Penn & Teller TV - Dominic Walker - Andrew Boyd - Richard Wiseman - swordplay online - Chris Everard - Terence Hines - Aleister Crowley -
You can fool yourself with your very own home hoax kit: it’s that sombre party game called the Ouija board. There are two sure things you can say about the Ouija board: It’ll set you back about twenty bucks. And two: It’s bullshit. Penn & Teller, Bullshit! s1e12: Ouija Boards, Showtime 2003
Think twice about it. I don’t believe it’s getting in touch with anything genuinely spiritual and good. I think it’s simply getting in touch with unhealed parts of the human unconscious and with the deep wounds within themselves, and it’s going to bring all sorts of things to the surface which they may not be able to face and which may be quite destructive. Dominic Walker, Bishop of Reading
The modern Ouija board comes from the late nineteenth-century ... It became extremely popular in the 1920s. Andrew Boyd, Ouija author & researcher
But what can start off as just harmless interest or just as fun can often lead to serious negative experiences for people. Dr Richard Wiseman, University of Hertfordshire, paranormal & occult research unit
Three jurors in the 1993 trial of Stephen Young for two counts of murder were unable to make up their minds over the defendant’s guilt or innocence. They sought help by using a Ouija Board to commune with one of Mr Young’s victims. The spirit of Henry Fuller duly appeared. Fuller had been killed with his wife Nicola, and in his ghostly reincarnation Henry confirmed that Young was the pair’s killer. ‘Vote guilty tomorrow,’ was his instruction, via the Ouija board. Young was convicted – and re-convicted at the retrial for the inevitable ‘material irregularity’ in the first proceedings. Swordplay online, Top Ten Mad Jury Moments #1
The easiest gateway to the spirit world. Chris Everard, Spirit World volume 1
There have been a lot of bad cases of people receiving really bad messages from bad spirits via the Ouija board. ibid.
The planchette is guided by unconscious muscular exertions like those responsible for table movement. Nonetheless, in both cases, the illusion that the object (table or planchette) is moving under its own control is often extremely powerful and sufficient to convince many people that spirits are truly at work ... The unconscious muscle movements responsible for the moving tables and Ouija board phenomena seen at seances are examples of a class of phenomena due to what psychologists call a dissociative state. A dissociative state is one in which consciousness is somehow divided or cut off from some aspects of the individual’s normal cognitive, motor, or sensory functions. Terence Hines, Pseudoscience and the Paranormal 2003
There is, however, a good way of using this instrument to get what you want, and that is to perform the whole operation in a consecrated circle, so that undesirable aliens cannot interfere with it. You should then employ the proper magical invocation in order to get into your circle just the one spirit you want. It is comparatively easy to do this. A few simple instructions are all that is necessary, and I shall be pleased to give these, free of charge, to any one who cares to apply. Aleister Crowley