As Catholics, it’s crucial to acknowledge the incredible danger that comes with engaging in occult activities like the Ouija board. In recent times, the Ouija board has surged in popularity, especially among younger demographics. Even virtual versions are now readily accessible.
These platforms primarily target teenagers and young adults, observable in the marketing on online marketplaces like Amazon, which display options ranging from cat-themed to Stranger-Things-themed boards, along with various colors and glow-in-the-dark versions. Moreover, their affordability, with many priced at under twenty dollars, makes them even more accessible.
Ouija boards are used to contact spirits, particularly by individuals who have experienced loss and believe they can communicate with the departed through what they perceive as an innocent game.
Remarkably, there exists a Ouija board labeled the “Holy Spirit Board” on Amazon, which is advertised as a Christian game. According to exorcist Father Ernesto Caro, who was interviewed on EWTN News Nightly, the game is a “trap from the devil,” despite its use of Christian imagery. The designers of the game are using deception in an attempt to convince Christians that they are speaking with God, when in fact the board is demonic.
As Catholics, it is imperative to recognize that the spirit board is not innocuous entertainment; rather, it poses genuine dangers, potentially leading to serious consequences, even death, for those unwittingly granting permission for demons to enter through the opened portal. Those engaging with the Ouija board are not connecting with deceased loved ones or God, but rather with deceiving demons impersonating them. Ultimately, the truth unravels because demons cannot indefinitely conceal their malevolent nature. Love does not exist in hell.
According to The Catechism of the Catholic Church:
All forms of divination are to be rejected: recourse to Satan or demons, conjuring up the dead or other practices falsely supposed to “unveil” the future. Consulting horoscopes, astrology, palm reading, interpretation of omens and lots, the phenomena of clairvoyance, and recourse to mediums all conceal a desire for power over time, history, and, in the last analysis, other human beings, as well as a wish to conciliate hidden powers. They contradict the honor, respect, and loving fear that we owe to God alone. (2116)
In 2003, the Vatican issued a publication regarding the New Age phenomenon entitled “Jesus Christ the Bearer of the Water of Life: A Christian Reflection on the ‘New Age.’” This document critiques the New Age movement and particularly cautions against occult activities, deeming them incompatible with Christian beliefs. It discusses the notion of the Age of Aquarius supplanting the Christian era and references Luke 16:13, “No servant can be the slave of two masters: he will either hate the first and love the second, or treat the first with respect and the second with scorn.”
One cannot simultaneously embrace Catholicism and take part in the New Age movement, as the latter often advocates for reliance on alternative practices such as magic, diverting individuals from placing their trust in Christ. How can one claim to follow Christ while engaging in behaviors fundamentally opposed to the teachings of the Church and the writings of Sacred Scripture, which are inspired by the Holy Spirit?
When teenagers and young adults resort to the Ouija board in search of supernatural answers, they jeopardize their faith in God. Instead of turning to Him in prayer, they seek guidance from spirits, placing their trust in entities other than God for answers to their questions. Christ ceases to be their central focus, potentially leading to a weakening and eventual loss of faith in the one true God.
The use of the Ouija board can result in detrimental physical and psychological consequences. There have been reports of nausea, vomiting, dizziness, and headaches by those who sought to communicate with spirits. The author of the novel, The Exorcist, William Peter Blatty, was interviewed by Ray Connelly in 1972 on the Evening Standard, and reported supernatural occurrences as he was writing the last chapter of his book after using the Ouija board. He stated:
Well, I don’t want to sound like a nut, but as I was writing the last chapter and the epilogue, I did have a series of bizarre experiences. For the first time in my life, I got hung up on a Ouija board for 10 days.
I’d never done it before, but I found I couldn’t leave it alone. And I had the most definite feeling that I was communicating with the dead. Yes, I agree an awful lot of it could be auto-suggestion, and I knew all about how Ouija boards worked because I’d researched it so much for the book, but there were certain things which are not susceptible to explanation by the subconscious mind.
Connelly notes that Blatty paused for a long moment and then continued with the following:
…But then there were poltergeist experiences. Doing revisions of the book at a friend’s house, the telephone rang and suddenly the receiver leapt off the hook. It happened to him first and then to me. So I asked a friend who did the acoustics for the Kennedy Centre what the possibilities were electrically, and he said it was impossible. Then telephone engineers in two states confirmed that it was impossible. But we both saw it happen. That was the culmination of several incidents, but it was the one that in no way could be explained.
Blatty’s novel and eventually the movie, The Exorcist, directed by William Friedkin, was based on the real-life exorcism of the 14-year old, Ronald Edwin Hunkeler, now an engineer for NASA. Isabel Vincent and Jack Morphet in their New York Post article, “What Really Happened to Ronald Hunkeler, who inspired ‘The Exorcist’” report that, according to his mother, Hunkeler appears to have become demonically possessed as a result of using the Spirit Board, which was first introduced to him by his recently deceased aunt who had been a spiritualist. There were more than twenty exorcisms performed on the teenager over the course of several months, as reported by the Jesuit priest, Father William Bowdern, in his diary of the “Case Study by Jesuit Priests,” which is published online by Sensus Fidelium. Bowdern details the injury the demons inflicted on the boy and the abhorrence and violence they demonstrated in the presence of the Holy Eucharist.
Although demonic possession is not an everyday occurrence, it is real, and the possible consequences are severe. It is not worth the risk of enduring such torment and violence by the Prince of Darkness, all for the sake of simply “playing a game.” Why risk opening the gateway to the demonic, giving Satan permission to harm us, and losing our soul to the evil one?
Photo by Stefano Pollio on Unsplash
