Prison Inmates Get Scared by Ouija Board

A report and comment on religious trends and events being covered by the media.  This week’s item is from the Orange County Register, August 2000, with the headline, “Inmates Get a Scare Out of a Ouija Board.”  A circle of inmates set an Ouija Board on the floor and gathered around.  They leaned in and together prayed to the devil.  At one point, inmates said they lightly placed their fingers on the board and called up the spirit of a woman.  They asked the spirit how she died and followed the message indicator around the hand-crafted board as it spelled out I was murdered.  They asked how, and then watched the indicator move letter to letter spelling out, investigate.  The inmates were spooked but the game wasn’t over.  According to Santa ClaraCounty jail officials, the inmates went from asking a few questions to praying to Satan to—three of them screaming out loud after they thought they were possessed by demons.  The bizarre situation became so intense jail officials said, the correctional officers called in a priest who, one by one, blessed twenty-nine prisoners as he sprinkled them and then, the group’s dormitory with holy water.  We have never had anything like this occur here, said Brian Paretti, County Department of Correction spokesman.  The Ouija Board, a plain board with the alphabet and words, yes, no, and good-bye, printed on it, is said to have been around in some variations for hundreds of years.  Some sit down to the board out of curiosity, others seek spiritualistic or telepathic messages.  The jail inmates, all documented gang members, said they spent an entire night earlier this month crafting the board.  They used the underside of a scrabble game as the base, fancily penciled in the alphabet and shaped a piece of cardboard into a tear drop to use as the message indicator which, according to superstition, mysteriously moves from letter to letter spelling out messages after a question is asked.  On three separate nights four to five inmates gathered at one time in the bathroom.  It’s the darkest place in the dorm with just a flicker shining in from afar.  Before long, inmate Isaiah Valaskas, twenty-one, said he and others thought they felt a presence in the bathroom.  They asked the board if anyone was in there and the teardrop began spinning uncontrollably, he said.  Everyone bolted!  When they went back in, Marcos Vasquez said he looked at the board on the floor, and then turned to face the others.  I felt cold and bigger, the twenty-six year old said.  I was filled with anger and talked in this deeper voice I had never had.  Inmates thought Vasquez was acting but the drama continued.  By the third day, three inmates, including Vasquez, feared they were possessed.  They tore up the board and threw it away.  But, on the morning of August 5, two correctional officers, who never saw the inmates toying with the Ouija Board, said they heard screams coming from the inmates’ dorm.  They went inside and confronted a chaotic scene in which inmates were crying and flailing their arms.  Paretti, the corrections spokesman, said officers soon realized the inmates seriously believed they were possessed.  After interviewing all the inmates involved, jail officials said they don’t believe the fear was feigned.  They called a priest away from his other prayer duties and asked that he bless and counsel the inmates.  The clergyman spent two days counseling the three inmates most overpowered by fear.  Marylou Etter, who has been Director of Detention Ministry of the Diocese of San Jose for about fifteen years, said this is the first time she has heard of the county’s jail inmates using an Ouija Board.  But it’s not unusual, she said, for some to pray to the devil.  She said she counseled one woman who contemplated praying to Satan because someone told her it could get her out of jail faster.  Some of the incarcerated have asked to see a minister after claiming to have seen dead loved ones.  Others Etter said, want ministers to cleanse their cell after seeing or hearing their cell mates pray to Satan, but in all her years of working inside of jails and juvenile halls, this is the only Ouija Board.  Most of the inmates involved were probably overcome by guilt, she said.  They were doing something they weren’t supposed to Etter said, and they were probably fearful of what they might have done.  Some did have a religious turnabout.  Vasquez said he was raised Christian and before this incident, sort of believed in God.  Now, there is no “sort of” about it, this was a sign to believe.  Both Vasquez and Valaskas are awaiting completion of their trials.  Vasquez is jailed on charges of being under the influence of drugs and willful harm, injury or endangerment to a child and a parole violation.  Valaskas faces charges of spousal abuse, false imprisonment and parole violation.  According to an internal memo about the incident, the priest told jail administrators one thing he neglected to tell the inmates.  The Catholic Church doesn’t believe a person can become possessed through use of a Ouija Board.  Etter declined to say whether she believed the board could evoke spirits.  It’s not for me to say whether they are or are not possessed.  We need to honor whatever people think is going on with themselves, Etter said.  The board, she added, goes into the same grouping as Tarot cards and fortune tellers; it’s nothing to play with.  Vasquez is now taking that advice seriously.  The inmate who has tattoos that run up his arms and cover his chest and neck said last week that he was counseled twice and still has a hard time sleeping.  He still can’t explain what came over him but said one thing’s certain, he’s never touching a Ouija Board again.

Tom:

Dave, I want to point out to our listeners that this article is not from the National Inquirer or something they would pick up on the way out of the grocery store; this is from the Orange County Register.  This is a legitimate article by people who are very concerned about this but most people would sort of just blow it off, saying, oh well you know, it never happened or it couldn’t happen.

Dave:

It says that an Ouija Board goes back hundreds of years.  Well, there are various devices—some people just turn a whisky glass upside down on a table and put their fingers on it after dinner—many ways to do this.  However, the Ouija Board specifically was invented after World War I and the purpose was to contact the spirits of the American soldiers who had died in France.  It became America’s most popular parlor game and I didn’t realize Tom, but apparently, it still is popular out there.

