Last night, your roommate brought home a Ouija board. You, as a skeptic and atheist, do not believe in such things, but you agreed to play with it. You both put your hands on it and your roomate calls out to the spirits. Suddenly, the board jerks out of your hands and you both are startled. You remind yourself that Ouija board movements are reasonably explained in terms of unconscious movements on the part of the participants. Still, the force of the movement caught you off guard and you both agree to put it away.
The next morning, you get up and find your roommate chanting quietly with a strange, distant look on her face. You surreptitiously record her chanting with your phone and, on a whim, play it back to your friend who is a priest. He says it sounds like gibberish, but then he suggests playing it backwards. When you do, he tells you that your roommate is perfectly reciting the Latin Mass … backwards. Your roommate has never gone to church and, to your knowledge, knows no Latin.
Would this phenomenon be sufficient to believe in the supernatural? Or would you simply attribute it to the power of the human mind, trickery on behalf of your roommate and/or priest friend, or some other natural explanation?
