was still happy. By now we were so confident in ourselves that we became cheeky. For example we asked if we could have a quick break to have a cigarette or if we could put the light on, I also asked if I could get pen and paper to write the whole thing down. None of these things disturbed the séance, even though we had already committed several taboos. We had a lively conversation with our visitor and eventually I asked if she would know where the "Book" was that once belonged to Berta. Her answer was short: DANGER. After I told her that I knew about the book and that I thought if anybody should have it should be me, she spelled out the following: VON ALTMANN, RICKLINGEN. Ricklingen is the area of Hanover where my father grew up. Later a little checking with my parents confirmed that there was indeed a very influential family living in that area, they were however called VON ALTEN.
Claudia then asked if we had lived before. The answer was 1-2-3-0 which I believed to be a date. We were then given two names. Claudia was supposed to have been called OBANAE and I was WIEBCE. We both had heard of the name Wiebce before, even though nowadays it is spelled with a "k" and not a "c". None of us though had ever heard of the name Obanae though I thought it was rather nice. When we said it, we pronounced it "o-bar-na-ee", not knowing if it was correct and thought no more of it that evening. At this point, without any warning, the glass suddenly went back to the exact starting point on the board. We knew it was the starting point, because before we started, we had put the glass on the paper and then had drawn a circle around it. Taking this as a sign that our visitors had had enough - we took a break, and talked about what we had just experienced. By now it was quite dark outside and we drew the curtains. And then we made a big mistake. We knew it was wrong, but we couldn’t help ourselves to try it again…
During the first session, the atmosphere had been very relaxed and friendly but that was soon to change. No sooner had we put our fingers near the rim of the glass again, than it felt as if something sinister had entered the room. We felt a horrible presence but we persevered and asked of the spirit’s identity. The answer was more than scary, because the glass went around the paper and onto silly letters, that didn’t make sense. Then suddenly the glass sped up, went exactly halfway off the edge of the table and then back again. We didn’t want to break the séance without sending the "thing" off first, so we announced that we were finishing this session, said goodbye and tried to put the glass back into its starting position. Note that even though this time we carefully tried to place the glass onto its starting position - we never quite managed to get it exactly spot on.
We looked at each other and wondered what we should do with the glass. Normally of course, one should destroy the glass but we couldn’t do that because Claudia’s mum didn’t have many. So we washed it and let the water run for several minutes whilst mumbling placatory things like, "Leave the glass...You are gone..." etc.
To be honest, we couldn’t bear staying in the living room any longer because the evil feeling was still there, so we decided to go to sleep - we had finished the whole bottle of rum by then. It was still quite early but we’d been through a lot. We fell asleep pretty quickly and I soon fell into a very strange dream. It wasn’t a story or anything, all I could dream about was faces, grey faces, that were being pushed and pulled in all directions. And then I heard the Voice…
It was the most booming, deep and evil voice you can imagine. Not even the most evil voice of anyone or anything in any film could ever come close. The weird thing was, that I swear I could hear it with my ears, not just in my head. The voice uttered something like a warning to me but I can’t remember the exact words. I woke and immediately tried to wake Claudia by calling her name but she wouldn’t move - she just lay there, whispering without moving even her lips! I then shook her because she scared me so much and she said she was already awake and that she had heard me the first time. Her explanation was as chilling as her actions. She said she hadn’t wanted to move because she felt there was something in this room, something threatening, which had giving her a clear warning…
I did find out a little about that name Obanae. In 1990 I came to England as a Nanny and one evening a friend of ours wanted to do a ouija session which turned out to be a complete farce in itself, although I did learn something very interesting. I told someone there about my ouija experience back in the eighties and obviously mentioned the name Obanae, pronounced the German way. The man suddenly went as white as a sheet, and said that it was not pronounced "o-bar-na-ee" but "o-ban-ye", as in the French word allemagne. I was completely puzzled as I had never heard of that name but this man had - where he had grown up in Scotland. As he showed me in an atlas a small Scottish town called Oban, I felt a cold shiver run down my spine. He went on to tell me that in the middle ages boys who came from this town sometimes were given the name Oban and girls Obanae…
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