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How Ouija Boards Work 41

How Ouija boards work.

(Hint: It's not ghosts.)

No, demons will not possess you

if you use one.

By Aja Romano

If you’re thinking about grabbing a Ouija board
for your next conversation with the other side,
you might want to think again.
Despite their long history as hoax
spiritualist devices turned hit toys turned tools of
the devil, Ouija boards won’t actually put you in
contact with demons or spirits. Any scary
firsthand reports you might hear or read of real-
life Ouija board horror stories are exaggerations,
false claims, or a misunderstanding of how hands and arms to move the pointer to the It frees everyone’s minds to subconsciously
Ouija boards actually work. answers that you — again, unconsciously — generate creepy Ouija board answers together.
That might be disappointing news if may want to receive. The effect might also make the Ouija
you’re hosting a Halloween sleepover, but it There are multiple scientific studies that board an effective tool to help you tap into your
might also leave you asking, “How do Ouija have shown various instances of the ideomotor own subconscious. In one study published in
boards work?” The answer is surprisingly effect in action. In one well-known and oft- 2012, scientists found that using the Ouija board
simple. repeated variant of the Ouija board test, allowed subjects to recall factual information

blindfolded participants spell much more with more accuracy than if they weren’t using
Ouija boards rely on the power of your incoherent messages. (You can try this one at the board. Participants were instructed to answer
own body home.) a series of yes/no questions and to rate whether
These experiments easily demonstrate they were confident in their answers or merely
If you’ve never used a Ouija board, the concept that the Ouija board only works when the guessing. Later, they were subjected to another
is pretty straightforward. With a group or by participants are able to manipulate the pointer round of questions but used a Ouija board to
yourself, you place your hands lightly on a themselves. If a ghost or spirit were really in the indicate “yes” or “no,” once again rating their
triangular pointer called a planchette. The room, it would be able to direct the planchette to confidence level in their answers. In cases where
planchette rests on the board itself, which has spell out coherent messages without any participants believed they didn’t know an
the words “yes” and “no” in its top corners, an assistance. But there is no ghost, and when the answer, they were able to give more correct
alphabet in the center, and the word “goodbye” Ouija board users are deprived of their ability to answers, more often, when using the Ouija
at the bottom. spell out words they can see, the game rapidly board than when they believed they were only
The idea is to summon the spirits you devolves into gibberish. guessing on their own.
want to communicate with, and they’ll move the The researchers behind that study have
planchette around the board to spell out answers The ideomotor effect is actually a gone on to speculate that using the Ouija board
to the questions you ask — until they or you powerful subconscious tool as a technique to unlock subconscious
finally say goodbye and the spirits go back to knowledge could lead to insights about the early
wherever they came from. Before Ouija boards were invented, spiritualists onset of Alzheimer's and other
It all sounds pretty harmless, but there’s and other would-be ghost communicators used neurodegenerative diseases.
a long tradition of people believing that Ouija makeshift devices called “talking boards” that In other words, the Ouija board is
boards are dangerous occult gateways that can served a similar purpose. Talking boards first potentially a very powerful communication tool
lead to demon possession or worse. After all, became popular in mid-19th-century America, — just not in the way most people think.
what happens if it’s a non-friendly spirit that’s when millions of people suddenly gained an
moving the planchette without your control? interest in talking to the dead following the The ideomotor effect is behind much
In fact, there’s a simple scientific tremendous loss of life in the Civil War. The more than just Ouija boards —
explanation: The mysterious mechanism that popularity of talking boards, and their use as a including several harmful real-life
powers the Ouija board is called the ideomotor tool to exploit grieving war families, meant scams and “therapies”
effect (pronounced “idio-mo-tor” or “id-ee-aah- scientists actually started studying the
meh-ter”), and it’s basically a way for your body ideomotor effect in the midcentury, well before The appeal of the ideomotor effect is that you
to talk to itself. Ouija boards and planchettes were patented in actually may be communicating with something
The ideomotor effect is an example of 1890. you can’t typically access — your own
unconscious, involuntary physical movement — Over the years, research has determined subconscious — and that the experience can feel
that is, we move when we’re not trying to move. that the ideomotor effect is closely tied to like communicating with something paranormal
If you’ve ever experienced the sudden feeling of subconscious awareness — and that its effect is or unknown.
jerking awake from sleep (known as the hypnic maximized when the subject believes he has no
jerk), you’ve experienced a more abrupt version control of his movements. Paradoxically, the (Continued on Page 42)
of the ideomotor effect: your brain signaling less control you think you have, the more
your body to move without your conscious control your subconscious mind is actually
awareness. The obvious difference is that the exerting.
ideomotor effect happens when you’re awake, This is where the Ouija board’s
so the reflexive movements you make are much triangular pointer comes in. The planchette
smaller. makes it easier to subconsciously control your
In the case of a Ouija board, your brain muscle movements, because it focuses and
may unconsciously create images and memories directs them even while you believe you aren’t
when you ask the board questions. Your body in control of them. It’s also why the planchette
responds to your brain without you consciously seems to move even more effectively when
“telling” it to do so, causing the muscles in your multiple people are using the planchette at once: