<p>I did the Ouija board all the time as a kid -I always pushed it and I always denied it. I may need to join some sort of support group for admitting that.</p>
<p>corranged: I do somewhat doubt that game light as a feather. However, the ouija board is REAL. There is a reason, the game outsold monopoly. If you don’t think it is real than you are calling everyone on this forum a liar about their direct experience with a ouija board. I do not have any experience with them and hope to never have one. If you want to see exactly what my perspective, watch this video:[YouTube</a> - The Ouija Board Really Works!](<a href=“http://youtube.com/watch?v=EMhqq5F_RZ4]YouTube”>http://youtube.com/watch?v=EMhqq5F_RZ4)</p>
<p>Oh, I’ve used Ouija boards as a kid, and I thought that it moved when no one moved it. </p>
<p>…But I also think that there is an explanation beyond Hasbro channeling evil spirits through a piece of cardboard. </p>
<p>I’m going with the assumption that there’s an everyday or scientific explanation unless there’s actual evidence to the contrary. A random interview posted on YouTube is not evidence.</p>
<p>That youtube clip is some sort of 700 Club propaganda - I think the only devil tempting that poor guy in the video was Pat Robertson.</p>
<p>OK. The video just ended… Definitely not proof.</p>
<p>corranged, but the wikipedia still doesn’t explain why a person could be lifted so easily. How could it just be the mind when the actual physical body is literally being lifted off the ground? Oh well, I guess there aren’t answers to everything…</p>
<p>There are answers, even if I–or Wikipedia–don’t know them. </p>
<p>This game is normally played by groups of young girls. If there are 7 girls playing, it’s not at all unreasonable that six girls, each using four fingers (two on each hand) can physically lift the seventh girl, who’s probably not more than 100 pounds. By convincing themselves that she is light as a feather, they will not feel her full weight. They fool themselves to believe that she is light, so while their bodies work to lift the full weight, their minds recognize that they are lifting something that is light as a feather. At least that’s what I believe the Wikipedia entry said. It makes sense to me, especially when you consider the fact that the game can be played in reverse by a group convincing themselves that the thing they are lifting is hundreds of pounds or attached to the ground.</p>
<p>I just played with one last night, and it freaked me out. It spelled out who I liked, who my friend liked, where I was going to college, and where she was. (Harvard, of course.)</p>
<p>but yeah, I definitely felt something creepy going on, and I would never want to play with one ever again.</p>
<p>corranged-I was going to say the same thing. If 6 or 7 girls are lifting a 120 pound girls, none of them are lifting more than about 20 pounds which doesn’t feel like very much, because the weight is distributed between the 7 of them.</p>
<p>As for the Ouija board…you can be pushing it even if you don’t think you are. It’s definitely a subconscious thing. I don’t believe in the whole “demonic spirit” thing…Satan has better things to do than mess with little kids at their birthday party sleepovers (and I say this being a devout Christian). He’s a little busy fighting the Cosmic Battle.</p>
<p>WOW! What a rush of Jr. High (it wasn’t called Middle School in my day) sleepover memories. The Ouija Board could/can be “creepy,” but in such a fun way. The whole demonic possession thing is just way too “too there” for me. Honestly, it’s just a game!</p>
<p>im telling you, it opens up demon portals.</p>
<p>Don’t believe in any such thing, but you’re entitled to your beliefs.</p>
<p>We played the levitation game in 4th grade all the time. The “dead” girl never got lifted more than a a few inches before we all either screamed or collapsed in giggles. Usually she never got lifted at all, because she would giggle and we would all laugh and “break the spell.”</p>
<p>My mom used to make us a ouija game on rainy days sometimes. She would write the letters on paper, cut them out and arrange them in a circle on a smooth table. The she would take a wine glass, she said crystal was best, and wash it in very hot water and put it upside down in the center of the circle of letters. We then would put our index finger on the top of the upended glass and ask away. It was alot of fun and not spooky at all! Although one evening when I was an older child, around 12, we were playing my moms version of ouija and my younger sister was being very pesky. I was standing by the side of the table watching her and my mom play and thinking with all of my might, “_______ needs to go to bed”, guess what the ouija spelled out!</p>
<p>I believe all that matters is that you believe.</p>
<p>Stuff like ouija boards just make me laugh, it’s such a pile of bull.</p>
<p>when it moves, is it supposed to move pretty fast? because our’s was inching very very slowly, which makes me think maybe it was just us.</p>
<p>I used the Ouija board once in 6th grade (age 10) with some girlfriends. It said my one friend would marry a man named Paul and that I would marry a man named Peter. Neither of us even married a man whose name began with P, though she did marry a man whose name is 4 letters and I married a man whose name is 5 letters (but given that many a male’s name is 4 or 5 letters, that doesn’t seem to mean much). Now maybe each of us will lose our husbands of (currently) about 26 and 22 years and remarry to men by those names, but I tend to doubt it.</p>
<p>Now at 13, I started having dreams where I died in my 20’s, and when I was 27, a boss took me out to lunch and learned of my nightly dream of dying in my 20’s and asked if I had ever used a Quija board and when I said I did as a young kid, he said that this was how the devil got into me and was having me program myself to die young and that I needed an exorcism! 
