A teen alleged to have stabbed his friend has accused a Ouija board of writing him to do it. The Texas teen, 15 years of age, is being charged with attempted murder after stabbing his friend in the middle of the woods near their high school. While neither the victim and the assailant are both not being named, the claim is one of many made in recent years that a physical attack has come to be blamed on a paranormal origin.
The attacker, who remains anonymous, had no history of mental illness. Weslaco police spokesman J.P. Rodriguez attempted to make sense of the situation to a concerned public. He suggested that while he had no intention of making excuses for the attacker, the “eerie” case may have something to do with a misplaced belief that the friend was the source of his problems, adding that the attacker may have genuinely believed the Ouija board spelled out the violent course of action.
This isn’t the first time a claim has been made that the paranormal could have had an influence on violent actions made by an individual. In January of this year a Wisconsin man attempted to blame a ghost for hitting his wife, though his wife told authorities that the real assailant had been her husband. Rather than believing the ghost story, authorities handcuffed him and charged him with assault and strangulation. Given the fact that a witness clearly knew who was to blame, and the drunken assailant changed his story several times, it seemed fairly clear to police that ghosts had no part in the violent attack.
In March of 2009, a man accused of shooting his girlfriend in the head made the claim that ghosts were responsible for the killing, and told him to do it. In this case, however, the culprit was not thought to be a poorly crafted alibi, but possibly a serious mental illness. Calwyn Fearon said that he was constantly tormented by ghosts who not only told him to do things, but actively cajoled and insulted him so he could get no rest.
There is one story in recent history, however, where a ghost – or rather the legend of a ghost – was directly responsible for the death of one ghost hunter while on an impromptu hunt in North Carolina in 2010. The ghost hunter traveled along the tracks looking to intercept the ghost train alleged to be around Statesville, South Carolina when he was hit by a real train.
It seems these stories all accuse the interest of the paranormal rather than paranormal forces themselves with being connected directly with the tragedies that followed. Just as with so many things in our world, the paranormal has become a means of explaining away violent behavior that may actually have a more direct root in actual societal issues rather than Ouija boards. After the 1950’s it was Rock music that was to blame. In the 1970’s a new wave of violent films were starting to hit the silver screen. Video games in the 1990’s were to blame starting in the 1990’s. But long before any of these, the paranormal had been blamed for violent action and tragedies.
As time goes on, and history keeps ticking away, the number of mysteries in the world will only grow. Perhaps in time this greatest mystery, that of human nature, will be solved.