The Manor Files | Part Two of Three
Justice: The Fire, the Strange Letters, and the Unanswered Questions
The Art of the Séance | October 15, 2026 | Manor Coffee, San Diego
One name that wasn't quite a name. One mysterious year. And a conversation that went from coffee to fire and death rather quickly.
Welcome Back to The Manor Files
Well, witches, welcome back.
If you read Part One of The Manor Files, you're already familiar with Greg the Gargoyle, our potentially snaggletoothed resident of Manor Coffee who apparently enjoys the smell of coffee, gothic decor, and disapproving of my vocabulary. If you haven't read Part One, I recommend starting there:
Because where we left off, the board had produced a rather interesting sequence:
W-J-U-S-T-I-S.
And in our next session, a name emerged that appeared to connect with those letters.
Justice. Now, I'm not going to pretend that a talking board spelling something resembling a name is definitive evidence of communication with the dead.
I've been involved in witchcraft and paranormal investigation for more than 25 years, and if there's one thing I've learned, it's that the moment you stop questioning your evidence is usually the moment you start making shit up. But this portion of the evening was interesting enough that I wanted to give it its own article.
Because things got considerably darker. And one participant had a physical experience that became part of the recorded session. Let's get into it.
Session Two: Justice
Recorded approximately 6:59 PM – 7:23 PM
The following questions and answers are transcribed from our handwritten notes. Original letter sequences are preserved, with participant interpretations in parentheses.
Q: Is there somebody else here besides Greg tonight? Please speak through the board.A: J-U-I, followed by a push-pull sensation, G-S-T-H-I-D, 7-8, and a reset.
Q: Is Justice correct?A: YES, with a push-pull sensation, followed by a reset.
Q: Justice, the number 78, is it a year? Does that year mean something to you?A: YES.
Q: Justice, is that the year you started living here? Is 1978 the year you started hanging out around here?A: No response.
Q: What does 1978 have significance for you?A: F-I-R-E.
Q: Justice, did you get hurt in a fire here in 1978?A: YES.
Q: Did you live or work here?A: L-I-V.
Q: Did you have an apartment here? I thought it was always commercial buildings.A: NO.
Continued Communication: 7:18 PM
Q: Is Justice your name?A: NO.
Q: Are you seeking justice?A: NO.
Q: Is Justice a nickname?A: No response.
Q: Did you live in the back alleyway?A: G-T.
Q: Are you talking about the old Globe fire in 1978?A: YES.
Q: Were you harmed in the fire, Justice?A: YES.
Q: Did you set the fire?A: YES.
Q: Did you want to set the fire?A: YES.
Q: Do you now feel guilty for setting the fire?A: NO.
Q: Was it for a good reason, Justice?A: No response.
Q: Why did you set the fire?A: H-E-A-T.
Q: Were you cold?A: YES.
Q: Justice, is there a message you want to spell out for us tonight?A: D-T-E-A-T-H (interpreted as DEATH).
Q: Justice, do you know you are dead?A: YES.
Q: Can you point out how many people caused the fire?A: H-H-S (unidentified sequence).
Feral Witch's Commentary: Justice
Well, that escalated quickly.
We went from Greg enjoying the smell of coffee to someone apparently discussing a fire, death, and the possibility of having started said fire. Not exactly the lighthearted conversation I anticipated.
One of the more interesting observations from this session came from a participant who was seated at the planchette with me during the communication attributed to Justice.
The participant reported feeling incredibly sick and physically unwell during the exchange.
Later, they asked whether Justice had been using their energy, and the board responded YES.
Now, as someone who has practiced energy work and explored the paranormal for over 25 years, I find these types of experiences interesting, particularly when they occur during an emotionally intense session.
But here's where we separate the experience from the explanation.
The participant reported genuinely feeling ill. What caused that sensation is something we cannot establish from a Ouija board response.
Was it an energetic experience? The atmosphere of the séance? A physical reaction to the intensity of the moment? Something entirely unrelated?
We don't know.
And just because the board answered YES doesn't mean we can definitively conclude that an entity was drawing energy from someone.
What I find interesting is that this participant was actively involved with the planchette when the sensation occurred. Their physical experience became part of the session itself, and it was documented in our notes. That's worth preserving without exaggerating what it means.
The 1978 Fire Reference
Another part of this communication that caught my attention was the reference to an Old Globe fire.
The board produced the numbers 7-8, followed by confirmation that they represented a year, and later spelled FIRE. But we need to be particularly careful here.
We have not independently verified the claimed connection to a fire in 1978.
And more importantly, a Ouija board answering YES to questions about starting a fire does not establish that an actual person was responsible for an actual historical event. I'm not about to accuse some long-deceased San Diegan of arson because a piece of plastic moved across a board.
That's not investigating.
That's how you end up turning speculation into an episode of paranormal Dateline. Something else that stood out was how quickly our questions became specific. Once the board produced FIRE, we started offering possible explanations.
Was someone hurt?
Did they cause it?
Were they cold?
Those are leading questions, and leading questions can influence how a session unfolds.
As a practicing witch and someone who has spent decades exploring the paranormal, I think it's important to acknowledge that.
We cannot expect to investigate something responsibly if we're unwilling to consider our own influence.
The Strange Spelling Patterns
There were also some interesting sequences worth revisiting. Toward the end of Greg's session, we recorded:
W-J-U-S-T-I-S
Then, in the next session, we received:
J-U-I
And later:
D-T-E-A-T-H
Which participants interpreted as DEATH.
Was the board attempting to form recognizable words?
Were we unknowingly interpreting random letters according to the story developing around the table? I don't know. But the similarities are worth noting. I am also interested in the repeated appearances of letters such as H, E, T, and S across several sequences.
Of course, those are relatively common letters. Repetition alone doesn't make them supernatural.
And while I would love to announce that we've discovered an ancient spirit language, I'd rather have actual evidence before embarrassing myself on the internet. There's enough of that going around already.
What Do I Think Happened?
I think we had an interesting experience that deserves to be documented accurately. I think one of our participants experienced genuine physical discomfort during a session that had become emotionally intense.
And I think the recorded letter sequences raise questions worth investigating further. But I don't think we have enough evidence to identify a spirit, connect the responses to a specific historical event, or explain the participant's physical sensations. And I'm okay with that.
You can believe in magic without abandoning critical thinking.
In fact, I would argue that your spiritual practice becomes stronger when you're willing to question your own experiences. And quite frankly, this was the point in the evening when I would have preferred to have Greg back discussing interior decorating.
Coming Next: The Ghosts of Hillcrest's Past (WILL POST ON HALLOWEEN)
Our séance didn't end with Justice. After the communication appeared to conclude, we continued asking questions. And the answers took us in an entirely different direction.
Kurdish food.
Sixth Street.
An apparent individual we called Zeke.
Go-go culture. Old Fashioneds. And one particularly interesting year:
1963.
Now, for those who don't know me personally, I spent much of my younger years running around Hillcrest in the 1990s. It was where I found my people. But the memories I carry from those years aren't all happy ones. And the references that appeared during our final sessions brought up some feelings I wasn't expecting.
That's where Part Three begins.
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