It's Saturday night. Your parents have gone to bed for the night, leaving you and a few of your friends alone with scary movies and a bowl of popcorn. Thunder and lightning along with torrential downpours complete the scene. What better time to pull out the Oujia Board? I know I did it a few times. We even lit candles and turned out all the lights to make it seem like a real seance.
I didn't really take it that seriously back then, but in the back of my mind I still hoped something would happen to convince me that spirits were real and they wanted to communicate with the living. But the candle flames didn't mysteriously go out, there were no strange sounds, and certainly no one was ever possessed by an evil spirit. I guess I should be grateful for that.
I have heard multiple times that Ouija Boards are extremely dangerous. Every psychic I have talked to has told me to stay away from them because if you don't know what you are doing it is very possible you could open the door to another realm and let things into our world that should not be here. Of course, I can't help being a little skeptical about that as well. Out of all the times my friends and I used a Ouija Board, we never had a single encounter with anything supernatural, or even slightly unusual. So, why the warnings?
The video above is pretty eerie and so are these stories of weird experiences people have had while using a Ouija Board.
There are a few explanations for the whole Ouija Board phenomenon. First, scientifically, it has been suggested that people are subconsciously moving the planchette without even realizing it. So when it seems like it might be inching towards the M, everyone kind of starts to push it that way together. This is possible, but depending on how many people are playing, the planchette would be attempting to move in a lot of different directions at once causing a lot of confusion and misspelled words.
Second, spiritually, mediums have said it is not the board itself that holds power, but the people that are using it. It is just one form of divination among many. They also believe that spirits use the eyes of the person they are talking through so by blindfolding the person it takes away their ability to speak to the spirits. This would mean than any experiment in which a person was blindfolded would be inaccurate.
Lastly, many skeptics have just said that someone who is playing is purposely moving the planchette to play a trick on the other people who are participating. It is more like a joke that people can pass on to others who have never played before which I think is the purpose Parker Brothers had in mind when then marketed the game. I'll admit I did this a couple times when I was younger, and people fell for it.
Anyway, whatever you think the Ouija Board really is, game or serious divination tool, keep in mind that there could be more to it than you know, so be careful!
