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A Jury Consults a Ouija Board for a Verdict
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Don't get us wrong: If Ouija boards could actually be used to consult with the dead in the afterlife, they would be useful as hell for solving murders (or at least finding corpses). But their validity as a forensic tool is actually not recognized by modern science.
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Cootie catchers are still totally legit, though.
But don't tell that to a jury in the U.K., which was having some trouble deliberating on the case of Stephen Young, who was accused of murdering a couple as part of an insurance scam in the '90s. As is typical when a jury can't reach a verdict, the judge had them sequestered in a hotel room overnight to sort their shit out. But at some point that night, they got a bright idea and whipped out a Ouija board, figuring they might get some answers if they just asked the murder victims directly.
In their defense (or not), they were pretty drunk -- the jury took advantage of the "all expenses paid" component of the sequestration, and things started to go awry when somebody located the liquor cabinet. So it's true that four of the jurors were absolutely OK with summoning the dead via Ouija, but they were so liquored up that they would probably have agreed to praying over some goat entrails.
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"Room service says the best they can do is some chicken livers and fish bones."
Anyway, reportedly the four jurors sat down in the dark with their hands on an upturned glass and asked the spirit world for guidance. A ghost identifying itself as Harry Fuller, one of the murder victims, guided the glass over the Ouija board and spelled out the words "vote guilty tomorrow." Nailed it!
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"Y'know, now that the mescalines wearing off this seems like a terrible idea."
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