Is there anyybody there?...

Ever done the Ouija thing?

Yes? No? I have.

When I was about ten my uncle Charley came to our house one Saturday lunchtime and set up his home-made deck of ouija cards on our kitchen table. We were going to have a séance – me, my mum, my dad and uncle Charley. What a weird thing to do on Saturday lunchtime, but then it was the sixties so it was kind of a fab, groovy, hip, thing also.

Charlie used a small stemmed wine glass as a makeshift planchette and arranged an alphabet of cards in a semi-circle with another numerical (0-9) semi-circle beneath it. Finally to add symmetry to his magical arrangement he placed a ‘yes’ card on the left and a ‘no’ card on the right. The ‘goodbye (I’m out’a here and back to the spooky, spirit world) card sat right at the bottom like a final straw.

Nervously, we all placed our little fingers on the little glass and uncle Charley spoke the words…

‘Is there anybody there?’

There was.

Some people think it is evil, others think it is fun.

Science says that the subconscious mind directs the planchette, or pointer, to spell out the words, producing something that is already in one of the participant’s subconscious mind. They call this automatism or ideomotor action (it’s all in the ideomotor action).

Spiritualists obviously believe that they are actually making contact with the spirit world and that they are talking to the dead; messages from Aunty Dora or Uncle Fred, directions on where to find those lost keys (what lost keys?), red Indian spirit guides, ‘you need not worry, I’m at peace’ messages.

Or perhaps every single Ouija session is a fake, who knows?

I don’t know what caused the pointer to move around the table, I’m not even sure that I cared. I just know that for some reason it worked and that I found it fascinating.

Years later I tried it again, this time at midnight, on Halloween, by candlelight.

‘Is there anybody there?’

There was - and not a very nice ‘anybody’.

It put me off meddling with the ‘hidden forces’ for quite a while, but in pursuit of bloggable experiences I’ve recently been experimenting with Madame La Ouija once more.

Here’s the verbatim (if automatic writing can be verbatim) transcript of my first experiment. I think I got pretty lucky.

AKH – Is there anybody there?
Answer – YES
AKH – What is your name?
Answer – O-R-S-O-N
AKH – Do you have a family name?
Answer – YES
AKH – What is it?
Answer – W-E-L-L-E-S
AKH – Orson Welles - are you THE Orson Welles?
Answer – A-P-P-A-R-E-N-T-L-Y-I-A-M
AKH – Wow! You are one of my heroes.
Answer – H-O-W-S-A-T-I-S-F-Y-I-N-G-L-E-N-D-M-E-Y-O-U-R-A-R-M-A-N-D-I-L-L-S-I-G-N-Y-O-U-A-N-A-U-T-O-G-R-A-P-H
AKH – What’s it like on the other side?
Answer –I-H-A-V-E-T-H-E-T-E-R-R-I-B-L-E-F-E-E-L-I-N-G-T-H-A-T-B-E-C-A-U-S-E-I-A-M-W-E-A-R-I-N-G-A-W-H-I-T-E-B-E-A-R-D-A-N-D-A-M-S-I-T-T-I-N-G-I-N-T-H-E-B-A-C-K-O-F-T-H-E-T-H-E-A-T-R-E-Y-O-U-E-X-P-E-C-T-M-E-T-O-T-E-L-L-Y-O-U-T-H-E-T-R-U-T-H-A-B-O-U-T-S-O-M-E-T-H-I-N-G-T-H-E-S-E-A-R-E-T-H-E-C-H-E-A-P-S-E-AT-S-N-O-T-M-O-U-N-T-S-I-N-A-I
AKH – Sorry. No message then?
Answer – R-O-S-E-B-U-D
AKH – ‘Rosebud’? Citizen Kane ‘Rosebud’?
Answer – R-O-S-E-B-U-D
AKH – What does Rosebud mean?
Answer – F-A-K-E-I-S-A-S-O-L-D-A-S-T-H-E-E-D-E-N-T-R-E-E
AKH – And what does that mean?
Answer – O-L-O-R-O-S-O
AKH – Oloroso? Are you talking about the Sandeman’s ad? I thought you were great in that. I was only about six but I remember it vividly.
Answer – I-H-A-T-E-T-E-L-E-V-I-S-I-O-N-I-H-A-T-E-I-T-A-S-M-U-C-H-A-S-I-H-A-T-E-P-E-A-N-U-T-S-B-U-T-I-C-A-N-T-S-T-O-P-E-A-T-I-N-G-P-E-A-N-U-T-S
AKH - I don’t understand. What do you mean?
Answer – W-A-T-C-H-T-H-E-F-I-L-M-A-G-A-I-N
AKH –Which Film?
Answer – R-O-S-E-B-U-D
AKH – Kane again? But I’ve watched it at least twenty times!
Answer – T-H-E-M-A-R-K-E-T-J-U-S-T-C-L-O-S-E-D
AKH – Eh?
Answer – I-F-Y-O-U-W-A-N-T-A-H-A-P-P-Y-E-N-D-I-N-G-T-H-A-T-D-E-P-E-N-D-S-O-F-C-O-U-R-S-E-O-N-W-H-E-R-E-Y-O-U-S-T-O-P-Y-O-U-R-S-T-O-R-Y
AKH – Eh? And where did you stop your story?
Answer – W-E-A-R-E-B-O-R-N-A-L-O-N-E-W-E-L-I-V-E-A-L-O-N-E-W-E-D-I-E-A-L-O-N-E
AKH – Are you lonely?
Answer – N-O-B-O-D-Y-G-E-T-S-J-U-S-T-I-C-E-P-E-O-P-L-E-O-N-L-Y-G-E-T-G-O-O-D-L-U-C-K-O-R-B-A-D-L-U-C-K
AKH – And which did you get?
Answer - GOODBYE

And then the planchard stopped moving.

‘The market just closed’? I wonder what he meant, and what was all that about ‘fake being as old as the Eden tree’? Orson always did talk in riddles - managed to make the biggest nation in the world panic over a radio play about an alien invasion from Mars though. He sounded a bit low if you ask me - but then he was genius, pure genius! Goodbye Mr. Welles, I wonder if you’ll be back to talk in riddles with me again some time.

Now watch the great man. Two hours after this interview he was dead.