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The deep psychological trauma that follows,(some people), using an Ouija board has always intrigued me.

I get the skeptics view of the unconscious movement of the planchette but it really misses the whole story.

But then again Skepticsim usually does miss the whole story.

What is usual in most (strange). Ouija stories:

Ouija is usually played by children or teens.

There is a message that apart from one individual participant nobody else should know.

There is activity during and beyond the session.

There is a deep psychological change in one or more of the participants that is persistent after the session.


And yet it is impossible to replicate/never gets replicated.


I'm wondering if the whole thing is linked to a similar state of mind such as shamanic drumming? What is going on in the brain when people are involved in a Ouija experience?

Why does the Ouija event follow some people and not others?

I've never met someone who has been "haunted' by a Ouija experience, I've met one person, who was no-nonsense and unimaginative who said she experienced something that terrified her.


I still find the whole thing fascinating and I fully believe that it's the state of the mind of the participant that influences the activity of a Ouija session.
 
I agree entirely NF. I remember to this day my mother and my god mother using a Ouija board, on one occasion. Must have been well over 50 years ago. Can't remember what happened if anything, but the fact that I remember the incident (when I have only vague snapshot memories of my early childhood) shows how much of an impression it made even to me as an observer. Never got involved with the things myself.
 
The deep psychological trauma that follows,(some people), using an Ouija board has always intrigued me. ...
I'm wondering if the whole thing is linked to a similar state of mind such as shamanic drumming? What is going on in the brain when people are involved in a Ouija experience? ...
I still find the whole thing fascinating and I fully believe that it's the state of the mind of the participant that influences the activity of a Ouija session.

I think the reason some folks are deeply affected by using the Ouija relates to the Ouija method / procedure itself.

The Ouija is arguably the most extreme engagement in divination / communication / etc. one can experience because it is personally participatory. By this I mean everyone touching the planchette is directly involved in the process of generating the message in real time.

This affords a degree of experiential immediacy that isn't so readily induced when (e.g.) one shuffles Tarot cards and has another person across the table reveal and interpret them. If your fingers are on the planchette you're actively participating in selecting the elements of the message. Because the message is being assembled directly from the items to which the planchette moves there is no indirection in forming the outcome nor any intermediate step of interpretation by someone else. It is what it is, and you were party to selecting what it is.

There's also a measure of social reinforcement, because you're selecting the message elements collaboratively with whomever else is touching the planchette.

The Ouija is the one consultation / divination procedure that most directly engages the audience member with the process and hence leaves the least room for avoiding responsibility for the outcome. You can either accept or reject the outcome, but only at the expense of accepting or rejecting the procedure itself.

I can't think of another procedure that goes so far in forcing the participant to "buy into" the outcome. This induces a personal investment of belief / emotion that's unavoidable and inescapable.
 
The deep psychological trauma that follows,(some people), using an Ouija board has always intrigued me. I get the skeptics view of the unconscious movement of the planchette but it really misses the whole story.
I think you'll find that psychology can scoop up the rest of what is going on, if skepticism doesn't do the job.
But then again Skepticism usually does miss the whole story.
It isn't that Skepticism doesn't take in the whole story, it's more that it isn't susceptible to the superstitious mindset, and so isn't victim material.
What is usual in most (strange). Ouija stories: Ouija is usually played by children or teens. There is a message that apart from one individual participant nobody else should know. There is activity during and beyond the session. There is a deep psychological change in one or more of the participants that is persistent after the session. And yet it is impossible to replicate/never gets replicated. I'm wondering if the whole thing is linked to a similar state of mind such as shamanic drumming?
And what are the children told that the Ouija Board entails? Talking to devils and the dead. Scary stuff. Imagine what could happen if the kid has an underlying mental condition that has gone undiagnosed?
What is going on in the brain when people are involved in a Ouija experience? Why does the Ouija event follow some people and not others? I've never met someone who has been "haunted' by a Ouija experience, I've met one person, who was no-nonsense and unimaginative who said she experienced something that terrified her. I still find the whole thing fascinating and I fully believe that it's the state of the mind of the participant that influences the activity of a Ouija session.
Well, much like drug abuse, or illicit sex, Ouija boards have the cache of being forbidden fruit, so naturally kids are interested. Then they experience the ideomotor effect. But what is the ideomotor effect? It can serve as a freeway to the unconscious mind, much like people who have an ability with automatic writing. Now let's suppose that the mind involved is not expecting this to work, or is laden with plenty of content that they aren't comfortable with. How many unstable people are trying to forget traumatic events that their unconscious mind is trying to get them to integrate and remember? It must be just like having a devil parading your secrets about when the ouija board begins to relay messages. We are our own devils and our own angels both.
 
