Do you believe that Ouija boards are actually being used to contact the spirit world?

Fuck no.

LMAO! No.
Unless one is already inhabiting some spirit world of their own. Oooh…my lights just flickerd, could it be the Ouija spirits or maybe this windy storm? Oh no, the Ouija gods must be angry with me for doubting their power. haha

Uh NO!!

What the hell is the idolator response? Some kind of Chris Brown song?

Ouija boards are used to contact the fantasies of early teen age girls. That’s about it.

No

Seriously?

No, Ouija boards are a game, and rely on the power of gullibility.

Hahaha. This can’t be a serious question.

The word itself (ouija) suggests believers have a bug up their arse, irritable vowel syndrome.

Of course not.

Everybody knows that Parker Brothers owns the market share on the netherworld.

<wet blanket alert>

“Or is the very idea of such a thing mere delusional superstition?”, you ask? People are easily fooled, most often by themselves. Our uniquely human ability to recognize patterns often leads to superstitions & other false conclusions.

Belief systems entirely lacking of evidence are often shared among groups of people, a self-reinforcing phenomenon. Even highly educated people can be easily fooled if they haven’t been taught critical thinking skills to help distinguish what’s real and what isn’t. People choose to believe what they want, but the skeptical view is informed only by validated physical observation & logical inference, i.e., science. There’s a nice article on Ouija boards at The Skeptic’s Dictionary :
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…users often feel the planchette is moving of its own accord rather than responding to their own unconscious muscle movements (ideomotor action)...Skeptics believe that those using the board either consciously or unconsciously move the pointer to what is selected. To prove this, simply try it blindfolded some time Have an unbiased bystander take notes on what words or letters are selected. Usually, the results will be unintelligible.

The movement of the planchette is not due to spirits but to unconscious movements by those controlling the pointer. The same kind of unconscious movement is at work in such things as dowsing and facilitated communication.
...
Are ghosts moving the pointer? It might seem so, but when players are blindfolded and the board is turned so the top faces the bottom (without the players knowing it), something weird happens. The pointer moves and stops where “yes” and “no” would be if the board was top side up. Without being able to see the words, letters, and numbers on the board, the players move the pointer to places that make no sense. This seems to tell us that the players are moving the pointer to where they think “yes” and “no” (or letters and numbers) are.
...
The fact that a person takes a “communication” seriously enough to have it significantly interfere with the enjoyment of life might be a sufficient reason for avoiding the Ouija board, but it is hardly a sufficient reason for concluding that the messages issue from anything but our own minds.
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There are lots of other Ouija-debunking sites around the world. I liked this comment at an online forum (link):

…I think it is ridiculous that some supernatural being would want to hang out in a piece of cardboard for all eternity.

I wish I could contact people I love who have died, however, regardless of the mechanism, it’s just not possible. They’re dead and gone.

No ,I don’t believe that a game has the power to speak to spirits in the afterlife.

@zenvelo Ooops that was a typo on my part; that should have been ideomotor response.

I’ll ask the moderators if I can amend the typo.

I agree that it is an “ideomotor” type response, but I don’t think that proves what the source is or is not. I would say it does offer access to some input from something other than the conscious mind, and it’s also interesting just to see how uncomfortable it makes people, even by suggesting something interesting could be going on with it.

I would agree that it would be a mistake to put faith that Ouija readings have some specific meaning and authority. Ouija literalism is just as bad a mistake as Biblical literalism. ;-P But tapping into unconscious input can be very useful in a variety of ways, if done well. Even rolling dice and reflecting on your reactions to the outcomes can be useful, as it gives an outside perspective. With Ouija, there is the potential also of getting “outside” perspectives from the subconscious, and the subconscious of one’s friends. If you have fun with it in a “take what seems good and useful, forget or laugh at the rest” kind of way, then it can be fun, harmless, and possibly useful or at least provoking of thoughts and feelings.

Anyone of breeding and refinement knows that the magic 8 ball displaced the ouija board sometime in the mid 50s. By the way, does anyone know what became of that deluge on tv of all those wonderful psychic hot lines?

They all failed. I knew they would.