Have you ever screwed around with the paranormal?

TL;DR, have you ever played with paranormal rituals, tried to talk to ghosts etc?

My experiences:

In this post I relate a tiny bit of my experiences playing with the paranormal. Scary stories, occult rituals, religious ceremonies, new-agey rituals (which are usually just bizarre misinterpretations of actual religious practices from different cultures), I’ve done a lot. Sadly, I’ve never gotten to go on a ghost hunt like on Ghost Hunters (back when it was actually good), which is something I’ve always wanted to do. Oh well, I imagine it would be absurdly boring in reality anyway.

Like I said in this linked post, I’ve never done anything that requires grievous bodily harm, sacrifice (of people or animals), or inconveniencing others who weren’t already up for playing paranormal detective with me (i.e. bothering secretaries in hospitals). Which isn’t to say I never mildly hurt myself intentionally (I’ve pricked my finger and pulled out tiny amounts of hair), but no wrist slitting stuff or anything like that.

I’ve probably tested hundreds, if not thousands of rituals. For those of you on the edge of your seats (or the Scooby Gang ready at any time to pounce on a paranormal thread and helpfully explain that the paranormal is fake), no absolutely none worked. None of them that had a clearly verifiable outcome anyway. Obviously the really fuzzy ones like “luck” worked in that “kind of maybe” way where they make you feel luckier, or you experiencing confirmation bias, but sorry, I can’t offer any working “Greater Summon Satan’s Buttcheeks” ritual for those of you just dying to pull the ultimate party prank.

These spells can get hilariously complex. There’s one that I found really funny, though I can’t recall the specifics. It was a summoning ritual of some sort that required you to, on a new moon, take a walnut shell (I’m certain it was a walnut shell). Fill it with a drop of blood, some saliva, I think maybe a little semen or vaginal goop (depending on your sex), and the rest with lime juice. Then every night until the full moon you had to do… something. I can’t recall what that something was, but it was really boring, like lighting a candle and meditating (with said disgusting walnut). And then on the full moon get next your circle of white salt (you DID remember to make a circle of white salt right? What kind of occultist are you?), with your Lesser Gross Magical Walnut of Bodily Fluids of course, and chant some silly phrase. I loved that one even though I knew nothing was going to happen if for no reason other than how ridiculous it was.

There’s an absolutely huge amount of theory involved in this whole thing. A lot of it mutually contradictory being different cites and sects of course. For a while I figured that was partially a side effect of how back around in 2006 or so, back when I was really into this stuff, the internet still by and large had communities that you got to by following “recommended pages” links or by recommendations from people in their forums, rather than searching around, though that was starting to change a lot. However, looking around now I notice the same thing happening with very mutually exclusive moods and theories. I don’t know if these people simply don’t notice, don’t care, or what. I suppose they could disagree with other sites’ practices, but I’ve never seen any holy wars between different occult sites, though that doesn’t mean it never happened.

But when I say “theory” I mean it. It’s all very… academic I guess? For something as weird, often new-agey, and unverifiable I’ve seen academic papers on the stuff. And I don’t mean real journals of modern folklore analyzing this stuff. I never really kept tabs so I don’t recall the names, but there were legit, no-joke, “Journals of Demonology”, so-called “academic” conferences, and so-on with a (I assume not very good and/or very biased) peer review process and everything. Which isn’t to say all of it was academic, certainly some sites made no claim or acknowledgment of anything remotely (pseudo-)scientific, but it was there and not especially uncommon to see 10-20 citations on a page from these sources.

