Psych!
There’s a fine line between psychic and psychotic. We’ll get to that. But first, let me tell you about my few, brief encounters with the supernatural.
Let’s start with the Magic 8 Ball. All the rage when I was a kid in the Fifties, this toy was the brainchild of Cincinnatian Albert Parker and three partners who devised and marketed it around 1948. Parker drew the idea from “spirit writing,” a practice used by his mother, a local clairvoyant. In spirit writing, the practitioner holds a pen or other writing device, which spirits allegedly use to produce words on paper. No, it’s not like the autopen that President Donald Trump claims former President Joe Biden used to sign bills into law, grant pardons and order trillions of dollars’ worth of aviator sunglasses.
No one quite believes that the Magic 8 Ball is really a psychic device, but it remains popular — it appears in a recent episode of the Apple TV+ series “Your Friends and Neighbors.”
The Magic 8 Ball is a black sphere designed to look like the 8-ball from the game of pool. Ask the 8 Ball a question, shake it and turn it over to reveal a round window in which floats a multi-faceted die. Each face of the die contains an answer to your question — as many as 20 different answers depending on which version of the ball you use. Answers may be positive, such as “It is decidedly so”; negative, such as “Don’t count on it”; or neutral, such as “Reply hazy, try again.” Yes, these are also actual answers to reporters’ questions from White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt.
I can’t declare that my Magic 8 Ball ever scared the pants off me, but I can’t say the same for a Ouija board. If you’re unfamiliar with Ouija boards, the device is a flat board on which are printed the letters of the alphabet, the numbers 0-9 and the words “Yes,” “No,” “Hello,” “Goodbye” along mystical various symbols. Users place their hands on a heart-shaped piece of wood or plastic called a planchette, ask a question and — hands still on the planchette — allow it to move to spell out messages. I always believed the Ouija board to be fun but hokum.
But at a party many years ago, my friends and I dragged out the Ouija. Our initial questions sometimes produced a recognizable answer. But, after many sessions, the planchette began spelling out what we took to be gibberish. Then we realized that the words it was spelling were a vulgarity regarding a religious figure. No, it was not President Trump’s verbal assault on Pope Leo XIV. But we hurriedly put the board away, and I have not used one since. If I want to channel malevolent psychic forces these days, I just turn on FOX News.
Now, as promised: There’s a fine line between psychic and psychotic. Proof exists in a Washington Post article about a group of “pet psychics” who claim to be able to divine how pets feel about going on vacation with you, or about your leaving them with a sitter for extended periods.
The Post talked to three pet psychics, all of whom act as intermediaries for human-animal communication. Animal clients include dogs, cats, horses, rabbits and, in one case, a bearded dragon lizard.
Laura Stinchfield, who claims more than 30 years’ experience as an “animal communicator and people medium,” told the Post: “The animals will send us their thoughts, their feelings, the images in their heads and the feelings in their body. Then our mind transfers that into whichever way the individual does it. My mind transfers it into words, or another animal communicator might see mostly pictures or have mostly feelings.”
Hmm. I’m not sure if I think that either of our dogs would psychically express a preference for the type of lodging we’d pick if we took them on vacation with us. Or if they say that they prefer a male dog sitter over the woman who usually attends them if we leave for a few days. But I know that Izzy, our oldest dog, can let us know when it’s dinner time, or the exact moment (9 p.m.) when we’re supposed to give her and her younger sister, Riley, their dental chews. Izzy lets us know by staring intently, sometimes for more than 10 minutes, until we get them the treats. I equate her unblinking gaze with that of a 16-year-old boy at a topless beach for the first time.
And it’s true that Izzy can repeatedly trick Riley off the couch by grabbing a toy and parading with it. Then, when Riley comes for the toy, Izzy takes her place on the couch.
Psych!