Mike Conley's Tales of the Weird: Is Ouija an invitation for evil or spooky fun?

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Mike Conley's Tales of the Weird: Is Ouija an invitation for evil or spooky fun?
March 10, 2010
Mike Conley
The McDowell News

Most people know what a Ouija board is and they probably have used the one that is mass produced by Parker Brothers. But could a seemingly innocent game really be an invitation for demonic forces to enter your life or is it just harmless fun?
For those who are not familiar with the Ouija, it is a flat board marked with letters, numbers, and other symbols, supposedly used to communicate with spirits during a séance. People who use the Ouija board sit around it and very lightly place their fingers on a movable indicator. The participants ask questions of the spirits and the indicator usually moves around the board spelling out the answer or some other message from the spirit world. Many people, especially the young, have had spooky fun playing with the Ouija board. I know because I was one of them.
When I was a boy, my friends and I would get together and play with the Ouija board. We would try to contact someone famous who had died recently, like Elvis. Nothing really weird happened during those times and for us, it was just harmless fun.
But others say that there is something sinister about using the Ouija board. They sincerely believe that it is an invitation for evil and disaster to enter into your life. Both the book and the movie of "The Exorcist" showed young Regan playing with a Ouija board just before she became possessed by the Devil.
The noted psychic and healer Edgar Cayce called Ouija boards "dangerous." Some paranormal researchers, such as John Zaffis, claimed that the majority of the worst cases of demonic possession were caused by the use of the boards. Demonologists and paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren stated, "Ouija boards are just as dangerous as drugs." They said that people who play around with séances and Ouija boards are unknowingly inviting the evil forces to come in and take over their lives, according to a Web site.
On another Web site, one man wrote about a weird but harmless incident from his childhood involving a Ouija board.
"I have spent my entire life since this incident trying to convince myself that it did not happen this way and that I was just remembering a sensational adolescent story," read the anonymous man's account. "As much as I try to remember it differently, I just cannot."
According to this man's story, he and his friend Mike were 13 years old at the time and were having fun with a Ouija board.
"We started out at his house, which was out in the Walnut and Almond Orchard area of California's central valley," reads his online story. "There were a few stories of spirits that roamed the orchards, three in particular in a place that everyone came to know as 'the haunted orchard' which was less than a mile from Mike's house."
The local legend held that three men were wrongly hanged in the orchards for murders they did not commit.
The boys decided to try and contact the spirits from the haunted orchard. They managed to contact an American Indian named Skilled Heir who apparently witnessed the crime for which those men were hanged.
"We spent a week asking him all sorts of questions, and finally one night it turned very ugly," reads the man's story. "Skilled Heir was nowhere to be heard from, there was a spirit named Bael that had taken over the airwaves and the pointer never moved so fast as it did with him. It was very precise in its answers and told us that it would not allow us to speak to Skilled Heir anymore."
But the next morning, the boys were able to contact Skilled Heir again. They had been watching Saturday morning cartoons on TV but every now and then they would switch over to a college basketball game involving Syracuse University. All of a sudden, the TV went out and the screen was full of snow. The boys got their Ouija board out and asked Skilled Heir if he could tell them the score of the game. The pointer on the board moved toward "yes."
The boys then asked what the score is and pointer on the board indicated 62-58.
Indeed, the score of the game was 62-58.
"Syracuse was winning, and that was the last time I ever touched a Ouija board," reads the man's story. "I still do not want to believe it."