In communication with the spirits

CHENNAI: In the beginning, I could feel a breeze of cold wind brush against me when we called out to ‘It’. This made me feel its presence among us. And when we said goodbye, all I felt was  another cool breeze, though we all were sweating inside. And it wasn’t just me that night;  eight of my other friends felt what I did.The ouija board, a device that is used to communicate with spirits during a seance and is often treated as a game by many, has received mixed reactions from people. While some doubt its efficacy and believe that contacting the dead is a scientific impossibility, others find it to be a traumatic, often leaving scars that last a lifetime.Meykandan Krishnan, an IT professional, is a non-believer, though he has seen people badly affected after playing the game. “After we played it, one of my friends was very disturbed,” he says. “He had lost his father a year ago and now he believes his mother is possessed by his father, and the reason is because someone from the family had disturbed the unknown. I don’t believe it, though.”There are others, however, who claim that the game works. “I saw it and felt it myself!” says Nihal, for whom the entire experience was rather frightening. “I thought it was just another game; I didn’t realise the horrible sense of fear it was going to haunt me with. I couldn’t bear the sight of my mother trying to kill herself, and speaking in my dad’s voice.” He feels that his house has stopped being at peace ever since that night, and wouldn’t advise anyone to try the game even for fun. “Things have changed a lot since then and to make things more worse, my house is just behind a cremation ground.” While most find the thought of bringing back the dead most frightening, the curiosity that plagues them about life after death leads them to play this game. “I was just a mute spectator there and it was rather fun,” says Ben Verghese, an engineer. “The spirit seemed to be quite young and hep! He kept saying ‘no prob’ ‘hey’ and ‘chill.’ One of my friends asked for my bike number, and while it was answering, I was saying it to myself and it kept moving around the alphabet. When I stopped, it stopped too. I  felt the spirit could read my mind or something. I don’t know if there is a scientific explanation, but it was a creepy experience.”Vyjyanthi Krishnamurthy, a concerned mother, says, “Beliefs about playing such games should never be encouraged; contact with other dimensions can be dangerous, especially to those who are not psychically strong.”  She also feels that children of today do not think about the consequences of their actions until it’s too late. “They think it’s  ‘cool’ to be in such dangerous situations.”Vandana Manoj, a psychologist, says the Ouija board was a tool for communication with the unknown 100 years ago. “For most people, it is a convincing example of ideomotor actions or rather an unconscious movement which results in something, but the public doesn’t seem to buy that,” she says. She knows many who are in mental homes after having been affected deeply by the experience, and recommends that people refrain from playing it if they want to keep their sanity intact.Whether their experience was frightening or funny, everyone who’s played the game has one thing to say: “Do not get involved’’. Experiencing the supernatural is something not everyone can handle, and the Ouija board is not be played for fun. It has the potential to leave one mentally disturbed. Trying the game for pleasure would be like taking a swig out of a bottle labelled Deadly Poison.