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April 6, 2025 13 mins

Guest host Rich Berra and ouija board expert Karen A. Dahlman discuss the history of talking boards. 

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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Now here's a highlight from coast to coast am on iHeartRadio.

Speaker 2 (00:04):
Can somebody do the Ouiji board by themselves?

Speaker 3 (00:07):
Yeah, you can. Here's an interesting fact about me.

Speaker 4 (00:11):
I always thought you need to use it with a
partner for thirty nine years, the first thirty nine years
of using this board, because on the back of my
box when I got my board in nineteen seventy three,
it said use it with a partner, preferably male female.

Speaker 3 (00:28):
So I'm going to.

Speaker 4 (00:28):
Enlist my younger brother to do the board with me
all the time. And then I started working just with
my women friends, girlfriends and stuff, and then the guys
or whoever. But I thought that that's what was needed
because it works so well for me when I did
use it with another person. But on the thirty ninth year,
I thought, why am I not using this board by myself?

Speaker 3 (00:46):
Let me try it.

Speaker 4 (00:47):
And I had some friends who told me they could
do it without another person. So I started doing that,
and I can use the board by myself.

Speaker 3 (00:54):
I have good experiences.

Speaker 4 (00:56):
Still, I would say the messages don't tend to be
as verbose or or maybe I get paragraphs. I get
pages and pages Before the plan chet stops.

Speaker 3 (01:05):
But when I do by myself, it.

Speaker 4 (01:06):
Tends to be a little more direct and I might
get maybe just a paragraph. So I'm just a sentencer too,
and of course I'll have another question or comment and
more messages will come through. But it just works differently
for me. So yeah, you can learn to use it alone.
And I will say this. People write to me all
the time and tell me I can't get this device
to work. It doesn't always work so quickly, not saying

(01:29):
it can't. It worked well for me right out of
the box, but it doesn't do that for everybody. And
I find when people use it by themselves, it's more
of a learning curve because you have to learn to
since that real subtle sensation of the planchet wanting to move.
It's like a polling sensation, so subtle that you might
miss it if you're thinking too much about it. And

(01:51):
people who do the board by themselves tend to think, oh,
I'm pushing it.

Speaker 3 (01:55):
It's hard.

Speaker 4 (01:56):
I always say, start with the partner, learn what that
feeling feels like, and then translate it to you trying
it by yourself.

Speaker 3 (02:02):
So yes, it can be done.

Speaker 2 (02:04):
If you're doing it by yourself. I heard you mentioned
automatic writing. There's pages and pages. Wouldn't it be a
quicker means to an end for somebody like you just
have a yellow pad and a pen and just go
just kind of I do that too.

Speaker 4 (02:16):
I do that too, or I direct channel now, which
is my voice and hearing the words come through.

Speaker 3 (02:21):
This helped me.

Speaker 4 (02:22):
Using the tool really helped me understand that I was
The tool works because I work. Has nothing to do
with the tool itself. It's just a tool device and
inanimate object. It works because I work because I already
had the abilities to channel. I already was seen to
seize people and spirit beings and all kinds of interesting
lights and stuff that many people didn't see that were there.

Speaker 3 (02:44):
I already have these abilities and just allowed me to
fine tune them and hone them in. Or then it
allowed me.

Speaker 4 (02:50):
To go step further and be off the board and
still channel. So yeah, it's it allows you, it can
help you learn to channel. In fact, there's some famous
people out there who have used the board throughout since
since his inception back in the late eighteen hundreds.

Speaker 3 (03:06):
To you used it to write.

Speaker 4 (03:08):
Incredible novels or plays or poetic stories and all kinds.

Speaker 3 (03:15):
Of interesting information started.

Speaker 4 (03:17):
They might have started movements, spiritual movements, or even the
AA movement. Bill Wilson who started the AA Tenants of movement,
he actually used the leision board to channel those tenants. Oh,
I can tell you all kinds of many famous people
who have used this tool over the years, and they
used it for like either.

Speaker 3 (03:34):
Inspiration artistic artistic endeavors such as writing.

Speaker 4 (03:39):
They use it to create award winning novels. Jack Harron
was a work of art written by Emily Grant Grant.

Speaker 3 (03:48):
Hutchins Hutchings who she said she.

Speaker 4 (03:50):
Channeled Mark Twain and channeled to write that book. And
people say, well, that's that's horrible work. If that's Mark Twain,
eas these do terrible in the laughter life.

Speaker 3 (04:01):
But she was kind of made fun of.

