Ouija Boards, By Kevin
Ouija Boards are brilliant. Some people think that they are not brilliant, but they are wrong. What a Ouija Board is, is a special type of wooden board with writing on it that students use to roll spliffs on. However, they have many other uses beyond the obvious: They can also be used by teenagers to scare themselves shitless and by professional psychics, such as Derek Acorah, Shirley Ghostman, and Darren Brown, to fleece the emotionally vulnerable. This is because you can move a glass around the board and pretend you are spelling out words from the Dead. You don’t need a Ouija board to do this, actually. You can write out the alphabet on pieces of paper, along with selected words that the Dead are likely to use-burning, dark, angels, intestate, and so on-and spread them around your mom’s dining table. That way, you can confuse the Dead by putting letters in the wrong place, so that they say things like “The money is under the floorboarks.” However, your mom is likely to complain about the glass scratching the polish off the top of an expensive heirloom, especially if you contact a particularly talkative ghost.
You can find Ouija Boards in all sorts of places. In auctions, on eBay, in Joke shops, in jumble sales. But mostly when the houses of dead people are being cleared out. This strikes me as quite ironic. Now, more than ever, you would think, the dead person could do with a Ouija Board. And what does their family do? Give it to the Church for a raffle. You’d think before donating it they’d have a go and try to contact Uncle Steven to see where he’d like to have what’s left of his body buried and what they should do with the cats. But families generally are quite thoughtless in my experience, especially when someone’s just died. They get so wrapped up in their own grief they don’t step back and think things through properly. Which makes it a particularly good time for psychics to cash in or God botherers to take advantage while they’re not thinking straight.
Not that there’s anything to it, of course. There are no such things as ghosts. Nevertheless, I do like to keep an open mind about the phenomena associated with the paranormal, such as table wobbling, regression therapy, seances and the production of smegma, and of course, ESP. In the case of Ouija Boards, since there are no such things as ghosts and it is incumbent upon us to adopt a scientific approach to explaining associated phenomena, the apparent communing with the Dead must have some more rational explanation. My favourites are these:
(1) We are contacting the spirit or essence of past owners or users of the board, who have somehow left their psychic imprint on the board.
(2) Ouija Boards function as a portal to parallel universes. Since physics has now established the existence of infinite multiple parallel universes running alongside our own, the most likely explanation is that we are getting message from people who have died in our universe but who are still alive in millions of other universes and who have an important message they want to get their loved ones, who are still alive in our universe but, perhaps, dead in theirs.
(3) Like (2), but we are in contact with a parallel universe in which the Dead can still talk and communicate with the living, and that universe comes into contact with ours at the point where the Ouija Board is being used, even if it’s only being used to get Susan to not want to be alone tonight.
(4) We are contacting the spirit of the people who made the glass we’re pushing around. Or all the people who have drunk from it. This would explain some of the bad language and filthy suggestions most ghosts seem to use.
(5) It was Michael Williams all the time pushing the glass, which is why the message from beyond the grave was “Kevin MacPherson will die next week of exploding goolies.”
Whichever is the actual answer, I think it is important not to poo-poo that which we do not immediately understand. Important historical figures have resorted to Ouija Boards to guide them in major decisions. Napoleon Bonaparte based his decision to advance on Moscow on advice given to him from beyond the grave. Ronald Reagan based his entire Latin American strategy and his policy on Iran by consulting Russell Grant in the Daily Express every morning. Adolf Hitler, who was extremely superstitious, also decided to invade Russia on the basis of a recommendation from the other side, possibly from the same spirit who advised Napoleon. And Leon Trotsky was bent over the I Ching, trying to divine his future, when he got an ice pick in the back of his head. All of these examples demonstrate that we mock the paranormal at our peril.
What is more, when you have collected enough Ouija Boards, you will have enough psychic power concentrated in one place to make your house collapse in on itself like that one in Poltergeist. I keep all my Ouija Boards in my sister’s bedroom. Sometimes, in the middle of the night, I bang on the wall and make barking noises, so she thinks it’s her dead dog, Shandy, trying to get in touch. Or a ghost with Tourette’s.
Anyway, I hope you will collect Ouija Boards now I have shown you how brilliant they are.
And that is the end.
(Kevin MacPherson is Bishop of Bath and Wells)
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