Ouija board fun!

[Stereolab]

I don't believe that Ouija boards do anything paranormal.

That said, who on here believes that Ouija boards can "work" without any party consciously moving the pointer? (I certainly do.)

It's been YEARS since I played with one...but I had a few interesting things happen with Ouija boards back when I was a teenager.

One time the pointer started spelling out LUCIFER, even though I wasn't consciously moving it, and based on my friend's reaction, I'm really really sure that he wasn't either.

Another time, I was using one with a few buddies, and the pointer kept going from Q to 8, back and forth. No one could make any sense out of it for a while...but then I thought it might mean "quiet," because we were getting kind of loud. (Or, in retrospect, maybe it meant "quit," because one or more of us was frightened of what the board might "say.") I often got strange abbreviations that I'm not sure any of my friends could have come up with consciously.

Again, I don't think Ouija boards do anything paranormal. I swear. But does anyone have any fun Ouija board stories??

[Yahweh]

Psychic: "Give us a sign if we've contacted the spirit of George McCloud"

Ouija board: "P-I-C-K-L-E-S"

Psychic: "This is a very good sign, how are you doing today George"

Ouija board: "P-I-C-K-L-E-S"

Psychic: "Can you tell us what life was like before you died"

Ouija board: "P-I-C-K-L-E-S"

Psychic: "Can you tell us anything else."

Ouija board: "P-I-C-K-L-E-S"

Psychic: "..."

Ouija board: "P-I-C-K-L-E-S"

Psychic: "I get the feeling you are yanking my chain".

Ouija board: "P-I-C-K-L-E-S"

Psychic: "I hate this stupid game..."

[roger]

Originally posted by Stereolab
That said, who on here believes that Ouija boards can "work" without any party consciously moving the pointer? (I certainly do.)Me too. Ideomoter effect. When I was a kid both my sister and I were silly enough to think that there was something to it. It's very easy to tell when somebody is purposely moving the puck. Almost always, when I tried to move it on purpose to give a fake answer she'd call me on it, and vise versa.


Later on, when we realized it was hokum, we tried it again and of course nothing happened.

[Jas]

Back in high school a bunch of it were playing with one, and it said that one of us would experience a death in the family soon. The next day, the father of one of the girls playing died of a heart attack. Pure coincidence, but at the time it had us right freaked out.

[Tricky]

Ouiji boards are one of the simplest of things to test. Simply have the sitters wear blindfolds, or otherwise obscure the board from their view. If it really is the spirits moving the planchette, then that should not affect the outcome. If you argue that the spirits need your eyes to convey the messages, then explain why the spirits can't simply cause your hand to write out the words with an ordinary pencil? Or since they are controlling your brain, why can't the spirits just cause you to speak?

Actually, all these things are claimed by various mediums (media?), but most of us have a point where we realize that this is just silly.

[psy kick]

I once did the board by myself, and it spelled out look in the mailbox.
I did.
it was empty.
So I stuck the board in it! ha!

[shemp]

There are lots of good uses for a ouija board, especially if you have a wood stove.

[Pyrrho]

What's really funny is when you get one of those shows with a psychic - especially a ghostbuster - and someone brings up Ouija boards...the psychic and the hosts practically froth at the mouth at how urgent it is to get rid of all Ouija boards in your house, because of all the evil spirits they attract.

[corplinx]

Ouija is a game by Parker Brothers. I prefer Trivial Pursuit.

[max]

I played it with three school mates, we were fourteen. We all asked would we get girlfriends and would we get married. In answer to my question it said I would marry a Victoria Grintzevitch. We roared our socks off laughing at the thought of me marrying a Russian let alone even meet one (this was 1954) and we lived way out in the countryside.
Three years later when I started work, one of the first few people I was introduced to was That name. I freaked of course. For the next two years she was coming on to me like mad and I spurned her every move even though I fancied her. Eventually she gave up. Had I not played the ouija board I am sure I would have married her but in my young mind I was too scared to as that would have proved to me that there were spirits around.
She was a stunner too!:D

[max]

I agree....there is no answer to that, is there?:D

[Rolfe]

No, but there are some questions.

Did the board spell out the name letter by letter? At the time this happened, did you know anyone by that name? Or even by that surname? Did you write down the name that was spelled out, at the time?

Can you deduce that I'm ever so slightly doubting your veracity here, old bean?

Rolfe.

