Ouija Boards

[PPI Jason]

Hey Dan,

It's good to hear from you again. When you mentioned your experiences in the swamps of South Carolina it reminded me of some of my experiences when I lived in the jungles of southern Mexico. It was a very very superstitious area. I remember whatever village I was living at the time would have a small town newspaper. The front page of the papers regularly had articles about recent alien landings, livestock abductions, werewolves, and things of that nature. I remember many a night riding around on my little mormon bicycle through numerous dark winding dirt road ways through dense jungle. I remember just a huge feeling of being alone.....or not....at times. You couldn't see very far and the dense brush constantly obscuring my vision just let my imagination run wild. I've always considered myself a skeptic, but even I starting buying into a lot of the mythology down there.

Witchcraft was a very real idea down there. I remember there were numerous people that had some type of muscular disorder than, looking back now, I think was some form of very advanced and untreated arthritis. Many people had there hands just permanently contorted in grotesque ways with fingers curled. Many of these people were in constant pain. But it was rare to find anyone, at least in many of the areas I was at, that believed it was arthritis or palsy or anything like that. To them, it was a curse. The sufferers themselves would tell me how they pissed off some strange witch lady down the road one day and their condition started later that week. Everyone had a witchcraft or possession story. They had all kinds of legends. For example, some of the people used to look at the color of the cross above the Catholic Churches. They claimed that if it was a certain color (I think they said red) then that meant that that church had an assassin type priest there that was authorized by the pope to kill people that threatened the faith of the local population. Fortunately I didn't find very many red crosses. But you bet I got a little nervous whenever I came across one.

The point is, and I could be wrong, but I really feel deep down that the Ouija Board is just an extension of our imagination. Even the most ration person can bring it's powers to life if they are thoroughly convinced of it's power. I guess that maybe why, Dan, your experiment wasn't successful. I anticipate that during our experiment we won't find much anyway. But if we do, mmmmmm boy.

[PPI Brian]

Nothing like resurrecting an old thread. Especially if it's about the Ouija board. Here's a video that shows a great experiment that was proposed by Mr. Faraday:

http://www.youtube.com/v/cma5Zn7xrWU

[PPI Tim]

Maybe we should put this on our facebook page.

[PPI Brian]

Found another video. This reminds me of the experiment we conducted recently.

https://www.youtube.com/v/PRo8TytvIDw

[PPI Karl]

Wow.  Embedded video looks BEAUTIFUL in our new forum! 

Hardcore apologists for Ouija boards are going to argue that the spirits are not, in "fact," guiding our hands to the answers, but, rather, they're influencing our minds:  that being open to the spirits of the board means letting them inspire the actions we direct, and not that they, themselves, are the ones directing our hands.  I'll play devil's advocate here and say this approach actually makes more sense.  If spirits were actually moving the hands of board users, that would be an invoked poltergeist experience.  It makes more sense that our brain chemistry and its brain wave functions would more readily avail itself to spectral manipulation than our physical extremities or eyes.  In other words, with our understanding of the ouija board's layout obscured by blindfold, the signals getting through, but the interface is off-line:  it's the equivalent of trying to home in on the right TV channel without the benefit of the television the monitor, itself, being switched on.

Whaddya think?

[PPI Tim]

Can we post what our Ouija Board experiment looked like?

[PPI Brian]

Can we post what our Ouija Board experiment looked like?

If you buy me some beer and help me edit the video we can. 

Once the video is edited perhaps we can talk Karl into providing the narration? (hint! hint!)   

(Note: I sincerely apologize for not having this project finished by now. I've been looking back at all the unfinished projects I've left laying around and it's very depressing.)