This Paranormal Life - #241 Ouija Boards

Episode Date: December 7, 2021

Your parents warned you about using Ouija boards, and for good reason. These spirit boards can connect the user with an entire universe of disembodied entities. Unfortunately for the entities, the majority of users up until now were teenagers having sleepovers. But on this episode veteran paranormal investigators Kit & Rory attempt to make contact with the other side to prove once and for all; are Ouija boards really paranormal?Buy Official TPL Merch! -  thisparanormallife.com/storeSupport us on Patreon.com/ThisParanormalLife to get access to bonus episodes!Follow us on Twitter, Instagram, and YouTubeJoin our Secret Society Facebook CommunityAdvertise on This Paranormal Life via Gumball.fmEdited by Kami TomanResearch by Amy GrisdaleIntro music by www.purple-planet.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Are there ghosts in space? Are all landlords demons? Answers to these questions and more on this episode of This Paranormal Life! Yo! And welcome back to This Paranormal Life. This is the weekly comedy podcast where every Tuesday, me, Kit Greer-Molvena, and Rory Pars, who's sitting across from me, investigate a different paranormal tale and decide at the end of the episode if it's true or not. If it's truly paranormal or not. Oh yeah! We've been in this

industry for years. The grifting industry. And we're getting pretty good at it at this stage. We've seen it all, folks. We've seen ghouls. We've seen goblins. We've seen demons. We have very few fears left. But there's goblins. We've seen demons. We have very few fears left. But there's always some left.

There are. Specifically, spiders and commitment. And my greatest fear of all, marrying a spider. A combination of the two of them. I think we can all understand that. Where do I put the ring? She has so many arms. To be fair, we have more fingers than they have legs.

That's your take. That's what they say to rile up the armies when we're taking part in the great spider wars. Remember, men, we have more fingers than they have legs. Hoorah! And they eat all our fingers let's cut to today's chase rory i can't believe it took us so long but today we're talking about ouija boards oh rory what do you know uh i mean not a lot outside of the general knowledge of these things they are a tool used to communicate with i assume

the dead but maybe not just the dead it could be just creatures of the underworld uh demons possibly as well uh it's a board with letters on it and people move a little circular object around the board together to kind of spell out words. All right. Einstein looks like you know a lot about them. Why don't you host this week's episode? Created in 1917. All right. That's quite enough. You've been reading my notes, sir. This is one of those weird cases where even though we are the experts, probably a lot of our listeners know more than us because I think I'm right in saying

neither of us have ever used a Ouija board. They genuinely kind of scare me. Whereas I think depending on where you grew up in the world, a lot of people have used them and done them. Me and Roy were talking about this episode coming up a while ago and we both said we're scared of them. My parents would disown me if they knew I was doing one. Yeah. And we do a lot of weird shit as well. I mean, we tried to summon an actual demon at a live show. We used a cursed voodoo doll that I bought on the Internet a few weeks back. And this is one of the few things that we haven't done yet because it kind of scares me a little.

I had a pretty normal childhood, but my mom talked weirdly a lot about Ouija boards. And if you're at someone's house and they want to do a Ouija board, run out of the house as fast as you can. That is someone who had a traumatic experience as a child. That's like your dad making you swear as a child, you will never play Jumanji. And it's like, so you played Jumanji then. That's the only reason why you could be this enthusiastic. Yeah, you should at least be neutral about Jumanji. Your ghillie suit tuxedo is making a lot more sense now, dad. I just don't know if I'll get sucked back in.

I have to be ready. Did you always have that monkey tail, father? Well, our first story comes from a reddit user named no springs he was only 12 years old when this happened but it was so terrifying he remembers it like it was yesterday no springs was spending the night at their friend danny's house a classic sleepover what better activity to fill the evening than playing a ouija board danny went and got it from the cupboard while his sister Jenna dimmed the lights.

They placed it on the center of the coffee table in the living room. They put the glass on the board, put their fingers on it, and moved it around to warm up the board. But before long, the board took over and the game had begun. Whoa.

To their relief, it was fun. The planchette was moving around like crazy, spelling out all sorts of stupid words. P, O, O, P. It spelled poop. They didn't know how it was happening, but that was part of the fun. It was a little scary, sure, but even if it was a ghost operating the board, at least they were all having a good time.

All three of them had their fingers on the planchette when it suddenly jerked violently. It began shooting around the board with purpose, as if by magic. I can see you through the window. Oh, God. I can see you through his eyes? What does that mean? Put the board away. You've gone too far already, children. I would have stopped at poop.

