# Ouija board? **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [March 10, 2024, 1:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ouija-board/998661 "2024-03-10T01:47:25Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Dung\_Beetle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dung_beetle/32/7945_2.png) [@Dung\_Beetle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dung_Beetle)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2024, 1:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ouija-board/998661/1 "2024-03-10T01:47:25Z")
Watching 13 Ghosts on Svengoolie right now, and it got me in the mood to hear some Ouija stories! I never played it with anyone except Nervous Nellies (“demons will get us!”) Or Klass Klowns ("How long is my dick, hur hur!) I don’t believe, you don’t believe. Or do you? What happened when you played the game? ---
**Author:** ![dolphinboy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dolphinboy/32/330_2.png) [@dolphinboy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dolphinboy)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2024, 1:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ouija-board/998661/2 "2024-03-10T01:50:55Z")
Nothing much really. You asked it questions you already knew the answer to and it mysteriously wandered around the board and landed on “Yes” or “No” or spelled about your teacher’s name, and everyone watching was dumbfounded and amazed. It’s completely fake, and we all knew that going in, but it was fun anyway. ---
**Author:** ![Fear\_Itself](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fear_itself/32/19637_2.png) [@Fear\_Itself](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fear_Itself)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2024, 1:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ouija-board/998661/3 "2024-03-10T01:52:02Z")
I remember one Ouija session in the mid-60’s where a friend asked when she would die. The Ouija said “1969”. As far as i know, she is still alive. ---
**Author:** ![SuntanLotion](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/suntanlotion/32/16165_2.png) [@SuntanLotion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SuntanLotion)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2024, 1:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ouija-board/998661/4 "2024-03-10T01:56:18Z")
I’m in the minority, but yes, they are demonic. I can think of more fun games. ---
**Author:** ![Beckdawrek](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/beckdawrek/32/3647_2.png) [@Beckdawrek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Beckdawrek)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2024, 2:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ouija-board/998661/5 "2024-03-10T02:06:49Z")
I never thought of it as any more than a silly game. Any more than I could do surgery after playing Operation!, I knew it was a fake. There was a girl in my college dorm who went home and never returned after playing Ouija and it telling her some crap. ---
**Author:** ![guero](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guero/32/136_2.png) [@guero](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/guero)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2024, 5:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ouija-board/998661/6 "2024-03-10T05:58:45Z")
Well, here’s my story, for what it is worth. My girlfriend (and future wife) got hold of one for a lark. We sat down across from each other and asked a question. After a few moments, the thing started moving around the board. I said she was moving it, she said I was moving it. No matter what we asked, the answer was la-la, yo-yo or some other nonsense syllable.\* We got bored and put it away. The next afternoon, I was alone in my bedroom and got curious. So I got out the board and, sitting on my bed next to my sleeping cat, tried it again. After a few moments, I felt a calm descend on me and the thing started moving, but again, only nonsense. At this point my cat woke up, got wide eyed (looking in my direction, but past me), and bolted out of the room. I have great faith in my cat’s judgement, and put it away for good. I have no idea whether it is real or not. I have also read that it works through unconscious muscle twitches or whatever. I have no desire to pursue it further. \*\* As an aside, I later was reading something about Ouija boards, and the writer mentioned that the “spirit” or whatever you are contacting also has to become familiar with the medium, and will often start out speaking gibberish or baby talk. ---