Speaker 4 (04:02):
And some people may know about Pearl Curran who channeled
Patience Worth, who was a seventeenth century woman who's spoken
an old dialect, an old English dialect that this woman
only had an eighth grade education. She never even would
have heard this dialect before. But she went on to channel
her for many many years, twenty five years. She worked
with her and brought forth all kinds of short stories, poems,

(04:25):
and books that won acclades. I mean, the list goes
on and on, But you can use this tool to
even inspire yourself, be creative, to get gain insight wisdom
into yourself, your life, or and or to communicate with
your loved ones. You can explore I call it exploring
the consciousness of the universe. You can explore with this tool,
and it just helps you get to a place where

(04:46):
you can springboard off of that, as many of these
people did, such as Jane Roberts, who channeled the whole
Seth material. She started on a waged board when she
met Seth and about three months later got off the
board and started channel in him directly.

Speaker 2 (05:01):
This is some kind of crazy interviews to watch over
the years.

Speaker 4 (05:04):
Right now, you've seen him right the old Black Line
wasn't great to watch, and you can see her speaker
language changes the way she talks and she's channeling stuff directly.

Speaker 3 (05:11):
But she learned and met him on a wisul board.
So the list goes on and on how you can use.

Speaker 4 (05:16):
This tool, and you can use it just like I said,
to do self improvement kinds of things like if you
talk to your higher self, you're inner self, you get
good insight.

Speaker 2 (05:24):
I wonder what's going on here in America in the
late eighteen hundreds where that in seances and just magic
shows like Houdini and that that sort of culture seemed
to be really captivating for Americans. The ghost stories that
all that stuff sort of kind of just really popped
up in the eighteen eighties or so. What do you

(05:44):
think was happening there?

Speaker 4 (05:46):
Yeah, well, actually it's about eighteen forty eight, and we
have to talk about the Fox Sisters out of Hydesville,
New York. And they were in contact, supposedly with a
dead peddler who was buried under their cabin and they
would wrapping in knocking sounds as they pointed to alphabets
or they went through the off bed and called out
the letters and they would spell out messages, and they

(06:08):
became an overnight sensation. The Three Scissors went on to
basically start the modern spiritualist movement.

Speaker 3 (06:15):
And so having different.

Speaker 4 (06:17):
Devices they were pointing at letters or wrapping and make
knocking sounds. That's kind of what starts this whole interest
in spiritualism and actually births of spiritual movement here in
the United States, while overseas, let's go to France, they
had a movement called spiritism. Alan Kardik is a big
name that maybe people have heard, but they were experimenting

(06:38):
with table tipping and automatic writing and this little plant
sheet which is French for the word little table that
would move around, and so you start seeing this movement.
Happened about eighteen forty eight, eighteen fifty, mid eighteen hundreds,
and it went on from there. Now you have to
think what was going on in the United States around
that time. We several well about a decade later, we

(07:00):
get into the Civil War, and so people are losing
great mass carnage, losing their family members. They also want
to reach out, so they're going to spiritualists. They're going
to these people that could have been snake oil and
bringing in the spirits and some of the you know,
the trickery, the trickery they were doing at these events.

(07:21):
And then there were some people that were not. There's
some really incredible psychic mediums that were developed or came
out in that era really helping people and went on
stage and gave great shows and stuff.

Speaker 3 (07:33):
So it was a neat time to.

Speaker 4 (07:35):
Really explore what happens when you die. It was more
based on the decease really, and then you've got to
look at their nineteen twenties, nineteen thirties and forties when
pretty much everybody had one of these tools and their
parlors because we just went through two great wars and
again mass carnage, losing your loved ones and wanting to

(07:56):
have an ability.

Speaker 3 (07:57):
To maybe communicate with them one last time.

Speaker 4 (08:00):
And there was even a group of people named the Finleys,
Joan and Darby Finley, who were using Luigia board, and
this is in nineteen sixteen. They began communicating with this
young American soldier who had died in France on Christmas
morning in nineteen fifteen. Now they had a really interesting,
fascinating communication with the soldier. His name is Steven, and

(08:22):
he went on and talked to him about the other
side and life after death and his experiences. And they
published book in nineteen twenty called Our Unseen Guest, So
they were already starting to do this work, and many
other people were doing this as well. But that's a
you could probably find that on line, Our Unseen Guest
and read about it, because that's a really fascinating story

(08:43):
in itself. So people were trying to reach out and
have that last connection with maybe their loved ones.

Speaker 2 (08:49):
What do you think in your travels, we would be
most surprised to hear about what you've learned or picked
up about the afterlife itself.

Speaker 3 (08:59):
Well, let me share a little story with you, if
I may.

Speaker 4 (09:02):
That happened in the mid eighties, actually early eighties, it
was eighty two to be exact, when I was in college,
and this kind of helps explain it.