I would have stopped at poop. That's a word. It knows what poop is. God knows what else it knows. This is when you need to break out your safety matches to safely burn this thing to the ground the kids were terrified and turned all at once towards the small basement window high above them through it they could see the car in the driveway and the dark woods beyond jenna was so scared it looked as if she might cry danny and no springs were on edge

too and tried to console her, but they were both extremely curious about what was happening. Hey, hey, it's okay. It can't hurt us. Let's just ask what it means. Oh, great spirit, where are you? Under the car. It's under the car. Let's go see. The boys were keen to check out what was going on. The last thing Jenna wanted to do was go outside in the dark, but she wasn't okay with being left alone in the basement, so she begrudgingly followed them up the stairs and out the back door. They crouched low and crawled to the edge of the car,

peering underneath it, hoping to see something. Can you see anything? Suddenly, a dark shape appeared, seemingly out of nowhere. It was a huge black cat, and it was furious, hissing and scratching. The kids ran back inside, half petrified and half relieved it was only a cat. But Jenna was done. Guys, can we stop now? I'm really scared. But no sooner had she uttered those words than every single light in the entire house cut out. The kids screamed at the top of their lungs. They sat in the pitch black, not daring to move, so frightened they could barely breathe.

Their only source of light was the dim glow from the window that the unseen force said it had been watching them through. But now not one of them could bring themselves to even glance at it. This is very intense for a sleepover. You know, when I was young, whenever I had sleepovers as a kid, we'd fire up Mario Kart on the N64, microwave some popcorn, stay up past our bedtimes. And sure, play Ouija Board 64 for the Nintendo all through the night. I was playing Luigi board and Mario Kart. But this is intense.

Making connections with the demon world. That's a little intense for adults, let alone 12 year olds. I think kids have changed a lot. You know, I think parents back in the day were uh worried too much about us having i don't know pre-marital sex true um when they should have been worried about us um screaming i think what one of these 12 year olds said was oh great spirit where are you a minute ago you wish they were banging each other that would be the least of your problems.

After what felt like an eternity, the light suddenly flickered back on. But in reality, it couldn't have been more than a few minutes. But the children weren't consoled by the light. They sat up in quiet terror until sunrise, at which point they put the board away at the back of the closet and never played with it again. Too late. Too late, guys. The door's open. So I think it's safe to say that most of our listeners have heard of a Ouija board before, and I'm sure 90% of them have done one,

but not all of them will know the history of the most famous method of communication with the other side. Also known as a spirit board or talking board, the wooden slate is adorned with four words. Yes, no, hello, and goodbye. It also features the entire alphabet and often a series of numbers, one to ten. It's quite weird to throw in hello and goodbye, isn't it? You're gonna see that's quite crucial later on. Oh, really? Because you're gonna want to say bye. When it says I can see you through the window, you're gonna want to say goodbye. Bye bye. Tap it twice.

I just thought, you know, some of those words would be instead of basic pleasantries, some of their most popular words like blood or horns or fire. You know, it's like they talk about that a lot. So we're going to it'll be a little time saver. Yeah, just like you should have demon or angel on there so that if they just go straight to demon you can break the board in half yeah it should be like i basically want this to be like a paranormal chat roulette right where as soon as you make contact you're like angel or demon if it goes to demon pass skip to the next one angel or demon angel all right well that's what you want to talk about blood all right you were a demon pass skip to the next one angel a demon angel all right well that's what you want to talk

about blood all right you were a demon f**ker you got me there pass this is uh something we'll touch on later uh which is part of the problem is that uh the spirits can lie so even if you if you give them the option of angel they're gonna choose it yeah a criminal isn't gonna tell you they're a criminal if anything it's quite fitting um i don't know demons to be trustworthy i don't think that's one of their uh defining characteristics paranormal chat roulette we can we should make that app yeah that's a good idea so users place their fingers on a wooden pointer called a planchette which often has glass in the middle so you can read the letter. And this moves between words and letters to spell out messages. Now, a quick Google search will tell you that,

oh, it's all an innocent, traditional parlor game. And it wasn't even remotely associated with the occult until it was featured in The Exorcist in the early 70s. The Ouija board was even patented by the Parker Brothers around 1900, the same company that brought us board games such as Cluedo, Monopoly, and Scrabble. Wow. Nothing paranormal about it whatsoever, just another board game that sits in your cupboard ready for a rainy Sunday afternoon.

That's interesting. So at a certain point, at least, it was like uh like any other kind of children's game or family game i think to this day it's copyrighted by hasbro the toy company wow yeah that's bizarre isn't it so you can just get this it's quite accessible yeah it's not like a dark web thing i think in the uk i don't think it's i don't think you're buying it in toys r us right right or any similar toy shop i don't think it's like i don't know it's not on the shelf with action man that's for sure but it was at one point and they certainly reserve the right to sell it um in america not sure if you can if you can just buy off the shelf if the one company

owns all of those ips i would love it if they did like a crossover edition so it's like a ouija board where you could talk to mr monopoly you, it's like both games combined. Yeah, like Star Wars Ouija. Yeah, exactly. Talk to the spirit of Jar Jar Binks. Mesa can see you. Mesa want blood. Goodbye.

Goodbye. Absolutely goodbye. Mesa, if you fire up your ouija board and the first word is misa you know who exactly who that is angel or demon gongan all right to put the board away i think uh in terms of uh an identifying first word of a sentence, Jar Jar Binks is right up there with Michael Jackson. If it's Shamone or Misa, you know who you're getting into. But Rory, the idea that this is just a kid's game is what they want you to believe. The truth is people have been using Ouija boards to contact the dead for years before the creators of Risk got involved. contacted dead for years before the creators of Risk got involved.

