Ouija Boards

[Spot's Meow]

One of my sisters is a preteen and I've been considering what to buy her for Christmas. Hasbro has that buy two games, get one free deal going on and since I was interested in two of the games, I was looking at a third one to get from the limited choices. They had a ouija board available and I thought it might be a fun gift for my sister. I never had one but had always wanted one at that age.

Since I'd never had one I didn't know how they worked or whether they were really any fun, so I tried to look up some information online...it was not easy to separate the actual advice from the crazy claims. Just reading the reviews on Amazon for the product will make you question the sanity of mankind.

I decided to ask my mom if she would like it and my mom basically told me she would not allow it in her home because it's evil and "I've learned through my life to just not mess with that stuff."

I find that pretty silly myself. It seems to be just wood, cardboard, and plastic that people subconsciously move around. But as I've never owned one, I suppose I don't have any personal experience by which to go.

So please, give me your opinions on and experiences with ouija boards. Would you feel uncomfortable with your child owning one? Discuss.

 

[RJDiogenes]

Well, there's nothing supernatural about them, of course. Any results come from the subconscious influence of the participants. I can certainly see why people would enjoy playing with them, though; sort of like playing with Tarot cards.

 

[iguana_tonante]

I would encourage my child to mock people who believe Ouija boards are "evil" or "supernatural".

 

[sojourner]

I can think of many mass produced items that are "evil", the Ouija board is not one of them.

 

[Lindley]

I'd be careful. I don't really buy into the stories, but it's one of those things where there's just no point in taking the chance there's something to it, however remote.

Besides, while *you* may think of it as a bit of harmless fun, there's no guarantee your sister will regard it the same way. That gift could draw her into ideas and circles of friends which are not in her best interest.

 

[Miss Chicken]

I have started reading some the one star reviews on ouija boards over at Amazon. Some are really quite funny such as

I just recently got this product, and so I sat down to use it and asked it "who am I speaking with". Slowly the key moved to spell out "Billy Mays Here". Immediately after that there was a burst of cold air, and now he won't leave my house. He throws away all of the products I own that he didn't endorse, for example, all of my paper towels. I have to clean all my messes with Zorbeez, as he will not allow me to keep anything else. Its not all bad, I came home on my birthday and he had gotten me a Big City Slider Station, which actually works pretty good.

But most are along the lines of

I am a mother of three and wish that people would stop selling this as a toy because this will never be a toy.When I was a teenager I had a ouiji board and life was never the same after.I became obsessed and used it on my own alone it worked by myself but a grave mistake it was.I went through hell.The movie the exocist is based on a child using a ouiji board it is a true story.Whether you believe in the supernatural or not don't take the risk I was a naive teenager then,now I know the consequences, but it was a severe price to pay.

The person who owned my house before me used this so called toy and now I have a spirit in my house that won't go away. The people who manufactured this toy must be satanists or something because they're selling this evil thing to children. I feel sorry for the kids who wrote reviews saying that they use the Ouija board every day. They don't realize that they are well on their way to becoming posessed by the spirit they're contacting.

 

[Nerys Ghemor]

I'd be careful. I don't really buy into the stories, but it's one of those things where there's just no point in taking the chance there's something to it, however remote.

Besides, while *you* may think of it as a bit of harmless fun, there's no guarantee your sister will regard it the same way. That gift could draw her into ideas and circles of friends which are not in her best interest.

This pretty much sums up what I was going to say. Whether or not they are capable of literally summoning things, I am still not a fan of some of the ideas and mindsets that have the potential to come with it.

 

[Amaris]

I agree. The product itself, I believe, is utterly harmless and the stories people claim are real are as authentic to me as an episode of Ghost Hunters (in other words, not). The mindset that is created by all those very same stories that surround it, however, make it something to warrant caution. In other words, if the girl is easily influenced, I would recommend against it.

 

[Holdfast]

When I was 17, I used a ouija board to summon up a demon named Vedrak.

So it worked well enough for me, but I can't speak for whether it will work for your sister.