Though no matter the community there was always the undercurrent of a Mythbusters-esque “don’t actually do this!” Nobody minded if you tried luck spells or peace spells or whatever, but under no circumstances should you chant certain words or try to summon an imp. “This isn’t some silly RP forum and you’ll be in for a very rude awakening if you mess around with this stuff.” Or “it’s definitely possible, but I won’t explain how on this page because some dumb kid will actually summon a Succubus and get his soul sucked out through his dick.” Or anything violent (like a “Magic Missile” sort of spell) would have some objection, occasionally moral, but more typically something like “if you do this without understanding the magical theory, you might mess up and the energy might turn inward and destroy you.” Though obviously a lot of pages would do the “you shouldn’t do this but here’s exactly how to do it” thing. Most harmful spells were completely useless to actually hurt anyone anyway, since they required direct line of sight. I mean, unless you think your High School/Workplace/Bar/The Mall/Subway station/Wherever you’re gonna do this is just going to let you draw a circle of white salt, a pentacle, put lit candles at all of the points of said pentacle and start chanting ominously while gesticulating like a madman (needless to say, I only tried these ones in private with good-natured friends).

Either way, it’s really fun, though I don’t do it much any more. I don’t think I’d ever run out of weird rituals to try, but I sadly just stopped. I did it mostly alone for years and I don’t think I can do it anymore without friends to joke about it with. But at my age people are starting to either settle into their status as “true believer” who I would generally tend to avoid discussing this stuff with, and “totally uninterested”/“thinking it’s a childish waste of time.” Ah well.

Yes…every Halloween I ring up Harry Houdini…for some reason, he never answers.

For us guys too shy to answer, it was to make hotties fall madly in love with us. :stuck_out_tongue:

I tried to summon a djinn once, but I used kosher salt instead of regular and ended up with Milton Berle. :frowning:

Being a shy teenager with few friends, I certainly looked at love spells, but I never really tried them. Generally it was for four reasons:

  1. A lot of love spells were secretly of the “placebo” kind, and those got really boring to test really fast, so I was done with those by that point. For instance, one “love spell” was to place a list of attractive qualities about yourself in your pocket, and it will “enhance those qualities.” Obviously this isn’t a “love spell” so much as a tip to give yourself confidence disguised as a love spell.

  2. I found the whole idea of brainwashing somebody into love/sex somewhat ethically questionable, among other things.

  3. Many of the spells that weren’t just placebos required you paying someone to do it (obviously love spells are lucrative given how many people want to desperately find love).

  4. Finally, the vast majority of the remaining spells suspiciously seem like they would have only worked on people who would already probably date you if you asked. They were things like (and yes, this was an actual one I remember) “put a white feather on their pillow within an hour before they go to bed. This will only work if you have permission to be in their room.” (if I’m in a girl’s room an hour before she goes to bed, while the chances aren’t perfect, I’d say they’re pretty good that she’d date me), some love spells were just flat out honestly only for people who already liked you. They were somewhat closer to “love enhancing” spells, in that they would tell you to do it to “your spouse” and it was generally meant to act as either an aphrodisiac or have some effect like “bringing the spark back in your relationship” or “making your spouse more romantic”. Obviously not the kind of thing that’s helpful for the socially inept or chronically dateless.

I know that magic or fairies are not real so I don’t waste my time with it.

That’s great, I know magic and fairies aren’t real so I play around with stuff involving them because I know it’s ultimately of no real consequence.

Which makes no sense whatsoever. But it’s your time you are wasting so good luck with that.

I used to say Bloody Mary three times in the bathroom at night.
It only works if I have vodka and tomato juice in the house.

So what should I do instead (I mean, if I still actually did this stuff, as I mentioned in the OP, I got rather bored of it a few years ago)? Watch sports? Play video games? LARP? Make little paper boats? Or don’t tell me, you’re one of those people that think that indulging in anything just because you find it “interesting” that doesn’t increase your income or teach you a new skill you can use in your profession or a future one is “worthless.” Pray tell, what are acceptable hobbies to you?

At least I got some decent stories, not to mention a small working (though certainly not anywhere near professional!) knowledge of folklore out of this one, from studying what old cultures really did do or think about certain things, or finding some really cool myths and legends. And shouldn’t we be encouraging people to test things out, research them, and think about them instead of taking the truth about them for granted? Obviously nobody should be wasting grant money or expensive lab equipment on the existence of fair folk, but to discourage someone from doing an ad-hoc investigation of something in their spare time?

You asked for people’s opinions in a forum called in my humble opinion. I apologize for giving my opinion.

