The Ouija Board

Regarding denial (see below), a true story:

Back in college, junior year, shortly after Halloween, the guys I worked with on the night shift in the dining hall came in all jumpy and agitated. Turns out they had been playing around with a Ouija board and had convinced themselves that some malicious spirit was haunting their dorm room.

I tried to convince them that they had nothing to worry about -- that Ouija boards are nonsense and it was all just the power of suggestion.

Tommy, the one who seemed most freaked out, always wore a cross around his neck on a thin silver chain. I told him to take it off and to hold one end of the chain, letting the cross dangle.

"Hold your hand perfectly still," I told him. "Don't move your hand at all, OK? Now, without moving your hand, stare at the cross. Don't move your hand, just stare at the cross and think, 'Back and forth. Back and forth.'"

The cross, of course, began to sway slightly from side to side like a pendulum.

"OK, now -- don't move your hand, but think, 'Circle. Circle. Circle.'"

The cross began to swing in tiny circles at the end of the chain. Tommy's eyes went wide.

"See?" I said. "It's all in your mind. It's just the power of suggestion." Unfortunately, the only words that seemed to register with Tommy and the rest of the crew were "mind" and "power."

"You're doing that!" Tommy said.

"No," I explained, "You're doing it with tiny movements of your hand. Just like the Ouija board."

"I wasn't moving my hand!" he insisted. "I was keeping my hand perfectly still. You've got some kind of mind power!"

Thing is, though, even as he loudly defended his belief in both Ouija boards and telekinesis, it seemed like he was a little bit embarrassed by the whole thing. Some part of him, I think, knew that it was ridiculous to have gotten so wigged out by a little plastic slider manufactured by Parker Brothers, just as some part of him knew that it was his hand and not my mind that had caused the cross to sway and rotate.

Yet embracing irrationality seemed easier, or perhaps more attractive, than admitting irrationality. Tommy remained convinced, more steadfastly than before, in the reality of Ouija boards and mind power.

I was never able to convince him otherwise. (Although I was able to convince him to swap chores with me so I didn't have to clean out the deep fryer anymore. That was probably wrong of me.)

Comments

[Jennifer]

I seem to recall an interview with a game maker that produced Ouija boards on NPR, where he was asked how it worked. I believe he replied along the lines of "We don't know, really."

Bizarre.

[John]

"Although I was able to convince him to swap chores with me so I didn't have to clean out the deep fryer anymore."

Using your mental power, no doubt! LOL

[Matt McIrvin]

My first year in college, I took a sort of Great Books discussion course that touched on many subjects. Once, in the midst of an argument about skepticism and the supernatural, one of the other students, a generally educated and articulate person, revealed that she believed the stage magician David Copperfield might have genuine supernatural powers that he used to perform a stunt in which he passed bodily through the Great Wall of China.

(She suggested that the mechanism had to do with matter being mostly empty space. I was reminded of this, years later, watching Woody Allen's "New York Stories" short "Oedipus Wrecks", in the scene where the magician's assistant vaguely suggests that Mae Questel vanished because of "something about molecules".)

I was taken aback; did she not understand the concept of "a trick"? That the job of a stage magician is to fool people, and that one's inability to explain the mechanics of a particular trick doesn't negate the advisability of keeping this in mind? That most magicians will freely admit this, regardless of their stage patter? Even more startling, it turned out that a significant fraction of the class found her speculation reasonable. They took his act more seriously than he probably intended. I remember thinking that it's no wonder it's so easy to deceive people about these things when one is deliberately trying.

[craig thomas]

when we done the ouija board we attracted what i can only described as a voilent poltergeist thankfully the disturbances decreased after 2 weeks more than the whole neighbourhood now believes in this phenomana because of the freeky shit during and after our ouija board session.
My advice about the ouija board...very dangerous DON'T TRY IT, TRUST ME!