Ouija boards are selling fast. Google reports that sales of the board are up 300 per cent, and it is threatening to become a Christmas ‘must buy’. The culprit is a new Hollywood horror film titled Ouija. Low-budget, lowbrow, the critics hammered it, but cinema-going teens, looking for something scary in the Halloween season, loved it. Cue big box office takings and huge demand for Ouija boards, many manufactured by the American toys giant Hasbro, who helped finance the making of the film. But to some people, including churchmen, it is a danger to be avoided, a trigger for psychological harm - or something worse. ‘It’s like opening a shutter in one’s soul and letting in the supernatural,’ says Peter Irwin-Clark, a Church of England vicar who has witnessed the dark side of Ouija. ‘There are spiritual realities out there and they can be very negative.’