Now, we at Dark Lord Enterprises are generally interested in substantial profits. We also have a very reasonable interest in modest profits, small profits, and even very, very tiny profits, depending on just whom we need to disintegrate in order to make them happen.
But sometimes, we do things out of the sheer goodness of our hearts. Okay, that’s a lie. Sometimes we do things because other kinds of Evil in the world are messing up the world in ways which mean that we’ll have to do a LOT more cleanup after we take over. And we can’t have that.
So we’d like offer this concept under a general Open Source license; as long as you credit us, you’re free to use it yourself, although I really wouldn’t, if I were you, not unless you’re a specialist in dealing with some of the perils of summoning beings from Beyond The Grave and so forth. We wouldn’t want you to get hurt, or, more specifically, we’d hate for you to be taken over by some spirits bent on unspeakable deeds, as that will significantly decrease the likelihood of your buying any of our books.
(We do pride ourselves on having some of the most unspeakable novels out there; but it’s been our experience that if you call forth an entity from Unknown Dimensions, the only literature in which it has an interest is in acquiring one of the several so-called ‘real’ versions of the Necronomicon which are widely available on the Internet. Because even Cosmic Horrors like a good laugh.)
For this idea, you’ll need only two components: an Ouija Board, and a cell phone.
As anyone versed in the mystic arts will tell you, while Ouija Boards are not particularly good at helping you predict the future or do divination, they really are great at summoning beings you really, really don’t want to have around. And the board itself doesn’t matter so much; oh, it helps if you’ve got a collection of genuine antique 19th-century originals lying around, but your ordinary, cheap, plastic internet version will do just fine.
Consensus reality is very powerful, and our general cultural disbelief in traditional ghosts and ghoulies and long-legged beasties serves us reasonably well as a protection against most of them. On the other hand, the specific and somewhat perverse belief that Ouija Boards really might contact the spirit world tends to help your mind get past the Psychic Censor, and, if you really want to do something magical, dangerous, hard to measure, with minimal reward and maximal but unpredictable result, you can try to use an Ouija Board to summon forth some supernatural entity.
And the kinds of entities which enjoy Ouija Boards are the sort about whom one ought never think. And you really, really oughtn’t joke about them. Because if you think those particular occult tools are funny, I can assure you that those beings think the damn things are hilarious.
However, in this case, I’d like you to make an untraditional use of the damn thing. Simply place your cellphone—fully charged, I recommend—straight on the board, and ask whatever spirits might be around to speak to you through your phone.
Please note that this will not result in some sort of exciting or glamorous Hollywood-style mystical special effects. In fact, probably visible will happen at all; if those beings actually made some kind of big, spectacular appearance, more people would believe, yes, but they’d also be terrified. This is why the things you summon usually do extremely little. They wait around until you’ve basically forgotten you played around with some unwise magickal tools, and—
—but that’s not a pleasant story, so we’ll leave it aside.
Here’s what is likely to happen: your phone will become haunted.
And, I want to stress, not haunted in any kind of fun way. It won’t show up when others can see it. It won’t play cute little tricks or give you codes or offer you occult knowledge. It will simply appear, in various unexpected visions of undead fury, when you least expected, when you least want it, when you most need something else, until you get to the point where you really, really don’t want to pick up your phone.
Now, let’s be clear.
I’ve seen apps that restrict your phone, apps that shut off your phone at certain times. I’ve seen people try various schemes of locking up their phones. Some of them work.
But the thing that should work—the knowledge that looking at your phone is very, very likely to make you very unhappy—doesn’t work well at all.
There are some negatives here; there are a lot of times when your phone is really useful. But wouldn’t it be helpful if you picked up your phone to do useful things, and then put it down or put it away before it could make you miserable?
Of course, trapping Horrors From Beyond in a cellphone isn’t exactly nice to them, but hey, I’m a Villain, and they’re not my demons. I keep my demons in my heart, where they belong.
Go ahead, try it. And after you’ve been shaken half out of your skin by whatever you see in your phone, after it’s surprised you often enough, the negative reinforcement will help you start using your phone just for stuff that you need, and should cut down on your overall doomscrolling by a good 89%.
No need to thank me for making your life better. Just buy my books.
…and maybe read them on your desktop, just to be on the safe side.
My name is Jeff Mach (“Dark Lord” is optional) and I build communities, put on events, and make stories come into being. I also tweet a lot over @darklordjournal.
