From Beyond the Grave?

Today’s Ouija article by Kirst D’Raven on Mysterious Times lead me to record a few of my own thoughts on the phenomena and hopefully complement this with some further insight.

I had heard and read several creepy and fascinating tales about Ouija Boards and fondly remembered Captain Howdy from The Exorcist. I had even tried using little bits of paper with letters on and ‘Lexicon’ playing cards to make my own. Being an only child, these experiments had typically been conducted alone and I had not detected so much as a twitch from the glass on the table despite my hope (and fear) that I may have been able to communicate with the spirit world.

I was pretty convinced of there being some link to the ‘spirit world’ as my Aunty had told me a very creepy story of her and other nurses taking part in a session overnight in the hospital nursery where they worked. Although normally known for her great sense of fun and jokey stories, this was one where she was totally serious and I knew she was not making it up. The board had come up with details about a family member of one of the nurses and was scary in its accuracy and detail. They had abandoned ship pretty quickly after several accurate answers to their questions and would never try it again.

The opportunity to try it properly for myself came when I was staying overnight with a group of fellow drama students during a theatre run. I had the Lexicon playing cards with me, which I’d brought as a game rather than their secondary use and, when one of my friends starting talking about Ouija and said that he knew how to run the sessions, several of us agreed to give it a go. I was determined at the time to keep my finger as lightly on the glass as possible as I wanted to know if there was anything to it, rather than trying to fake it or take part in a practical joke. After a few false starts, the glass started to move ‘with purpose’ but spelled out nonsense strings of letters. Then, it started to form words and specific replies to questions.

At one point it indicated that it wanted to communicate to me and, when asked for a name, spelled out ‘Helen’ (it wasn’t – but names changed etc etc). I couldn’t think of anyone named Helen in my family past or present but ‘Helen’ wanted to speak to me. The board then spelled out “We are” and then d-e-a… My heart dropped into my stomach. The glass moved across to the next letter… “r”. “We are dear”. I can’t remember exactly what followed in the terms of questions and answers but I did cotton on that “Helen” appeared to be a living Helen that I was very close to at the time. The session went on for several hours and, although I kept my ‘light touch’, even to the extent of losing my touch on the glass at times when it moved rapidly, the glass still moved steadily and purposefully. I was the only person in the group who was constantly on the glass, as the others swapped over throughout the session and I knew if there was any hoaxing it had to involve more than one of my friends working together. It was unnerving and very strange. I seemed to have communicated with a living person through the board as well as the departed. Several months on, I spoke with my closest friend from the group and asked him to level with me if he was involved in any trickery (he would have had to have been). He insisted that he had done nothing and hadn’t heard of anyone else admitting to faking it and he was just as amazed as I was by the events of the evening.

So, what had gone on? Did I really communicate with the living and the dead using a glass and a deck of letter cards? Or is there perhaps a better explanation that is a bit more rooted in this world?

There is a natural effect called the Ideomotor Effect. This can be observed when the brain considers a course of action and there is a muscular response even though the subject is not consciously aware of it. It is very similar to our reflex actions where response to a stimulus occurs that is outside our conscious control. In 1852, William Carpenter, an English Professor of Physiology, published a scientific paper at the Royal Institution discussing the specific mechanism by which suggestion could cause muscular movements of which the subject could be unaware. Carpenter’s theory can be applied to many other effects seen in séances at the time, such as ‘table-tipping’. Since the publication of his paper, these effects have been measured and verified many times by measuring electrical activity in the muscles of a subject. This gives a real explanation as the movement of the glass without calling into question the honesty of the participants; they genuinely have no awareness of causing such movements. It also explains cases, such as that experienced by my Aunty, where the board ‘knows’ the answers to questions – it knows exactly as much as everyone taking part in the exercise.

Knowing this, and knowing also that the power of suggestion can be used to influence people, then a ‘Medium’ using these effects together can produce a powerful spectacle. For anyone not believing this is plausible, watch Derren Brown’s ‘Séance’ in which he uses exactly this sort of trickery to incredible and convincing effect. Also, consider this for a minute – the mechanism by which these effects can be produced has been known and described since 1852!

Of course, I am not saying that this explains every Ouija Board session that ever took place. I wasn’t there for all but a few of them so I simply don’t know. However, if you’re asking me which explanation seems more likely; ghosts talking by moving a glass around or a known and demonstrable biological effect, I know which one I’m choosing.