He was a biomedical engineer and not a priest, so that struck me as rather odd. I didn’t sign up for the exorcism, but I did decide it couldn’t be a good thing to dream of dying young every night and so made a decision to try to wake up whenever I started to have that dream and try to set my mind to a different dream, and within a mere week, I had dumped a theme to a dream I had been having for over half my life.</p>
<p>Even though my mother saw “The Exorcist” and was frightened by it (where I saw it three times in one weekend when it first came out and wasn’t scared at all, at least not once the movie was over), she never seemed to have an issue with my having a Quija board or playing with it with my friends at our house. But when I bought myself some Tarot cards in 7th grade during a trip to NYC, she came into the bedroom and saw me using those and completely freaked out, saying they were dangerous cards to play with and I wasn’t to play with them again. She likely wouldn’t approve (were she alive today; she died when I was 17, and I doubt it had anything to do with my using the Quija board or Tarot cards) of my having put a Tarot program on my iPhone (though I felt it goofy and think I might have deleted it already - not sure, but when I do my next set of deletions, it will be among them if it’s even still on there).</p>
<p>I’m Catholic and I too recall being told at some point that we weren’t supposed to use a Ouija board, although vividly remember a group of us using one at a slumber party. I also remember that the Ouija board spelled out a very long and rather elaborate prediction for one of our group and scared the h**l out of us, so I for one have never gone near one of those things again. I have both a relative and a good friend who are priests and they say that such activities are an opening for the devil to “get at your brain” as it were. The Catholic Church catechism forbids engaging in any kind of fortune telling activity, including horoscopes. It quotes some part of the Bible that says only God knows what the future will bring and you’re not supposed to try and find out. Plus, I think psychologically if you think something bad will happen, you could unconsciously make it happen.</p>
<p>As for that finger lifting up a body trick, I was never at a slumber party where it worked, but I do remember reading an interview with Sharon Stone (i think it was her) who said when she was a teenager she rode horses a lot and maybe lived on a farm (?) and anyway she had a riding accident where she fell off the horse, and the horse fell on top of her. The horse broke its back and couldn’t get up so she was pinned underneath 1000 lb animal. Her mom somehow saw it happen and ran out and picked up the horse and got it off her. Sharon Stone said her mom was this little bitty woman who could hardly lift anything. It’s mind over matter in extremis. Like when a mother can lift an automobile off her kid in an accident or something. The brain has the ability in extreme conditions to make the body do whatever it needs to do to survive.</p>
<p>ps- I don’t think Hasbro is making a toy for the devil to get at you. For one thing, Ouija boards have been around longer than Hasbro, haven’t they? but the idea is you are opening up your thoughts to accepting supernatural forces of influence other than faith in god (i know he’s supernatural, but anyway) and that could create an atmosphere in your mind for the devil to get in and trick you. at least i think that’s the general idea.</p>
<p>Personally I’m a skeptic on supernatural- whether good angels helping to guide us, or evil spirits tempting us. But as a skeptic and relatively logical person, I look at it this way:</p>
<p>If a ouija board opens up spirits that can use their power to guide the pointer spelling words- then how about trying this; set up the board, all hands flat on table, and stare at it to see what it spells? No touching. Just let the powerful spirits good or bad if they exist, to push the pointer themself. If it doesn’t work then I would believe it is just entertainment.</p>
<p>Similarly, I remember Kreskin’s tv show, and bought a kit of cards and misc crap he sold. One of the items was a pendulum on a string that 1 person held, and his esp would make it swing and spell words. It worked for me! Then my dad saw me, and said for me to hold the top part of the string against a table edge so I couldn’t unintentionally start it swinging. That broke the spell. Clearly, I had unknowingly set the pendulum moving.</p>