An interesting topic...
Ok, I'm not sure exactly how to say what I want to say on the subject. I don't believe that you actually talk to ghosts or spirits or whatever you do with them, but they do work somehow. Several of my friends and I thought it would be fun to try one of these out, so we bought one. At first, nothing happened because you have to be kinda serious about it working in order for it to do anything. We were laughing and joking about it. Then we decided to be open-minded about it and try it for real. We didn't do any ritual prayer seance crap, just stopped joking around and got serious about it. I'll be damned if it didn't start working. What that means exactly, I'm not sure, but it started spelling things out. I think we started by asking if there was anyone that would speak to us and varying the amount of pressure on the pointer (not in the sense of pushing it around, just how lightly we laid fingers on it). We "talked" to this guy that was a college student that had been murdered with an axe. We asked several questions of this person and most were answered. We tried staying with yes/no questions or questions with single word answers cuz it takes forever for spelled out answers. I wish I could remember all of the details about the questions and answers and the name we got, but I can't. There was even one point when we asked a question and the answer we got caused both of us to take our hands of the pointer and look at each other like "WTF?!" Another we "talked" to was a 5 year old kid that had been killed by his father. He couldn't spell worth a crap so it was hard to communicate.
After it started working that first time, others wanted to try it out. I know for a fact that I wasn't consciously pushing the thing around and everyone else that did this stated the same. I'd find it hard to believe that everytime I paired up with someone else that they were the ones doing the moving. We got into serious talks about that during and after messing with the board.
I think that the subconscious is likely what makes these things do what they do, but it's still strange. If it's subconscious, where did these names come from? I'd never heard of them that I recall. Where did these details come from? Why these methods of death? Pretty crazy stuff that's kinda cool and creepy at the same time.
Oh yeah, I ended up throwing it away some time later and I didn't die.