The infamous evil Ouija board - part 2

 After the last article I received many emails of people telling me there stories and as I suspected most are second or third hand. One thing people kept assuring me was that evil has been associated with this board since at least the 50's, possibly earlier, but there are a few things I noticed in these stories. A. Hardly any of them had demons or possession associated with them. B. They were all told the board was evil by clergy or family members with strong religious views. Which still holds me to my theory that the church has a large role in why this toy is evil. From experience growing up Christian, I know the church views any type of spirit communication as a product of the devil. The church has two views on where spirits go when it departs from the body, ones that go to Heaven and ones that go to Hell. I have even been taught that ghosts are actually demons portraying loved ones to win over trust so we will "let them in." With that being said the very fact that the Ouija board claims to be able to contact spirits would automatically be looked down on by the church, whether it be a toy or not. But still I will say I believe the reason why people have associated this board game with the devil is largely due to the movie The Exorcist.

Now The Exorcist is based off of a true story of a 14 year old boy who was possessed and actually required 3 separate Rites of Exorcisms from 3 different Christian denominations Episcopal, Lutheran, and Roman Catholic. The case did happen in 1949 and the boy did admit to be playing with a Ouija board. Now one thing to remember here is that religion was now involved when this claim came out, so the church automatically would assume this was the reason behind the possession. Just because the church assumes this doesn't make it fact, there have been other documented cases of possession where Ouija boards were not present. The case of Anneliese Michel comes to mind. After 1973 (the year The Exorcist came out) there was a sky rocket of claims dealing with Ouija boards and demons, it's a fact.

Another common factor in the Ouija stories I received (and have heard in the past) is most of them end with someone burning the board to get rid of the evil, but to their surprise it isn't affected by the flames. I have heard many other stories that consists of the smell of flesh when thrown in the fire pit, even a board screaming in the flames. But the biggest commonality is that the fire has no affect on the board. Could this stem from the belief that the Ouija board is closely connected with demons and the Devil, and the belief that fire is associated with Hell? Even as a believer and researcher of the paranormal it is hard to believe something made out of wood surviving the fire place.

Still this common factor is interesting, so I contacted a man by the name of James "The Amazing" Randi, to talk about this. For those who don't know who James Randi is, he is an investigator and debunker of paranormal claims. His foundation currently offers a $1,000,000 check to anyone who can prove paranormal abilities, you may have even heard of this as the "million dollar challenge". This challenge has been going on since the 70's and has never been won. So Mr. Randi told me to present everyone here with an experiment, in his words.

"Have everyone go out and buy a Ouija board and set it on fire. If it doesn't burn, they'll win a million dollars."

James Randi has also done tests on the Ouija board and to prove it is nothing more then the ideomotor effect, he blind folded the operators and the results produced was nothing but nonsense. No words, names, phrases, yes, no or dates, it was only gibberish. Surely demons or evil spirits would be able to spell the same way they were before, so what happened? The logical explanation according to Randi is that its all done subconsciously by the operator, when the operator can’t see the board, the operator can’t produce positive results.

The purpose of these articles is to provide other explanations for the Ouija board rather then demons. Wouldn't you think if this board was really producing such evil results there would be a ban on Parker Brothers producing them? Besides humans are obsessed with the negative, we always have a tendency to look at the darker side of things. So with this in mind, how many people have looked for positive Ouija board stories? Probably no one reading this article, we only want to hear about the demonic possessions that occur.

Personally I believe the effects of the Ouija board is based on the intent of the user. I do not believe a few compressed pieces of plywood to be evil. The same way I do not believe a gun is evil, but if a person goes out and shoots someone, the person and the intention is evil not the guns or bullets. Another thing we must take into consideration is logical explanations. As a researcher of the paranormal I look for logic first, and through experience I know that when someone believes they are having a supernatural happening logic is the first thing gone. Everything thing that makes a bump, bang or rattle becomes the ghost.

Could the same thing also be happening with the Ouija board? A couple of kids are playing with the board by candle light and they ask for a sign, a few seconds pass and the candle blows out, it may be eerie but was it a demon or even a ghost? Or is so it far fetched to think it was a common normal house draft? The same can go for future events, something unexplainably bad happens to someone so they start searching for answers. The only thing they can think of was that they played with the Ouija board when they were 10, so it must be a demon coming back for them. And since demons exist out of time, it may be 10 years for the human but only mere seconds for the demon.

So again all I am asking is for people to ask questions. Is the Ouija board really a conduit for demons? Are demons and Satan himself really just sitting around waiting for people to start playing a Ouija board? Is it the intent of the operator? Maybe it is nothing but the human subconscious. Or could it just be some stupid toy with a superstitious and spooky history associated with it? I'm not the one to decide, but maybe its all thee above. Thank you for reading and please continue to send your Ouija board stories to toledo_paranormal@hotmail.com