Talking Boards:
A device purportedly for divining answers to questions and talking with spirits often marketed as a game. Talking boards are similar to the 'Planchette.' They feature letters of the alphabet and numeral zero through nine, and the words 'yes' and 'no.' The user asks a question, places their fingertips on a pointer and then allows the pointer to spell out the answer.
Talking boards are often controversal. Advocates feel the movments of the pointers are directed by discarnate beings and spirits of the dead. Skeptics say the user moves the platform subconsciously without realizing it.
The best known talking board is the Ouija, an oracle game invented in 1892 by an American, Elija J. Bond. The name derived from the French and German words for 'yes,' oui and ja respectively.
Shortly after it's invention, the Ouija enjoyed great popularity due to the interest in 'Spiritualism' and to the thousands of World War 1 bereaved who tried to find ways to communicate with their loved ones who had been killed in the war. Since then, it's popularity often has coincided with peaks of interest in the occult. Since 1966 the Ouija has been marketed by the Parker Brothers game company of Beverly, Massachusetts, which states that it is a game for entertainment purposes.
Many believe that talking boards are inherently dangerous and that any beings who communicate through such a device are likely to be demonic and attempt to possess the user.
From: "The Encyclopedia of Ghosts & Hauntings"
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Submission from a viewer:
WARNING
Other Stories
April 15, 2004
People.
I am very open minded, sometimes skeptical and usually spooked. There are two things my father has always told me. I think they are worth considering.
1. Do not use Ouija Boards to try raise the dead, they will not like to be woken. If they wish to contact us, they wil do so.
2. If you absolutely must use one, try get someone who knows how to send back what they raise. You wouldnt dabble with electricity if you werent an electrician would you?
Slainte
Dublin
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Submission:
10/29/06
I was about 14 when 3 of my friends and I decided to use a Ouija board (the spiritual activity at my home was already in full swing...that's what prompted us/me to want to contact the spirits in my house- I wouldn't blame the board though- I know it's a dangerous instrument). Anyway, after the planchette was moving, we were doubting each other, convinced the other was moving it...so we asked "If you are really here, do something!" At that moment a BLUE ORB that was about a foot long appeared in the room, moved slowly over the top of the board and then descended down quickly over the candle we had lit...and poof...out went the candle. Scared the crap out of us!!! And I threw away the Ouija board...only to find it again in my closet a few months later. This time I took it outside and busted it! In hindsight, I don't think we had contacted anything evil, in fact, quite the opposite it was just so out of our realm of experience. I had never even heard of an orb at that time.
Jennifer A.
Ouija Board
Other
5/21/07
My cousin told me this story about a ouija board. One night while in her room, alone, she looked in her closet and found a ouija board. (A ouija board is a board game where you are supposed to make some kind of connection with the dead.) She took it out of the box and started to play. After about a half hour of asking questions to the dead, she noticed that the board was changing colors, the board was white but it turned a dark black! But then the scariest thing happened, one by one, the number 666 (the devils number,) was appearing right on the board! 666, 666, 666, it wouldn't stop until a minute later all went quiet and all of a sudden the room was so cold she could see her own breath. And then she saw these ghostlike figures floating around her bed, and on the wall there were words written on the wall saying "your pretty face is going to hell! We still cant figure out why it happened, but she refuses to sleep in that room.
Matt
stubenville Ohio US
'OUIJA BOARD' TO BE BROUGHT BACK TO LIFE ON BIG SCREEN - 5/30/08
