Despite many warnings, most
people continue to view the Ouija board as a harmless pastime:
Spiritualists,
psychologists, psychiatrists, medical doctors, theologians, and other
informed persons have all given warnings on the hazards of using the
ouija board and similar devices. In spite of all they have said, it is
evident that many persons are still ignorant that dangers exist.
Those who know little or
nothing about the occult and ouija board experiences do not understand
these warnings concerning the "innocent" use of the board. One who
speaks of physical, mental, spiritual, or other problems which might
relate to ouija use is often viewed as an extremist, obsessed with
groundless fears. How could the use of so simple a device result in
anything detrimental to the user? This is often the attitude until,
through personal involvement, the reality of the dangers is
experienced, and the warnings are then remembered. Often by this time
permanent damage has occurred.1
Indeed, the dangers of the
Ouija board have been noted long before our modern revival of the
occult. Almost 70 years ago, the medium Carl Wickland, M.D., referred to
his own encounters when he wrote of "the cases of several persons whose
seemingly harmless experiences with automatic writing and the ouija
board resulted in such wild insanity that commitment to asylums was
necessitated.... Many other disastrous results which followed the use of
the supposedly innocent ouija board came to my notice."2
Edmond Gruss refers to a
clipping from the files of the famous magician Houdini, concerning a Dr.
Curry, a medical director of the State Insane Asylum of New Jersey, who
stated the Ouija board was a "dangerous factor" in unbalancing the mind
and predicted that insane asylums would be flooded with patients if
interest in them did not wane.3
Noted psychic researchers Ed
and Lorraine Warren refer to one instance where the Ouija board was used
"as little more than a joke," and yet it led to the house becoming
"infested" with evil spirits.4 Noted occultist Manly P. Hall is founder
of the Philosophical Research Society and considered one of the leading
authorities on the occult in this century. In Horizon magazine
for October-December 1944, pages 76-77, he recalls, "During the last
20-25 years I have had considerable personal experience with persons who
have complicated their lives through dabbling with the Ouija board. Out
of every hundred such cases, at least 95 are worse off for the
experience.... I know of broken homes, estranged families, and even
suicides that can be traced directly to this source."5
Other authorities on the
Ouija board, Ed and Lorraine Warren, cited above, state in their book
Graveyard (1992, pp. 137-38): "Ouija boards are just as dangerous as
drugs. They’re not to be played with.... [J]ust as parents are
responsible for other aspects of the children’s lives, they should take
equal care to keep the tools of the devil from their children...
especially in an era when satanic cults are on the rise. Remember:
Séances and Ouija boards and other occult paraphernalia are dangerous
because evil spirits often disguise themselves as your loved ones—and
take over your life."6
Dr. Thelma Moss, a
parapsychologist on the staff of UCLA’s Neuropsychiatric Institute,
prefaced her discussion of the Ouija board in The Probability of the
Impossible with: "Warning! For certain persons, the Ouija board is
no game and can cause serious dissociations of personality."7
Some incidents of Ouija board
use are bizarre, but they have been documented; for example, Ouija-board-related
vampirism. Vampirism is not total fiction; there are many accounts of it
in the psychiatric literature. Skeptic William Seabrooke, in his
Witchcraft, refers to one female "vampire" he actually let suck his
own blood in a moment of perverse fascination. Psychic researcher
Raymond VanOver refers to a man who was quite serious about his need to
drink human blood, particularly that of young girls.8
Blood, of course, has long
been used in occultism for any number of purposes. Blood may be drunk in
ritual (sometimes at the spirits’ request9), offered on altars, used in
pacts with the devil, or as a means to materialize spirits. In Occult
Science in India and Among the Ancients, Chief Justice Louis
Jacolliot refers to one formula of magical incantation: "The flowers
that he offers to the spirits evoked by him should be colored with the
blood of a young virgin, or a child, in case he proposes to cause
death."10 Given the use of blood and the perverted nature of occult
practice, it is hardly surprising some people might become "vampires" or
feel the need for blood.
In some cases, use of the
Ouija board—like astrology—leads to actual involvement with witchcraft
and Satanism. (Sociologist Edward J. Moody observes, "Those who
eventually become Satanists usually have begun with astrology."11) On
more than one occasion, the spirits themselves—claiming the participants
are now "ready" for more serious occult work—have suggested the players
"graduate" to such practices. Carl Johnson, who started dabbling with
the Ouija board after occasional earlier brushes with occultism states:
The "voices" and other
eerie stuff began when he and his sister started playing around with a
Ouija board a few years ago, he recalls. This led to nightmares,
creeping depression, and a suicide attempt—which Carl says left him
revitalized and thirsty for blood. So he delicately pricked the leg of
his sleeping sister and slaked his thirst. Then, compulsively, he took
to sucking blood from slices he made in the arm of a pliant homosexual
pal—a practice shared by other young friends when he organized a
satanic coven....
Lilith, too, became a
vampiric Devil worshipper. She describes ceremonies under full moons
in which her teenaged coven would get zonked out on dope and drink
blood mixed with wine. Ultimately, she knew things were getting out of
hand when one of the cultists proposed kidnapping her own father and
offering him up as a ritual sacrifice.12
Thankfully, it appears that
some, perhaps many, people do not seem to be harmed by the Ouija board;
they may have innocently played with it as a child or for fun at a party
and suffered no discernible ill effects. The problem is that no one can
tell the outcome in advance. There are also hundreds of cases of
innocent or naive occult involvement leading to spirit possession,
insanity, financial ruin, adultery, divorce, criminal acts (even
murder), and other tragedies, as the books by Edmond Gruss, Stoker Hunt
and the literature of occultism and parapsychology proves.13
Ouija boards should never be
played with, especially for entertainment. Parents should never give the
board to their children. Perhaps one day Parker Brothers will no longer
deny the ruin that this "game" has brought to thousands of people.
Perhaps it will own up to its corporate responsibility and, retaining
the copyright, refuse to market this "game" again.
Notes:
1 Edmund Gruss, The
Ouija Board: Doorway to the Occult (Chicago, IL: Moody Press,
1975, reprinted and expanded in 1995), pp. 72-73.
2 Carl A. Wickland,
Thirty Years Among the Dead (Newcastle, 1974, rpt.), pp. 28-29.
3 Gruss, The Ouija Board,
p. 75.
4 Robert Curran, The
Haunted: One Family’s Nightmare (New York: St. Martin’s Press,
1988), p. 1.
5 Gruss, The Ouija Board,
1994 ed., pp. 78-79.
6 Ibid., p. 79.
7 Thelma Moss, The
Probability of the Impossible (Los Angeles, CA: J. P. Tarcher,
1974), p. 237.
8 Martin Ebon, ed., The
Satan Trap: Dangers of the Occult (Garden City, NY: Doubleday,
1776), p. 108.
9 Mircea Eliade,
Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 1972), pp. 307-308.
10 Louis Jacolliot,
Occult Science in India and Among the Ancients (New Hyde Park, New
York: University Books, 1971), p. 141.
11 Irving I. Zaretsky, Mark
P. Leon, eds., Religious Movements in Contemporary America
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1974), p. 363.
12 The National Observer,
June 1, 1974; cf. J. Keel, "More from My Ohio Valley Notebook,"
Flying Saucer Review (British Publication), vol. 13, no. 4, p. 21.
13 John Ankerberg, John
Weldon, The Coming Darkness: Confronting Occult Deception
(Eugene, OR: Harvest House Publishers, 1993).
