According to recent reports, 28 teen girls in Colombia have been rushed to the hospital after playing with an Ouija board.
What exactly are Ouija boards and why would one trigger anxiety and loss of consciousness in teens?
What happened in Colombia?
Reports citing information from Jam Press said that the teens were admitted to the hospital with signs of fainting and anxiety. School staff accompanied them to the hospital.
“The school is waiting for the medical reports before providing an update on the incident,” said a report from KLUV. “Many parents believe the children have been using Ouija boards in class.”
“I work here in a hospital kiosk and every day I see three or four children arrive after fainting,” said one mother quoted in the reports.
“Parents, you have to move, investigate what’s happening at school, because our children cannot continue in this situation. Our children always have a good breakfast and it cannot be said that what’s happening is due to lack of food.”
Per the reports, local authorities had not confirmed whether there was an investigation into the incidents.
What are Ouija boards?
A research article provided by the Library of Congress explained that the Ouija board was created for supernatural communication in 1890 and was first manufactured in the U.S. The article describes it as “a board printed with letters and numbers that uses a sliding pointer to spell out messages in a mysterious way.”
From the time the Ouija boards first appeared, “newspapers reported on its use as a way to communicate with the dead, predict catastrophes, solve mysteries, even commit crimes,” and its popularity grew in the Wake of World War I,” said the article.
“While some see it as a harmless parlour game, others swear by the board’s ability to communicate with those who have passed to the “other side,” said The Conversation. According to the outlet, “science suggests that ghosts aren’t behind the board’s mysterious movements.”
How do Ouija boards work?
“One possible answer is the ideomotor effect,” said The Conversation.
“The term ideomotor stems from ideo (an idea) and motor (muscular activity), suggesting our movements can be driven by our thoughts. The ideomotor effect refers to movements people make that they’re unaware of – referred to as a subconscious movement. So when using a Ouija board for example, a person may subconsciously move the planchette, spelling out things only they could know.”
A 2018 study published in the Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences journal also found that “Ouija board sessions are illustrious examples of how subjective feelings of control – the Sense of Agency (SoA) - can be manipulated in real life settings.”
Researchers conducted a field experiment at a paranormal conference where Ouija board fans were equipped with eye trackers while using the boards. Results from the experiment “suggest that meaningful responses from the Ouija board may be an emergent property of interacting and predicting minds that increasingly impose structure on initially random events in Ouija sessions.”
Could Ouija boards be dangerous?
While science doesn’t back up the notion that spirits are communicating through the Ouija board, Vox noted that “there’s a long tradition of people believing that Ouija boards are dangerous occult gateways that can lead to demon possession or worse.” They have also been the subject of horror movies, such as 2014’s “Ouija”.
If one person in a group has anxiety about something, it can be contagious, according to an article in The Harvard Business Review.
“Uncertainty can be compared to a virus itself, one that is only adding fuel to the anxious fires burning in many of us,” said author Jud Brewer. “This is because uncertainty triggers the fear centers in our brains.
Knowing how this process works, however, can help us take proper countermeasures and develop better mental hygiene.”
However, when fear, uncertainty and anxiety are “spread by social contagion – defined as the spread of affect from one person to another – it can lead to something even more problematic: panic,” he explained. Just like walking into a party and suddenly feeling like you’re in a ‘social mood’ when you hadn’t been moments before, fear and anxiety are two emotions that spread easily from one person to another.
Brewer offers tips for staying calm and not getting wrapped up in socially contagious panic, such as practicing mindfulness techniques.
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