Supernatural Magazine

Confessions of a Paranormal Investigator 3

OK, so we’ve turned the lights off, everyone is quiet (sort of) and the Ouija board is set up on a small table in the middle of the room - let’s try and communicate with spirit! Now if they exist, there is presently no technology to actively talk to them (please don’t get me started on ghost boxes!) so a lot of people have to use good old fashioned methods to try and open dialogue with the disembodied folk from beyond.

Now, I’m always rather startled at the amount of information people receive during these vigils. On many investigations I have witnessed an astonishing amount of alleged spirit information coming through a board, glass or crystal such as names, dates, location, how they died, what they did in life, phone number, shoe size, hair colour, PIN number…I could go on but there’s limited column space!

So the question here is this – in these situations are people really contacted the deceased? An obscure ‘hit’ on an Ouija board could snowball into many supposed ‘hits’ as it escalates into a full blown conversation. Yes, you’ve proberly realised by now I’m not a big fan of Ouija but I’m not taking that away from people who regularly use them. Each to their own of course but as far as I see it, there is too much potential human error involved that dilutes (if any) the results.

Using a glass for divination also has the same problem. On a recent investigation I was invited to, a group of friends were huddled round a table ready to see what the glass had in store. During the course of this session we had one of the group’s grandmother come through who was protecting a chap in the team from some evil entity (how do they determine its evil?), there were a couple of people claiming to have mediumship abilities (everyone seems to be a medium these days?) saying a spirit fellow was following them around the location and we had the usual obligatory questions asked like ‘push the glass to who you want to talk to’, ‘do you want us to leave?’ and the classic ‘do you intend as any harm?’ (yawn!) in which the alleged spirits happily played ball. What was interesting however was on the next vigil in the same location but with another group – the glass didn’t move an inch!

So there are a couple of things that could have happened here. Either a) when the first group left after a lot of chat, spirit became bored and popped off for a brew or b) the first group were not talking to spirit at all but their own imagination got carried away. Now if the second group also produced results then there maybe something to go on but even then, you can’t dismiss the possibility of sub-conscious movement of the glass or even someone (dare I say it) purposely affecting the outcome? So as we are still limited by our knowledge and execution of communication with the ‘other world’, these tried and tested procedures are here to stay or at least for the foreseeable future.

You can purchase Marq’s Book Below

Marq English

Marq English

Marq is a filmmaker and actor and over the years has directed an assortment of short films and documentaries with some having been broadcast on television Marq is also the founder of The Sutton Film Festival, which was established in 2002 to showcase short films from new and established directors.

Marq is the author of the book Paranormal Surrey (2011) published by Ambleley Books and has written for various publications including Paranormal Magazine and Ghost Voices Magazine. He has been invited to discuss his views on the unexplained for many radio shows including White Noise Radio, Now That’s Weird, UKPN Radio and BBC Radio. He was also the paranormal advisor on the Quay FM Radio show Tuning In back in 2008.