From time immemorial, people have been fascinated by the idea of talking to the dead. Some people believe that the dead gets reincarnated as someone else. Others believe that they are up in the heaven or down below the hell. Some others believe that they are roaming around us as spirits, walking for us to dial them. None of these claims are scientifically proven. I don’t mean to offend anyone or make fun of any religion. It just isn’t scientific, at least until now. Well, we can tolerate unscientific elements when it’s harmless. And most religions, if not all may have elements that are unscientific but in general work in favour of the humankind. What we can’t tolerate are frauds who make money with these shenanigans. And Ouija boards are no different.
The infamous ‘spirit communicator device’- Ouija board was patented in the year 1890. There have been similar practices and instruments in the past. But this was the first time someone took it too far to actually apply for a patent, and the sad thing is that the patent was approved. There are numerous stories behind how the device got its name. Some people say that it’s an Egyptian word for good luck. Others claim that it is a fusion of German and Spanish. Or maybe they just made up a spooky name all by themselves. Whatever the case, millions of Ouija boards have been sold to date, and sadly it still is in the sale.
I do agree that the whole ‘Ouija board’ thing is fascinating and it is not fair to blame the people who approach this with curiosity. But the false claim that through this board with alphabets and numbers, you can communicate with your long lost husband or dad is sinister in nature. The Ouija board was made popular, I believe in terms of 3 reasons;
1. Ouija boards were presented as board games and not just a device to spook things out.
2. Ouija board claimed to have the capability to communicate with the dead popularizing it among the American widows after the civil war.
3. Ouija boards were accessible to everyone and so even the people who didn’t believe in its claims wanted to test it out of curiosity.
If you are not familiar with Ouija boards, here is a rough picture; you take out the Ouija board and sit in a spooky place with candles and improper lighting. The board contains the English alphabets in the middle ( Coz even the illiterates when dead, suddenly become experts in English ) as well as some numbers. ‘Yes’ and ‘No’ will be written in the top corners and ‘goodbye’ at the bottom. The board also comes with a triangular piece called a ‘planchette’. All you have to do is keep your hands on the planchette, summon your dead relative, or any spirit who is available and ask the questions. The planchette will move on its own to spell out the answer. This might seem odd, but the planchette actually moves and all the participants involved proclaim that they have nothing to do with it.
But how? How does it move its own? The answer is, it doesn’t? We move it. So are they all lying? No, they just don’t know that they are moving it. What….???
Confused? Don’t worry. There is a simple word to describe this whole mess; ideomotor effect. The ideomotor effect is an unconscious, involuntary physical movement. All of you have experienced this in the onset of your sleep (hypnic jerk). When you ask the ‘spirit’ a question, it is actually your unconscious self that answers it. You might have heard, that it is dangerous to play this game on your own. This is because the effect is magnified when there are multiple communicators. Your subconscious will start moving the planchette and you will feel another push from the person sitting nearby. Believing that the spirit is guiding you, your subconscious will further ease the movement. And this effect is more magnified if you actually believe in the phenomenon.
But how does our subconscious decide which answer to pick? Well, as a matter of fact, if it wasn’t for the superstitious counterpart, the Ouija board could have been a powerful tool for psychoanalysts- it is just up their alley. Researchers believe that Ouija boards can be relied upon to verify the factual information that we consciously don’t remember. Suppose you are asked whether Sigmund Freud is the father of modern psychology. You might have heard this statement before, but you still second-guess your intuitions and opt ‘no’- it is a possibility. But if you were using an Ouija board at the time, your subconscious would have probably led you straight to ‘yes’ as you recognize the statement. Pretty neat, right?
If you just want to debunk the whole thing ask the communicators to try on a blindfold, taking away their option to manipulate the planchette- even unconsciously. You will see that the spirit either goes blind or suddenly forget all the English learned from the ‘underworld academy’.
(check out this YouTube video from Brain games, National Geographic; https://youtu.be/PRo8TytvIDw)
