When the occult apocalypse comes, it will probably start at a sixth-grade slumber party.

I’m very much not a sociologist. There are probably a bunch of theories out there on why the average middle-school girl, in groups, will gravitate toward black magic: the need for power in a society where they’re among the most powerless, puberty unlocking magical talent, the world becoming more weird as you get more aware of it and the accompanying desire to learn more weirdness, goat demons, whatever.

I think it’s something to do. Early adolescence in the US swings wildly between needless drama and total boredom. If you’re too old for dolls, you’re not into sports, there’s nothing good on TV, and you can’t have or talk about much regarding sex, eh, might as well try necromancy.  (There could be a study about the decline of occult practice relative to the rise of video games, but even there I doubt it–only two to four people can play the PS5, but everyone can get in on a seance.)

So first I was explaining “Light as a Feather, Stiff as a Board” to my parents. Then I said that you don’t go to a slumber party unless you want to contact the dead (unless you’re that one girl who ruins the seance by being A TOTAL BABY ABOUT IT, GOD).

And now I present the list of Occult Slumber Party Activities from least to most likely to be the start of a horror movie.

1. The aforementioned Light as a Feather, Stiff as a Board. (For the uninitiated: one of you lies in the middle of the floor. The others make a circle and chant the eponymous phrase over and over. Eventually the people in the circle are supposed to be able to lift the central girl with just their fingertips, or one finger each, or something.) It’s not even really occult, just vague hypnosis and weight distribution. Still, it sounds creepy and when you’re “ironically” doing it in your high school dorm’s common room and the house counselor comes out, she will absolutely freak. Sorry, Mrs. M. 

Also, looking this up on Wiki revealed versions where the people in the circle will start off by chanting “She’s looking ill,” “She’s looking worse,” “She’s dying,” and “She’s dead,” so wow, it isn’t without a creep factor. Kids played a version in 16something with a chant amounting to “Here’s a dead body, but lift yourself because Yay Jesus.” Not sure that’s better. Kind of glad we invented Nintendo.

I’m going to group the weird chanting “Crack an Egg on Your Head” game here too: doesn’t claim to directly mess with the supernatural, mostly hypnosis, but creepy af. Explanation again: one girl sits behind another, chants, and does appropriate physical contact with her fingertips, like some kind of proto-ASMR. Now apparently it’s a semi-wholesome children’s game listed on parents’ sites, but the lyrics in the 1980s were some variant of:

Concentrate, concentrate
There’s an egg on your head, the yolk running down
Concentrate, concentrate
Babies are crying, people are dying
Concentrate, concentrate
There’s a knife in your back and the blood’s running down.
Concentrate, concentrate

You know: for kids!

The ending can vary from just tickling or a “cold breeze” (breathing on the person’s neck) to spiders running up their back to being pushed off the Empire State Building to being hanged. I shit you not. (This is also where the phrase “criss-cross applesauce” comes from, for those of you whose preschoolers get taught that as a name for sitting cross-legged.)

Because neither of these games are actually supposed to do anything but fuck with people’s minds, but they range from “slightly creepy” to “what the fuck, exactly, is wrong with kids?” they tie for Number 1 with the next item.

1. Fortunetelling, Arts and Crafts Division

Yes, you’re legit trying to see the future. Yes, if you believe in or live in a universe where any such thing opens people up to the Beyond, that could be a problem. Yes, there’s some scope for shit you didn’t write on the paper here, and yes, the name “cootie catcher” is pretty gross when you think about it. MASHER also has some potential. 

That said, it’s really difficult to imagine the Forces of Ultimate Darkness manifesting through a piece of college-ruled paper with neon-pink writing on it. I could be wrong, someone could create the Scented Marker Lament Configuration, but I can’t really summon too much dread here. 

Except for being told I’ll marry Tom Green and have seventeen kids. Yikes.

2. Fortunetelling, No, For Realsies Division

There is always one girl in fifth grade who learned how to read palms, or “how to read palms,”  over the summer. It’s a high-demand skill and, used right, can keep you in the best Fruit Roll-Ups all year. You can also claim that people you don’t like have “really short life lines.” 

This is part of a wider group that includes “crystal balls” (generally out of a kit and/or someone’s mom’s 1980s home decor) and telling the future with either playing or Tarot cards (Tarot cards, being more mystic and actually having a Death card, are natural.y cooler). Creepier symbolism and the potential to predict genuinely horrible fates for everyone makes this category pretty decent, but it’s still less doom-y than…

3. Fucking With the Dead

I wasn’t sure whether to class Ouija boards separately and whether, if so, they’d be more or less a bad idea than just freeform seance funtimes. On the one hand, there’s some pre-existing order. On the other, there’s the tension of waiting for the board to slowly spell out letters, plus The Exorcist, plus The Stand, plus that one Christopher Pike book where one of the girls messing with the Ouija board freaked out and caught herself on fire with a candle and one of the other girls poured brandy over her because it was wet and then she and her sister came back horribly burned ten years later and tried to MURDER EVERYONE ON A SKI TRIP.

Although I suppose that wasn’t directly necromancy-related. BUT STILL. 

4. BLOODY GODDAMN MARY.

I mean there’s an actual franchise made from a variant on this one. But let’s elaborate.

You’re summoning a ghost. You’re summoning an explicitly hostile ghost, a ghost whose reaction ranges from cursing at you to scratching your eyes out to actual strangulation, depending on what version of the story you’re going with, and you’re doing so on your own, in the dark. 

No, you’re not getting anything out of this, except maybe dead. 

I think 90% of the girls in my generation have played this game. Most of us more than once. Why? Because suburban preteen white chicks have the survival instinct of a Bosch pear, is why, at least when it comes to meddling with things man was not meant to know.

I offer no complex sociological explanation here. But when Cthulhu rises and reality starts fraying around the edges…look, there’s a good chance that we could have avoided the whole mess if Danielle’s parents had just let her throw a boy-girl party, you know?