Questions to Ask the Ouija Board
Questions for a Ouija session, ordered from simple yes or no openers through to closing the board, with notes on which answers can be checked afterwards and which tell you more about the people at the table.
The questions
Open any question for the note
Is anyone here with us tonight?
Why ask it
A board can only answer yes or no until someone starts calling letters, so open with something the planchette can answer in one move. If it slides fast and confidently on the very first ask, that usually says more about how hard the group is pressing than about the room.
Are you willing to talk with us?
Why ask it
Asking permission gives the living an exit as much as the dead. Agree beforehand that a no here ends the session, so that nobody has to argue about stopping while other people are enjoying themselves.
What is your name?
Why ask it
The first spelled answer sets the pace for the night. Names that arrive as clean, familiar spellings tend to come from whoever at the table is reading ahead; slow, oddly spelled answers are the ones worth writing down.
How old were you?
Why ask it
Numbers are the easiest thing for a board to produce and the easiest thing for you to record, which makes this the place to test consistency. Ask it again twenty minutes later and see whether the number holds.
What year did you die?
Why ask it
Pairs with the age question. Two numbers that cannot both be true are the clearest sign the answers are coming from the table, and if they do line up you have a date range you can look up later.
Did you ever live in this house?
Why ask it
One of the few answers you can check afterwards against deeds, census records, or a neighbour's memory. Sessions built only on unfalsifiable questions can never be wrong, which is also why they never tell you anything.
Where did you live before that?
Why ask it
Place names spell out slowly and awkwardly, and that awkwardness is useful: a long hesitant answer is much harder for one person to steer than a single letter.
What did you do for work?
Why ask it
An occupation is concrete enough to picture and specific enough to research. When the answer comes back as an abstraction rather than a trade, the board has usually run out of anything to say.
Who did you leave behind?
Why ask it
Names of the living stall a board more often than dates do. Write down the exact letters before anyone interprets them, because half-spelled names are the ones people later insist matched someone they knew.
Is there someone at this table you came for?
Why ask it
Turns a vague session into a specific one, and shows fast whether the group has quietly decided in advance whose grief the evening is about. Watch who looks up.
Do you have a message for that person?
Why ask it
This is where a session stops being a game for somebody. Agree in advance that whoever receives a message can end the evening, because this is the question that tends to make people cry.
Is anyone with you now?
Why ask it
Tests whether the group can hold a single thread. If a new character arrives every time attention drifts, the conversation is fragmenting rather than deepening, and that is usually the moment to stop.
Is there something you are still waiting for?
Why ask it
Open enough to produce something unexpected, narrow enough that the board is not being asked for a paragraph. One-word replies like peace or time are where most sessions quietly stall.
What do you miss?
Why ask it
One of the few questions where a single word still feels like a full answer, which is why it produces the moments people remember. Treat it as a temperature check on the table as much as a question to the board.
Is there anything you want us to do?
Why ask it
Worth asking and worth handling carefully, because the answers people act on afterwards, visiting a grave or ringing a relative, are the part of the evening that lasts. Promise nothing at the table.
Are we asking the wrong questions?
Why ask it
Gives the group permission to change direction instead of grinding through a list. It is often the most honest moment of the night, because someone usually admits out loud that they are bored or uneasy.
Is there a question you want us to ask?
Why ask it
Hands over control, which exposes how much the group has been steering. A long silence here, after twenty minutes of fluent replies, is worth noticing.
Do you want us to stop?
Why ask it
The consent question again, later, when the mood has changed. If anyone at the table is hoping for a no so the evening can continue, that is your signal to end it regardless of what the planchette does.
Is there anything else before we close?
Why ask it
Ordinary courtesy, and practically useful: it lets whoever has been sitting on a question raise it now rather than remembering it at two in the morning.
Are you ready for us to say goodbye?
Why ask it
Closing deliberately matters mostly for the people in the room. An agreed final word, with everyone lifting their hands together, gives the evening a boundary so it does not follow anyone upstairs.
Running a Ouija session well
Practical guidance for the conversation itself
Settle four things before anyone touches the board
Agree who can end it
Decide out loud that any one person can stop the session and nobody argues. Most bad Ouija evenings are bad because someone wanted to stop and felt outnumbered.
Appoint a scribe
One person stays off the planchette and writes down letters exactly as they come, with no guessing at words. You cannot transcribe and play at the same time, and unedited letters are the only record worth keeping.
Set a finish time
An hour is plenty. Sessions that run late get looser, the answers get longer and vaguer, and people are more easily unsettled after midnight than before it.
Decide who sits this one out
Someone recently bereaved, someone very drunk, or a child who has been talked into it will not have a good night. Let them watch or leave rather than putting a hand on the planchette.
While the board is open
Ask one question, then wait
Stacked questions produce answers nobody can attribute. Say the question, let it sit, and resist filling the silence with a second version of it.
Keep questions answerable
Yes or no, a number, or a short name. A board is a poor instrument for anything longer, and asking for explanations is what turns a session into the group writing sentences together.
Avoid questions someone at the table can answer
If one person already knows the name of the previous owner of the house, that name will arrive. Save the checkable questions for facts nobody present has ever looked up.
Read letters, do not guess words
Call each letter aloud as the planchette lands and leave the interpreting until afterwards. Guessing mid-word is how the group finishes the sentence for itself.
What usually goes wrong
Leading questions
Asking whether the child in the attic is unhappy tells the board there was a child and an attic. Once you have supplied the story, everything that follows will confirm it.
One person narrating the meaning
There is usually someone who explains what each answer signifies. Their reading becomes the group's memory of the evening, which is worth naming before it happens.
Treating advice as instruction
People do act on what a board says: they ring estranged relatives, they change plans, they take a warning to heart. Decide in advance that nothing here becomes a decision until the morning.
Pushing past discomfort
The point where someone goes quiet or asks to slow down is the point to close the board. Curiosity is not worth a friend's bad week.
Why the planchette moves
Small unconscious muscle movements, known as the ideomotor effect, will move a light object under several pairs of hands without anyone feeling that they are pushing. Knowing this does not spoil the evening, and it explains the two things people notice most: that answers reflect what someone at the table already knows, and that the board goes quiet when nobody has an idea of what should come next.