Ouija board fun!

[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.