Mediums traveled far and wide with their talking boards, helping bereft families get in touch with fallen soldiers from the American Civil War. Wow, I didn't know it was that long ago. Things really took off when it was adopted as a favorite method of ghostly communication by the Fox Sisters. These were some seriously spooky women that claimed to be able to talk to spirits. They would bring out these boards at seances and got intelligible messages from the other side. The Ouija board... This is... Worryingly, the Ouija board is said to have named itself all the way back in the 1880s.

Holy shit! A group of early adopters realized that their talking board didn't have a proper title and asked what it would like to be called it spelled out Ouija the board told them not even a ghost on the other side I don't know I don't know when the assembled mediums were confused they'd never heard the word before so they asked what Ouija means the board replied good luck as weird and cryptic as it was the name has stuck oh that's I I don't like this man this is this is freaky uh funnily enough someone did tell us recently that they heard that the name Ouija is just uh the French and German words for yes stuck together. Oui and ja.

Oui, ja. But then does that make sense that it says yes, yes? Yeah, I looked this up and it's a popular story. I definitely saw people trying to discount it saying that no, that doesn't seem to be where it comes from. So I don't know. Jury's out there. There's also a fun story that when the businessmen of the Parker brothers

were trying to patent the design for the ouija board they were challenged by the patent officer to prove that it actually worked right a magic board sounds great but if you want your patent i'll need a demonstration we can't sell this thing if it's all a load of bunk not true i don't think that's how anything works. He challenged the Ouija board to spell out his full name, which the Parker brothers didn't know at that point. The men sat around, eyes glued to the planchette, and sure enough, it sailed around the board, spelling out the officer's entire name.

Sorry, what is going on? Is the board alive? White-faced and visibly shaken, he had no choice but to grant them their patent. How did the board know his name, if the brothers didn't even know it? Or was it his, like, dead mother on the other side spelling it out? Eh, just a ghost who can look into his cupboard and find a recent letter with his name on it. Okay, that's fair. It's a good question.

Is it the board? Is it the ghosts? This thing has a mind of its own. They got their patent, the boards went on sale, and reports of strange occurrences began flooding in. There were men that felt compelled to join the army after participating in a Ouija session, presumably to fight the ghost army that was coming. I mean, at the time that it was created, there's probably going to be a lot of dead soldiers.

So some of the messages coming from the other side are going to be pretty patriotic. I wouldn't be surprised if you were encouraged to join the army from the ghosts that were also in the army. It's a good point. Yeah. Yeah. Unless there's like a really embittered cadet who was killed in the line of duty. It's a scam. Please slap my recruiting officer for me. He ruined my life. One woman left almost the entirety of her fortune to a spirit named John Gale Forbes she'd met through a Ouija board.

They're dating? The request couldn't be carried out as the gentleman in question didn't exist. This is incredible. There's even one story from Buffalo, New Jersey, about two women who were trying to solve the mysterious death of one of their husbands and turn to the Ouija board for answers. The board gave them a name and description of the person it claimed to have killed their husband. So they went out, found that guy and murdered him.

All right. That's a bit much. I don't think you should be executing revenge based on what a f***ing Scrabble board tells you. The board told me Bono killed my cat. So I must end you two. Clearly, Ouija boards are no joke. And if you want to use them, Rory,

there are strict rules to abide by. I'm going to lay down the ouija law with some cautionary tales i don't think by the sounds of it there are no rules people are using these for a huge amount of activities what you said one woman was borderline sexting with a ghost yeah and she gave away her whole worldly possessions other people took vigilante justice in their own hands went to prison forever that's why we need rules okay yeah all right rule number one no sexting no matter how sexy the ghost may seem don't get involved the pacing on that must be terrible if you're like all right, spirit, what are you wearing? Nothing.

Ooh. Yeah. N-O. It's like trying to see boobs on dial-up broadband where an image would load like a chunk at a time. A tenth of a nipple at a time. Rule number one, beware the risks. You might summon something you don't want to. This is the account of a guy named Jake.

My buddy and I found a Ouija board at my girlfriend's house. We were really bored, so we wanted to see if it would actually work. As suspected, nothing happened. He brought the board back to my house and didn't think anything of it. The next day, strange things began happening. Out of nowhere, my friend started having sleep paralysis every time he spent the night at my house, despite never having had it before. The first time, he saw a tall woman

with long black hair standing in the corner of the room facing the wall. The next time, he was asleep on the couch and he saw the same woman standing at my open door looking directly into my room. Why are you making us do this? I don't want to see a strange woman

in my apartment rule number one to beware the risks it doesn't basically rule number one is don't do it rule number two always close the circle ouija boards have hello and goodbye printed on them for good reason here we go every session must begin with a greeting and it's essential to say farewell to close the circle. Just ask this guy named Vince. When Vince was a child, one of his friends goaded him into playing with a Ouija board in his basement. Young Vince didn't expect anything out of the ordinary to happen, so he went along with it. Once they started to play, however, the lights began to flicker, the air around them grew cold and a spirit began to communicate with them through the board. The spirit spelled out a Russian name and claimed he had been murdered.

