Has anyone used a ouija board themselves? i don't know if this topic has been covered (many apologies if it has) but i have always been fascinated by tyem and would love to hear about others experiences. I had a friend who did one once and she won't talk about it. Is it that bad??

Yes I have used a ouija board. At the time we used it nothing happened. We all felt that one of the others were pushing it. It was a day or so later we started having very strange things happen. We would hear knocking and things would be moved from where we left them.
I would say if your friend doesnt want to talk about it its not good.
Toni

I've gotta say, I'm just not in favor of the things. I know about the argument of it being our subconscious, etc... but I just don't think they are a good idea. Someone likened it to the door of your home. If you leave it open, you may get someone in there that you don't want around. I have heard many stories of folks unleashing things that would have been best left alone.
In my teens, I was curious about these things, as most kids are. A group of friends and I decided to play with one. We were sitting in the floor, and of course the thing was giving us all kinds of answers. The two girls across from me look up at the same time and start screaming their heads off. According to them, there was a girl behind me and to my side, who looked a lot like me but was in period clothing. I didn't witness anything myself, but the atmosphere in the room did change. Both girls were upset about the incident for quite sometime.
My advice is to avoid ouija boards. If you really have a desire to contact spirits, ask them to come to you in dreams, meditation, etc... These things are not safe, and the are not toys. I also would not advise anyone to use something like this by themselves.

I've never used a ouija board but I agree with Toni that if your friend doesn't want to talk about it, it's probably wasn't a good experience.

When my brother and I were young, we used the Ouija - we didn't know any better. We made contact with someone named "Victor" who gave us a vague answer to the question at hand (which did not turn out to be right). Because it was vague, we tried to contact him again the next day. This time we were met by another spirit who said we could not talk to Victor because he was sleeping. (!?) This one had a markedly different personality than Victor and seemed angry... it ended up making the planchette move briskly off the board once it told us we couldn't talk with Victor.

If memory serves me, it wasn't long afterward that weird things started happening in the house. At the time though, we didn't connect it to the use of the Ouija. I think using the board is dangerous because you never know who is going to answer you - it won't necessarily be a nice spirit and I've heard others' stories that are pretty terrible. A good analogy is like calling a pay phone in Grand Central Station - you have no idea who is going to answer the phone (if anyone).

My advice is to stay away from them. They can be trouble. It can open a door that you don't have the knowledge to close. I also agree that if your friend will not talk about it, it's not good.

Stay safe!

Kell

Okay here goes.... I have had numerous bad experiences with the ouija board. I don't nessecerly think there are bad. I won't personally get back on one if you offered to pay me to. So here are my stories.

I use to play the ouija with a group of friends. One girl who wasn;t into the occult was the first to introduce me to it. One day we started to use it in my backyard the spirit we got there wouldn't answer any of our questions so we decided to say goodbye and to try again. But the spirit didn't want to say goodbye and stuck around. We decided after afew minutes maybe a change of location would get rid of the spirit. So we went across town to a playground that I had played at as a child and continued our session. The moved did not have the desired effect, the spirit was still with us and would not answer any questions just keep moving the plancet in circles and getting us ****ed. We tried for several hours to get other spirits by breaking the connection and saying goodbye to no effect. Later that day we met up with one of our other friends and decided to give the ouija board one more try and we got another spirit finally.
Most of the times that I used the quija board the spirits seemed to favor picking on me more then my friends. This next incident was what made me give up the quija board forever. A group of friends and I decided to go out to a Dam that we knew off, it was quite late somewhere after 11:00 at night, to use the quija board without interruption. We got there and sat in our favorite place, on the rocks above the water. We sat on the top bank of the dam, a road ran down into an area in the dam below us that was a boat unloading zone. This is important to what happens next.
So we are playing with the quija, in pitch darkness on rock above the dam. We are sitting on the edge all around the quija board and my friends decides he wants to channel the spirit. The rest of us weren't happy about this and tried to dissuded him from doing so. He did it anyway, and I believe that he did channel something. I was sitting next to him, sort of in front of him, and his eyes started to turn black and started to glow. He turned to me and said something is wrong with your soul. At this point I get up and move away from him. Totally scared and wanting to get out of there. We were trying to get our friend back and to make the spirit leave when the freakist part happened. Now there is not much traffic here at night but there is some. Well a car came down the road through the unloading area. They started to circle around the area several times, we were already freaked and we really wanted to leave and was begging with our friend. HE then turned an lokked at the car and said "BE gone". The car was starting to make another turn, it verved up and took off down the road. The car was in mid turn and you could see the dirt kick up as the jerked through the road.

I have had other experiences with the ouija but I have already took up to much space. But you can see why I don't use the quija anymore.

