Ouija Boards: Good or Evil?

It must have been over fifteen years ago now when I was on a very long, monotonous night shift with one of my close friends/colleagues. All of our jobs were done and the night was going painstakingly slow when we began talking about spirits and spooky experiences.

Before I knew it, the suggestion of trying the Ouija board came up.

Being young, daft and having plenty of time on our hands to kill made the idea rather appealing (but in equal measures terrifying).

The ‘board’ was merely a very rough and quick paper attempt that we had followed and copied off the first website that came up on Google (and I’m pretty sure there was a quick view of a YouTube video as well). I tried my best to remain open-minded as possible and not take anything that happened as gospel.

The most I can honestly recall from this experience was that the glass did move, which in and of itself I found utterly mind-blowing! Admittedly, the movement was very intermittent - and when it did slide slowly to the letters, the words being spelt out made no sense at all. Other than that though, nothing startling happened.

The repercussions of our actions wouldn’t materialise until the following night though - and what happened then was something that shook me to my very core.

Ouija boards are infamous for being a very dangerous ‘game’, but it didn’t occur to me to what degree, until after my experiences.

I had gone to work for another night shift, but I was on with a different colleague this time, so I had to keep my lips sealed regarding the events of the prior night. And initially, all was fine; the shift started and continued in a very ordinary manner. But when midnight approached, things really started to amp up.

It all started with the fire alarms sounded randomly, blaring into the dead of the night and for no apparent reason. And no matter what we tried, there was no switching them off. Eventually, we had to call our manager so he could instruct us how to get them to stop.

Shortly after we did manage to get the fire alarms to silence, a light bulb smashed on its own accord in another room of the building. I tried to remain calm as we went to investigate this, but when we returned to where we had been sitting in the dining room, we were met with chairs that were scattered in all directions.

It didn't stop there either - when we went to do checks around the building, drawers had been pulled out, cupboard doors were wide open and the lights throughout the entire building completely went out for a good portion of the night.

When they did eventually come back on, the room where we had done the Ouija board remained the only room to be in complete darkness.

Let's bear in mind here that it was only my colleague and I who were there and we had not left each other's side once throughout all of this. So being all too aware of the chaos that Ouija boards notoriously bring and knowing what I had been doing the previous night it is safe to say that I was scared out of my wits and feeling horribly regretful for messing with something I had very little clue about. This experience haunted me for weeks and caused many sleepless nights.

Irrational fear had started to creep in after learning just how evil spirits can materialise when safety measures aren’t put in place.

I knew without any shadow of a doubt that everything had occurred because we had been playing around with the unknown and I swore I would NEVER touch one again.

…Until I did!

This time it was in Morecambe’s Winter Gardens, which is renowned for being really eerie, with lots of ghost sightings throughout the years. So much so that the well-known TV show 'Most Haunted' has investigated this location numerous times.

Morecambe Winter Gardens

A group of us paid to spend the night there and were shook to find that somebody had an Ouija board in the building. At first, I had no intentions whatsoever of touching one ever again, NO THANK YOU! But it wasn't long before my curiosity got the better of me.

The buzz of everybody else doing it mixed with the spooky atmosphere soon got me in the mood!

The main thing I remember from this particular experience was that a little boy had come through who had drowned. We of course checked this out later and found reports of the same incident from many, many years ago where a little boy had drowned in the swimming pool on site.

But I have got to be honest; despite this harrowing information, the atmosphere was very calm, relaxed and not scary in the slightest. In fact, we felt nothing but peace as we communicated with this little boy.

The board we used that evening

A few years later, we went back to the Winter Gardens for another night of 'ghost-hunting', and eagerly tried the Ouija board again, not even thinking twice this time around. There was a big ol' squad of us and the excitement mixed with curiosity was intoxicating!

It started pretty slow, so we moved to different parts of the building to see if that helped. We went down to the basement, set up the board on top of a small table, and gathered chairs around. There were at least ten to fifteen of us, as well as the tour guide; I had specifically asked that he join us as we had great success with him there the last time we had been at the Winter Gardens. He is a lovely, gentle man and his presence alone made everyone feel all at ease.

