OUIJA

Milton Bradley makes them. I think it’s safe to say that if your Ouija board hasn’t been dipped in virgin blood or isn’t made from the wood of an ash tree felled on the third full moon after the summer solstice or whatever the hell, there’s nothing special about it. In other words, what’s a Ouija board anyway? If I draw one on a piece of notebook paper, is there any reason it wouldn’t work/fail to work every bit as well as one made in some special way?
I guess my point is this, if someone used a Ouija board and something freaky or paranormal happened, it’s not because Ouija boards are special. It’s because something ‘out there’ is using that as a convienient way to convey messages, for it’s own purposes. It could (and does) as easily use dice, or tarot cards, or dreams, or whatever. These very same things could just as easily being meaningless when tried again.
That is, IF it’s not all just a bunch of hooey in the first place.

It’s funny for me that you guys would bring up this topic because I haven’t felt like spending much time responding to a thread in a long while. I can begin by saying that I would likely never play with a Ouija board again in my life. My experience with it began in high school. My friends and I were rather typical gothic teens and heavily interested in the occult. I ended up buying a Ouija board to play with my friends. I remember sitting up in my friend Mick’s room with a few other friends and her brother and sister. We often played drinking games, smoked pot and played the Ouija board. Nothing much ever happened there and we were always arguing about who was “pushing” the planchette around to spell what they wanted, but everything changed when I took the board over to another friend’s house.

Her name was Rosa. She lived in a part of town that was built on top of where a cemetery used to be. Her parents were very old country, superstitious Italians and her grandfather had died fairly recently (within the year) so her mother wore black every day and had covered all of the mirrors in the house, except of course for the one in the bathroom because Rosa still had to put on her make-up before school. My friend was really afraid of the board and because of the vibes of her fear, I began to take it more seriously too. We played it in her room and vowed not to push it around… sure enough it moved by itself while we were touching it. It didn’t spell anything, just moved around and would occasionally respond to a “yes or no” question or float around on the numbers but without stopping on really anything in particular. We decided there must be something in the house, so we tried it in different rooms, finally gathering the courage to try it in the dark basement room where her parents kept barrels of their home made wine. Another feature of the room were the sausages, which were hung from the ceiling by string to dry. We started in with the board again, getting more gibberish but becoming more and more convinced that this thing was for real. This time we needed proof, so we “asked for a sign”. Repeatedly we looked around and continued talking to the air after having taken our hands off the board. Then, unprompted by wind or any other interference except what could be assumed paranormal, one of the sausages fell down and hit us. Of course we began screaming, grabbed the board and got out of there so fast that as I remember it, we might as well have been flying out of there.

Of course her mother heard us and saw us with the board which resulted in a serious lecture, one which you’d sooner expect had she caught us with drugs or something. Her father was in on it too and I wasn’t allowed over for a very long time. So Rosa and I decided that there must be spirits all over the place. Like Uccisore’s suggestion, we drew Ouija boards on pieces of paper and placed one finger each on a coin. The make shift boards worked equally as well. At school we found that the swim locker room seemed to be the most haunted. We also went out to the cemetery and got results by doing nothing more than placing a coin on any horizontal memorial stones, the ones which are set like plaques in the ground at the same level as the grass. It was at this time that I noticed when in the cemetery I could sometimes see sparkles in the sky over particular monuments. I brought some other friends out to these places and they were able to see them as well.

But this story gets worse. (this will be vortical’s longest post ever!) Often when I was growing up both of my parents worked night and I was home alone a lot. In my boredom I discovered that the Ouija board could be played independently. One day after school I sat with it on the coffee table in the basement and tentatively placed my fingers on the planchette. After a while it started to move and I decided to take the experiment one step farther and took my hands off. The planchette itself continued to move and then quickly jerked off the board and stopped. This only took a matter of seconds, it’s not like this thing was floating around spelling things. It was enough to scare the absolute shit out of me and triggered a full scale panic attack. Additionally it proved that it wasn’t fake, whether it was a spirit or only my own psychokinesis, something very real was happening. I kept doing it and have the following reasons to speculate that this was, in fact, some kind of spiritual contact.

Strange things started happening in my house, things that were not only evident to me. Most of the disturbances were auditory, but not all. Both my father and I frequently heard voices in the basement. The times he heard speaking was always around the time my mother would be coming home. The dog would perk up and go down to the basement and both he and I would swear that we had heard my mom open the door and hear a voice, like hers, talking as if to the dog. One time my father went down there, already saying something to her while on the way down. He was going to get the laundry, but returned up to the kitchen only moments later asking, “you heard your mother didn’t you?” I told him something was going on and he didn’t say anything. If I bring it up now, he says he doesn’t remember.