[Darat]

Originally posted by corplinx
Ouija is a game by Parker Brothers. I prefer Trivial Pursuit.

I believe what the Ouija board tells me as much as I believe I own "Mayfair" or "Old Kent Road" when playing Monopoly!

[max]

rolfe
i knew nothing then, I was just a country bumpkin. One mate wasn't playing he was writing down all the answers. None of us knew of any foreigners let alone Russians. By the time I started work we lived in a different part of the UK. Nowhere near the town I previously lived in.

[Rolfe]

That's the trouble with these one-off weird stories. The teller can't prove the story to the satisfaction of even the moderately sceptical listener, and as it can't be replicated it goes nowhere.

I had a weird thing happen to me once, long time ago (nothing to do with ouija boards). Everybody else thinks I'm either lying or I'm remembering a dream. I certainly can't deny the latter as a possibility, though the memory has none of the qualities of a dream. And of course I can't prove I'm not lying.

I wondered if your story was a wind-up, but if not, I'm putting it in the same "WTF?" category as my ichneumon fly story.

Rolfe.

[tdn]

I never owned a Ouija, but I had Ka-bala, which was the strange 60s psychodelic version of a talking board (complete with "taro" cards, moving eyeball, and a magic answer crystal -- which looked incredibly like a marble). This thing was weird!

(As a side note, I recovered this repressed memory a few years ago. Months later I owned another that I'd bought on eBay for $250. Original box and all!)

Anyway, my brother and I were playing it. He asked:

"Will I ever play football in college?"
Yes
"Will I ever play pro-ball?"
Yes
"What position?"
SHTWQER
"QER? Quarterback! Yeah! For what team?"
BUVSVA
"Buffalo Bills?
Yes
"Will I be just like OJ Simpson?"
Yes

To set your minds at ease, my brother works as a parks director in New Mexico. He has not had a B movie career, and his wife remains unstabbed to this day.

[max]

Rolph
the worst thing imaginable......I had a couple of plays put on in London some years back and I had one character relate the ouija story as if it were his. I tried to contact victoria to ask permission to use her full name and at the same time to explain why i never responded to her advances. Anyhow I couldn't locate her until last summer. I did tell her that had she agreed I would have married her but the ouija incident had put me off. She laughed and said 'now you tell me when i'm 62' I guess it was insulting to tell her at this late stage:D
And it doesn't matter to me who believes me or not, I know the truth and like all the posters on here I'm taking part in a thread, that's all

[jnelso99]

Originally posted by Tricky
Ouiji boards are one of the simplest of things to test. Simply have the sitters wear blindfolds, or otherwise obscure the board from their view. If it really is the spirits moving the planchette, then that should not affect the outcome. If you argue that the spirits need your eyes to convey the messages, then explain why the spirits can't simply cause your hand to write out the words with an ordinary pencil? Or since they are controlling your brain, why can't the spirits just cause you to speak?

Actually, all these things are claimed by various mediums (media?), but most of us have a point where we realize that this is just silly.

Penn & Teller did Ouija boards on their ************ show. They had some average people try to contact the spirit of William Frawley (aka Fred Mertz from "I Love Lucy") at the hotel he either stayed in a lot or died in. They first "contacted" him successfully, asking simple yes-no questions, then did it again blindfolded. The kicker was that the Ouija board was turned 180 degrees without their knowing it. Not surprisingly, they moved the puck to where they THOUGHT "yes" or "no" was.

Then they had a Ouija nutcase (who sold his own line of "spirit boards") explain that the spirits DID need your eyes to be able to move the puck or something like that.

[Explorer]

"Ouiji boards are one of the simplest of things to test. Simply have the sitters wear blindfolds"

Oiuja could not work and does not work if the participants are blindfolded! Why? The participants need to see the board to spell out the words.

This proves only one thing, it is not likely to be be spirit forces physically acting on the hands of passive participants holding the glass or planchette.

Is it spirit forces acting on the mind of the participants and then through the participants acting on the glass, or is it the ideometer effect?

The effect of blindfolding of participants does not prove either theory conclusively.

Verdict? The jury is still firmly out!

[Hexxenhammer]

Originally posted by Explorer
"Ouiji boards are one of the simplest of things to test. Simply have the sitters wear blindfolds"

Oiuja could not work and does not work if the participants are blindfolded! Why? The participants need to see the board to spell out the words.

This proves only one thing, it is not likely to be be spirit forces physically acting on the hands of passive participants holding the glass or planchette.

