Ouija board, please explain this?

Me either. It sounds like an unmitigated load of rubbish.

Ooo, a piece of cardboard with letters on it. Scaaaaaaaary.

Welcome to the SDMB, happyboy.

The first part of your post has nothing to do with the subject at hand. The question is whether this particular game was created for the actual purpose - as opposed to being a run-of-the-mill game - of communicating with spirits from another world. Some have asserted this to be the case but have provided no proof to it (witnessing by ministers notwithstanding).

It’s not a simple issue of believing things we don’t see. I believe in Japan, and yet I’ve never seen it. I believe in black holes, and yet I’ve never seen them.

We all have sources we trust. I trust scientific experiments, ones that rely not on the subjective attitude of the mind but on the objectivity of the fact. If you wish to believe only those who have an agenda in believing a certain way, that’s your privilege. I find it interesting that you yourself offer anecdotal evidence to support your claims, but even those claims could be verified somehow - if your wife was a witch, she could utter a curse on someone, for example. Your wife’s experiences, true or not, corroborate nothing at all. Had they happened to more than one person, then those experiences would corroborate each other, but those experiences do not corroborate facts.

But it appears that those who believe that Ouija Boards are inherently evil refuse to explain why they believe so. I won’t attack whatever religion you practice, but this strikes me as bizarre. They’re evil why, exactly? Because you believe them to be. And why do you believe them to be? Because they are, that’s why. Oh.

[And doesn’t it bother you at all that these were toys sold in toy stores for the purpose of entertaining people? If they were meant to be used as gateways to the afterlife, wouldn’t they be sold to adults instead of kids?]

Indeed, all one would need to do is get the Ouija Board out and ask a question without laying hands on it. If the marker moved, then perhaps there would be something there. If the marker did not move, then perhaps that would mean nothing.

I suggest that people believe there is “evil” behind the Ouija Board because they are predisposed to believe so; that their religion demands that for there to be Good, there must be Evil.

But the subject of religion itself is way over my head and beyond my capabilities, so I’ll leave it at that. I will say this, though; the sanctimonious attitudes I see in this thread by some are at best condescending, and at worst thoroughly repulsive.

No–the question is whether anyone could explain how Delphinus got the results she and her friends experienced from the Ouija board. Both the natural and the spiritual explanations were given by various parties.

It’s interesting that you believe in some things you’ve never seen, yet say that experience does not corroborate fact. If you walk off a cliff, the experience of falling will certainly corroborate the fact of earth’s gravity, whether you believe in it or not. And if you saw a demon face to face, I guarantee you would believe in their existence (and probably mess your pants).

Sorry, you haven’t been paying attention. The Ouija board can be used (that doesn’t mean it is every time, necessarily) as a gateway to the occult world. That’s mentioned several times in this thread. That makes it evil enough for me. To my knowledge, Monopoly has never been used for such purposes!

If you don’t believe in the existence of good and evil, can you tell me why we have laws against, say, killing people, or stealing? Certainly I don’t need such laws because I wouldn’t do those things, but if I did, why should it be a big deal? If there is no life after death, why would anything in this world really matter? If humans have no eternal soul, why should any of my actions–even if they hurt another living being–matter at all? I don’t mean merely, “because the family would miss their dad,” I mean morally, what would be wrong with crime?

To say, “it’s not nice to kill people,” won’t work. Not nice by whose standards? Who gets to decide what’s not nice and what is? If there’s truly, absolutely no right and wrong, maybe my culture places a high value on the person who can kill the most people (like a gladiator), and if I want to kill some people from your culture, who are you to say it’s a crime? Would you dare push your values on me?

Please understand that I have taken the argument to its extreme end (and now we’re REALLY off the subject, but you brought it up), but it is the ultimate outcome of a “no right and wrong” philosophy. Of course, even most athiests would not support a lawless country–but that proves that even they believe, somewhere deep inside, in the existence of good and evil.

Yes RJKUgly that was a quote from Anthony North’s ’ The Paranormal’ and I didn’t find anything silly about it at all. It makes complete sense to me.

‘It is difficult to prove or disprove conclusively any paranormal claims. Most peole put these occurences down to coincidence, but that is merely answering one mystery with another and doesn’t upset our ‘safe’ intellectual beliefs.’

