While most countries have traditions of people contacting the dead, up to now the activity involved adults asking questions which made sense to ghosts, such as: "Are you there, Auntie? Can you tell me where you buried the money, you miserable cow?"

But Hasbro is empowering massive numbers of pre-teen girls to use these channels to deal with issues in their lives. I find this frightening. Think about the implications. In Hades, a group of ghosts will be sitting around quietly being dead, or whatever ghosts do. Suddenly a tickertape machine comes to life. The ghost on monitoring duty makes an announcement: "We have a question from the land of the living."

The other ghosts stir slightly and ask him to read it out loud. "It’s from Meg-Meg, aged nine," he replies. "I had a pink flower bag but Melissa got one so I wasn’t her friend anymore but she gave a Zak bracelet to Mandy’s sister’s friend who told the teacher. Shall I invite her to my party?"

The ghosts look baffled. "What does it mean?" The chief ghost shakes his head. "I think it must be some kind of code." But then along comes another question: "Can you tell Zak Efron to wait eight years till I’m old enough to marry him? If you don’t, I’ll scream and scream until I’m sick." Then another: "I want a pony RIGHT NOW." And another: "If you don’t materialize a pack of Barbie Glitter Stickers in my room in ten minutes I will kill my baby brother."

Suddenly thousands of similar puzzling requests are pouring into the land of the dead. They don’t know what’s hit them. Poor guys.

I looked up some of the toy review sites on the internet to see what buyers had said about this product. Here’s a comment from a mother in Chicago (I didn’t make this up): "I bought this for my daughter, thinking she could talk with Grandma and Grandpa now that they’ve passed over. Unfortunately, it seems that it’s something of a party line, because we will be in the middle of a conversation with someone, and some demon will take over and start spouting out filthy stuff. Needs more R and D! The final straw was when the dog became possessed."

The pink Hasbro Ouija board is now available at Toys R Us. I shall definitely NOT buy it for my girls. But of course they may end up playing it at the homes of their friends. On behalf of all parents, I have a request for ghosts reading this. Please respond to all questions with: "You will get a pony AND Barbie Glitter Stickers AND marriage to Zak Efron if you do two hours’ homework a night, eat your greens and do everything mom and dad say from now on."