Is it spirit forces acting on the mind of the participants and then through the participants acting on the glass, or is it the ideometer effect?

The effect of blindfolding of participants does not prove either theory conclusively.

Verdict? The jury is still firmly out! Your credulousness regarding Ouija boards is recorded in this thread. (http://www.randi.org/vbulletin/showthread.php?s=&threadid=25592&perpage=40&pagenumber=2) Why don't you explain some more of your Ouija board experiments?

[Soapy Sam]

Rolfe- I'm afraid to ask. Ichneumon fly? Not some kid wondering why his pet caterpillar was acting odd?
Come on. Out with it.

[BazBear]

Well there is something to it...but the something is IMO those involved, nothing supernatural. We (my brother and some friends, roughly 20 years ago) even created our own board using a lightly baby oil lubricated glass storm window and a white whine glass (up side down) as a pointer to insure no one was cheating consciously. And even if they had tried, it wouldn't work, the glass would tip almost instantly...trust me, I tried!!! It "works", but how and why is my question?

[Miss_Kitt]

BazBear -- As some others have pointed out, it's the "ideomotor effect" -- that is, your muscles are moving without you consciously sending signals. The same thing that can make a bent wire dowsing rod point to a water bottle when you walk by--even if you're a skeptic.

[Bikewer]

The Skeptic's Dictionary site has had an article up on the Ouija board for some years.

They "work" to the degree noted by means of the "ideomotor effect":

http://www.skepdic.com/ouija.html

[Aepervius]

@soapy

"I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created the Ichneumonidae with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of Caterpillars, or that a cat should play with mice."

*wink-a-wink*

[TX50]

Do you get foreign boards too (eg. Greek or Cyrillic) or do all spirits
speak English (like Houdini's late mum)?

[Ernie M]

"Ouiji boards are one of the simplest of things to test. Simply have the sitters wear blindfolds"

Oiuja could not work and does not work if the participants are blindfolded! Why? The participants need to see the board to spell out the words.

This proves only one thing, it is not likely to be be spirit forces physically acting on the hands of passive participants holding the glass or planchette.

Is it spirit forces acting on the mind of the participants and then through the participants acting on the glass, or is it the ideometer effect?

The effect of blindfolding of participants does not prove either theory conclusively.

Verdict? The jury is still firmly out!


The Verdict:
Ouija boards "work" because the participants are moving the planchette, whether consciously or subconsciously- hence the ideomotor effect.

Penn & Teller did a great job explaining the Ouija board on their "Bulls**t" show! Serious and humorous!

[Starthinker]

I have a Ouija board story. Years and years ago after my sister "found Christ" we were having a fire on the beach and she decided to burn her ouija board. She tossed it in and we watched it burn for a while, then she tossed in the plastic pointer. It was a plastic, as I've said, had some glued on parts and a little window so it was no surprise to me when it crackled and hissed a bit. But, oh lordy, it was proof to her that a demon was released because it wasn't plastic melting, no, it was a demon screaming. Just another slap to the forehead moment.

[Pup]

I wanted to feel the ideomotor effect for myself, so my wife and I tried to work a ouija board a few years ago. We couldn't get it to move. The only way we could get it to work at all was to consciously move it randomly and then it would sometimes stop "on its own."

If that was the ideomotor effect, it certainly didn't seem particularly spooky. I guess people need to be taught that it's spooky. Or are there some personality types who would consider it spooky without being taught, and others who wouldn't? I suspect there's a type of personality that tends to assume things are spooky unless proven otherwise, and another that's vice versa.

[Bikewer]

Back about 30 years ago, my wife and I played with one for awhile. we must be capable of generating the "effect" in spades, because we got all sorts of clever and complicated information.
Interestingly, this was all stuff we were either interested in at the time or reading about.

[learner]

When I was about ten years old three friends and me had an Ouija session. As you can imagine we got all the messages we were looking for. We were in my friends sisters bedroom, eerie quiet, you could almost hear our hearts beating. What we didn't know was that for some reason she had set her alarm clock. This wasn't a digital clock, nothing fancy, just a great big un with bells on top, loud enough to wake the dead. It tolled. Ive never seen a room vacated so quick in my life. We didn't speak about it til our early teens. Scared,..never :jaw-dropp

[Ashles]

We tried it one night.

We tried to contact the devil.

Eventually it seemed that we did, although he appeared to be unable to spell Beelzebub correctly.

