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Table-Tapping/-Tipping/-Tilting/-Turning (Séance Phenomenon)

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ElishevaBarsabe

Gone But Not Forgotten
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Mar 19, 2002
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My maternal family used to amuse themselves at times by table tapping (or table raising, actually). That is, they would sit at a card table, place their hands on it, and command the table to rise. Story goes that once they got the table nearly to the ceiling! However, I didn't see that, and by the time I was born, they had, apparently, given up the practice.

Since I found these family tales to be very interesting, I finally got my mom to agree to attempt to raise a table with me. We didn't have a card table, so we decided to use the coffee table. We sat on the floor and both of us placed our hands flat on the table and chanted "Rise, table! Rise, table!"

After about 15 minutes of chanting. the coffee table gave an great shudder--a movement that seemed to come from within the wood of the table itself, which was both unexpected and very creepy. My mom and I both gasped and pulled our hands off the table at once.

We never tried that trick again.

Has anyone else ever tried to tap or raise a table? Anyone succeeded?
 
Elisheva said:
After about 15 minutes of chanting...
Click to expand...
Such perseverence! I'd have got bored after 5 minutes, maybe less.
 
My BF went through a phase of table-tipping with a bunch of similarly daft mates in their youth.

He reckons that they could, with practice, raise and tip a table in the air even with a girl sitting on it! I think I described this elsewhere on the boards some time back.

He also did raising spirits with & without ouija boards, summoning demons and astral projection for lewd purposes.

Nothing fazes him. He once lived in a house where a leftover entity sat darkly in a corner giving everyone but him the creeps for a week.

His wall-mounted collection of occult objects faces into his neighbour's house which seems now to have become quite bizarrely haunted!
 
escargot said:
His wall-mounted collection of occult objects faces into his neighbour's house which seems now to have become quite bizarrely haunted!
Click to expand...

There's the makings of a movie in that idea. :D

Would you mind giving an example of such a haunt?
Thank you!
 
Table "talking" was a family favorite...until...

At a holiday gathering of family and friends,
we decided to bring out the card table to
see what would happen. We took turns, with 4 people at the table,
the others watching. We finally got the table up on one leg
(3 were in the air... it never got completely off the floor.)
Suddenly, it started "aggressively" jumping
toward my girlfriend's sister.
It jumped so violently that the leg that it bounced on
bent... it seemed to be behaving like a
dog on a leash, and only being held back by the
4 pairs of hands on the table.
The poor woman was terrified.

Several years later this woman was shot and killed
by her soon-to-be ex-husband.

Were the incidents related?
We haven't been brave enough to try and find out...
Or to see who might communicate through the taps!

TVgeek
 
My BF's neighbour's hauntings-

The BF and Pete live in adjoining semi-detached houses. BF hangs his Ouija boards, cursing masks and other occult paraphernalia on the wall above the stairs facing Pete's house.

Soon after BF started doing this, Pete found quite solid-looking people in his house at odd times. He'd get up for a drink in the night and there'd be someone standing in the kitchen. He'd come home from work to see someone walking up the stairs. His girlfriend left him because she didn't like waking up in the night to see a mini-skirted teenager looking out of the bedroom window.

There seem to be about half a dozen different men and women hanging around. None of them spoke or caused any trouble- they were just 'there'. He had some polt activity too, not troublesome but occasionally annoying.

Pete put up with this for a few months until one day he had occasion to look up the BF's stairs and saw the gruesome collection. 'So that's why I'm getting haunted!' he said.

The BF laughed: he knows ghosts won't bother him as he's not scareable!
 
escargot said:
My BF's neighbour's hauntings-
Click to expand...

Thank you! The neighbor hasn't requested the removal of the objects? Or, is there a chance the neighbor is playing your BF on this one?
 
Pete told the BF about the odd goings-on some time before he saw the wall display and the BF laughed, saying he was lucky to have spooks around as HE never saw any! It didn't occur to the BF that he'd been causing the trouble with his collection. That was Pete's interpretation.

Pete is a friendly and laid-back chap and accepted that no personal harm was meant to him, so he did not take offence over the curios facing towards his house. My BF would have moved them straight away if he had, being an obliging chap.

As far as I know Pete still sees the people and has things moved around mischievously. His girlfriend stayed away and he has another who presumably doesn't mind so much.

The houses are only about 10 years old by the way, built on farmland with no intriguing history.
 
