This is a personal essay about my childhood memory of my “evil Magic 8 Ball”—that is, being told that my Magic 8 Ball, a simple toy, was a nefarious occult item by a supposedly well-meaning neighbor.
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Sometimes, when I write personal essays about real people, I use fake names, but I try to keep them consistent across different essays if I write about the same person.
The “Evil Magic 8 Ball” Essay
Please? I begged my mom. I was — to my recollection — around 9 years old, and getting the Magic 8 Ball for my birthday was, for me, the near-equivalent of Ralphie’s obsession with the Red Ryder BB gun in A Christmas Story.
So, I was ecstatic when I received this divinatory tool of excellence. I went around prognosticating everyone’s fortune to the point of obnoxiousness. “Ask me a question!” I would declare until I could elicit a yes/no question from my prey. Then I’d run my hands over the ball, give it a good shake, and gravely give them their answer: sadly, “Outlook not so good,” or joyfully, “It is decidedly so!”
I eventually got around to Mrs. Jensen, who lived around the block from us and was the mother of Priscilla, a friend I had grown up alongside, despite a four-year age difference, because of our proximity. Mrs. Jensen was well known to everyone, I imagine, within a radius of at least a few miles, as she would, wherever she went, preach to people in an attempt to “save” them and prepare them for the “rapture”, which she believed was going to happen in the very near future.
As you might guess, she did not share my enthusiasm for my new toy.
“Oh no,” she said, shaking her head with a gloomy air, “that’s not good.” She went on to explain to me that my new toy was a “tool of Satan” and that I had better not use it. This sapped quite a bit of the joy I was experiencing in playing fortune-teller to the neighborhood.
The evil Magic 8 ball would be a long line of things she’d warn me against during my childhood: Ouija (Possession!) Which, of course, you know if you’ve seen enough horror films. The Exorcist (Which she picketed when it showed at the theater two blocks from our house. — Yes, scary, but when I finally did see it, it failed to elicit the demonic visions she claimed it would), Led Zeppelin IV and the Beatles White Album (play it backward and it says demonic things, though I was never sure what it was supposed to be saying.) Budweiser (whose floats she would loudly boo when they passed in our community parade), the tarot deck or cootie catcher (Those paper fortune teller things we folded up as kids – taboo as it’s a “divination” tool), and Richard Hittleman’s 28-day yoga program (False Religions!).
The evil of the Magic 8-Ball fell into the same category of suspect objects as the tarot deck: divinatory tools. One wasn’t, according to Mrs. Jensen, supposed to try to tell the future.
Yes, there are admonitions in the Bible against divination. But the Bible also admonishes against trying to forecast Jesus’s return. Mrs. Jensen, however, would conveniently ignore those passages, passing along whatever she heard from a televangelist or- I sometimes suspected- concocted in her imagination.
“Pastor Snack,” she told me during her daughter’s birthday party at a roller rink, “says that he had a vision of a coin with 1984 on it. The rapture will come before that, and Jesus will take all of us good Christians away with him, and the rest of the world will be left with seven years of tribulation. But that means you won’t have to do awful things like grow up or get married! Isn’t that wonderful?”
Getting told “Outlook good” by my clairvoyant toy was Satanic. It was perfectly acceptable, however, to “reassure” a nine-year-old with the impending end of everything.
I recall calculating that I’d be turning 15 in 1984, thinking that maybe I wanted to grow up and have a family, feeling abashed that I did not confess my already-burgeoning doubts about whether I was, in fact, a “good Christian,” and considering that I didn’t know the word, “tribulation.”
Based on the context, tribulation didn’t sound like a good thing to me.
It struck me that she didn’t seem all that troubled by the suffering of those left behind. But my mom always told me that Mrs. Jensen had “good intentions,” and I imagine that her idea of “saving” the unconverted masses from this fate was what prompted her to preach to anyone who would listen. It’s a good thing we didn’t have Facebook then. She’d have been one of those people amplifying false information.
Forecasting the end of the world was sort of a hobby to her. This wasn’t, then, an isolated occurrence. However, it was a memorable one because, by the time we got ready to leave the skating rink, she had a small but angry crowd gathered around her.