**Author:** ![Balance](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ccd318/32.png) [@Balance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Balance)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2024, 6:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ouija-board/998661/7 "2024-03-10T06:51:31Z")
Ouija boards are board games, made by a major toy company. They’ve been around for over a century in commercialized form, and there have been no plagues of demons. Fear of them basically began with The Exorcist, which used a board as a plot device. They run on a fundamental bit of human brain wiring: we subconsciously aim at whatever we’re looking at it. That’s undoubtedly been very useful to us, as it’s fundamental to using thrown weapons, but it’s also what sometimes makes us run into the only tree within 10 miles when we go off the road: you look at the object that stands out, and you subconsciously make micromotor adjustments to aim you toward it. In the case of the Ouija board, when a group of people are touching the planchette, one twitches a bit involuntarily (or deliberately, if they’re messing with the others), and everyone looks in the direction the twitch moves the planchette, causing them to subconsciously reinforce the motion. Once they’ve got a letter, they start looking at other letters, trying to guess what will be next…and sure enough, one starts moving the planchette toward the letter they’re looking at, which triggers the others to look there as well, and the process repeats. Ultimately, there’s nothing more mystical about it than a person’s ability to throw a baseball to a friend. ---
**Author:** ![Andy\_L](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c67d28/32.png) [@Andy\_L](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Andy_L)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2024, 11:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ouija-board/998661/8 "2024-03-10T11:33:35Z")
> [@Balance](#): > > Ouija boards are board games, made by a major toy company. They’ve been around for over a century in commercialized form, and there have been no plagues of demons. Fear of them basically began with The Exorcist, which used a board as a plot device. Milton Bradley has awesome power in the spirit world. I could tell you things about Twister, too… ---
**Author:** ![RunSilent](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e0b2c6/32.png) [@RunSilent](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RunSilent)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2024, 11:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ouija-board/998661/9 "2024-03-10T11:50:34Z")
It is a toy. It is a piece of laminated particle board and a piece of plastic. It is nothing else. There are no demons. ---
**Author:** ![CairoCarol](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cairocarol/32/3825_2.png) [@CairoCarol](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CairoCarol)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2024, 12:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ouija-board/998661/10 "2024-03-10T12:33:18Z")
> [@Balance](#): > > In the case of the Ouija board, when a group of people are touching the planchette, one twitches a bit involuntarily (or deliberately, if they’re messing with the others), and everyone looks in the direction the twitch moves the planchette, causing them to subconsciously reinforce the motion. Once they’ve got a letter, they start looking at other letters, trying to guess what will be next…and sure enough, one starts moving the planchette toward the letter they’re looking at, which triggers the others to look there as well, and the process repeats. > > Ultimately, there’s nothing more mystical about it than a person’s ability to throw a baseball to a friend. This, or something like it, is obviously what’s going on. Still, I had a fun Ouja board session with a friend when we were in high school. We were well aware that it wasn’t “real,” but it was fascinating to see how our minds and fingers could produce results without us consciously directing the planchette. We asked if there were any spirits around, got a “yes,” and began chatting. You’ll be stunned to know that two teenage girls conjured the spirit of a young man. The best part was when we asked, “what do you think of humanity?” and “he” answered, “Wise fools.” Not bad work, for the subconscious coordination of two people. ---
**Author:** ![kayaker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kayaker/32/441_2.png) [@kayaker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kayaker)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2024, 12:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ouija-board/998661/11 "2024-03-10T12:53:34Z")
> [@Beckdawrek](#): > > I never thought of it as any more than a silly game. Any more than I could do surgery after playing Operation!, Hey! I know the guy (John Spinello) who “invented” that game when he was in college and sold it for a few hundred dollars. Ten-ish years ago John needed surgery and was unable to afford it. His daughter Lisa (also a friend) contacted Milton Bradley and they paid for her dad’s care. A true feel-good story. We have an anniversary edition of the game, never opened, autographed by John. ---
**Author:** ![kayaker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kayaker/32/441_2.png) [@kayaker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kayaker)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2024, 12:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ouija-board/998661/12 "2024-03-10T12:59:00Z")
My Ouija board story. When I was a little kid, my mom had a group of women who would come over to our house to play mahjong (a Jewish tradition?). One week instead of playing mahjong, my mom set up a Ouija board and they played around with that. The planchette was moving around to different letters but they made no sense. Then one of the women realized that the letters spelled out a bunch of Yiddish words, and the two women doing it _knew no Yiddish_. At that point the women were all shaken up and the board was put away. ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2024, 1:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ouija-board/998661/13 "2024-03-10T13:59:40Z")
Our Ouija board seemed to be defective: it was always one digit off when it came to numerical predictions! The first time, we were playing, there was a Pick 4 lottery drawing happening on TV. So, a minute or two before the drawing, we ask it the numbers. It says something like “4898.” “The first number is 4!” We kinda laughed at the coincidence. “The second number is 8!” No we’re starting to freak out “The third number is 9!” What in the fuck? We’re like legit shaking and jumping up and down now “The fourth number is 3!” Oh, relief. But what the fuck, it got the first three right. So this was right around the time of the 1991 NCAA basketball championship, Duke vs Kansas. The game was happening in a couple of days, so the next thing we asked was who was going to win and what was the score going to be: It said Duke 72-68. I call my friend deep into the fourth quarter where it looks like that result may be a possibility. With 1:30 left on the clock, the score was 68-59. We’re talking breathlessly on the phone. There’s a bunch of last-minute fouling at the end of the game, but Duke manages to get a dunk to make it 72-65 with about 30 seconds left. Kansas misses two 2-point shots, Duke gets it back, loses it to Kansas with 5 seconds left, and the final shot is a 3-pointer that would have nailed the score and it just hits the front of the rim and misses. We were _screaming_ on the phone with that last shot. And the last one – I’m still trying to figure out how this could have been done – but I was at this same friend’s house with two other people, and his gramma (his guardian) was sitting in the front room. We’re dicking around, asking it who we would marry (I don’t remember what it said), but we did ask it to “show us your presence” or something. Within a few seconds, the doorbell rang. We all jumped. We ask gramma “Who was it?” “Nobody.” “What do you mean nobody, like nobody important.” “No, nobody was at the door.” I think we shortly put the Ouija board away after that. These days, I believe all three were coincidences, but those are some pretty freaky coincidences, looking back at it. ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2024, 3:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ouija-board/998661/14 "2024-03-10T15:32:37Z")
I don’t have any personal experiences. But G. K. Chesterton wrote in his (1936) autobiography about playing around with a oiuja board. > [@](#): > > My brother and I used to play with planchette, or what the Americans call the ouija board; but we were among the few, I imagine, who played in a mere spirit of play. Nevertheless I would not altogether rule out the suggestion of some that we were playing with fire; or even with hell-fire. In the words that were written for us there was nothing ostensibly degrading, but any amount that was deceiving. I saw quite enough of the thing to be able to testify, with complete certainty, that something happens which is not in the ordinary sense natural, or produced by the normal and conscious human will. Whether it is produced by some subconscious but still human force, or by some powers, good, bad or indifferent, which are external to humanity, I would not myself attempt to decide. He goes on to describe a couple of his own experiences. This is in [Chapter IV of the autobiography](https://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks13/1301201h.html#ch4), starting with the third paragraph. ---
**Author:** ![Eyebrows\_0f\_Doom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eyebrows_0f_doom/32/3119_2.png) [@Eyebrows\_0f\_Doom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eyebrows_0f_Doom)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2024, 4:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ouija-board/998661/15 "2024-03-10T16:23:45Z")
I can’t believe people here honestly think a toy can communicate with the dead, or that such a thing is even possible. ---
**Author:** ![wolfpup](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolfpup/32/10618_2.png) [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2024, 4:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ouija-board/998661/16 "2024-03-10T16:28:29Z")
> [@pulykamell](#): > > Our Ouija board seemed to be defective: it was always one digit off when it came to numerical predictions! That’s a great post that could be the inspiration for a fine supernatural short story! I’m thinking of a Ouija board that puts you in contact with an ancient relative. They lived in a historically fascinating time and you can ask them questions about it, but their memory is shot and they get most of it wrong. They can also see the future, but not very well. 😀 My theory is that Ouija boards work just fine, but the deceased we try to communicate with are so wrapped up in the afterlife that they’ve become pretty dysfunctional. ---