The BF and his mates did it years ago, very successfully it seems.
Around the same time as they did a ouija board and summoned an inky-black something which hung around the house for a few weeks.........:eek:
 
escargot said:
The BF and his mates did it years ago, very successfully it seems.
Around the same time as they did a ouija board and summoned an inky-black something which hung around the house for a few weeks.........:eek:
Click to expand...

if you use one of those green scouring pads it'll get rid of anything :)

Yea, that's my coat - the one with the velvet coller.
 
Yup, details to follow when I can corner the BF.
There may be some on the 'Ouija Warning' thread, I think.

The BF attracts such weirdness but it doesn't scare him. ;)
Yup, Ok, I know, he lives with me, what's scarier than that.................. :D

As I remember, a girl sat on the table to weigh it down and it still danced around anyway. :eek:
 
Yep. I did.

I'm no pro cameraman, but would it not make sense to invest in a couple of more cameras, cover all angles, both over and under the table and then that way idiots like me wouldnt be so dis-believing? (if thats a word) There were too many areas that were out of shot.

It seems to me that there was too much scope for 'intervention'. I really want to believe, really I do. But I'd love to see some footage that makes me stop and think.....'Well how the hell did that happen'? And if I cant figure it out.......I might just believe.
 
Yeah, I know exactly what you mean.
Camera work was messy, couldn't see all of the table when it was moved etc.
I like to think that they didn't purposely move the table but lately I aint to sure.
 
Hmmmm. Its similar to when they have locked off cameras and there is a tiny part of the object off camera. Isn't it obvious that the point of filming something that moves seemingly paranormally should have all areas covered to it stands up to scrutiny?

Or am I missing something??
 
I do not know of course if there have ever been any genuine ouija bords or table tipping or sayonces (sp) as I have never been to a genuine one. I supose if ghosts are really the spirits of the dead then it is possible that they might chose to comunicate via methods that origionated as parlour tricks.

A table tipping or a ouija board is easy to fake, you simply need 2 people to colaborate. that way whenever someone dose the "look it must be genuine I've taken my fingers off and it still moves" routine you always have at least 1 person pushing the glass or the table.

To go back to the subject of most haunted, the thing that hits the credability of their table tipping experiments the most might be just how sucsessful their forrays into table tipping have been, it would seem that they have never had a failed table tipping on the show. I would presume that if one were conducting objective experiments in table tipping then it would never be 100% sucsessful, even if you put some people you know to be hoaxers around the table and in the middle of britains most haunted location.
 
Essential reading for any thread on table tipping or ouija.

http://www.barrettdorko.com/articles/ideomotor.htm

Basically, it doesn't require anyone to consciously cheat - all it requires is suggestion and minute unconscious motor movements.
I have experienced the effect myself - during Derren Brown's seance, we tried the ouija board bit. It freaked us out until he explained. Basically we both swore we were hardly touching the glass, definitely not pushing it. But all it took were a few verbal suggestions and subconsciously we must have been pushing it. What made this even more the likely explanation was that the name we were meant to "receive" had been chosen before the seance had started, and it was basically all a set up, as was shown at the end.

For me that's proof that table tipping and ouija involve the ideomotor effect.
Of course in some situations it could be otherwise, I'd never rule anything out, but I think it's important to be aware of all possible explanations, and this is a big, scientifically proven one.

Next time they do table tipping on MH, observe how they choose certain people to do it, and how normally Yvette "leads" it. Think about it: she is doing the suggesting - "please make the table move, try harder for us" etc. And the people she choses she has been working with for a while, and probably considers friends. They want to make it happen for her, and subconciously, they will.
I even vaguely recall them saying in one show that one of the people doing the tipping was unknown to the crew which is probably why it hadn't worked so well - they actually mentioned the chemistry between the people involved as being important. They were right, just not for the correct reasons.
 
I completely agree with Pinklefish. And I think theres a subtle element of chaos theory that comes into play here. The Derren Brown thing was in my mind too. I remember in the seance that he did, he pretty much debunked how the mediums at the turn of the centuary freaked folks out with ouija's and things. The mind is a weird, weird place. A bit like Droitwich.
 
I saw MH for the first time a couple of weeks ago (I don't have a working TV, let alone Digital :( ) and it was the Live one at the Welsh Navy place. I carefully watched the Ouija and the table-tipping and noticed that in both of these, Derek was the only person to never remove his finger or hands. In fact, at the end of the table-tipping Yvette said the only way that the table-tipping could be faked was if you had your hands on the table in a specific way. The same way that Derek had his hands on the table. Also, what is with having a table-cloth on the table? Surely it would make for better TV if there was no table-cloth and you could clearly see that there was no way that the MH crew were controlling it.
 