I think you'll find that psychology can scoop up the rest of what is going on, if skepticism doesn't do the job.

It isn't that Skepticism doesn't take in the whole story, it's more that it isn't susceptible to the superstitious mindset, and so isn't victim material.

And what are the children told that the Ouija Board entails? Talking to devils and the dead. Scary stuff. Imagine what could happen if the kid has an underlying mental condition that has gone undiagnosed?

Well, much like drug abuse, or illicit sex, Ouija boards have the cache of being forbidden fruit, so naturally kids are interested. Then they experience the ideomotor effect. But what is the ideomotor effect? It can serve as a freeway to the unconscious mind, much like people who have an ability with automatic writing. Now let's suppose that the mind involved is not expecting this to work, or is laden with plenty of content that they aren't comfortable with. How many unstable people are trying to forget traumatic events that their unconscious mind is trying to get them to integrate and remember? It must be just like having a devil parading your secrets about when the ouija board begins to relay messages. We are our own devils and our own angels both.


I love this but I'm part of this pandemic and don't have the time to respond.
 
The rate people are dying there may be a latency problem on the ouija network.
 
The rate people are dying there may be a latency problem on the ouija network.

Joking aside, you might be onto something - in the years of the First World War there was a greater interest in seances because of the amount of death around, people wanting reassurance about an afterlife. Could the same thing happen again?
 
Joking aside, you might be onto something - in the years of the First World War there was a greater interest in seances because of the amount of death around, people wanting reassurance about an afterlife. Could the same thing happen again?
Or taking DMT ??? I would love to try that but I think it would send you knutz ?
 
Joking aside, you might be onto something - in the years of the First World War there was a greater interest in seances because of the amount of death around, people wanting reassurance about an afterlife. Could the same thing happen again?

The First World War mention brings to mind for me, something not exactly Fortean; but to my taste, affording considerable fun. This being the book The Road To En-Dor, by E.H. Jones: the most unusual prisoner-of-war-escape story which I have ever come across. (In this work, published not long after WWI, the author refers to the abovementioned upsurge in interest in attempting to contact the dead, during and subsequent to that war with its colossal "butcher's bill". ) By the way, I tried a search of the forum: it would seem that the book has not previously been mentioned hereon.

The book is autobiographical: the author, in the British Army in the Middle East fighting against Turkey, was taken prisoner by the Turks. He and fellow-inmates of their remote P.O.W. camp in the middle of Asia Minor, desperately bored, took to attempted ouija-board sessions; things so came about that he and a fellow-officer found themselves -- for a lark -- thinking up messages and deliberately and surreptitiously, spelling them out via glass on board: this ploy took off rather spectacularly, with most participants believing that it was "for real" and being highly impressed. The Turkish camp staff -- whose behaviour toward the prisoners spanned the whole gamut from sadistic to benign, this sometimes applying with one and the same man, according to mood -- come across as almost endearingly sloppy, inept, and thoroughly corrupt; the camp commandant and his minions became interested in the supposed communing with the spirits, and made an offer to Jones and his fellow-scammer Hill, to go into partnership with them re using their supposed supernatural connections, to quest for buried treasure which was thought to exist in the neighbourhood.

Jones and Hill took the opportunity of feigning to go along with this scheme of the Turks', in order to use the time outside the wire which it would entail, to try to escape and make for Allied territory. It so befell that their (highly complicated) plan went pear-shaped at the last moment: they adopted a fresh escape strategy, equally unconventional but this time nothing to do with the spirit world. With this, they sorta-kinda succeeded: after much suffering, they were able to get out of Turkey and back to their own side very shortly before the war's end in November 1918. As said -- assuming no deep layer-beneath-layer goings-on unknown to the escapers, then no putatively genuine supernatural element was in play; but I for one, find the book a most enthralling and entertaining yarn.
 