But he does remember how he ended up taking the dog to the vet at my mother’s urging after she had seen the dog frequently sit at the top of the stairs on the second floor and whimper. The dog would look, as if towards someone scolding her floating in the open space between the stairs and the ceiling. I only saw it once and was very disturbing to see the dog spontaneously cowering the way she would when swatted on the nose, although absolutely nothing was happening. And my mother remembers the night I called her frantic while hiding under my desk upstairs convinced by sounds of dishes breaking and things being knocked over that the house was being robbed. She called the police from work and came home. The police came and inspected the entire house to find that nothing had been moved, touched or broken.

This entity or entities seemed to have a more personal relationship with me. I am convinced there was more than one- I had played the Ouija board so much that if the thing was for real, there could have been a dozen spirits contacted. There was definitely something nasty or at least very mischievous in the house. When I was home alone once a little picture flew off the wall and hit me in the shoulder. I reenacted the event several times to see if it could have hit me had it just fallen downward naturally, but it was impossible. Something friendlier seemed to be in the house as well. When I would go to sleep at night I would frequently awake and feel as though someone was lying next to me in the bed. I could feel a depression behind me, like the weight of a body on the mattress and it was warm. If I moved to look the feeling dissipated, because I was oddly comforted by it, I started to leave it alone and it continued on like that almost nightly for a while. It’s presence seemed to diminish the fear I had regarding the other incidents. Fearful that these things were somehow attached to me, I consulted with another friend’s grandmother who reluctantly preformed some kind of test on me she had learned to see if there were spirits that had attached themselves to me. It involved a dish of water and oil- I have no idea how it worked but the results were upsetting to my friend’s grandmother, who became kind of angry and frustrated. She only spoke Italian and my friend suggested we leave her house afterward and told me she had said something like “you kids need to stop fooling with that witch shit and go to church.” She was annoyed that I had come into her house because she was such a devout Catholic and I was obviously giving off very disturbing energies as indicated with the oil and water.

Enough was enough and I had long since stopped playing with the Ouija board when I started actively trying to get whatever the hell was in my house, out. Taking grandma’s advice, I prayed a lot, which was something I had never done before. I also did rituals and banishments. Slowly at first and then it became more apparent, the strange things stopped happening. It still felt like something was in the house, but now it seemed to be dormant. I’ve never had any such encounters since, sometimes I almost miss them, but then I don’t. A therapist I had seen a few years ago was interested in these stories and had entertained the idea that I might have been going thru a lot of stress and had been hallucinating, but the fact that I wasn’t the only person having these experiences seems to disprove that idea.

Great retort! I once recalled once when I was dilly-dallying with tarot cards: “what is the point in laying them out in an orchestrated position or outlined shape (like a cross for example) when placing them in a pile face down in the order you drew them works just as well?”

There’s so much excess in the occult with fanciful doodads and other nonsensical errata that it’s no wonder how Christianity got so flamboyant.

Well, if I was an occultist, I’d say the paraphenalia is an important part of any ritual, helping to focus the mind, and create the right ‘atmosphere’.

Think about some poor bastard who lives on shithole row, and sees nothing but spinach for 6 days a week, walking into somewhere like York minster, and watching, admittedly from afar, these funny-looking blokes in gold-encrusted clothes, waving smoke and staffs around, bathed in the light from a stained glass window the size of his entire neighborhood, whilst what looks like a bunch of diminutive angels sing from the cloisters.

Impressive is not the word. Spinach man would be on his knees before the first syllable of the littany could be uttered.

Religion got killed by TV.

And the Occult got killed by crappy horror-movies.

Vortical that post was crazy!.. and no one even responded. That a very interesting story, and it even refutes most of what Uccisore said in his first post.

I played ouiji once… it told me I was the King of France in my past life.

Tres interestment no?

I find it interesting how we have these UFO videos, and ghosts and spirits and stuff… but we just sort of dismiss it, like a fly that is mildly annoying.

I do!!

There is an explanation for vortical’s post.

There’s always a psychological answer

  Well, maybe there is, and maybe there isn't. I'm of two minds about this: I believe first and foremost that spiritual 'stuff' is agent based. Obviously I believe in prayer and miracles and such like. If there is any other stuff, more like what a person would call 'occult', that isn't balderdash, I believe it's also tied up with beings, not spiritual 'entities'. 
 So, it could go two ways. Perhaps all the flamboyant mumbo-jumo is irrelevant, because a spiritual entity is just going to do what it likes regardless- in that case, why not a Ouija made of toilet paper? If the entity likes spooking teen girls, it will jump on any situation available. 
  OR, all the mumbo jumbo is super important, because the spiritual entities like it that way. Maybe 'demons' are stuffed shirts who like things a certain way, and people who think burning candles and chanting self-empowement crap is enough are just fooling themselves into accepting their own unwillingness to 'do what it takes'. 
 In either situation, the fact is there is no power in a Ouija board. If someone freaky happens because you use one, it's because something 'out there' wanted it to- I would say for no reason other than to promote belief in the occult. I guess what I want is to point out that talk of Ouija boards should serve to point at a much more interesting, fundamental matter.