I walked out, pretending not to be with her, and waited outside the rink. Her ever-present presence was one reason I started distancing myself from Priscilla as I grew into teenhood and bypassed the year 1984, failing to ascend to heaven and stubbornly advancing toward that horrible act of growing up.
But, back to the evil Magic 8-Ball. Though I was already becoming a young skeptic, I was still a kid, and between her warnings making me nervous and my desire to be a people pleaser, I gave the “foul” device away to a friend.
Afterward, I proudly told Mrs. Jensen I’d given away the evil Magic 8-Ball, expecting praise. You can guess that I was disappointed in this expectation. Instead, she appeared shocked and lectured that I was “passing along the evil.”
What did she expect me to do? Pound it apart with a hammer? In retrospect, that may have been fun. Burn it? Throw it off a cliff? No, wait! It might survive then, and some unsuspecting soul might fall under its influence!
But I didn’t ask for it back. At that time, giving things to a friend and then asking for them back elicited being called a particular name we no longer use, fortunately, as it’s very insensitive.
I did, however, tell my mom that I’d given the ball away, though, for some reason, I didn’t tell her why. If I try to put myself back there now, I recall mild shame. She appeared perplexed that I’d begged for this toy only to give it away. But she shrugged and said, “OK,” if that’s what you want to do with it.
I never got another 8-ball toy, though I used one at a friend’s house and didn’t suffer any evil effects. Mrs. Jensen would probably see that differently if she were still around, as I’m now an atheist with an interest in Buddhism, which she would consider evil in itself. But, ironically, knowing Mrs. Jensen had much more to do with starting me on my voyage toward skepticism than any nefarious toys did.
I’m tempted to buy another Magic 8-Ball just for nostalgia! I’d say, for that, “Outlook good!”
Mrs. Jensen did — many years later, when I was in my teens — try to convince me to get rid of my tarot deck. The same deck still sits in a box on my shelf.
My Evil Magic 8 Ball: Afterthoughts
As an aside:
At times, “evil Magic 8 Ball” toys have been made, but I couldn’t find any of them on Amazon. They were ones with intentionally suspect messages. I’m assuming Mattel removed them. You can, however, find branded eight balls, like the Stranger Things Magic 8 Ball, as the object made an appearance in the show.
Though I haven’t thought about this memory for quite some time and am far removed from being influenced by Mrs. Jensen’s type of thinking, plenty of people online are still worried about the “occult” nature of simple toys like the “evil Magic 8 Ball.”
Instead of worrying about the suspect nature of plastic toys, like an evil Magic 8-Ball, how about taking some time to question whether there is objective evidence for what you believe?
Magic 8-Balls !
Here’s what I could find via Amazon, if you’re shopping for one of these:) None of them is the evil magic 8 ball I once actually saw!
- Magic 8 Ball Retro has all the answers to all your deepest questions!
- This “throwback” version Magic 8 Ball reminds fans of the fortune-telling fun they know and love.
- After “asking the ball” a yes or no question, turn the toy upside-down and wait for your answer to be revealed through the window.
- Answers range from positive (“It is certain”) to negative (“Don’t count on it”) to neutral (“Ask again later”).
- It’s the fastest way to seek advice!
- Actually works!
- Ask any question, turn over the magic 8 ball, and you’ll get its answer.
- The original magic 8 ball just got smaller, classic and collectible
- Tiny fortune-telling 8-ball
- Experience Magic 8 Ball question-and-answer fun, but with a spooky twist with this Magic 8 BallStranger Things Limited Edition.
- Ask a question, count to ELEVEN, then turn it UPSIDE DOWN and let the answers appear, floating in a blood-like liquid. See the answers, either positive, negative or mysterious – like “better not tell you now.”
- Don’t be a mouth breather! Go on a curiosity voyage and seek fun direction on life’s perplexing questions, supernatural or not.
- Have fun finding answers to all the deepest queries. Friends don’t lie, and neither does the Magic 8 Ball.
- This Magic 8 Ball Stranger Things Limited Edition makes a great gift for fans and collectors!
Keep up on the dukkha!
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