For the devil, he sure moved the planchette sluggishly.

Except when we all declared we were tired and wanted to go to bed and asked if that was okay - it whizzed over to 'Yes' really quickly.
I guess he was tired too.

[ExMinister]

I used to have a lot of success getting the ouija board to work, though it only worked with some people and not others. The weirdest thing we got was a poem that started out: "Black and white had a fight..." about a battle between good and evil in which evil won. It freaked us out enough to put us off the ouija board for awhile.

[Pixel42]

I wanted to feel the ideomotor effect for myself
Do you drive? Ride a bike? Sight-read piano music? Touch type?

We all occasionally turn the control of our muscles over to our unconscious minds whilst we consciously think about something else entirely. That's really all the ideomotor effect is.

[ExMinister]

I wonder if what comes through a ouija board is ideomotor effect combined with expectations and spook factor. We all suspected each other of moving the planchette, but with the ideomotor effect it's possible we were all being honest. We were a bunch of teenage girls and communing with the dead was spooky to us, so perhaps what we got was what we expected. I don't know. It's still possible one of us was deliberately playing a trick on the rest of us. That's the thing, how can you know? You might know YOU weren't moving it deliberately, but there's no way to know what your friends were doing.

[bonavada]

A long time ago, I lived with my family on an isolated small-holding in the wilds of Carmarthenshire, Wales. My father would spend a few nights a week at the Inn a mile or so down the road. TV being what it was then, me and my brother (we were about 14 and 13 year old) would often play board games, cards and the like (along with Mam) after we got my little sister to sleep.

We occasionaly wrote out the alphabet etc, cut it out and persuaded Mam to play "weeji" on the coffee table. My mother is a firm believer in all things woo, and we enjoyed gently winding her up a bit about it all. Most of the time after the obligatory "Is there anybody there?" entreaty, the glass would spell out gobbledygook. Once though, we played just after a Dalmation dog we kept had been "put to sleep" for taking a little chunk out of my sister. I can't, for the life of me, remember the name of the dog it was something like "Mick" or "Joe".

Anyhoo....the dogs name was spelt out in answer, My mother was very excited and even asked pooch why she bit Vivienne. I think the answer was something like "she tasted pretty good haha" (my brother being the wag he is) It all came to a grinding halt when one answer was "Woof" and me and Paul just fell about the room crying with laughter. To say my mother was livid is an understatement.

BTW we never played "weeji" again.

BV

[Denver]

...It all came to a grinding halt when one answer was "Woof" and me and Paul just fell about the room crying with laughter. To say my mother was livid is an understatement.


Ok, so contacting a dog's spirit and have it spell out Woof is now my favorite ouija story ever. :D

[JcR]

I almost always selectively missed out on the great Spooky board game ouija board. When my friends decided to dabble with this, I usually went out for a hike. I Wondered along the way, about all the different reasons they may have had for their great outdoors opt-out.
To enjoy the sounds of crisp little stream, slowly and methodically weaving it's way. The leaves crunching beneath a walking foot, I so eagerly take. Taking in all the subtle mysteries that the day whispers on about, like a gentle chanting wind.

I would hear about all the wonderful stories after the fact. More than just the usual, the planchette pointing out letters and stuff. No!... It would levitate and hurl itself at someone, before spinning mad and furiously, then off to the wall to knock a picture down.
Of course it never happened when I was present.
I guess I null the spiritual event. The big party pooper that I am.

[ksbluesfan]

The Ouija board is a sore spot. My wife firmly believes she was contacted by Satan posing as Jesus Christ when she was young. If I want a fight, all I have to do is say "weeji". No evidence to the contrary will ever convince her that the Ouija board isn't a portal to hell.

[Ralph]

I have a Ouija board story. Years and years ago after my sister "found Christ" we were having a fire on the beach and she decided to burn her ouija board. She tossed it in and we watched it burn for a while, then she tossed in the plastic pointer. It was a plastic, as I've said, had some glued on parts and a little window so it was no surprise to me when it crackled and hissed a bit. But, oh lordy, it was proof to her that a demon was released because it wasn't plastic melting, no, it was a demon screaming. Just another slap to the forehead moment.



I've seen the infamous "screaming ouija board" mentioned at Rapture Ready on occasion.

Nobody batted an eyelash.

If you covered up a ouija board with a laminate of a monopoly game.......would it still be a portal to hell?

Would satan get pissed off that you were "building" little plastic houses & hotels on his "property"?