 

[Nerdius Maximus]

Well, assuming that there are such things as magic and the supernatural(Just hypothetical, I don't know one way or another), I think people are missing the point when they say the board itself is or isn't evil. It would be what people are using it as a tool for, and what their capabilities are. It is a piece of mass-produced cardboard, but chainsaws are also mass-produced, and while most people use them to cut up trees and logs, a select few might use them to cut up people. The point being that it would be what the user made of it.
I'm highly skeptical of anything supernatural, but I'm like Mulder, in that I want to believe. It's more fun that way. Part of me wants to believe the scary stories people tell about contacting the dead with ouija boards, because that would be really, really cool.

 

[Tora Ziyal]

I would not be uncomfortable w/ your giving my (hypothetical) child a ouija board. But you already know that your mother would be uncomfortable, so it doesn't like a very good idea to give one to her daughter / your sister.

 

[Shatnertage]

If your mom doesn't like the idea, don't do it.

I'm sure there are plenty of other disagreements you can have with her without introducing something as silly as this.

Pick your battles.

 

[Spot's Meow]

I never said I was going to buy it for her, as soon as my mom said no I obviously started looking elsewhere. I just thought my mom's reasoning was silly.

My mom also mentioned a "mindset" that went along with the board, and I'm not sure I'm really clear on what people are talking about. That you will become a witch, obsessed with dark magic? Wanting to hang out with dark spirits? I don't really get what you guys are referring to.

I highly doubt my sister would be into that stuff anyway because she's very practical like me and would likely think the board and the spirits associated with it are fake, but I thought it might be fun to play with her friends at sleepovers, that sort of thing. She's really hard to buy for so I'm kind of stretching to find gift ideas for her.

But anyway, back to my question. I am genuinely curious. People speak of this dark mentality associated with wanting to do bad things with ouija boards and I'm just not sure what exactly the danger is.

 

[scotpens]

If a young person becomes obsessed with a Ouija board and really believes it has supernatural or clairvoyant powers, and if that person starts getting deeply involved with magic and witchcraft and occult practices, they must have been somewhat screwed up in the head to begin with. Just like all the kids who were allegedly driven to suicide by listening to satanic heavy metal.

In any case, I believe the supposed power of the Ouija board is simply to answer questions about the future. You can't use it to harm people or cast dark spells. That voids the warranty.

 

[Lonemagpie]

The supernatural side of it is all bollocks (it was invented as a game) but you might want to bear in mind that if at least one parent is actively against a particular gift - regardless of what it is - then giving it might well be asking for tension and arguments, which tend to put a dampener on the Xmas Atmos...

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

They're just cheap toys. Nothing supernatural about them. I don't really care one way or the other.

 

[Joshua Howard]

I'm a Satanist Nazi Corporate Fascist with New Age and Neo-Pagan leanings who feeds off of the paranoia of those who are convinced that they are surrounded by evil.

The fools! They'll talk about how "evil" an Ouija Board is as if Hasbro secretly employs a legion of demonic beings to magically curse their games before they make it to Walmart. They have no idea what evil is.

Evil isn't ghosts or spirits, or pentagrams with creepy people dancing around in them. Evil is normal stuff that those moral watchdogs don't even think of, like whatever it is that makes so many people starve, fight, and die from preventable illnesses around the world. If you want to see the face of evil, leave the Ouija board in the closet and pick up the latest copy of The Economist.

In any case, I guess I probably wouldn't buy such a controversial item as a gift unless I was fairly certain that it wouldn't offend the receiver of the gift or the immediate family. After all, if you give them the gift and they get their panties all in a bunch over it, that refutes the whole point of giving a gift at all.

 

[Miss Chicken]

I think that Wolfram and Hart secretly runs Hasbro.

 

[RJDiogenes]

I would never, never buy a kid Monopoly.

 

[propita]

I was given a Ouija board as a gift when I was young. My brother and I fooled around with it once, spooked us, and we didn’t bother with it. Mom didn’t want it in the house--she that she didn’t know if there was anything supernatural about it, but one didn’t invite trouble. Her grandfather studied Torah and an uncle (a high-up rabbi/scholar) wouldn’t study the Kabbalah--that he wasn’t “pure” enough or whatever--so she didn’t want us messing with it.

Frankly, while I think it’s nothing, at the time I honored my Mom’s wishes.