The game whose eerie allure will never be put to rest There has always been fierce argument about the authenticity of mediums. Can they really summon up the voices of the dead, or are they frauds, imposing on unhappy people? One of the most famous, or notorious, in the 19th century was Daniel Home. He so impressed Elizabeth Barrett Browning that her sceptical husband, Robert, angrily wrote a splendid satirical poem denouncing "Mr Sludge the Medium." The appalling death toll of the American Civil War gave a boost to spiritualism, as women, especially, sought to get in touch with dead sons, husbands or fiances. The 1914-18 war understandably had the same effect here. One of my grandmothers used to attend séances in the Thirties. Her husband hadn't been killed in the war - he died of pneumonia in 1907 - but, perhaps encouraged by friends who had been comforted by communicating with their war-dead, she sought him out. She had given up by the time I knew her, though whether because she had succeeded or failed, I don't know. Spiritualism attracted all sorts of people. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, though in most areas of life, a man of robust good sense, was a convinced believer in the spirit world and the reality of communion with the Dead. I doubt if Sherlock Holmes would have approved. Yet even sceptics have sometimes been disturbed by messages purporting to come from Beyond. There's a nice scene in The Acceptance World, third volume of Anthony Powell's A Dance to the Music of Time. A ouija board is produced to while away a wet Sunday afternoon. JG Quiggin, the Marxist critic and staunch materialist, pooh-poohs the whole thing. He is indignant when Karl Marx apparently "comes through," and accuses the narrator of manipulating the board. But later when a message seemingly comes from the novelist St John Clarke, whose secretary he is, he panics and returns to London in a hurry. There's actually a lot of spiritualism and other-worldly stuff in Powell's long novel. When asked why, he was rather vague about it, and merely said there was a good deal of it about. His own mother frequented séances, and I have never been sure just what Powell's attitude to these things was. Muriel Spark has a very creepy medium, Patrick Seton, in her novel "The Bachelors." He is basically a fraud, but he has moments at least when it seems, and he believes, that other voices do indeed speak through him. Some years before she wrote that novel, Muriel Spark had a breakdown in which she was assailed by hostile voices. People who have had such an experience may on recovery conclude that the voices come from their own sub-conscious; yet they may never be quite certain that they don't come from outside, even from the world of the Dead. Throughout history men and women have believed in ghosts, and, if ghosts are the spirits of the dead, why shouldn't they find the means to pass on messages from the after-life? If you have to be very credulous to suppose that the Dead may speak to you, either through a medium, or by way of tapping out messages on a board, you have to be a very sturdy materialist to be absolutely certain that there is nothing there, no communicable life beyond the grave. Nevertheless, whatever our views of eternity, sensible people are usually sceptical about these matters, and their scepticism can only be reinforced by the realisation that the ouija board came into being as a result of purely commercial enterprise. Moreover, the messages it purports to deliver rarely seem to amount to much. Margot Asquith, a devout Christian who had no time for Spiritualism, remarked that we all know the living often talk nonsense but it's nothing to the rot that the dead seem to speak. This seems like good sense to me. No doubt most of those who rush to buy ouija boards this Christmas will regard it as a harmless game which they won't take even half-seriously. But you never know. Strange things happen. There are, as Hamlet, with his experience of getting orders from his murdered father's ghost, told Horatio, "more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in your philosophy." As if Christmas with one's relatives weren't terrifying enough, Google is predicting that this year's best-selling gift will be an Ouija board. Move over Christmas afternoon Monopoly, henceforth it will be all ectoplasm and revolving heads. Personally, I will be bringing back my beloved grandmother, who once gave me a fur coat and diamond ring for Christmas, while telling the rest of the Betts womenfolk that they were "too fat" for them. The Ouija, also known as the talking or spirit board, is emblazoned with the letters of the alphabet, numbers 0-9, "yes," "no," "goodbye," plus assorted arcana. A heart-shaped instrument, the planchette, moves to indicate a spirit presence during séance activity; or rather it is moved, as participants" fingers are conveniently placed on it. Scientists refer to this as an "ideomotor response," whereby suggestions, beliefs or expectations cause unconscious muscular movements. Otherwise known as, everyone totally pushing it. Such devices were first deployed in China around 1100AD, similar methods of spirit communing practiced in ancient India, Greece, Rome and medieval Europe. In the late 19th Century, Ouijas took hold as a (rather odd) toy. The surge in spiritualism following the losses of the First World War fuelled the fire, and boards were readily available for generations - a colleague recalls them being on sale in Boots. This may explain why spirit boards were as essential a piece of kit at my Eighties secondary school as indoor shoes and navy gym knickers. Personally, atheistically, I never dabbled, but lunch hours weren't lunch hours without some member of my class frothing, levitating, or summoning the undead. For talking board dabbling was as essential a rite of passage as acne and love bites, pursued more ardently than the boys at the next-door school. Spookiness set in at 12 and did not depart until university, fuelled by hormones and Stephen King shockbusters. One particular episode stands out: heads intensely bowed over a board, the question: "Whooo is theeere?," letters spelled out. STANA?" puzzled the ghost busters, before someone twigged: "SATAN!" Our religious studies mistress had no idea why she was confronted by a group of hysterical neurotics hotly seeking exorcism come last lesson. Just say no, kids.