At that point, things were getting a bit too real, they decided to take a break to make some pizza rolls. But they forgot to close the circle when they were done. After returning to the basement, the energy was heavy, books and things were sprawled out on the floor, and the board sat innocently in the centre of the room, the energy was heavy. Books and things were sprawled out on the floor, and the board sat innocently in the center of the room, perfectly still. But when Vince caught a glimpse of the planchette in the mirror, its reflection was spinning wildly by itself. That is terrifying.

That's pretty good horror movie stuff there. So say goodbye before eating pizza rolls or just bring pizza rolls to the board yeah appease the demons with pizza rolls before closing the board make a pizza offering uh this is a little bit like jumanji isn't it where it's like if you don't because the whole thing about jumanji was you have to finish the game for everything to stop yeah otherwise it's still gonna go buck wild uh and the jungle man's gonna come get you and all that weird shit's gonna happen i don't really remember jumanji but uh i'm starting to think it was heavily based on ouija boards i wouldn't be surprised yeah even the like weird design is like not too dissimilar but then yeah similar to this you have to close you have to end it

close the circle for everything to stop all the weird shit to stop rule number three respect the spirits or risk a ghostly burglary okay okay so far every rule by the way is just respect the spirits it seems like and then you're just listing off a few different ways in which the spirits have been disrespected and the consequences of that. Reddit user Hammerhands recalled a story about a friend who was a bit too vocal about his disbelief. We're hanging out in a friend's dorm room and busted out the Ouija board. It was about 11pm and the communication with the board was going quite well. Gary, one of the skeptics, kept calling bullshit to the whole thing.

We convinced him to sit on the floor with us and give it a shot. Is this for real or just a bunch of bullshit? He said. The planchette zipped to no in the blink of an eye. Fine, prove it. No sooner had he finished that statement when the lights in the room flickered and the building's fire alarm went off. This freaked us all out and we left the room to follow the fire alarm procedure. After 20 minutes, campus safety said it was a false alarm and let us back in our dorms. We got back to the room. The Ouija board was gone. They didn't close the circle.

Did they close the circle? No one took it with us and the room was locked. You f***ed up, Gary. Big time. The Ouija board is like three blocks away. It stole a car. It got a bag of meth. It is going on the town tonight rule number four i'm not even going to give you a story with this one because it doesn't need

elaborating choose the right setting aka no graveyards okay that's just common sense is it though this is exactly why you needed to tell me this i don't know though is it a graveyard pretty good place if you're trying to make contact with dead people right all right fine physical or why you needed to tell me this. I don't know though. Is it? A graveyard. Pretty good place if you're trying to make contact with dead people, right? All right, fine. Physical or spiritual. Seeing as you're arguing

on the one I didn't give you a parable. Here's the parable. Okay. This was in Cosmo magazine. Rachel Schwartz was in high school when her and her friend decided to use a Ouija board

in a graveyard. We sat in our grandparents' grave to mess around with a Ouija board. All right, well, don't. That's f***ed up. Five minutes after we started playing with it, the ground began to sink underneath us. We ran out of there very quickly

and haven't messed with one since. There you go. You needed the story. That was great. It's like, you don't need to tell me all these rules and all these stories. I get it. All right, well, don't do it on a graveyard.

Seems like a good idea, though. Now you told me I want to do it fine last rule number five don't use it alone always bring backup cool we don't know the ghost backup or like regular backup regular absolutely regular i don't know the extent of what can happen when you use a ouija board solo but i did find one YouTuber who posted the following video of what happened when he attempted it. Hi guys, happy Halloween. We're gonna try this again. Didn't work out too well last time.

Then don't try it again. I'll do it like this. If you didn't see what happened last time, I'll annotate to find it up there somewhere all right kit show me a video of a guy using a ouija board in his house alone holy shit he's using uh a glass a drinking glass as a planchette and it just exploded before he could even touch it. Um, I don't know. I'm gonna,

I'm tempted to run out the garden. I really can't do anything with that anyway. What the hell? What noise is going on? He's in his kitchen. There was a noise in the background. Uh,

All right. Shit is just flying There's a noise in the background. All right. Shit is just flying at him now. The ghost is trying to kill him. The power of Christ compels you. He's now guarding himself with the Ouija board, using it as a shield. And yelling, the power of Christ compels you. That's a very bizarre.