Attached are two photographs of a ouija board I found. In best horror film tradition, I found the board (in it's box, with planchette) on the wall outside an empty house at twilight. The house looked like it was being renovated, and was a fairly nondescript suburban house in Hove. I saw it as I was heading to the pub, and thought that if it was still there afterwards, I would take it. It was, so I took it home. It turned out to be a fairly old mass produced board, dating from the 1960s I think. I was somewhat concerned - having a notoriously overactive imagination - that having the thing in the flat (which itself had a somewhat uneasy atmosphere at times, though again that overactive imagination was probably bought into play) might spook me out... but no. No spook outs, no creepy feelings, nothing. I half heartedly tried to use it once, and nothing. I'm more than a bit wary of ever
21034407_10211578759318239_1598848369475219855_n.jpg
21078769_10211578759278238_9010127571580451704_n.jpg
using it though...
 
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Attached are two photographs of a ouija board I found. In best horror film tradition, I found the board (in it's box, with planchette) on the wall outside an empty house at twilight. The house looked like it was being renovated, and was a fairly nondescript suburban house in Hove. I saw it as I was heading to the pub, and thought that if it was still there afterwards, I would take it. It was, so I took it home. It turned out to be a fairly old mass produced board, dating from the 1960s I think. I was somewhat concerned - having a notoriously overactive imagination - that having the thing in the flat (which itself had a somewhat uneasy atmosphere at times, though again that overactive imagination was probably bought into play) might spook me out... but no. No spook outs, no creepy feelings, nothing. I half heartedly tried to use it once, and nothing. I'm more than a bit wary of ever View attachment 33202View attachment 33203using it though...
Ooh wow!! That's so awesome!!
 
Attached are two photographs of a ouija board I found. In best horror film tradition, I found the board (in it's box, with planchette) on the wall outside an empty house at twilight. The house looked like it was being renovated, and was a fairly nondescript suburban house in Hove. I saw it as I was heading to the pub, and thought that if it was still there afterwards, I would take it. It was, so I took it home. It turned out to be a fairly old mass produced board, dating from the 1960s I think. I was somewhat concerned - having a notoriously overactive imagination - that having the thing in the flat (which itself had a somewhat uneasy atmosphere at times, though again that overactive imagination was probably bought into play) might spook me out... but no. No spook outs, no creepy feelings, nothing. I half heartedly tried to use it once, and nothing. I'm more than a bit wary of ever View attachment 33202View attachment 33203using it though...
You need to wonder why the former owners left it lying about in such a prominent spot. They wanted somebody to take it away. :eek:
 
Attached are two photographs of a ouija board I found. In best horror film tradition, I found the board (in it's box, with planchette) on the wall outside an empty house at twilight. The house looked like it was being renovated, and was a fairly nondescript suburban house in Hove. I saw it as I was heading to the pub, and thought that if it was still there afterwards, I would take it. It was, so I took it home. It turned out to be a fairly old mass produced board, dating from the 1960s I think. I was somewhat concerned - having a notoriously overactive imagination - that having the thing in the flat (which itself had a somewhat uneasy atmosphere at times, though again that overactive imagination was probably bought into play) might spook me out... but no. No spook outs, no creepy feelings, nothing. I half heartedly tried to use it once, and nothing. I'm more than a bit wary of ever View attachment 33202View attachment 33203using it though...
This is a standard mass-toy produced item from the 50's. Read back on this thread and be a little cautious about your interest. I have never been convinced that spirits come across, but the process does seem to bring out bad things in the users.
 
This is a standard mass-toy produced item from the 50's. Read back on this thread and be a little cautious about your interest. I have never been convinced that spirits come across, but the process does seem to bring out bad things in the users.
They were sold like this up to the early '70s at least. my family had them then.

We have several threads on then as you'll know.
 
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