Dear group;
Well, I used one when I was a kid with some neighborhood kids. That must have been around the mid 70s and we had never heard about any of the bad things associated with Ouija boards. After all, the kid across the street bought one in the toy section of a large department store, so it was only a toy, right? It was sitting right there with all of the other board games, Monopoly, Candyland, Chutes & Ladders, etc. How bad could it be?
All of us were Catholic kids and most all of us were the same parochial school and no one told us of the possibility of becoming demonically possessed by using a Ouija board. Remember, this was after the Vatican-II Council and the Roman Catholics of north America were trying to embark on a spirit of ecumenicism, which meant putting aside all of those old, outdated and obsolete superstitions like demonic possessions.
After the movie The Exorcist came out, in 1972 or 73 I think, ALL of us had a billion questions regarding demonic possessions for the nuns at the school. Without exception, the official reply went something like:
"Well, we must understand that during the Middle Ages, mental illness was unheard of and not even the finest doctors of the time were aware that certain people were suffering from various psychiatric diseases brought about by poor living conditions. People would unknowingly be suffering from the effects of alcoholism and they would be diagnosed as being possessed by evil spirits. Likewise, a child would be born mentally handicapped and everyone would fear it was possessed by evil spirits. Or, if a person became senile they would be called witches. This was because people did not know any better back then. No one could imagine the possibility that the cause of these problems did not come from people's souls but from their minds. People do not become possessed by demons, therefore do not worry about that. Now, let's continue with our spelling.."
And that was it. That was the explanation that we were told and that is what WE believed. Therefore, knowing that we could not become possessed, we saw no reason why we couldn't fool around with a Ouija board. We goofed around with one, off and on, over the course of a couple of weeks, more or less. Then, one night when I wasn't there, the board told a friend of mine that his grandmother and grandfather would both be dead within a week.
Sure enough, 2 days later they passed away in an auto accident! Needless to say, this freaked my friend out! After a few days had passed, he spoke up in class and told the nun the story. She replied that it was just a coincidence and that i how those things worked. If a prediction comes true, then it must have been real, and if not, it's immediately forgotten about. She told us that this is also how fortune tellers work.
And that should have been the end of it, but it wasn't. Mother Superior caught wind of the story and of us messing around with a Ouija board, and she was such an old-school Catholic that we imagined her to have been raised in like a dungeon or something, she found another ancient Catholic, a priest and also an accomplished exorcist!
He then visited our class and told us that, contrary to popular Catholic beliefs in the 1970s, demonic possessions WERE possible and that because of the advances in psychiatric medicine, actuall possessions were much easier to discern in modern times than in times past. Also, he went on to tell us that medieval physicians may not have known the CAUSE of mental illness, but they DID know the difference from someone with a mental illness and a person who was truly possessed.
Now, this priest looked like he was around 180 years old and therefore the nuns could NOT make any statement contrary to his, so they just had to sit there and stew while he lectured us about the devil and evil spirits. Of course, what we wanted to know about was Ouija boards and he got straight to the point.
According to the exorcist, the vast majority of possessions occur whenever someone exposes themselves to the occult and by far the most popular way of doing this is by trying to foretell future events. He went on to tell us that even though Ouija boards were a modern day invention, their intended use goes back to the dawning of mankind, that of course being to foretell the future.
He told us that any and all forms of *lucky charms* and amulets can lead to the possibility of possession. Even things like lucky rabbit's feet and horseshoes can cause one to become possessed. He also explained to us that it's not the OBJECT itself that can cause possession, rather it's the person belief in the object. Such beliefs are against Christian teachings and even though they may SEEM to be innocent at the time, what they actually do is to lessen one's belief in God.
All in all, it was a VERY good discussion and one which we certainly needed to hear! Also, it scared the bejeebus out of us and we never ever EVER played around with a Ouija board again.
Your friend;
LAMAR