What are the comments like? Are people, I mean, even if it was fake, that was pretty believable looking. Top comment. The way he said the power of Christ compels you. I lost it. LOL. XD. Dude, you're the only one I've ever seen react like that to the activity of that level hats off to you man i'm surprised to even mess with you anymore because you're not scared of it

you rule in my book bro that's true he did handle it very well but i'm not sure that's how it works like this relationship with humans and demons you know they say when you're being bullied uh if you stand up for yourself and stand up to the bully, then, you know, they don't mess with you anymore. I don't think that works with demons. I think if I stood face to face with a demon and said, sticks and stones may hurt my bones, but words will never hurt me. He would grab my soul from my chest and breathe fire fire down my throat melting my dreams uh he would put your soul in a pocket dimension making you feel like you lived in solitary confinement for 1 000 years before placing your soul back in your body broken and afraid i would say words will never

hurt me and then he'll say a word that i've never heard before. Something that probably sounds like Markolov. And I would die. I would die a thousand times in a second. It turns out their words can hurt quite a bit. Their words are magic. My words are, please stop, sir. This hurts. Markolov.

I said there were five rules. There is actually more. I'll just rattle through a couple. Sure. Choose a quiet, dark place. just rattle through a couple. Sure. Choose a quiet, dark place. Graveyard. Designate a... No, that's the only place. Let's go.

Designate a leader and only they can ask questions. Assign a scribe to write the messages down. Don't take every word the spirits say as law. Like American police, they're allowed to lie

and mislead you on purpose. Be polite and ask spirits to introduce themselves or you risk them getting violent with you. If you get a bad feeling, feeling say hasty goodbye and hang up the phone wait we have to be like polite to them and cordial and finally sage the room once you're finished uh should have warned you about this earlier as i highly doubt you have sage on you ready to burn you're right we don't do you did you get No. Why did you buy the poison without the antidote?

What do you mean you're reading it for the first time? Doesn't matter. We are ready to go, Rory. I don't know if you can notice this package at the back of the room here. It's a suspiciously board-shaped package. I have bought a Ouija board for us to use. i don't want to do this we've got the rules it'll be fine bro we race through the last of the rules oh there's a lot more too but we just don't have time to read them something here about if your name's rory um walk away the demons hate that

name okay well that seems like a bad idea then one here about uh don't do it near 1 p.m this is the paranormal demon hour and it is absolutely unsafe to do it sadly we are running out of time today so we do have to press on at one uh it'll all be fine i these are a lot of red flags already from the get-go So I'm gonna Give Rory the package So he can check out the Ouija board for himself I don't The worst part about this is that I can barely

Keep up with the Day-to-day communications With my friends and family I don't need to open up a new line Of communication It's like getting a new social media app yeah there's gonna be a lot of notifications and the notifications are going to involve what if every time you got a whatsapp message a glass threw itself across your kitchen

that's what it already feels like every time i get another email after i've responded to like six emails i feel like my soul's being shredded apart so i don't need demon emails i don't need dmails okay wow look at this son of a bitch so this is uh this is your classic ouija board here guys we have um you know the the classic type font the name the logo uh in the corners of the board, there is a sun, a moon. Oh, and then what just looks like little illustrations at the bottom of people using the board. And then, yeah, we have all of our letters. One to nine and then zero.

Yes, no. Goodbye. No, hello. There's no hello on the board.'re already in oh just by holding it we're in uh that's worrying do we spell out yo or what's up maybe yeah i guess that's it the the the spirits we contact they don't get to say hello they gotta spell out whatever they want to say there's a sheet of paper stuck to the back of it does this come with it oh hey look it's got a set of rules wait are these the ones you just read nah these are new rules

all right well let's definitely read those there's worryingly a demon little girl uh in the background of the rules so i don't know whether I should follow these. Cool. Well, this is good to know. All right. So this is pretty handy. We do have, as Roy says, a list of instructions for how to use this specific board. I think you might need to check inside that package again. Hopefully we have a planchette. Oh yeah, there is something in here.

Yo, there it is. Ooh, this is, Jesus. This is a wooden heart with an eyeball at the top of it and then a hole below i don't like this man i don't want to be here so i want to i just i'm hung over negative energy and just i don't think it's going to affect the board so just uh i was just trying to be upbeat because if that negative energy gets into the board, then we could have some nasty little characters on our hands. Was that one of the rules that I have to be happy when I do it?

I just think... I was very open about how unhappy I am about doing this. I think like if you hang around with three other Lamborghini owners, you'll be the fourth Lamborghini owner. And I feel like if you bring negative vibes to the board we're gonna attract some negative demons and okay well i mean i could try my best i'll try my best but you know it's been hard recently and i couldn't pay my rent this month uh so that bounced back and then my landlord got in contact i'm just worried that we're gonna get like whingy little demons who also can't pay their spirit world rent uh is that a bad thing which is pathetic uh so financial hardships come i don't come around i'm not gonna feel sorry for

you like if you tell me this story i'm not gonna there's no point telling me it because i just don't feel sorry for you it's yeah it's fine which is i gotta find somewhere else to somewhere to move to yeah all right man well this is work so can you please get your head in the game it's fine like cool like we can talk about you being homeless like whatever at the end of the work day yeah there's time but like we have a lot to get through it's just like it kind of sucks as well. Cause as I told you, my, my family sent me an email saying that they weren't going to do anything big for Christmas this year and everyone was just going to do it, do their own thing.

