Ouija board sales up 300% and could become a Christmas 'must buy'

• The device is said to be a method of contacting the spirit world
• Renaissance is a result of new low-budget horror film titled Ouija
• One vicar believes the game poses the risk of psychological harm
• ‘It’s like opening a shutter in one’s soul and letting in the supernatural’

By Neil Tweedie for the Daily Mail

Published: 20:17 EST, 30 November 2014 | Updated: 05:55 EST, 1 December 2014

Ouija boards are flying off the shelves. Not in the super- natural sense — but the commercial one.

The device, said to be a method of contacting the spirit world, is experiencing an unexpected renaissance. Google reports that sales of the board are up 300 per cent, and it is threatening to become a Christmas ‘must buy’.

The culprit is Hollywood, and a new horror film titled Ouija. Low-budget, lowbrow, it tells a familiar story — of kids dabbling with the ‘other side’ and coming off second best. The critics hammered it, but cinema-going teens, looking for something scary in the Halloween season, loved it.

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Spooky: The device, said to be a method of contacting the spirit world, is experiencing an unexpected renaissance

Cue big box office takings and huge demand for Ouija boards, many manufactured by the American toys giant Hasbro. Being a canny company, Hasbro even helped finance the making of the film Ouija, which has put new life into the business of talking to the dead.

All rather amusing. Or not, depending on how one views this strange product, named after the French and German words for ‘yes’.

To some, the Ouija board represents a harmless form of enjoyment, a pretend-scary rite of passage for teenagers in search of thrills on a stormy night. But to others, churchmen included, it is a danger to be avoided, a trigger for psychological harm — or something worse.

‘It’s like opening a shutter in one’s soul and letting in the supernatural,’ says Peter Irwin-Clark, a Church of England vicar who has witnessed the dark side of Ouija. ‘There are spiritual realities out there and they can be very negative.’

Players are told to sit around the board, each place two fingers ‘lightly’ on the pointer, and concentrate

And he is adamantly opposed to the sale of Ouija boards as toys.

‘It is absolutely appalling. I would very strongly advise parents not to buy Ouija boards for children.’

The board itself is a simple thing, combining the letters of the alphabet and the numbers 0 to 9 with the words Yes, No and Good-Bye. With it comes a planchette or pointer.

Players are told to sit around the board, each place two fingers ‘lightly’ on the pointer, and concentrate — before starting to ask questions in turn. ‘Ask your questions slowly and clearly,’ read the instructions. ‘And wait to see what the planchette spells out for you.’

The planchette then ‘moves of its own volition’ towards specific letters and numbers, according to Christina Oakley Harrington, proprietor of Treadwell’s, a London bookshop specialising in the esoteric and the occult. ‘You feel it pulling away from the fingers. I’m not dim — I have a PhD — but it’s not being pushed. It’s mysterious.’

An American invention, the board was a child of the spiritualist craze of the 19th century when mediums proliferated and seances were common in well-to-do homes.

Ouija took off again in the Sixties, outstripping sales of Monopoly in its best year. Cash-strapped teens made their own versions, using an upturned glass and paper scribbled with letters

Ouija took off again in the Sixties, outstripping sales of Monopoly in its best year. Cash-strapped teens made their own versions, using an upturned glass and paper scribbled with letters.

But the age of the Ouija board’s innocence was about to end. The year 1973 saw the release of hit film The Exorcist, in which a young girl takes to communicating with an unseen being by means of such a board. The being is a demon that goes on to possess her, before being exorcised by priests.

William Peter Blatty, author of the novel on which it was based, was inspired by a tale from the Forties, about Roland Doe.

The teenager was said to have become possessed after playing with a Ouija board for long spells, his spiritual infestation manifested by scratches, levitation and poltergeist activity. Only after he was exorcised by Catholic priests did he return to normal life.

‘The horror film shifted the focus of Ouija to the idea of lost or malevolent spirits,’ says Miss Oakley Harrington. ‘That was where the culture of danger came in. Once you have something said to be a way of consorting with malevolent spirits, you get the Church involved.’

An American invention, the board was a child of the spiritualist craze of the 19th century when mediums proliferated and seances were common in well-to-do homes

But the Reverend Irwin-Clark does not doubt that the threat is real. ‘I would hugely recommend people not to have anything to do with the occult,’ he says. ‘People find they are having strange dreams, strange things happening to them, even poltergeist activity.’

Anthony Hayne is a Catholic priest who specialised in exorcism before his retirement. Interviewed a few years ago, Father Hayne said he had dealt with a few teenagers who ‘had been using Ouija boards and had let the darkness into their lives’.

And the late Reverend Tom Willis practised as a Minister of Deliverance — jargon for an exorcist — for the Anglican Archdiocese of York for half a century, advising Archbishops on the occult. He, too, saw the board as a source of danger.

‘A lot more people are dabbling in the occult and having seances, and that is causing a lot of problems,’ he said in 2012. ‘In the Sixties, the Ouija board caused so many problems — people ending up in mental hospitals because of what they have experienced.’

The year 1973 saw the release of hit film The Exorcist, in which a young girl takes to communicating with an unseen being by means of such a board

An unseen force spelling out messages, he explained, may have sinister motives. ‘It may pretend to be your grandmother you’re in contact with, but it might be something more evil that suddenly gives you some bad advice.’

On one occasion, he remembered, he was contacted by three dockers from Hull who had used a Ouija board the previous evening. ‘They just sat there shaking,’ he said.

One person not scared by Ouija is Terence Hines. He is a professor of psychology at Pace University, New York, and has written about them in his debunking study Pseudoscience And The Paranormal.

Like many sceptics, he believes the participants are themselves pushing the planchette to spell out messages. But, curiously, he does not attribute this to dishonesty. It could be entirely subconscious control, he believes.

In support of this theory, Canadian paranormal investigator James Randi once blindfolded people taking part in a Ouija session.

The result was nothing more than gibberish — talkative spirits appeared to be silenced when the players couldn’t see the board’s letters.

Perhaps all this will leave only one section of British society taking Ouija boards seriously this Christmas — the retailers cashing in on the sales boom.