Paranormal Games and the Importance of Ritual

We all know the rules…

It’s late at night in your hotel. Restless, you walk down the long, carpeted hall to the bank of elevators. The whole building feels deserted—even the room service trays outside rooms seem dull and gray. You call the elevator to your floor, and step on…you press the sequence 4-2-6-2-10-5 on the buttons, and wait patiently as the elevator goes up and down…eventually releasing you into another dimension…

No? How about this?

It’s late at night, and you’re home alone. You cut open a doll, replace the stuffing with rice, and sew it up with a red thread. You name it, and place it in a tub full of water. You take a glass of saltwater with you as you hide in a closet…because it’s the doll’s turn to come looking for you…

Really? No again?  Fine, how about this, then?

It’s dark in a room with a mirror. You light a candle, looking into the mirror, and you chant “bloody mary, Bloody Mary, BLOODY MARY!”

Are you with me now?

As Halloween approaches, I thought it would be interesting to take a look at some of the questionable activities people tend to get up to around this time of year. These three are only a few examples of paranormal games people play. The Elevator Game and One-Man Hide and Seek are relatively new activities, and of course, Bloody Mary has been around forever. And there are so many more—there’s The Three Kings, The Hooded Man (aka The Taxi Game), The Midnight Game, and so many more. And we can never forget the inimitable granddaddy of them all, the Ouija Board.

While these are all different games with different alleged outcomes—the elevator takes you to another dimension, the doll comes looking for you, you summon a spirit, or you talk to people on ‘the other side’, they all have one thing in common.  All of these games involve ritualistic elements.

While I’m not one to use Wikipedia as a primary source, this excellent definition of ritual found there is paraphrased from Ritual: Perspectives and Dimensions by American religious studies expert Catherine Bell—“A ritual is a sequence of activities involving gestures, words, and objects, performed in a sequestered place, and performed according to set sequence. Rituals may be prescribed by the traditions of a community, including a religious community. Rituals are characterized but not defined by formalism, traditionalism, invariance, rule-governance, sacral symbolism, and performance.”

The end result of a ritual practiced with the expectation of an outcome can be nothing, or it can be something. The internet is packed with ‘true’ stories of non-believers playfully practicing a ritual and getting more than they bargained for. While I have my doubts about the vast majority of such reports, I do believe that, with enough belief, a shared reality can be created, one that might very well answer to any ritual, regardless of the participants’ personal belief systems.

Take, for instance, the third ‘game’ mentioned above. On its surface, it’s meaningless, just a fun, spooky way for people to scare themselves.  But there are a significant number of people who will swear on their mother’s grave that they saw someone in the mirror.  A trick of the mind? Maybe. An actual summoning? Less likely, but possible. The point is that, these rituals sometimes work, at least on the hearts and minds of those performing them.

Countless people have played with Ouija boards, and had discussions with someone or something. The belief of many of these same people may have given the online legend of Slenderman a form of life. If a house is believed to be haunted, people, including non-believers, may well have experiences there. And if enough people believe in it, there may well be another dimension accessible by elevator, or a creepy doll that comes looking for you. 

Never mind the fact that the last two games were made up by folks in Korea and Japan, respectively. We know who created the games. We also know of people who swear that they’ve had these experiences.

Ritual is one of the many ways we, as humans, project order onto a seemingly random universe. We pray. We go through our morning routine in exactly the same way. We wear a ‘lucky’ piece of clothing or jewelry on important days. We attend religious and secular ceremonies. Ritual is one of the many tools we use to make the world more pleasant, more understandable.

We can also use it to scare ourselves silly.

So, as Halloween approaches, and we go to parties or hold late night Ouija sessions with friends, pay attention and don’t take these rituals lightly. Yes, yes, I hear what you’re saying…’I don’t believe in all that, so nothing is going to happen.’ But what if it does? What if it’s not your belief system that matters, but the beliefs of thousands, millions of people you’ll never meet?

So play the games. Have fun. But respect the ritual, just in case it delivers some unexpected results. Happy Halloween!