Our group from the second time at the Winter Gardens

He started the session off as we all waited with bated breath. The planchette began to very lightly vibrate under our fingers, and it was soon moving around the board with ease. Almost immediately it was pretty clear that the spirit trying to connect was my Nanna Turner, and she wanted to speak with my Dad.

He wasn’t even sitting around the board, and no matter where he moved, the planchette followed him.

Eventually, my Dad gave in and took a seat at the table. He is a very shy and private man (especially within a group of people he barely knows) so I took it upon myself to speak on his behalf if he was stuck for things to say.

Before I even finished asking some questions, the planchette was moving to either Yes or No. I asked for my Nanna Turner to move it to the initials of certain people’s names in spirit etc. and everything was completely spot on. The whole thing may sound somewhat morbid to some, but this experience was nothing short of amazing.

Morecambe Winter Gardens

From here on out there seemed to be a queue of everyone's family members that were waiting for their turn to speak to each of us around the table. It was seriously the last thing we all expected but the best surprise we could have hoped for. A few got answers they had been searching for, and messages that nobody else would know.

My Grandad came through spelling ‘Poppy’ to me, which was his nickname for me - nobody else knew who was sitting at the board at that particular time. I could feel nothing but love as I savoured every moment of this whole experience that was beyond serene.

However, when we tried again a couple of hours later in a different part of the building, we got the opposite response. There was a young boy who came through at first and was evidently struggling to spell, and then his Mother joined in and seemed most displeased at us bothering them.

The room was suddenly thick with unease, and a sense of fear began to trickle down my spine. We knew that staying in that room and pursuing further contact would be a big mistake, so we made a unanimous decision to close the session and make a swift exit.

Inside the Winter Gardens

I went into a spiritual shop a couple of months later and was chatting to the woman who works there. Somehow she took the conversations onto Ouija boards and warned me completely against them - even though I hadn’t even touched on the subject.

She said that it is only used by tricksters and negative spirits and was quite adamant that loved ones would never come through one of them - instead insisting that it's the devil poses as them.

Her words left me feeling deflated. Not only had that night given me such comfort through the beautiful connections so many of us had made with our loved ones, but it had also finally encouraged me to pursue my spiritual side.

I was convinced that all our family members had come through, but she had made me begin to question everything.

It was such an amazing experience for all there that night; surely a negative entity wouldn’t and couldn’t be involved with such a blissful feeling of happiness.

I had recognised and embraced the pure Divine love on our first encounter - and conversely, I had also felt the utter fear and sense of threat in the following session with the board that night too.

Could I trust my intuition in knowing the difference between good and bad when it was so easy to do so that night?

My gut instinct and senses told me to believe in what I felt that night, and now looking back I still stand by this one million per cent.

But it does beg the question, are Ouija boards a tool to avoid?

The first night we spent at Winter Gardens

When all is said and done, Ouija boards can open portals that malevolent entities from the lower astral planes have access to. And once they find that way to enter this world, it’s only a matter of time before they can breed their negativity and cause utter havoc and devastation in people's lives. That's why over the years I have armed myself with as much information as possible and have done a tonne of research on the subject.

From the many people I have spoken to about their personal encounters, I honestly don't think I have heard any good stories about this elusive board 'game'.

The vast majority of people would tell you to get as far away from an Ouija board as possible in your first instance and to not look back!

Yet some of the world's most respected spiritual mediums have said that they aren’t always bad, and connection with good spirits and loved ones can be possible.

Despite the varied and contradicting encounters I have had with the Ouija board, I have to say that my experiences via this divination tool were essentially the very thing that stirred old curiosities and piqued my interest hugely in the Spirit world.

One thing I will say is, that before meddling with something you don't have a great knowledge about, it is vitally important to do your research. Because as the old saying goes, 'knowledge is power'.

The spiritual world is not something you explore without caution. Whether you believe in spirits or not, never risk your safety. Make sure you thoroughly educate yourself on the proper measures to put in place before, during and after using an Ouija board.

An 'opening prayer' (followed by the Lord's prayer if you so wish) is the best possible way to pursue a spiritual experience of any kind. And always end the session with a releasing prayer too and by by saying 'Goodbye' via the board.