And then they accidentally CC'd me on an email chain where they were planning a vacation without me. So that kind of, that hurt a bit, honestly. But again, I understand that's not the energy that we want to bring to the board. So, you know, it's fine, but I just feel like it's something worth talking about yeah yeah i yeah right the trip the trip to cancun yeah the the boat trip i got that email uh to i wasn't i wasn't bcc'd i was i was just cc'd because you got invited just figured that like sometimes when people meet us they're like oh oh, you guys brothers?

And it's like, no, but like, to your family, like, sometimes they would consider me a more fun version of you. Well, that's... Like a less whingy version. I think it's safe to say that's f***ed because I'm their biological son. So even if you were like a son to them, I am a son to them. Right, but... Okay, sure. So, like, yes, they obviously have to

have you as part of the family. Sure, well, apparently not. But if you were going to spend a lot of money on a Christmas cruise to Cancun, like, obviously you're going to pick the person who's not going to just complain the whole way. Right, well, I'm complaining because I'm not invited to the Cancun trip.

Yeah, but I just feel like if you had been invited, you would have found something new to complain about. Did you get one of the custom sweaters that they knitted for everyone? Yeah. It said Christmas 2021. Everyone we love is here. Yeah, yeah.

Knitted into the front and back. That's as tasteful as hell. And I'm not going to wear it because it does say Parr's family. I'm sure I'm not in the Parr's family. So it's probably, it goes over my head. But will I just like keep it in my wardrobe as like a cool memento or whatever that's f***** sure that's so

it's it's only extra awful because i am so cold uh all the time having not being able to pay my rent yeah okay we're circling i can't pay you i just feel like you can't move past it i just feel like you can uh this is gonna be hard not to bring that negative energy to the board. Do you understand? Demon, do you have a spare room? Do you have somewhere I could crash for a couple of days? Hello? Under the car.

You sound like my freaking mom. The demon's trying to close the circle. He's like, goodbye, goodbye, goodbye. We're like, no, no, hold on for a second. Come back here, you little f***er. I know you've got a haunted castle or something. The demon's like, I got a head. Kit, see you at the Christmas dinner.

You're going too? They're bringing demons? What the hell? F***ing Xantron the demon is going to my parents' Christmas dinner? Sure, you would normally be invited, but like you eat too much at the Christmas dinner. They're going to obviously invite a demon who doesn't need food for sustenance. Zantron knows a guy at the ski lodge. That's where he died.

Crazy. All right. Crazy. All right. I feel like your attitude is just absolutely nose diving. So we just need to get through this as fast as we can before you summon some kind of whingy, self-pitying demon to the studio. Instruction number one, gather a few friends.

Or enemies. Yeah, that'll do, I guess. Two, set the mood. Dim the lights. Light candles. Light incense, if you wish You have a candle actually over there I've taken the liberty of finding the only candle in the house

Which is a Muji company Christmas candle Okay We've got some sort of Christmas spirit That's fine They were pretty good to Scrooge At least if we die by demons I guess our corpses will be beautifully Christmassy.

Mood set. The Christmas candle has been lit. And I'll shake this around as if it's incense. Yeah, get a nice smoky atmosphere in here. All right. Number two done. Easy. Three, sit on the floor or around a table so everyone can see and reach the board.

Cool. We got it around a table so everyone can see and reach the board. Cool. We got it on a table. Awesome. Designate one person to ask all the questions so the spirits don't get confused. I'm going to say you should ask the questions. F*** off. Absolutely not. Because I feel like you won't be able to keep your mouth shut just with the way this episode

is going. And so I might as well just not get them confused about who's talking i don't get paid enough to talk to demons i'm stressed enough fighting my own demons inside of me i don't need to start talking to other external demons all right here we're getting serious number five place your fingers on the planchette it should be resting just above the letter g to start i thought it was supposed to start with hello. I thought it was very important. One of the old rules was don't forget to say hello.

All right. Slowly move the planchette in circles to let the board warm up and concentrate on what you want to ask. So let's start going in circles. Hey, spirits. What up? Thanks for being here today. Thanks for coming on the pod.

Sorry in advance that Rory is being such a little bitch about the whole thing. He's going through some shit. I think he's homeless or whatever. Yeah, I know.

Keep it light. Keep it positive. They don't need to know all this. I don't know. Something about, I think he's bummed out that I'm getting too invited to his Christmas,

his family Christmas and he's not. They don't need to know that honestly i don't really get because like why would they need it seems obvious right i would appreciate if you were nice to us uh while we're here that um i would ask the demons kindly sit this one out bud angels only and let's see what happens all right number eight start with simple questions, such as, how many spirits are in the room? Are you a good spirit? That one's a bit loaded, I'll say. It's a bit sexy. And what is your name? Sexy?

Have you been a good spirit? Okay, let's start off simple. How many spirits are in the room? What are we going towards? Eight? Wait, what the? Six.

