Hmm… ‘The Scariest Ouija Board Ever! *Evil Spirit Proof*… You know it’s true because
it’s all in caps. That’s the Law of Caps people! I’ve seen it in my own comment section.
13.5 million views! Holy crap, that’s over 25 times more views than all of my videos
put together! “All around me are familiar faces.” “Is there any spirits that would
like to contact us?” “Maja, we’re trying to contact you. Can you get in contact with
us again right now? Maja, are you there?” “We just looked you up on the internet - did
you have a sibling that got killed as well?” “Did your mother kill herself? Yes!” Is
this picture, on this phone – is this you? “G. T. G. Gota go. Ohhh!! No Way! Bro the
lights turned off when it said got to go! That’s not okay!” Okay… this video can’t
be taken seriously because it’s obviously a clickbait channel that entertains kids and
sells merchandise, but it does raise an interesting question – is the Ouija Board really a means
of contacting the dead? No, no it’s not… This, is the wee-jee, or wee-ja board – Debunked.
In 1891, the American lawyer and inventor, Elijah Bond, began advertising his ‘Ouija,
the Wonderful Talking Board’, describing it as a magical device that answered questions
“about the past, present and future with marvellous accuracy”, and asserted that
it was a link between “the known and unknown, the material and immaterial.” Since then,
and particularly since World War 1, it’s been viewed predominantly as a means of contacting
spirits, and if you’re unlucky, violent demons that want to possess you! In fact,
countless Christian authorities sternly warn against its use because of this reason. For
example, bible-knowledge.com asserts that “Even just one time with this demonic device
could break your protective hedge with the Lord and allow a demon to come after you”.
Bibleinfo.com asserts that “Ouija boards, séances, the occult and witchcraft are all
tools that fallen angels, also known as demons, try and use to deceive you. And not just do
they aim to deceive, but it’s not uncommon for these practices to lead to demon harassment
and/or possession”. And Premier Christianity states that “If you have a Ouija board,
I think the only serious question you face is this: where am I going to burn it?”.
Which, incidentally, is what I say to those who own a bible. But jokes aside (that being
the bible…), let’s back up a bit and ask, ‘what exactly is the Ouija Board, and how
exactly does one use it?’ Well, one doesn’t use it… it has to be two or more, and this
fact alone is very telling… but we’re get to that in just a second. Put simply,
it’s a board game that consists of a board and ‘planchette’ (which is basically a
flat object supported by castor wheels). The board is marked with the letters of the alphabet,
the numbers zero to nine, the words ‘yes’ and ‘no’, and occasionally, the words
‘hello’ and ‘goodbye’. And participants play the game by placing two of their fingers
on the planchette, asking direct questions, and then watching the planchette seemingly
move on its own to answer your questions. And the central claim of the Ouija Board is
that the movement is caused by spirits. Sounds pretty creepy right? Well, it is! It can be
terrifying! But like many terrifying things, it’s only so until you understand it…
and so let’s dive straight into it and ask the real question (and likely the reason you
clicked on this video in the first place) - how and why does the planchette move? If
it’s not spirits or demons, what is it? The answer is unsatisfyingly simple. It’s
due to a psychological phenomenon known as the ideomotor effect, wherein the influence
of suggestion and expectation causes people to subconsciously perform motor actions. Or,
to put it as bluntly as possible, it’s due to the participants unconsciously moving the
planchette themselves without realising it. It’s a very strange phenomenon, fascinating
even, but make no mistake about, it’s natural, and it’s thoroughly understood by science,
and there are many ways of proving that it’s responsible for the movement. For example,
one such way is to take believers who have just experienced the Ouija Board telling them
personal and accurate information, blindfolding them, and then asking the spirits the same
questions (as demonstrated here by the TV show, Brain Games). “Spirits, can you speak
to us? Are you there? Right there? Candel’s grandpa, show us that you’re with us again.