Some would argue that’s exactly what people claim the boards do.

If there is a god why would he let any spirits talk to or do anything to anyone. That does not make sense.

The whole thing is about people, as usual.

Com’n Ad… you gotta do better than that.

So, then what is the explanation?

Old Gobbo, I actually thought I was in agreement with Uccisore…

This only took a matter of seconds, it’s not like this thing was floating around spelling things. It was enough to scare the absolute shit out of me and triggered a full scale panic attack.

Sorry. But you just seemed completely predisposed to actually believing this bullshit form the very start. First the board is constantly spelling jibberis, which is consistant with Oujia being bullshit, but you seemed rather obsessed and intent on getting some actual results. I can imagine that you spent a great deal of time doing so, miking this Ouija stuff a major focus in your life. I mean your entire environment seems to all contain people who believe that Ouija is real. Its funny how people who believe in demons and ghosts see demons and ghosts and those who dont, well…do not. My friends fundamentlist christian father not only believed in the Bible literally but he also seemed to buy a lot of other horseshit too like demons, bigfoot, UFOaliens(who were really demons in disgiuse), homeopathy, Chi’ ect. ect… You were in an environment where you immediatly knew someone who was supposedly able to “test” spirit presance around you? Thats not a “normal” environment. It seems that you grew up in an atmosphere and environment that encouraged and facilitated supernatural beliefs.

Regarding environment, it’s called growing up Catholic in a very Catholic community comprised primarily by immigrants who are, yes, very superstitious. What exactly do you think is “normal”? I don’t think there is anything abnormal about an 80 year old Italian woman who was raised Orthodox Catholic. The idea of possession and exorcism is a part of the Catholic faith, as a matter of fact most religions have variations on these ideas.

No, not everyone around believed in the board. The friends I mentioned in the first paragraph were stoned and drunk when they played and used the board as a party game.

It seems that you, like Old Gobbo who said that I was disagreeing with Uccisore, fail to understand that I AGREE that the board is not special or powerful in and of itself.

I think you’re absolutely right when you say that people looking for spiritual contact are more likely to find it and those who are not are unlikely to have such experiences. Spirituality is a very personal thing. Religious people interpret the world differently based on their beliefs. If you are a Catholic lets say and you pray for a sick friend, have their name mentioned at the conclusion of a mass to enlist the prayers of others in your spiritual community and they get better, then you’re going to believe that those prayers helped the person in need. However, if you’re an atheist, those thoughts are never going to enter your mind and when your friend recovers you will be more likely to thank the doctors and nurses rather than god, because if course it was them and the advances of medical science that made the difference, it had nothing to do with the god you don’t believe in.

I think my approach was a little more neutral than you’re making it out to be. I did often question whether or not it was ME, electrical impulses in my hands or possibly psychokinesis causing the effects with the board. I questioned the events and even discussed them with a psychologist in therapy. When I heard things getting banged around in the kitchen while I was home alone upstairs I called my mother at work who called the police. I believed that someone had broken into the house, not that this was a hallucination or the result of my having played the Ouija board.

The Adlerian, your post wasn’t direct or clear enough for me to understand what you’re getting at. I’m interested to hear what you’re explanation might be. To clarify, when the planchette moved BY ITSELF, I was not touching it at all. But in all seriousness, I’m not trying to believe in some fabricated reality. I’d like to think I can find a better explanation for all this, however, at this point I am inclined to believe that the occurrences were spiritual in nature. As far as cause and effect goes, prayer seemed to be the solution, but like I mentioned above I do realize that outcomes and beliefs can have a lot to do with a person’s perception.

I know tons of catholics but I do not know a single one who claims to have to power to sense demonic presance around a person. Thats pretty strange. Right away you knew an old lady who could supposedly sense demonic/spirit presance.

Exorcism hasnt been a major focus and has in fact been frowned upon in terms of belief in Cathlocism for quite sometime now.

People who believe in demons and spirits are more likely to misinterpret explainable phenomenon as “demons”.

Just a note about my post: it got screwed up and that is only one small section of the response. Sorry.

Go to toreasonpublishing.com
To find an intellectually respectable description of a modern religion. Read Life Itself As A Modern Religion. Loved it

Maybe you only experience that stuff if you already believe in it. I’ve never had a ouija board do squat around me, nor have I ever seen anything remotely paranormal, despite the fact that the restaurant I run is supposedly “haunted.”

Stoned and dethroned…

exhales bong hit

I like it…