Well...they were very interesting...the past lives comments I mean. From the idea of a parallel universe and quantum physics, to the real cause of a sense of déjà vu, to being able to foresee certain events...
Don't misunderstand me...you do always leave comments I really enjoy reading...but sometimes an article triggers off your own memories or thoughts in the way that others don't...
The Victorians...those who planted dinosaurs all over the place and covered their table legs up with chenille...those people...they were heavily into séances and Ouija boards. Desperate to contact their dearly departed they'd sit in darkened rooms holding hands, while spirit guides popped up out of the ether and said Granny sent her love and was watching over the family and knows full well you tore her best lace tablecloth...
The charlatans, who made a tidy living from conducting such séances, had all manner of tricks of the trade up their sleeves to create a suitable atmosphere...one being tiny grains of gunpowder to be lit by a hidden assistant...the sudden pop and whiff of smoke striking alarm into the bosoms of the matronly ladies.
For unknown reasons, the spirit guides were generally American Indians...perhaps their names sounded suitably
strange...though quite why a North American Indian would be interested in chatting to your Granny about her lace table cloth will have to remain a mystery.
The late Victorian period was the heyday for séances using a Ouija board ...it'll be here my own personal prejudices come to the fore.
You'll probably all know already, but for those who might not do so...you need a board of anything...could be cardboard. Then you write all the letters of the alphabet round the perimeter of the board with a 'yes' and a 'no' somewhere near the middle. Then you need an ordinary glass tumbler.
The Victorians used ornate and decorated circular boards which I think can still be bought on the dark side of the internet...shops have either discarded theirs or never stocked them in the first place...Head-Shops might have some under the counter I suppose.
Gather half a dozen friends together and sit around the table...each person with a fingertip resting lightly on the up turned glass...then ask questions...
The glass moves...of its own violation. Maybe it'll travel quite slowly at first...for the silly questions. Then it'll get faster and faster and faster...dashing from one letter to another spelling out...it spells out words you'd rather not hear...phrases which cut too close to the truth.
Probably one of the most dangerous 'games' to have ever been played, the Ouija has driven non-believers to the refuge of the local Church...has required the services of the priest and has caused many to seek help from other agencies.
Perhaps the term 'conjuring up demons' is too strong a description, I can only go my own experience...an icy cold all over the room...we were actually shivering and our arms were covered in gooseflesh, despite it being high summer...an appalling and overwhelming feeling of total and utter dread. You see...we'd stopped asking questions of the board when we first felt uneasy...but the glass tumbler carried on without us...spelling out obscene phrases and the terrible ends to our comfortable lives...
It was as though we were caught in some form of spell from which we were quite unable to escape...sitting there round that blasted table while the glass moved rapidly from one letter to another and we had our hands in our laps.
Martin it was who broke it...he leapt to his feet and swept the letters and the board and the tumbler onto the floor...
I can't even begin to explain that evening...always the cynic, always the one who looks for a logical explanation to every mystery, when I catch a glimpse of small brown feet dancing in the moonlight I view that as a pleasurable trait I have of seeing into another world which has long gone...
Connecting...however briefly...to a hitherto unseen time of evil...there is no other word to describe it...that is something I'd wish upon no-one at all nor have I ever been able to explain how it was, that a piece of card torn from a box and a glass from the kitchen shelf could reduce the group of us to quivering wrecks.
x 
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