Does anyone remember the game light as a feather, stiff as a board?

Question

I remeber when I was so much younger, my girlfriends and I played this game. One of u lay down and the others sit around u with 2 fingers under u. They repeat light as a feather and so on. The one lying down starts to float almost. I seen it happen. Anyone have this experience? How does this work?

Answer 1

Teehee.

I used to love that!

Well it is not really happening it is just an elution.

You think it is going to happen and so since you are closing your eyes you start to think someone is floating because you are told to focus hard on that happening. I thought they were floating. Not really.

Answer 2

nope sorry!

Answer 3

I remember that from when I was a kid (long before "The Craft" came out). It was a big game at sleepovers. It never really worked, though.  

Answer 4

Did somebody just watch "the Craft" on cable?

Answer 5

That's no game THAT'S WITCHCRAFT !

Answer 6

I REMEMBER THAT!!!!!!!!!!!!

Lol, we used to play it in middle school all the time.

1. The person being lifted has to lay down, arms crossed, eyes closed. They can't move a muscle or make any noise. Make sure everyone has their fingers under the person already, and don't move them. One of the lifters says "She looks sick." Everyone repeats them, one at a time, going around the circle.

2. Repeat with "She IS sick."

3. Same, with "She looks dead."

4. Same, with "She IS dead."

5. Everyone, at the same times, chants "Light as a feather, stiff as a board, rise body rise." and stands up, lifting the person into the air!

This works because, by chanting the last part, you force yourself to believe that you ARE going to lift that person. Since you subconciously believe that, your brain tells your body to release more adrenaline, enabling you to lift the person.

Lol, the middle school I went to was part of a private, Christian school. The gym teacher got onto us for doing this just about every day! (Because it's roots are in witchcraft.)

Answer 7

Omg we used to play that we would have someone lie down and thee would be 2 on each side then one at the foot and one at the head and we each had to repeat light as a feather stiff as a bored i think a few times each..  lol..

Answer 8

I remember,  But I remember someONE would do the bulk of the lift.

Answer 9

I played a similar game called drunk as a skunk, high as a kite but that was back when I was dumb as a post.

Answer 10

Oh yeah! then I realized it was a movie once the credits started rolling and I realized I had no friends actually.

Answer 11

THAT GAME IS NOT REAL IT WAS ON A GOD d**n DUMB MOVIE

Answer 12

This is just a form of hypnosis (which is a combination of relaxation and concentration).  The person lying down tenses up her muscles to get more stiff.  At that point, the weight of the person lying down is more evenly distributed among the fingers of the people doing the picking up, so the lifting is easier.

Answer 13

i herd of it

Answer 14

We used to play all the time.  It was at least 20 years ago, but, i remember it really working.  I can't imagine now that it really worked.  Of course, there were usually at least 6 of us, and none of us weighed more the 65 lbs.

Maybe I'll get the girls together and try it this weekend.  

Answer 15

Yes when I was younger me and a couple friends thought it would be fun to play it so we did. We lit some candles in the basement and had one of our friends lay down. We put the fingers under her and after about 2 min she was up!!! It was the weirdest thing i have ever seen. It has to be magic or something because not all of us could lift her with just our fingers.

Answer 16

Yeah, we had fun with that.

It's the opposite of playing possum. To play possum you let your body relax completely and it seems heavier. Civil disobedience practices this, so that it's harder for the police to drag you away.

Stiffening your body makes it seem lighter, easier to lift.

I don't know how it works though.

Answer 17

Not sure how it work's, but I had two chicks who claimed to be witches do it to me and they lifted me up about 4 feet. I know because I opened my eye's and they dropped me!  What a night!

Answer 18

Sigh. It's not magic, folks. It's physics. But really, it's more of a mental thing.

On the physics side, it's distribution of labor, and the mental side, it's the power of suggestion; something kids are really suseptible to.

Let's say your a girl, and you're at a slumber party with your friends, and you decide to do this. First off, you're a kid and an idiot, and you have no idea how the world works, and you're really suseptible to nonsense such as this because you grew up belieivng in Jesus and Santa and the easter bunny.

Anyway, you're laying down, on the ground and everyone believes this willl work, for the reasons mentioned above.

So you're laying there, and you are relaxing your body. The funny thing about relaxing is that your body isn't limp. That's a misconception. Your muscles can hold a position steady without much force.

So your body is actually stiffening slightly as it lays on the ground. Your muscles aren't over-exerting themselves to stay in that position, and the suggestion of "stiff as a board", as well as the light stress of the moment (it's exciting, and spooky, so although you think you are relaxed, every muscle in your body is slightly tensed).

Okay, so you are now a stiff object, waiting to be moved.

Meanwhile, your friends, a bunch of girls, have been injected from day one of their lives with this constant suggestion that girls are weak and boys are strong. Therefore, they think moving something big (like a person) is completely beyond them. In reality, of course, any one of your friends could probably pick you up by themselves, if they tried hard enough.

At any rate, so your 6 girflriends all around you, completely discounting their own strength, put their hands under you. