I don’t know much about this stuff, but Cecil’s suggestion that it works mainly by unconscious movements reminds me of an experiment I once heard of as a kid. I was told that if you tied an weight to a string and let it hang from your outstreched hand and asked a question (Like “Should I go out with Susie”) you would get, depending on who’s telling you about it, either 1) an answer from the spirit world or 2) your innermost feelings about the subject, an expression of subconscoius desires. What would actually happen is for the answer yes, the object would swing in a circle; for no, in a straight line, back and forth.
I discovered that it didn’t have to be my innermost feelings; I could simply concentrate on the word “yes” (or happy thoughts) and make it swing circles, or “no” (or negative thoughts) for side to side. But I used this as a phony “truth detector” with my friend once when he spent the night, told him an outrageous story and had him “test” me with the device (after, of course, demonstrating that it “told the truth” when he held it). Of course I made it swing “yes” and he was fooled for a while, but I burst out laughing and had to tell the truth. Interesting phenomenon, though.
I remember when I was younger, about 15 or 16, my sister and one of her friends was playing with a ouija board. They would have been about 10ish. They kept saying it was a spirit of some sort, and I was telling them no its a fake. The next question they asked? “Is Joe a butthead?” The answer of course was yes. I suppose you could say that the spirit didn’t care for me not believing in him/her/it, but I think it was more likely that my sis and her friend didn’t like it.
Hey, I remember that magic trick, too! It worked pretty well-- if you told the person using it which answer meant what, beforehand. And no, it didn’t take me long to be able to control it, either.
I should get a beating on this, newbie and a bit counter to the trend of the thread. I’d like to throw another twist at this, perhaps instead of fraud or spirits these things are just tools. I’m a bit of a skeptic but have had the dowser thing work for me (very,very, strange feeling by the way), and learned a trick from my dad to locate pipes in ceilings or floors that uses a bent coat hanger(great for freaking contractors out). I have also tried a test of one of the boards that I think is better than the blindfold. We had a third party pull a card from a shuffled deck. We were 7 for 7 asking ‘Is the color red’. We stopped after we got the color and the number right the 8th try. I sincerely doubt spirits were involved. Statistically not impossible, but very strange to expereince. Any thoughts about the idea that this may be some sort of tool effect; a small person using a lever to move a huge rock would be pretty mystical if your society had no idea about leverage.
It’s quite psiible that you experienced something called “body reading”. I presume that the third party could see the card, and that you couldn’t, and that furthermore you could see the third person’s face, and they could see the board? What might be happeningis this: The person with the card knows the correct answer, and is hoping that you get it either right or wrong. When the pointer moves a little closer to the right answer, he might tense up slightly, or become nervous, or anxious, or any of a host of other emotions. You pick up on this from his facial expression, and move the pointer accordingly. You could test this, for instance, by keeping the card face-down until the answer is chosen, so that nobody knows if you’re “warm” or “cold”.
If this is indeed what’s happening, you may want to try to cultivate it: Body-reading can be a very useful skill.