So we have a little bit of movement on the planchette, and we seem to have landed on six. This is a small room, by the way. It's crowded with two in here. Two people. There is not a lot of room. So six is a lot. A little bit worrying,

given that we're hoping that all these demons I'm sorry, spirits. Don't call them demons! Sorry, guys. We haven't heard their intentions yet. It is worrying you jump straight to demons. Straight past goblins, ghouls,

ghosts, spirits. I mean, I lit a red candle. The instructions have a little demon girl on them. I'm f***ing mentally primed for demons. Alright. Let's jump to what is your name? Demon number one. Sorry, spirit number one.

Stop calling them demons! What is your name, bud? This is f***ed. They're gonna be confused themselves if you keep calling them that. You are That's worrying. They're not even- they're gonna be confused themselves if you keep calling them that. You... Are... That's worrying. We said name! We said name!

L... What's that? S? U-R-L-S. Earls? K. Earlske. Earls? K. Earls. Earls.

I mean, I know I was telling you to stop calling them demons, but that is not the name of an angel, let me tell you. Earls? Can we ask? That's the noise you make when you're punched in the throat. Earls! Can we ask? Sorry, Earls. Forgive him.

He doth not know what he's saying. Can we ask... Thanks, Earlsk, for jumping right in there. Can we ask what spirit number two is called? We don't need to go through all of them, but we'll ask what spirit number two. All right. I don't like this.

G. L. L. E. Glee and Earlst T Glet Sounds like a

frat boy Glet and Earlst Really it's an open forum right now What do we want to know from the demons our spirits you have to stop i genuinely can't stop i am so sorry you are borderline possessed this is so what's happening right now my eyes roll back into my head like we should probably ask him who to kill right who we should we should kill? Don't listen to him. It's like, what are you saying?

I'm bringing negative energy to the room, man. You keep calling them demons. Killing people? Are you crazy? This is f***ed. Are you good spirits? A, T, yes. Okay.

Just went straight to yes i kind of liked it that was just them thinking about it they were like uh yes yeah okay we're pretty good why do they have to think about it though yeah that is worrying could we be so bold as to ask um let's just say glet uh directly how did you die? Just want to ask you guys, what's it like being a demon? Like, no, stop it. You stop, stop right there. How would one go about becoming a demon? No.

H? Could be anything. Hit and run. Hot air balloon crash. Hot tub. Hot tub. What's that? U? god h-u-s hus hus what's that k husk husk what's husk is that a word let's ask let's go out with one final one um we've warmed

up the board a little bit should we just give them like a platform to say it's like hey you you're listening to all you know yeah you're broadcasting to the tpl nation here what do you want to plug exactly you guys got any good um hauntings coming up or anything you want to promote on the show oh it did just jolt a little bit when i said that that is worrying l l c l You'll see. Sounds a bit like. M. Sounds like you'll see them. L-C-M. Yeah.

L-C-M. L-C-M. All right. All right. Don't take your fingers. You took your hands off it. Don't take your hands off that thing. Let's just wrap up the podcast, I guess.

So thanks very much, Earlston Glutt. Breaking a lot of rules here, bud. If you want to just... We're going to get lunch after this. If you want to join us, that's cool by me. Your hands are off the thing. I'll turn on the lights, I guess. Don't turn the lights on.

We haven't even closed the circle yet. We've got to say goodbye to these. Oh, right. Shit. Okay. Sounds ambitious. Come on. Cool.

TTYL, guys. No, no, no, no. That's not how we do it. He took his hand off again. No. What? The goodbye. The goodbye. That's not how we do it. He took his hand off again. No. What? The goodbye. The goodbye at the bottom of the board.

Oh. Wait, why do we have to move it to that? The whole time we've just been talking to them and they've been using the board. Why do we have to move it to goodbye? I don't think we need to move it. I think we just need to say it. Really?

I'm going to do both. I don't want Earl's coming home with me tonight. We got one each. All right. Well, well, thanks very much, Earl's and Goulet, for swinging by the studio, and I'll see you next time. Awesome! Oh, shit!

It went straight off! It almost flew off the board! That was worrying. Alright, goodbye. Can we take our hands off now? Circle closed. Hands off. Good. Good. Bye. Can we take our hands off now? Circle closed. Circle closed. Hands off.

Pardon. That was stressful, man. I'm sweating. Well, Earlston Glett, unless they were Christmas elves that the candle invited into the studio, not really sure what those names mean. I really hope this week's episode of the podcast is um you know this paranormal life ouija board featuring earlston glett as guests this week we brought on earlston glett wow i hope you guys enjoyed that little first-hand attempt at the ouija board certainly a first in our books

as paranormal investigators somehow we let that one slip up tonight. I do love a good physical aspect when it comes to the podcast, you know, whether that's some sort of in-person investigation or using some sort of paranormal equipment. It's a great idea for a show. Rory, we talked a little bit about the history of the Ouija board and we've actually tried one firsthand. I do, I'm afraid, have to be so crass as to ask you to decide whether you think Ouija boards are paranormal or not? It's a tough one. You know, based on our experience today, I mean, as I said, when we put our fingers on the magical little heart eyeball thing pointer, it wasn't moving because we weren't moving it. And it's I don't know the dynamic between the person and the board.