Afterlife has not been proven but it has not been disproven either so evidently science can not prove everything.

Thanks to Happyboy for sharing his wife’s experience. On further research on the web I have now come across other web sites where people have spoke of what I had mentioned with regard to the board reading your mind or such things similar. It seems it is quite common, so I am not a nut after all eh?

With regards to the question of whether or not the ouija board is evil or not I think the answer is simple. The board itself is not evil, for some it is merely a toy, but lets just say it has the potential to become a dangerous toy. If you are of a gullible mind then yes playing with a toy like that is dangerous as you are open to ridiculous suggestion. If you are of the thinking that you are contacting spirits or something likewise then yes it is dangerous because you don’t know what you a playing with.

I am not of a religious background but having had experience with playing with these boards and experiencing some sort of phenomena I consider it silly and dangerous to dabble with it now. As for it being a fear of evil I just go with my intuition which tells me to stay away.

Pure class, I couldn’t have said that better myself. Spooky as well because only the other day that very thought crossed my mind. As I was thinking/reading can’t remember which, it dawned on me that very idea, good vs evil, we abide by laws, why is that?

Come on, happyboy, not this ‘atheists who have morals really believe’ crap again. I’ve only been here slightly longer than you, but a quick read through Great Debates shows quite a few counterarguments to that theory. You could start here or here.

With regards to the spiritual nature of a Ouija board, I’m going to have to get back to you pending the result of my goat entrails reading.

Oh Please. You’re saying that absent some mandate from an all-powerful spirit we have no way to determine what is in our collective interest? That’s just foolish. “it’s not nice to kill people” is a perfectly good standard, when you realize that most people want protection from being killed more than they want to kill someone, and therefore want laws that give that protection. Same goes for theft, assault, etc. These laws benefit most of us individually, and benefit us collectively as a society, by increasing stability, peace, etc.

On the other hand, the laws that are based solely on narrow concept of good and evil are the bad laws, such as laws against sodomy, laws restricting marriage between consenting adults, etc. Those laws we could do without.

In fact, we can argue that if there is life after death, you should be against laws against murder. Shouldn’t we do you a favor by sending you on your way to your reward?

Not only is it silly, it doesn’t apply at all to the situation we were discussing. You mentioned something that happened every single time you played with a ouija board. 100% repeatability. Not at all something random like your quote talks about. Again it seems like you’re trying to have it both ways.

Why is it difficult to prove that somethings happens or it doesn’t, paranormal or not? Just quoting some guy with an obvious agenda saying so doesn’t cut it. If something strange happened to you every single time you played with a ouija board, it would be trivial to prove. If you’re not anything special (as you said in your first post) it will happen for someone else also, and again it will be trivial to prove.

Again, this sounds like you back peddling because you know there is nothing to prove, so you hide behind a trite quote. If you want the real truth, put up or shut up. That’s what it comes down to.

Well, yeah, no sense looking for real truth when intuition is available. Whatever blows your skirt up.

Ugly

There are no Ouija board here, but sometimes people try to “turning tables”. That’s probably more difficult to get a result than with a oui-ja board, since a whole table round table has to move, but the general concept is the same.
Anyway, my brothers and some of their friends decided one night to “make tables turn”. Without any result. So, one of them began to cheat, discreetly knocking on the table, or making it move a little in response to questions asked. After a time, everybody noticed there was cheating involved except one poor soul. So, all the others began to enter the game, and creating more and more frightening “supernatural events” (and pouring alcohol in the poor guy’s glass to prevent him from noticing the more and more blatant tricks they were using) . So, not only the table moved in all possible ways, but my parent’s old clock would rang, the books would fell from the shelves, etc…
It lasted until the guy, truly frightened, wanted to stop. I’m pretty certain he too was scared when he came back home. Especially since the car, “mysteriously”, wouldn’t start and he had to come back home by feet (at night, and in a remote, out of the way place in the countryside…yes…I know…my brothers were cruel…). I assume that if he hadn’t been told the truth later, he would have wondered for years about these supernatural events (and in his case, probably remembering what exactly had scared him, despite the alcohol).

That’s great, but the first part of your post was a dissertation of the history of science versus religion and how it applies to the occult, as opposed to the Ouija Board itself. It was superfluous.