That’s odd, are the spirits drawing a blank? You know what year he died? Yes. Okay, what
year did you die? Right there? Okay. How do you think our new believers will react when
they find out that the spirits are having some technical difficulties? You can take
your blindfolds off. Now, what year did he pass away? 2010 […] Now, the sprits did
a fantastic job without the blindfolds, but with the blindfolds on, this is what I got
when you went for the day that grandpa (who was so clear before – right?), here’s
what got – you got a J, and a K, and you got three blanks that were on the middle of
the wood.” So, as you can see, once participants are blindfolded (and this is especially the
case when the board is also rotated 90 degrees) the spirits fail to communicate, and thus
this demonstrates the ideomotor effect… “Will our new believers buy into the science
behind the séance? There are no spirits. Yes there are! That was right, no! No!”
“I’m a believer. Regardless of the science, I believe even more now in the Ouija Board!”
This is what’s wrong with the world – people being impervious to new facts and information
isn’t a strength, it’s retarded! And it reeks of our lowly origin. Now some ‘psychics’
have respond to the blindfold experiment by asserting that the spirits need our eyes in
order to use the board, which, of course, is an ad hoc cop-out that attempts to render
the assertion unfalsifiable, but luckily there are many other ways to prove that the ideomotor
effect is responsible without blindfolding participants. To name but one more example
(and my personal favourite), in 1853 the English scientist Michael Faraday demonstrated the
ideomotor effect by simply stacking several pieces of cardboard on top of the planchette.
His reasoning was that if spirits were truly moving the planchette (that is, if the assertion
that ‘the planchette’s movement is caused by spirits’ is true) then the layers of
card would be dragged behind the direction of movement (like this); but if the movement
was coming from participants (that is, if the ideomotor effect was responsible) then
the layers of card would initiate the direction of movement (like this). And as it turns out,
it’s the latter – the ideomotor effect is responsible. Now once again, many ‘psychics’
have responded to this experiment by changing their central claim from, ‘the spirits move
the planchette’ to ‘the spirits cause the participants to move the planchette’,
which, again, is more ad hoc crap, but skeptics have nevertheless responded to this nonsense
in numerous ways. One way, which I personally find quite hilarious, is to take believers
in the Ouija Board to an abandoned house and tell them completely fabricated stories about
who died within the building and how, and then watch the participants somehow contact
these made up figments (as is demonstrated within this clip from the TV show, Science
of Scams). “To create this clip we invited a group of girls to take part in a tour of
a haunted house. This is Richard, who was playing the part of the guide. Richard made
up a haunted history of the building, which he told to the girls as he showed them around.
By the time the girls were ready for the Ouija Board they were convinced that the property
was haunted, and were expecting something to happen. This expectation helps their subconscious
generate the movement.” Weird, huh? It’s almost like suggestibility is the cause, isn’t
it? Now yet again, ‘psychics’ have responded to such experiments by asserting that once
we try to “test the spirits”, the spirits deliberately start messing with us, such as
pretending that they are the made up spirits we’ve just been told about, which is a pathetic
ad hoc response deserving nothing more than ridicule… these people are simply playing
hide the ball, doing whatever they can to make their belief unfalsifiable, and thus
impossible to prove false. They’re not interested in truth, they’re enemies of it. Anyhow,
to recap, many Ouija Board experiences occur simply because the median or one or more of
the participants are deliberately moving the planchette (as was the case with the video
in the intro), while other Ouija Board experiences are the result of the ideomotor effect, which
in short is the subconscious power of suggestion, expectation, confirmation bias, and personal
experience. The unfortunate truth is that once someone has established a certain belief
(which in this case is that the Ouija Board is essentially a telephone between the living
and the dead), they tend to favour evidence that confirms their beliefs and provides them
with a comforting conclusion to their emotional charged experiences. Don’t get me wrong,
these people aren’t completely impervious to evidence, but when evidence is presented
that crushes their beliefs and their reaction is this: “Regardless of the science, I believe
even more now in the Ouija Board!” Then I don’t know what to recommend… it’s
unfortunate, but we simply didn’t evolve to be rational beings, and statements such
as this embody this fact. Anyhow, I’m going to give this Ouija Board away to one lucky
subscriber, and so if you’d like to stand a chance of winning it, then just include
the word ‘Ouija’ within a comment on this video, and I’ll announce the winner within
my next one. As always, thank you kindly for the view, and an extra special thank you to
all of my wonderful patrons – I just want to sincerely thank you all again for making
my dream a reality.