Speaker 3 (09:11):
So I was using the board a lot with a
lot of my story.

Speaker 4 (09:14):
Sisters college friends, and I brought it to college with
me and I said we're going to use the Ouija board,
and they're like, okay, whatever. But I had a few
friends who could use it really well, and so we
started exploring the afterlife and talking to beans that were deceased,
people that some of our friends knew that had died earlier.
And I got such incredible information, that private information that

(09:38):
I would share with people that they knew and said,
there's no way you could have known that.

Speaker 3 (09:42):
What are you doing? How did you get this?

Speaker 4 (09:43):
And I said, well, I'm getting it from your friend
who's now deceased, who has these stories to tell. And
they were kind of raunchy stories. They were telling they
were spilling the beans on like things they were doing
at the university, at the fraternity house or something. So
it was they couldn't deny those stories. So I said
to one of my friends, who we did the board
really well together, I said, let's blindfold ourself. Let's take

(10:07):
out the element of being able to see, and let's
just put our fingers on the plant sheet and let
somebody else write whatever letters are coming through, and let's
just see what happens. I knew it was working so
well that a lot of times I did close my
eyes and somebody else would write.

Speaker 3 (10:22):
So we did that.

Speaker 4 (10:23):
We blindfolded ourselves, and we had an audience of about
eight different girls sitting around us, and they're like, what
are you doing? They were curious, they weren't sure, some
were afraid, others were like, this is exciting.

Speaker 3 (10:33):
So my friend and I blindfolded.

Speaker 4 (10:35):
Ourselves, sat down cross legged with the board across our laps,
put our hands on the plant chet. We're blindfolded now,
could not see. I had another gal sit there and
take dictation as it stopped on the letters. Well, that
plantchet started going. We're super fast moving around that board, fast, fast, fast, fast,
fast that it stops, and as it stops, I hear

(10:57):
somebody crying. I take my blindfold off and I said,
are you okay. She's like, yes, yes. I kind of
got some of the words that it was saying, and
I asked the gal who was right, and I said.

Speaker 3 (11:06):
Would you please read what you just what you just wrote?
And so here it is. This is it. I capt
these these.

Speaker 4 (11:13):
I keep copious notes on every session I had, and
I started doing that in the eighties, So this is
exactly what it said.

Speaker 3 (11:21):
He said, Hello, Leyla, this is your sister. I am fine.
Tell mom and dad that I am fine. So is
my boyfriend. We love you all. We are still with you.
We felt no pain and died on impact.

Speaker 4 (11:36):
The only pain we ever felt was the pain the
family felt and expressed at our funerals. We are at
peace and feel love. Please do not be concerned about
us anymore. Know that we love you and will always
be with you.

Speaker 3 (11:52):
We will be with you again. I love you all.

Speaker 4 (11:56):
At that moment of that message, I didn't know it,
but one of the gals in there who started crying
had a dead sister who just died a few years earlier.
I had no idea. In fact, only one of the
persons in the room knew that.

Speaker 3 (12:08):
The rest of us did not know that.

Speaker 4 (12:11):
And I learned that how close and how delicate that
that I'll call it, the veil between life people in
this dimension and people that are living on and the
other dimensions.

Speaker 3 (12:22):
Is so so narrow. It's right there, and they're.

Speaker 2 (12:25):
Wonderfully it's so hard for us, us muggles to see that.

Speaker 4 (12:31):
Well, I think it's it's a good it's a good
thing we can't because we're here to focus on our
life here and now, and we're so focused on those
who left us. We might be living in the past
or what could have been, should have been, in the
sadness which we do have grief, and that's that's really
a true testament.

Speaker 3 (12:46):
To how much we loved and how much they loved us.
That level of that grief, that's.

Speaker 4 (12:51):
A necessary thing to go through when you lose someone
like this or even a pet, you know.

Speaker 3 (12:55):
But the thing is, if.

Speaker 4 (12:56):
We're so caught up in all these lives we lived before,
or all the people the players in our life that
we loved, it's like we wouldn't be able to move.

Speaker 3 (13:03):
Forward in our life.

Speaker 4 (13:04):
We're really here as like an evolutionary school to learn
and to grow.

Speaker 3 (13:09):
Same on the other side.

Speaker 4 (13:11):
And I also when I talk to some of these
people who have moved on, they will they will say
that they're here for a time, and often they're saying
we're I'm ready or we're ready to move on because
we want to not interfere with the life of that person.
And so this girl's sister was trying to say, like
this dead sister when I first started this tool in

(13:31):
seventy three, was going to be around that family and
be there when they crossed over.

Speaker 1 (13:38):
Listen to more Coast to Coast AM every weeknight at
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