No, I asked “have you ever played with the paranormal?” Saying “no I haven’t.” Or even “no, because I generally don’t find investigating things I don’t believe in interesting enough to spend my time on.” Fine. You went off and insulted people who did by calling it “wasting your time.” While I don’t disagree at the level that almost all hobbies are in some way “time wasters”, you did it in a way that seemed to imply that people who did do it were participating in some lesser endeavor than… whatever it is you like to do with your spare time. If that wasn’t your intention, then I’m sorry I misread it, but that’s really what your wording of your responses sounded like to me.

Since by your own admission you don’t believe in the paranormal you are not playing with the paranormal since it does not in fact exist. So what exactly is your point again?

To chat about the doofy things we did as kids. Some of us made black cats in the garage and others of us went hunting for wendigos.

I don’t know about you, but when most people I know consume media about, tell stories about, or talk about “the paranormal”, we’re using it as shorthand for “things that some people believe are (or fiction portrays as) paranormal events, related to paranormal events, or cause paranormal events. Or appear similar to such things on the surface.” It’s like when people ask questions like “who are the most effective harvest gods?” We’re not saying there’s a literal cadre of gods, of which some of them are harvest gods, that have real world effects on crops and can be judged by some real world criteria. We’re acknowledging that, in general, there are things that at some point in time have been deemed “harvest gods” and that they generally have mythologies and stories based around them, as well as real historical events attributed to them. Thus, by an analysis of the stories, we may be able to determine which ones are overall portrayed as the most effective (while still completely not believing in their actual existence).

No, I didn’t play with anything paranormal because it doesn’t exist. Yes, I did play around with a lot of stuff that some people, either now or long ago, believe did have some supernatural or paranormal effect. But I found that a bit kludgy to write out and figured people would get the gist of what I meant from the OP.

When I was a kid and teen, I tried to do various paranormal things. Casting spells, trying to read minds, etc. I tried to sell my soul on several occasions. It’s very disheartening when you finally work up the nerve to perform the ritual, and you’re actually ready to sell your soul…and nobody is willing to buy it.

I still hold on to a lot of the irrational fears of messing with the paranormal drummed into me as a kid; I was raised in a pretty strict evangelical Christian environment, and it was just something that was not done. (All ignoring, of course, that Christian rituals and such could also be seen as messing with the paranormal.) So I’ve never set out to do anything on my own, and don’t do anything that requires me to be an active participant.

That said, I guess I have dabbled a bit. I attended a Spiritualist church for a few weeks to do research for a couple of undergrad classes (religious studies, and a philosophy of science course), and received spirit readings and healings as part of the research. The spirit readings were the worst cold readings I’ve ever heard, incidentally. I’ve dated a few women over the years who have been into “spiritual” belief, and played along a few times when they wanted to do things like get couples’ readings or spirit photography or whatever, as long as I wasn’t pressed into being more than a passive observer.

My ex-wife practiced Wicca, and I did stay conscientious in not violating the sanctity of her altar (though I routinely snuffed candles which she was to let burn out naturally as part of her spells… I felt that fire prevention was a greater good for us than respecting her practice). I did put my foot down when she wanted to cast spells on or for me, and I ended up flinging it back in her face when it came out that she had secretly cast some kind of eternal love spell on me when we first began dating. It came up while we were having an argument as we careened toward divorce, and I snarkily asked her how well she thought it had worked, given the circumstances.

That reminds me of this story (the story is finished a few posts down, the page’s format is messed up because it’s an archive, the actual forum is long dead). He tells a very funny story about a spirit healing/demon casting out where he pretends to be gay to get up on stage and report what the whole experience feels like.

To be honest, I’d feel quite ookie about people casting spells on me, not because I think it will do anything, but the intention. Health spells, or luck spells, whatever, I guess, not much different from a prayer. But anything meant to change my behavior (whether it be a love spell or a “confidence spell”) starts getting into “you want to change the way I think/act :dubious: territory”?

I tried praying once. I asked God for a pony. It didn’t work.

It worked for me! But it was one of the four apocalypse ponies… and then all the crops within 1000 miles of me had suspiciously low yields for YEARS.