I've read a lot of accounts on the Internet about persons using Ouija boards, holding seances and weaving incantations. Most of the times these accounts are given as "cautionary tales" about the dangers of "opening a gate to the other side" by dabbling with the occult.
How much of this modern folklore, how much Fundamentalist propaganda and how much truth? How much are we dealing with "real" entities and how much with the power of human mind?

I'll tell a firsthand account. I have a friend, that I shall call C.
A few years ago he became "interested" in the occult: he was not a serious researcher or an aspiring sorcerer, he was just your average dabbler that buys those incredibly boring grimoires and tries fortune telling using tarots.
Anyway he built himself a Ouija board using instructions he found in a book and one night he sets out trying it by himself.
"Contact" is made with an "entity" that seems to know pretty much everything about him. When asked to reveal its identity the board spells out "Lucifer". Obviously C. asked the "entity" for proof. The board spelled out "listen closely". In the dead of the night an ambulance came screaming by "Was it your doing?" "Yes". At this point he got really scared and went straight to bed.
The day after C. called me and told me everything. He also asked for advice since he knew that I have been into "this weird occult stuff" for longer than I care to remember.
He was genuinely scared and was clearly asking for help.
Personally I didn't believe for one second that the Prince of Darkness (have you ever noticed? All entities contacted using a Ouija board claim to be high-ranking demons, angels or historical figures) had made his appearance through a makeshift Ouija board. But I am well aware how the ill-effects of occult rituals can affect the human mind: that's why I have always adviced against holding makeshift seances and incantations.
Anyway I concocted a story about "low level spirits" trying to trick persons into believing them and told him to burn the Ouija board with some foul-smelling herbs to "close the gateway".
He seemed instantly relieved and told me he would burn the board as soon as possible.
In the end he tossed the board in the back of Toyota Land Cruiser and went on his way, intending to burn the thing later that night.
Of course he forgot.
Two days later C. called me again and told me that he had a car accident: the brakes on his car failed and he ended up in a stubble field. Thankfully he was on a desert bit of road and both him and the car were basically unharmed. Of course he blamed the accident on the vengenful Ouija board which was finally delivered to the flames.
Now I am not a superstitious or religious type but this accident has puzzled me for most of the past years. I have never heard of Land Cruisers breaking down, let alone having brake failures.
A coincidence? Perhaps.

Opening The Gate, what a great title for a topic and a post I relate to on so, so many levels, well your OuiJa account anyway.

Rather than dive in about Occult traditions yet, I'd like to refer to the Ouija instance. OuiJa boards are moved by the subconscious, but I won’t go into that here as I think another Post called OuiJa Board Effectiveness has touched upon it elsewhere on the forum. Whether the OuiJa Board is a conduit to the otherside or not, I certainly had a few hair raising moments playing with one when I was younger. In fact I think I even had one of my boards confiscated and burnt.

Why are people so frightened of them? The board as we know it is a fairly modern invention and was mass produced as a game in the first half of the 20th century. If they really could facilitate communication with the dead then surely some mobile phone company would have snapped up a patent by now and we would all be using them.

The board has developed its own folklore over the years and you will all have heard certain laws connected to them, such as “Never use the board on your own” and one I heard the other day at work, “Spirits will target the youngest person there”. I was amazed to find a website some months ago listing some. How many have you heard? http://www.museumoftalkingboards.com/ouistit.html

Some people use occult techniques when using OuiJa Boards such as visualising protective circles and invoking the elements or angels for the four main compass points. From what I have observed it seemed to make the board stronger and faster. But if it is all driven by the subconscious and you’re the one who set the ritual up for this purpose then the results should be better.

I think though that in many cases peoples beliefs are confirmed by the occurrence of freak coincidences and in Mauro’s account there were two classics. The siren sound and then the car crash. I think it is easy though to sit back and be rational when your not caught up in the situation and in most cases those people involved are not the best to analyse the experience they have had.

Ian, that's a great site, some of those Ouija related myths made me laugh so hard I almost tipped my chair!
I personally consider the board the last remnant of the once popular Spiritualist movement: if I remember correctly it was invented by an ingenious furniture and coffin maker wishing to make some extra cash (hence the legend that the first Ouija boards were built out of coffins) at the height of the Spiritualist craze.
But why the Ouija came to be regarded as dangerous as opposed to medianic contact or the classic seance has always eluded me.
As I related C.'s story I think everybody can relate the firsthand account of Ouija board use and it's amazing how everybody always claims "contact" has been made: I've never heard a single instance when Ouija users went away empty handed. The planchette (or the glass or the coin) will always start to dance. By contrast the Spiritualists always kept that a "medium" needs to be present, some procedures be followed and success is not ensured: the spirits are a capricious lot!

I have heard that the founders of the Spiritualist movement actually admitted to have been faking it, but by then it was too well founded.

I have taken the following from my article on Eliphas Levi and it covers his attempt to summon Apollonius of Tyana.