I’m not believing in them because of experiences, I’m believing in them because of scientific evidence and facts that point to their existence. Falling corroborates the gravity of earth, but it’s not the only indication that there IS gravity of earth.

This only means that you’re extremely gullible. It’s been mentioned several times in this thread, so it must be true? Do you accept everything you’re told at face value? How do you survive in life? (Oh, and you mention to your knowledge Monopoly hasn’t been used for such purposes - guess what, neither has the Ouija Board. It’s just a marketing scam, for crying out loud.)

Where did I say I don’t believe in good and evil? :confused:

And where did I say I was an athiest? Oh, but I must be, since I’m not agreeing with your weird logic. :wink:

And I’m glad you’re admitting you’re taking the argument to the extreme. Now try not doing that and see how it goes.

For those of you who think the Ouija board is somehow evil:

Throughout past ages, anyone attempting to summon demons or communicate with the dead or work magic needed to DO SOMETHING. Cast a spell, invoke the demon by name, use magic amulets or magic words, draw a magic circle, burn mystic materials, DO something.

So far as I am aware, no one has every thought merely writing the alphabet did not (now or ever) summon demons. Merely pointing to the alphabet did not (now or ever) summon demons.

So, why is a ouija board magical? What imbues it with supernatural spirits? Why is it different from a typewriter keyboard? Do you think that supernatural or evil spirits direct your fingers on a typewriter keyboard?

You can’t say it was the “intent” with which it was made – these things are mass produced by machines. There’s no (or very little) human intervention at all.

IF you told me that, before the ouija board could work, you have to recite some magical intonation, turn off all the lights, light a sacred candle upside down, whatever; and IF you told me those magical actions were necessary for the ouija board to function; THEN you might have a case. But as things stand, it’s ludicrous (even within your own frame of reference) to think the ouija board is “evil” or “spiritually connected” or “demonic.”

Except, I guess, in the sense that little demons are lurking everywhere, behind every nook and cranny, to try to lure you to death and destruction. (Not an uncommon belief in the Middle Ages, but pretty much rejected today even by people who believe in demons.)

Dogopoly: a cute game modeled after monopoly, sold in toy stores.
Its adorable!
Instead of jail, you’ve got a dog pound.
Theres also Catopoly!

Catopoly is clearly the work of demonic spirits.

:slight_smile:

www.velvetgiraffe.com/dogopoly.htm

When I was a teenager, our family pet cocker spaniel, Terry, died at age 12. We had him since he was a pup. To solace a grieving family, we tried communicating with Terry using the Ouija board.

After several attempts and many tears, the board eventually seemed to take a life of its own, and our hands moved in unison. I don’t know whether the spirit of Terry was still with us, but the Ouija board clearly spelled out, “Woof”.

We were all very scared and haven’t talked about it to this day.
(Note, the above may or may not be true.)

its cute, though.

meow!

As I understand it, the Fundamentalist Party Line concerning Ouija boards is that they are forbidden, not because they’re intrinsically “evil”–because even my militantly Fundie Grandma seemed to grasp that it was just the kids’ fingers moving the planchette around the board–but that the Ouija board might encourage further explorations into the occult. The thin end of the wedge, so to speak…

I remember as a kid using a Ouija board with some friends. The answer to some question spelled out one kid’s name, “Shawn”. Someone then mentioned that the kid in question actually spelled his name “Sean” and I was the only one who thought it was spelled the other way. Pretty clear lesson to me of how Ouija boards really worked.

I’ve got to run right now, so I may have missed something in this thread. Since, I haven’t had the chance to read it thoroughly. This topic is interesting to me because I want to believe in this phenomenon.

I can make up reasons to how it might be possible. I can imagine that these things DO occur. The problem is that after many years of research, study and degrees in appropriate sciences, I have yet to find a single paranormal occurance that stands up to investigation.

This is not conclusive proof these “experiences” are not possible, but it does show reasonable doubt.

**I WISH SOMEONE WOULD PROVIDE JUST ONE REAL EXAMPLE

(one’s enough)…but alas…:frowning:

[slight hijack]
This thread reminds me of a Calvin and Hobbes strip I read a lobg time ago. Calvin asked a ouija board, or something similar, if he would become president of USA (or some such) when he grew up and the answer was

[/slight hijack]