First, agreeing with everyone else, if your friend doesn't want to talk about it, then chances are it was a bad thing. When and if she's ready to share, she will but it's best to let that "sleeping dog" lay and not push.

As for my own personal experiences, I was lucky. I played and dabbled with them alone and with friends in my "youth" ( yeah, right more like only 20 years ago which would make me 22! ) and we didn't have anything really bad happen. Although a friend and I did hear strange goings on outside after one session and it freaked us out a little so we quit. My husband on the other hand played with the board alone and had no knowledge of the "correct" way to do it...he unleashed "something" that ended up haunting his dreams for weeks after. I finally had to burn candles and smudge sticks and do a special cleansing ritual to clear it out of the house and his head/dreams. Whatever it was was more interested in HIM then me and it terrified him in his dreams. I finally threw the board out( much to his distress beacuse he wanted to "try that again" ).

My personal opinion about them is this: whether you use a board or just sit in the middle of your living room and invite spirits in, you're messing with stuff that chances are, you will not have the knowledge to get rid of. You also open up a can of worms inviting spirits in general into your home because few people ask for SPECIFIC sprirts ( meaning only those from the white light or only those from the dark realm)and it's a crap shoot what you'll actually get. My observations lead towards strongly believing that only those spirits who atually mean harm, hang around close enough to the this realm to hear the request. I am persoanlly appauled that they( makers of the board) consider this a "game board" and sell it to unsuspecting people who just wanna have fun. I guess the "when in doubt, dont" rule would apply to the Ouija and other such things....if you don't know what you're doing, don't do it.

I recently talked to a Psychic friend of mine about this very thing. She said that a Ouija Board has no power of it's own. She said the power came from each of us, as you could produce a workable Ouija Board on your own. Using a piece of paper with the alphabet on it, and the #'s 0-9 on it, and a hair brush as the device to put your fingers on.
She said the same thing was true of the practice of "Table Tipping". The power comes from us, not the objects we're using. (I don't know if I agree with her. Perhaps I'm just being paranoid; but I think there is a movement going on in our society. I think some people are trying to white wash the topic matter, and slip information in under our noses, so to speak. Down playing the involvement of negative/dark forces as providing the intelligence behind the nasty crap coming through these practices.)
A coworker introduced me to the practice of "Table Tipping", he said the 2 tables he used would provide answers to questions that no one in the room had. Until they would check it out, to varify the information as being accurate.
When he brought the tables to my house to demonstrate them for me; we set up a video camera, and I got out my EMF Detectors to check for any spikes in energy.
However I told him that prior to starting I wanted to say a protective prayer over the tables. I told him I had read where the "Lord's Prayer" had been said over such tables; and they never worked again after that.
He said that was fine, "Go ahead, Dave! It's just a game! Your prayer won't have any affect on the tables. The power comes from your thoughts."
I said a protective prayer. Not the "Lord's Prayer", but one I made up, the same one I use when I do Ghost Hunts. The amazing thing was, the tables wouldn't work after I said the prayer. It took several attempts to get it to answer, even a few questions.
The first question I asked was, "Is Satan present?" It answered "Yes."
I asked, "Does the power for the table come from Electro Magentic Forces? The Table answered, "Yes." (But no fluctuations could be detected with my EMF Detector.)
I asked, "Does the Table love God?" It didn't answer. It didn't answer a lot of questions we presented to it.
My coworker has tried to use the tables since then, and they still don't work. I suggested that he use a Ouija Board on top of it, to see if that would open up the power link to the spirit world.
I also suggested that to the Psychic, she said it would have no affect on the table.
The problem was that, when my coworker heard me say the protective prayer, it made him believe he was protected aswell, and sheilded his mind from convaying his thoughts through the Table. She said he needed to re-open himself, in order to get the tables to become useful tools once again.
I don't know how he's supposed to do that.
The Psychic also said you never want to mention anything to do with Satan, or any negative thoughts when using these "Tipping Tables" or "Ouija Boards", as that opens a doorway for negative elements to affect what you are receiving.
I also read in the "Idiot's Guide to Communicating with Spirits" that if you ever receive any negative thoughts or messages when contacting spirits; then you are either entering those thoughts yourself, or that it's not coming from a Spirit. As Spiritualism is based on the practice of "Helping and Healing". So cease what you are doing if, you start to receive anything negative!
If you don't understand what you are dealing with I would say stay away from it's use.
My intent to have my coworker show me the Table Tipping demonstration, was to prove to him, that it was not "Just an innocent game".
But no matter what anyone else says, you have to use your own judgement.
If you get burned! Don't say we didn't warn you!

eeek!

I dont think i could when it came down to it.