Whilst on this trip he was asked by a friend of Bulwer-Lytton to give a demonstration of Necromancy, something Levi had never tried before, a Lady of title requested that he conjure the spirit of Apollonius of Tyana who was a renowned ancient magician. His ritual preparation took three weeks during which he fasted and meditated on Apollonius. A Temple was specially prepared with four concave mirrors and an altar resting on lamb's wool. The altar top was marble and a pentagram was carved upon it and a chain of magnetized iron was used as a magic circle of protection. On the altar were two small copper chafing-dishes with charred laurel and alder wood inside. Levi - who was alone -was dressed in a white robe with a wreath of vervain leaves entwined on a golden chain on his head. He held a sword and a copy of the ritual to be performed. Levi ran through twelve hours of incantations after which the floor reputedly shook and an apparition manifested before him. Levi was frightened, the figure before him was 'wrapped from head to foot in a species of shroud, which seemed more gray than white; he was lean, melancholy and beardless' The figured disappeared. He commanded its return with his sword. Something then touched his sword arm which went numb to the elbow and continued to ache for weeks afterwards. The figure re-appeared and at this point Levi became so weak that he fainted.

He was not convinced that this was Apollonius and rather that the effect that the ceremony preparation had on his mind was a kin to 'an actual drunkenness of the imagination'. Accepting that the apparition could have been a hallucination, he believed that he had actually touched something very real. He states in his later work 'I do not explain the physical laws by which I saw and touched something real; I affirm solely that I did see and that I did touch, that I saw clearly and distinctly, apart from dreaming, and this is sufficient to establish the real efficacy of magical ceremonies…..I commend the greatest caution to those who propose devoting themselves to similar experiences; their result is intense exhaustion, and frequently a shock sufficient to occasion illness'.

I think it clearly illustrates that the ritual preparation and the actual ritual itself pushed him to the bounds of physical and mental endurance. Three weeks of fasting and meditation, 12 hours of standing, holding a sword whilst reciting continuous incantations. I'm not suprised he saw something.

This can be seen one of a few ways. Levi's ritual worked but he did it in a very long and protracted way. Summoning a spirit like Apollonius is very hard and is going to take a lot of time and dedication, or you push yourself to your physical and mental limits until you have an induced hallucination.

"Lecherous spirits from the Ouija board will sometimes ask young women to do rather . . . ah, odd things. Ignore them and always remember that your Ouija partner (i.e. boyfriend) has nothing to do with this.

Three things never to ask a Ouija board:
Never ask about God.
Never ask when you are going to die.
Never ask where the gold is buried. "

Hahahaha. That site is great! Thanks Ian.

I found it an invaluable source of information for dealing with malicious spirits who favour communicating through planks of wood

I've never read Levi's works but from what I was able to patch up rituals need to be prepared with many weeks of fasting, sleep deprivation, chanting, reading of holy books etc.
It seems quite similar to the methods employed by many shamanistic cultures to prepare to make contact with the spirit world and incredibly similar to the methods Alexandra David-Neel described in her books about exoteric Tibetan traditions.
As much as she was firmly convinced that meditation, fasting etc could cause allucinations she related at least one case when something beyond explanation seemed to have happened.

PS: when I went to France this September I stopped at a small fuel station right in front of a magnificent villa in the outskirts of Dignes-les-Bains. I noticed Tibetan flags flying near the gate, so I went over and read the brass plaque nearby... "Centre Culturel Alexandra David-Neel"! Without knowing I had just stopped for a tankful of fuel in front of the house of one of my favorite authors...

Considering that each occult tradition seems to use techniques of relaxation, meditation and visualisation, my clairvoyant friend developed an adhoc approach. They didn’t adopt the dogma associated with any particular tradition, but took what worked for them from each, mixing elements of wicca with those of the kabbalah, etc. It worked well for them, even adopting methods of improving your willpower similar to those used by Crowley. They found that their clairvoyance became stronger, more intense, but more importantly they received less random images and considered their ability became more focused, improved. This could well show a relationship between clairvoyance and certain types of mental training.

I’d be interested to know if any other clairvoyant found their experiences changing after adopting similar techniques.

Thinking back to start of this topic and the Oui Ja Board account that may have been a big coincidence. Elsewhere on this forum I have mentioned an encounter Dan and I had with a ball of light. What I didn't mention we had just done a ritual to clense a Oui Ja borad (hey, come on, we were a lot younger then ) and it all happen on the day before summer solstice....spooky.

On one occasion, when I was younger a group of us used a board and had someone who reputedly was alive and asleep (we asked if it was 'eternal' sleep but apparently not)/ Then they went on to say they were living in our house, but gave a future date! Most probably one of us was faking (even though we took it in turns to go it alone with the glass). Still an interesting evening was had by all.

I agree that it's easy to infer significance into what is most likely coincidence. However, I've seen quite a lot of glass-moving (Ouija board lite!) where answers have been given that only myself and others who weren't touching the glass knew to be true. This has often happened when I've deliberately tried to mislead those around the glass in order to make sure I wasn't unintentionally influencing them to the right answer. Hardly scientific and/or conclusive proof but interesting nonetheless!

Anyone have links/ references to the scientific study done on the ideomotor effect that's said to be the cause of glass and ouija board movement?