Tom:

Well, I was with a group of kids who—and they weren’t involved with this but they were curious and because their friends had been involved with it.  They said what could be the harm here?  I mean, this is a Parker Brothers game.  How could you possibly think that something terrible could happen getting involved with this?Well, first of all, let me ask you, Dave.  Is this legitimate?  Not just the concerns here, but is there any evidence that these things actually do what these men experienced?

Dave:

Tom, many people have gotten into the occult through Ouija Boards.  As you know, we talked about it in one of our books that we did together, originally called, America, the Sorcerer’s New Apprentice, and now, The New Spirituality, and I see you have it opened there so you probably have some quotes.  But we’ve done experiments—We, I’m speaking editorially, scientists have done many experiments in laboratories where they scramble the alphabet so that the person involved does not know where the letters are, they blindfold them, they even put something between them and the board so there is no possible way that they could know where those letters are, they can’t be doing it—

Tom:

Just to describe it a little more in detail.  An Ouija Board, as we pronounce it, has letters on it and it has a planchette, which is a little indicator and what happens is, people put their hands on the indicator and, supposedly the indicator moves the hand to the letters which spells out words which go into sentences so that he is actually communicating, literally communicating, with the spirit or whatever it may be.

Dave:

Well, more than one person can play it at a time.  We mentioned that in the book there, Tom.  A lady—

Tom:

To warn people about it, we want to make that very clear.

Dave:

Right.  We mention in the book, Pearl Curran, a housewife who just got involved with an Ouija board and she did not have a very high education and yet she wrote one piece that she wrote through the spirit speaking to her through a Ouija Board was 70,000 words.  It did not have a word beyond the 16th Century English; it was all in Old English.  She had no way of knowing this; it claimed to be a spirit speaking through her that was writing this.  Now, getting back to the experiment that I mentioned where they are blindfolded, there is no way—they asked questions and that thing spells out answers, meaningful sentences faster than their arm could move if they were doing it with rational control.  So, we know that there is something involved from the spirit world.  Okay, now what it is, the Ouija Board leads people into the occult.  It teaches them the lies of Satan, so we know the source of this power.  Tom, it’s no different from Tarot cards, from a crystal ball, a dousing rod.  There are various—it’s a divination device, absolutely forbidden in the Bible.  A divination device is any physical object by which you can make contact with the spirit world.  Now, we talked about sacraments before.  This is not the way God does it, but this is the way Satan does it.  So, when you get involved in a physical thing that is going to give you spiritual information, spiritual life, you have moved into the occult actually.

Tom:

Dave, God objects to this because, you mentioned before, this was used as a kind of a séance device to contact loved ones who had gone beyond, but that’s necromancy terms in the Bible and God condemns it because you are not getting who you think you are getting.  You are not communicating with a loved one at all.

Dave:

Right.  The spirits of the dead are not floating about on the astroplane at the beck and call of those who want information from them.  They are either in heaven or hell but demons, Satan will come impersonating them and that will lead you down the path to destruction.

Tom:

Dave, we’ve quoted some research here but there are interesting people who has gotten involved in this that are highly regarded.  Carl Rogers, the father of humanistic psychology, for one.

Dave:

One of the followers, right.  He contacted what he thought was the spirit of his dead wife, Helen through an Ouija Board.  Actually, they had been going in South America to some séances, that’s how he got involved in this.  And, you know, he was the father of selfish psychology—we need to worship at the altar of self inside—and as she was dying, she is on her way out, why should he continue to be faithful to her?  So, he picked up another relationship—you have to look for self.  We talked a bit about self as our problem in denying self, not self-denial, self denying itself, but the denial of self.  And, he was a little bit guilty about this so he went on the Ouija Board and what do you know—Helen’s spirit came through and told him it’s okay, Carl, you’re alright.  Knowing that really relieved him.  That was a message from Satan also.

Tom:

Now Dave, just to finish up with this article, interesting they brought the priest in to sprinkle holy water.

Dave:

That’s not going to do any good—one physical thing working on another one.  How does water get holy and what does it do?  I find no example—

Tom:
It’s another form of ritualism and that’s what they were going through.  Its methodology techniques, it’s like trying to put out fire with gasoline in a sense or with more fire.

Dave:

Now Tom, this program is called, Search the Scriptures Daily.  I just ask anyone out there who is offended by my saying, How does water become holy?  There is no such thing as holy water and this is not biblical.  Please, find me a verse in the Bible about holy water.  Please, give me one example where Jesus used this, or the apostle Paul used this.  That’s all we are saying.  We didn’t invent Christianity.  This is not ours and it doesn’t belong to some church, but the Bible is our authority, that’s all.  If you object to what we say, then please, show us from scripture. Otherwise, why not believe what the Bible says?  Let’s go to the highest authority, not to some church but to God himself.

Tom:

Dave, our message here to those who would dabble with this, we can give them documentation; we can give them articles that deal with people who are experiencing this.

Dave:

Scientific people, scientists involved in laboratory experiments, it has nothing to do with some church or religion, something actually happens, they really make contact with a non physical dimension.

Tom:
And, the repercussions, the consequences are absolutely devastating.  Not just demon possession but these men, these women are having visions of these things.  These spirits will not leave them alone once the door has been opened, and that’s what we are concerned about those who would play around with it.

Dave:

And the worst part of it is, Tom, to think you were delivered from it by holy water.  That won’t do the job at all but then; maybe they think they are on the right track now.  So, that could be the worst part of playing with an Ouija Board.

Tom:

And Dave, some might think well, it seems to have an effect.  Well, it also could be just another part of this rift to make you think that you are dealing with it when the only thing that’s going to deal with something in the spiritual realm is Christ, trusting in Him and in Him alone.