[Robert Oz]

I wanted to feel the ideomotor effect for myself, so my wife and I tried to work a ouija board a few years ago. We couldn't get it to move. The only way we could get it to work at all was to consciously move it randomly and then it would sometimes stop "on its own."


Although I've never played around with a ouija board, I did experience the ideomotor effect in high school (although I had never heard of the ideomotor effect at the time and believed in woo) with six pencils and some friends.

We would make a rectangle out of six pencils - one person holding three and the other person holding the other three with the tips joined. A bit difficult to explain, but essentially each person would be holding the pencils in a sort of square with one side missing.

Anyway, with the tips joined you would ask this mysterious rectangle all sorts of yes/no questions. If the answer was yes, the pencils would swing out. If the answer was no, they would swing in. If the mysterious rectangle was unsure they would swing in the same direction.

Uncannily, it almost always got the answers correct. ;)

[Larry Barrieau]

This http://www.csicop.org//sb/9709/ouija.html is what I've been doing every year for the past two decades or so.

[arthwollipot]

What's really funny is when you get one of those shows with a psychic - especially a ghostbuster - and someone brings up Ouija boards...the psychic and the hosts practically froth at the mouth at how urgent it is to get rid of all Ouija boards in your house, because of all the evil spirits they attract.I was once told that you can't contact genuine spirits with a Ouija board, only elementals. And they're not evil as such, but mischevious and capricious and just as likely to frighten just for the fun of it.

Needless to say, this statement was backed up by several peer-reviewed studies from reputable universities.

[bonavada]

A filler on my Dalmation Ouija story. I talked to Mam on the phone last night. She says that the dog in question wasn't put to sleep for biting my little sister but for "killing chickens". The pooch was a bitch she got on "breeding terms" from a nearby farmer who had a sideline with pedigree dogs. Mam get's the bitch, pay's for the stud then half of the litter (or all the litter if only one pup) was given back to the breeder. Mam then kept the rest of the litter and the bitch.

Like me, she doesn't remember the dog's name, and, "the dog wasn't really a pet", in fact, she doesn't think the dog had a name at all!

I said to her I can't remember any dalmation puppies. I do remember other puppies but no dalmations. Mam then tell's me there were no "dally" puppies, the bitch was barren.

Anyway, I tease her about the animal being able to communicate (in English) through weeji and she chided me, "there's some things you shouldn't muck about with and weeji is one of them".

This is the kicker, Mam tells me that the "weeji woof" incident never even happened! She remembers often playing weeji but no dog "ever came through." I tell her about the "woof" message but she is adamant, "Why would I talk to a dead dog? Do you think I'm daft?" says she. Mam notes my silence and tells me to shut up and "what time are you picking me up for Tesco's?"

Later this got me thinking. There's no doubt my lil sis got bit (she cried more about the tetanus jab than the bite) It opened my eyes a little that my mother had that bitch put down not because she took a lump out of little Vivienne's arse but because she mangled some scrawny chooks! I used to hate them birds. I had to go looking for the eggs in all sorts of places around the yard and in the orchard. It was a pig of a job in the winter.

My thoughts are that the old man was behind the dally's demise. Things were tight money-wise back then. My mother loves animals so probably forgave the dog for nipping Viv but once she killed the hens, who brought in a little cash with the eggs (ie helped to pay for the old man's cider) she was doomed. I won't delve into this much further with Mam because my father died not long ago and she still grieves.

Thanks to the OP for bringing back these memories. Forgive my little indulgence here. Who'd want to be fourteen again huh?

BV

[SnuffSnuff]

Unfortunately, I never got a hold of any Ouija boards when I was young, but I managed to have fun with my brother about them.

My family believes in the supernatural and freak out about basically anything forbidden like witchcraft books and the like. My brother sometimes would approach me with thsee topics and ask if they were real. He brought up the good ol' spirit board and asked if it was real and if he could get one.

I told him they were really expensive, but if he wanted one really badly I told him a friend of mine had one in his basement. So he got all excited when I finally brought the board for him to use. Having some fun with him, I told him a list of things he needed to do first before he could use it, like turn the lights on and off, avoid wearing the color red, make a circle around you using yarn.

The problem I discovered was that by this time my brother had lost his nerve and no longer wished to use the board and was pretty close to tears by then. Feeling really bad by this point, I told him that I made it all up and gave him a link to Penn and Teller's show.