It just showed another table tipping on most haunted (castle dorlworth (sp?) in the netherlands) and derick is without a doubt the culprit. the table was tipping towards and away from him exclusivly (were it pivoting towards and away from any others perhaps there could have been some doubt but it was not). About half way though the 'table tipping' it showed a close up and at the side of the frame was dericks left hand (it had his chunky metal watch on it) and the hands themseves were moveing as he pushed the table, the force they were moving at and the way the fingers were moving could only be effecting upon the table, not an effect from the table.

knew that the anatomy part of my degree would come in handy some day ;)
 
Dead right!
I suspect if they did a table tipping session without Derek then bugger all would happen; he was clearly pushing the table tonight.:mad:
 
While I accept he could be consciously and blatantly cheating his arse off, seeing as he does so in every other part of the show, do you guys see the alternative explanation, and how it's quite interesting psychologically?
If Degs isn't aware of what he's doing, it's very interesting that he appears to be the one who is doing the most to make the table move. Now, if that's subconscious, it says a lot about the guy's mentality. It says that he's one of those cold readers who believes in everything they are saying.
Some say that type of fake psychic often gets better results than the ones who consciously do it. I reckon this is because they use the same skills but their own self belief draws people into it much more easily and convincingly than if it's someone lying all the time.
Basically it's easier to believe if the person doing it believes it.
So an alternative Degsy theory is born: he's not an outright scammer, he's a deluded cold reader who has convinced himself it's all real.

I'm not sure which is most likely though. Probably the outright cheating theory. But the reason I don't think that's the case is that the ideomotor effect would look completely obvious to someone observing. For the person doing it, their state of mind, due to the suggestion involved, means they really can't see that they are doing it themselves. That's the whole point.
 
Going back to the table tipping and degsy, i aggre with what was seen. Firstly though we have to think how does a "spirit" move a Table/crate? Telekinesis? Hot air?;) Or does the spirit stimulate an individual to do it? Degsy being open would then be the prime candidate. It could be done in the same manner as auto writing/drawing.
And of course it could be a complete pile of steaming already eaten vegetables 8 hours after dinner.:D
 
It could be the steaming option, after all if someone caught you moving the table with your hand all you have to do is say "the spirit made me do it!" ;)
 
Did anyone else see the Derren Brown seance where he was talking about the Victroian Mediums. I was very interested by the fact that the medium was unconsciously performing these parlour tricks from behind a curtain. What was even more interesting (assuming that the students involved were not stooges) was how he got the students to unconsciously perform these tricks.

Since watching that, I have always had the sneaking suspicion that Degsy really does think these things are happening and that he subconsciously knocks things over or throws things, when the camera isn't on him.

MF
 
misguidedfool said:
Did anyone else see the Derren Brown seance where he was talking about the Victroian Mediums. I was very interested by the fact that the medium was unconsciously performing these parlour tricks from behind a curtain. What was even more interesting (assuming that the students involved were not stooges) was how he got the students to unconsciously perform these tricks.

Since watching that, I have always had the sneaking suspicion that Degsy really does think these things are happening and that he subconsciously knocks things over or throws things, when the camera isn't on him.

MF
Click to expand...

Thats a very good point. The thing DB did was just suggestion, from what I know of his work. I don't think people realise just how powerful suggestion can be (why would they want to believe they can be affected so easily by someone saying certain words a certain way and using certain body language? Heck, anyone could manipulate you!)
Self suggestion is a similar thing, I think. It's like when you're alone in the house, it's dark and you're reading a thread on dog headed men. Or that one about faces in dark windows at night. It's all you can do to not scare the pants off yourself! On MH everyone is primed for a certain experience, indeed there is pressure for them to come up with it. It's mentioned elsewhere that Yvette got very upset when an interviewer implied it was all scripted and put on - I think we've hit the nail on the head here and most of the people involved really do buy into it, and suggest themselves into making certain things happen.
 
Tiptology

I took part in a Table Tilting sesh with a very well respected medium/clairvoyant (Sandy Sinclair) about 4 years ago. I was open minded about it all and quite unaware of what was to follow. There were four of us, all sat around a small wine table. Sandy went into a deep trance like state and we just had to concentrate and touch fingers, hands spread on the table. The table started to move in what I can only describe as a wave motion to begin with. Two of the sitters were men and they swore in disbelief when it happened. Then the table started to rise upwards, and there were no strings, no wires, no trickery. The table indeed did rise up.. and up, until I couldn't keep my hands on the table, it went up to the ceiling. An outside sensor light suddenly came on and the table came crashing down to the floor, the link was broken, and Sandy burned her throat in the process. You had to be there to believe it - I am now a believer in Tiptology. :eek!!!!:
 
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