Are Ouija Boards Dangerous?

Every once in awhile a movie comes along featuring a misbehaving Ouija board, and the public becomes intrigued once again with the mysterious talking boards. It started with The Exorcist and continues on to this day with the recent release of the movie Paranormal Activity. Are Ouija boards tools of the devil, or just a child's toy?

In the movie Paranormal Activity the stuff really hits the fan after an Ouija board is brought into the picture. Things go from being mildly spooky to terrifying quickly with the introduction of an evil Ouija board. This is par for the course for horror movies featuring talking boards. Some poor innocent sap brings home an Ouija board, the board misbehaves, and spooky happenings are officially afoot! Countless films have reworked this plot time and time again.

Are Ouija boards really a portal into the unknown? Are they a direct phone line to the Devil? I think not. Ouija boards are simply boards, with letters and numbers carved into them.

I remember when I was in high school a friend of mine called me in a panic asking how to destroy her Ouija board. Apparently it had done something to spook her out and she was convinced that Captain Howdy would stop by to visit her at any moment. I suspect that it was more the fact that she had just finished watching The Exorcist than being any fault of the actual board.

My friend insisted that she needed some elaborate spell to rid the board of evil so she could destroy it properly. There are all kinds of rumors circulating the net about boards letting out shrieks when burned, cursing their owners, and basically haunting their sorry rears forever. I convinced her to just drop it in the trash. And guess what? The board never returned like in some stories, and it never haunted her. Amazingly it stayed in the trash.

I believe that Ouija boards really are just a harmless game. Most of what comes out of them is either gibberish, is purposely spelled out by one of the participants, or is simply your subconscious mind airing random thoughts. Can evil spirits escape the board and get you? Again, most likely no.

In an age when every teenager on the planet has a cell phone with a camera and every parent owns a camcorder, you'd certainly think that by now someone would have caught a glimpse of something if demons, ghosts and the like really existed. In my opinion the Ouija board is merely a child's toy, albeit a very boring one under most circumstances.

If you've seen one too many scary movies this Halloween season and believe that you need help disposing of an evil board, check out Witchboard.info. They also provide scary Ouija board stories.