So I tried a Ouija Board for the first time a few nights ago. A friend brought it over, so we turned off all the lights, spread the board out on my living floor, lit some candles and some suspicious-smelling "incense," and gave it a go.

It didn't take long before the pointer-thingie (OK, it's called a "planchette") started moving around. I sure wasn't moving it. I barely touched it at all, and there were times that I thought it would slip out from under my fingertips. My friend swears up and down that she wasn't moving it either, and that, like me, she just had a feather-light touch on it.

We asked a few "yes" or "no" questions, which the board seemed to answer easily enough, to the point that it really felt like it could understand us. But any time the planchette moved to the letters to spell something out, all we got was gibberish. We tried sticking to yes-no questions, but it was like playing an especially frustrating game of 20 questions.

So if all this didn't make for a weird enough evening, it all took an even more bizarre turn. At one point, my friend asked a question, and the planchette moved to the "L" and then the "A" then the "L" then the "A" and so on. Just back and forth, L-A-L-A-L-A-L-A-L-A. It did this every time we asked a question. We kept trying to guess what it was saying. "Are you singing?" "Is this about Los Angeles?" "Is this about someone named Al?" All we got for our troubles was L-A-L-A-L-A-L-A-L-A.

And that was it. My big supernatural experience. My friend assures me that it's not always gibberish, and that sometimes the board offers genuine messages and helpful advice. We'll see.

(What does any of this have to with movies and/or DVDs? Nothing, I guess, so here's a link to Judge Naugle's review of Amityville 3-D, in which the characters use a board in one scene. Enjoy.)