Courtesy of Progsphere.

Progressive rock band the Mars Volta occupy an almost unfillable niche for their fans. For some sweet few years the band‰’s driving forces, guitarist Omar Rodriguez-Lopez and vocalist Cedric Bixler-Zavala, created a stream of innovative albums. However, the Mars Volta‰’s most interesting achievement does not come from their twisted time signature and jacked up meter. It comes from a Ouija board and a schizophrenic spirit. This story has been told before, but like any good ghost story, it needs retelling.

At a young age I fostered a little love for the occult. My creaky old home back in the Midwest has stood for over 150 years now. I plumbed the web for stories on all sorts of myths and spirits. Likely I never learned anything true. What I can tell you without any doubt is that these pseudo-spiritual sagas exist for retelling. So pretend the glow of your monitor is the soft flicker of campfire flame, and join me for something strange. Permit me let you in on an incestuous love triangle, a powerful poltergeist and a record that drops a smidgen of spectral blood in your ear.

In 2006, on a fateful whim Volta guitarist Omar ventured to the holy land. The Mars Volta had just released their album Amputechture. Perhaps in producing this album, riddled with allusions to the divine, the guitarist prompted himself into visiting Jerusalem. While at a marketplace, a strange Ouija board caught Omar. He bought it for Cedric, as a little gift.

Omar had a history with the spiritual, being raised with the Santeria traditions of the Caribbean, and treated the board with no small shred of reverence. Perhaps he gave it a tinge too little, maybe even a tinge too much. When we linger in strange metaphysical spaces, mind always towers over matter. The creaking of floorboards become sinister steps. Raccoons in the attic become the nails of ghouls. The drafty breeze transforms into spindly fingers stretching down your spine.

Regardless, superstitious Omar and Cedric sat down with the Ouija board after every show. It spoke in wild and creative terms that even Cedric with all his poetic lyricism felt he could not emulate. Cedric nailed its words down to a page. After a while he pieced together a story. The voice in the board called itself “Goliath.‰” It spoke not as one but for three. It contained a commandeering man and two women torn up and kept down by him.

The man in the board lusted for both women. His lust for one brought the other into the world and it would take her out too. His daughter had not been born too long before he overcame her. The man‰’s twisted act burdened his daughter with a child of her own. Unable to stow away the sin for long, the daughter gave birth. Raped and disgraced, the daughter‰’s parents saw an honor killing as the only proper end.

The board had lore buried in its very wood. When the band‰’s use tore at the old game, they saw poems etched into the inside. They came from all sorts of tongues. Some written in Hebrew, others in Aramaic, one of the most ancient languages on the Earth. Cedric sought translators. Some saw it and refused outright to bring whatever meaning they saw into the modern age.

The women sought a storyteller to unravel it all. It started out all talk, with Cedric and Omar as the interviewers. As time passed the man got greedy and asked questions back. Stories turned to pleas, turned to demands. The spirit in the board wanted a way back in, it wanted a body. What was worse, Cedric grew too fond of the tale. He longed to know more. Omar stepped in. He cracked it in half, buried it out in the desert.

The crack in the board festered like a spiritual gash left open in the sun. Cedric and Omar labored desperately away at finishing their newest album, The Bedlam in Goliath. Despite their best efforts, misfortune followed them at every turn. Omar‰’s basement flooded twice, destroying audio equipment. Cedric‰’s foot encountered injury. A band member contracted a rare blood disease found in only 1 percent of the population. Then matters became dire. Something nearly snapped Omar‰’s will to make the album.

The band‰’s sound engineer suffered a mental breakdown and claimed that Omar and Cedric were brewing up an evil tonic of sound. The sound engineer attempted to destroy all he could and outright sabotaged the album. Omar had relied on the engineer for years. The engineer had never even heard of the Ouija board.

Sweet salvation came in form of a new engineer with zero fear for the spiritual and a willingness to work on short notice. Convinced by the recent misfortune that the spirit was trying to destroy the album, Omar and Cedric doubled down. They believed the album might slay the spirit. By spreading the story of the women and the lust of the man over many listeners the board may finally be sated.

Every song on Bedlam comes with an ounce of blood born straight from the veins of angry spirits. The band tried to mete out good vibes to beat out the bad. They packed the song “Soothsayer‰” with audio of prayers from the Muslim, Jewish and Christian quarters in Jerusalem. They hope that doing so kept the album safe for each listener.

But what does it matter to you? You can shrug it off as superstitious insanity. Surely, you don‰’t believe this. But belief only needs a seed to grow. A scary story only needs a shred of your subconscious in its clutches to grow until twists the whole of your dreams into nightmares.

Listen to the album yourself. Turn on “Goliath‰” and hear the words of the spirit itself, transcribed through a singer made medium. Maybe the afterlife has some words for you too.