This is a subject I approach carefully. I have opinions about many things, but on mediumship I have always been reluctant to get drawn into the larger argument, because everyone has one and very few of them are based on direct experience. Mine is. So let me tell you what actually happened, and leave the interpretation to you.
The thesis
I was preparing a thesis and decided to visit mediums, properly and systematically. Not as a believer, not as a sceptic, but as a researcher. For each sitting I brought a control witness, someone whose job was simply to be present and remember exactly what was said. That person was my friend Ange, someone I had known since college, clear-headed and not given to embellishment. She still tells the story.
At one sitting, the medium told Ange things about her father. Specific things, the kind that do not emerge from cold reading or educated guessing. Ange has never forgotten it.
At that same sitting, the medium told me that my grandfather wore leather trousers. I laughed. It seemed so unlikely, so specific, so strange a detail to produce. I mentioned it to my father afterward. My Irish grandfather, it turned out, wore leather trousers when harvesting potatoes. I had not known that. My father confirmed it without hesitation.
The same medium then described a folded photograph and gave details about where it could be found.
I have no explanation for any of this that satisfies me. I have looked for one. I am still looking.
The Ouija board is a subject I do not get drawn on. Everyone has an opinion about it and I respect that. I have my own experience and my own relationship with that territory, and I keep it there. What I will say is that the question of whether the dead can communicate is one of the oldest questions human beings have asked, and the honest answer is that we do not know.
What I believe
Those you were drawn to in life, who inhabited your universe, if only briefly, still exist inside you. Unlike ghosts they are at your side. Your memories keep them alive. They are not necessarily gone, perhaps just outside what our limited sensitivities can perceive.
Many of those who have crossed over live on in my deck, revisiting every time their card is turned. The no man's land of this time of year always turns my thoughts to them. There is comfort in that, not fear.
It is not the dead who scare me. It is those who are almost scared to be alive.
The ones who live fully do not fear the end. They are far too busy wringing something out of every moment this life affords them.
A note on the subject itself
Mediumship is a sensitive area and I handle it as such. I do not promote it as a service and I do not make promises on behalf of anyone who claims the ability. What I can tell you is that some of the readers on this site work in this area, that they take it seriously and that their clients do too. If it is something you are drawn to explore, the conversation starts with a reading.
The Ouija, soul communication, contact with the departed: these are territories with long histories and strong feelings attached to them. I respect all of them. I do not get drawn into the argument because I have seen enough, personally, to know that certainty in either direction is probably wrong.