And it's, I don't know the dynamic between the person and the board. Are you supposed to move it? And then like we kind of did where it just goes in a general flow or direction and builds a word or is the idea that it moves by itself and you're just putting your fingers on the piece. It definitely felt like we were doing most of the moving, uh, just then. And even with us doing that it wasn't really spelling out any real words uh if they were they're not words that i'm familiar with maybe in the underworld those are day-to-day terms but yeah it was quite strange we didn't

get any real answers to our questions i wanted to do uh this the way that just the average person would try at home it would have been easy for us to like go for a quick laugh or like a fun like social media video clip where we like spell out something absolutely nuts that we've decided beforehand it's spelled corny or investigate

or something like that but I was genuinely curious to see what happens I completely agree it's a little bit misleading to say that I think the planchette moves entirely on its own i think it's more this thing of whoever's got their hands on it we all move it in like small subtle ways and then it's just wherever once you get it moving uh it's wherever it kind of happens to land and then you're kind of guessing has it stopped over a letter has it not yeah um so it's a bit weird and i would like to try it again and i would like to try with more people sometime yeah yeah because i think that's probably where it becomes

the most believable when there's so many people using it and touching it that you don't even know who is forcing it in any direction um and you're quite right we didn't really for one reason or another get any kind of really really crystal clear answers at least now that the circle is closed uh we can stop being so polite and courteous the demons okay all right the ouija board hopefully they weren't demons see you later asshole rory threw the board on the ground all right we had to wrap up because we got about five minutes before galette gets back here with the fucking glock uh so it sounds like uh in the case of for us today in our experience what do we think ouija boards are real i think we're gonna both say no today i'm gonna say no there's there's a there's a chance that we biffed the ceremony or some part of the process but we

did follow all the rules we were polite and antagonistic and we didn't really see much of a result now that being said we could be haunted to the world's end in the following week but until that happens it's going to be a no for me it's going to be a no one thing we didn't do is we are doing this in the middle of the day people do say you got to do it it's supposed to do it at night but yeah you know we'll see well i'd love to do this again maybe on like a live stream or something would be quite fun yeah that'd be a cool idea or a live show to be fair absolutely we could get audience members up as not like victims or sacrifices but as like volunteers that's the word i was thinking of sorry we can go hide behind bulletproof glass while they do the Ouija board. We need to be behind demon proof glass.

Whatever they use for the f***ing Popemobile is what we need to be behind. Which I think is just a wall made of Bibles. Hope you enjoyed this investigation into all things Ouija boards. I know some of you will have your own stories about this, which would be cool to hear. I don't think we've actually had many submissions up to this point about Ouija boards, but I guarantee now that we're asking for it, someone will have a story. Send them in to thisparanormallifepodcast at gmail.com. And we have a super special announcement to make right now. If you head over to thisparanormallife.com forward slash store. We have just dropped some new merch items.

This might be my favorite design that we've ever released before. I think this is the coolest thing in the world. We knew that we were going to be doing an episode on Ouija boards at some point. We knew it was going to be a huge investigation. So we wanted to create a bit of tie-in merchandise with this episode. So we worked with an artist bit of tie-in merchandise with this episode.

So we worked with an artist to make a custom This Paranormal Life Ouija board design. What? And because we're heading into winter, we wanted to put this design on some cozy items. So not only can you get this design on t-shirts, but also on hoodies. We've also, for the longest time, wanted to create a bit of merch with the TPL iconic phrase, live fast, investigate and die young. So we incorporated that into the design to make this what I think is an amazing looking live fast, investigate, die young Ouija board. This paranormal life design. It looks great. You should absolutely check it out.

So check it out. The link to the store is in the description of this very episode. Remember, if you can't get enough of This Paranormal Life, you just can't wait till Tuesday for another full-length episode. Head on over to Patreon. Patreon.com forward slash This Paranormal Life is where, for the last four and a half years, it's been the home of This Paranormal Life.

It's where we put full-length bonus episodes every single month. Bonus content. That is full-length investigations into the paranormal just like the main episodes but sometimes wilder and weirder oh yeah patreon is where the tpl family live and i mean like a real family not like an actual family that ditch you lie to you invite you to christmas yeah rude to you don't want i don't want you to be a part of it this is a family where everyone is is everyone's happy and equal and i'm invited so it's check it out it's great it's good fun quick sidebar the uh the the kit only live stream will be coming later this month so tune in for that uh this is the first i'm hearing about that so thank you for tuning in This is the first I'm hearing about that. So thank you for tuning in this week.

We will, of course, be back next Tuesday with a brand new Paranormal Tale. We'll be over on Patreon with a bonus episode this month. And until then, remember to live fast, investigate, and die young, baby!