A Skeptical History Of Spirit Mediums

Here is an interesting special on the hoaxes of spiritual seances. It is interesting to see some of the recorded hoaxes, though the angle an this documentary leans heavily toward absolute skepticism...

Ouija/Talking Boards

Well, this is the first post in my séance log. I've also posted this in the livejournal community seance_circle.

I plan on beginning this personal séance log to record, in details, the contents of my future séance sessions. The idea is to make a basic record of the proceedings, whether or not any phenomena is experienced. Because I'll be doing my best to keep only serious participants in my séance circle, I realize that there may be sessions where nothing of interest happens. I also plan on audio recording all of my sessions--if I encounter something of special interest, I'll be sure to post the audio record here, too.

I've been looking around to replace my tacky glow-in-the-dark Ouija Board (no self-respecting ghost would visit it ^_^). Since talking boards (the non-trademarked name for Ouija Boards and the like) are basically starter kits for holding your own séances, I figured it would be a good way to start out.

The instructions can be located here, or I found this authentic photo of the instructions that were printed on the back of older, wooden Ouija Boards:


Click to Enlarge


Finally, I thought this was very amusing:

This is the description of the most current version of the Ouija board game as described by toysrus.com.



I found the first "feature" to be especially funny, but pretty much the whole description is humorous. "How it works has been a mystery for over 30 years"? While that is true, for a game that started in 1848, it may be a bit of an understatement ;)