**Author:** ![kayaker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kayaker/32/441_2.png) [@kayaker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kayaker)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2024, 5:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ouija-board/998661/17 "2024-03-10T17:09:56Z")
> [@Eyebrows\_0f\_Doom](#): > > I can’t believe people here honestly think a toy can communicate with the dead, or that such a thing is even possible. Hmmm, yes, the spirits are telling me you are a skeptic. I’m currently communicating with a woman, either your mother or grandmother. She is reluctant to discuss certain things that she says would upset you. Her name has vowels in it. ---
**Author:** ![Beckdawrek](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/beckdawrek/32/3647_2.png) [@Beckdawrek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Beckdawrek)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2024, 5:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ouija-board/998661/18 "2024-03-10T17:12:27Z")
My 8-ball said "not likely"🙂 ---
**Author:** ![solost](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/solost/32/11776_2.png) [@solost](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/solost)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2024, 5:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ouija-board/998661/19 "2024-03-10T17:39:38Z")
> [@Balance](#): > > In the case of the Ouija board, when a group of people are touching the planchette, one twitches a bit involuntarily (or deliberately, if they’re messing with the others), and everyone looks in the direction the twitch moves the planchette, causing them to subconsciously reinforce the motion. Once they’ve got a letter, they start looking at other letters, trying to guess what will be next…and sure enough, one starts moving the planchette toward the letter they’re looking at, which triggers the others to look there as well, and the process repeats. Also known as the ideomotor effect. I always found it an interesting psychological phenomenon. > [@RunSilent](#): > > It is a toy. It is a piece of laminated particle board and a piece of plastic. > [@Eyebrows\_0f\_Doom](#): > > I can’t believe people here honestly think a toy can communicate with the dead, or that such a thing is even possible. I believe this is faulty logic. So what if it’s a toy? If there were spirits, demons, or other supernatural entities that were trying to communicate with the living, why wouldn’t they use anything, toy or otherwise, that allowed them to spell out messages? The reason supernatural entities likely don’t exist is because there is no compelling evidence that they do, and extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. I’m a proud skeptic when it comes to these things, but I think it’s important to be skeptical for the right reasons. I’m reminded of an Ouija-board myth busting stunt that Penn and Teller did on some show (don’t remember which). They met some amateur spiritualists in the lobby of a hotel where William Frawley (Fred on the ‘I Love Lucy’ show) had had a heart attack and died while walking out to catch a cab or something. They set up a Ouija board on a card table and tried to contact Frawley’s spirit with the board. But Penn and Teller had them all be blindfolded so they couldn’t fake the results. They asked ‘Frawley’s spirit’ questions, and the planchette went to the ‘yes’ or ‘no’ corners of the board and other spots to seemingly answer the questions in ways that made sense, but P&T revealed their ‘aha’ moment at the end— after they had been blindfolded, Penn had turned the Oiuja board upside down, so clearly the psychics were fakers who had faked the results from memory of the board! But…though I enjoy a good mythbusting, I didn’t think this proved what they thought it did. What if the spirit communicated by seeing through the eyes of the people working the planchette? Then ‘Frawley’s spirit’ would have been as blind as they were. Don’t get me wrong…I do not think for a second that ‘Frawley’s spirit’ was trying to speak through them. But I also don’t think that P&T disproved anything, Again, if you are using logic to try to prove or disprove something, make sure your logic is not faulty. A better ‘gotcha’ may have been if P&T had done a deep dive on Frawley’s bio, asked them to ask ‘Frawley’s spirit’ obscure questions about him, and seen if they were unable to give correct answers. ---
**Author:** ![SuntanLotion](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/suntanlotion/32/16165_2.png) [@SuntanLotion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SuntanLotion)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2024, 5:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ouija-board/998661/20 "2024-03-10T17:57:22Z")
No, the dead do not communicate through a board or anything. It is just plastic, but it attracts demons the way if you seed outside, it attracts birds. Demons do make themselves known, unless of course, hallucinations are a part of life. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ouija-board/998661.md?page=2)