Ghosts, Spirits and Ouija Boards

Spiritualism became a fad in the US, including Utah, during the 1860’s/70’s. One of your fellow Brits, William Godbe led a dissident offshoot of Mormonism that was initially based on Spiritualism. Godbe and his British cohorts (Elias Harrison and Edward Tullidge) founded Utah Magazine and its successor the Mormon Tribune to get their anti-BY views out there. The Mormon Tribune eventually became the Salt Lake Tribune.

Ouija boards were very scary to me as a youth. The stories I heard (and I now doubt their veracity) was that young people often found themselves possessed by the devil as a result of playing with such things. I have to admit to being a bit more skeptical now. Nonetheless, I still have a very visceral and negative reaction to Ouija boards.

I believe in spirits (good and evil) mostly because of experiences people I know have had as well as ghost stories I have read or seen on TV and I just don’t believe that all of them are either lying or misinterpreting some natural process like hallucinations, lucid dreams, etc. As far as spiritualism, maybe there are some legitimate mediums that can communicate with spirits fairly consistently but there has also been a lot of deliberate fraud exposed which I guess is only to be expected when people are making money off of this. Personally I don’t want to have anything to do with Ouija boards; even if they actually worked as planned sometimes (which they probably don’t most of the time) you still wouldn’t know who or what you are really dealing with.

Just a quick pop in.

From the Handbook.

“Occult Affiliation

Church members should not engage in any form of Satan worship or affiliate in any way with the occult. “Such activities are among the works of darkness spoken of in the scriptures. They are designed to destroy one’s faith in Christ, and will jeopardize the salvation of those who knowingly promote this wickedness. These things should not be pursued as games, be topics in Church meetings, or be delved into in private, personal conversations” (First Presidency letter, Sept. 18, 1991).”

Yes, look up the definition and think about it.

I believe that issues of spirits, salvation, life after death, certain health products, and even Ouiji/Ouija Boards are unproveable. And people milk people’s lack of knowledge and the unverifiability of these phenomena to their own ends. I believe JS was likely very good at it, although he may have been operating from sincere personal belief.

I still remember how disillusioned I became when I was talking to a friend of mine about how I had said I had had revelation to do something, and had made promises to people of follow-through. Then, it became clear to me the action I had felt inspired to pursue, was somehow wrong. I mentioned this to my friend, who baptized me, about how awkward it felt to tell everyone I wasn’t going to follow through, having said earlier that it was inspired.

he replied “That stuff is EASY to get out of”. Meaning, the unverifiability and pliability of revelation makes it easy to recant and to fail to justify. I was shocked as I had previously made a huge life decision — becoming a Mormon — based on all the hype about revelation and how it should direct our lives. Unverifiability is one thing that makes religion and claims to inspiration so “workable” in religion.

I will say this — once I participated in a Ouiji board session. I guess it was a seance of sorts. We all put our hands on the apparatus that sits on the ouiji board. And it started moving after we called the spirits. The problem was that three of us had our hands on the apparatus, so one person may have been moving it, and not telling the truth afterwards. I have had so little evidence of an extra-earthly world that I am agnostic about it. I have chosen indecision about it, as I have on so many other issues relating to religion, afterlife, inspiration, etcetera. God’s silence is extremely loud to me.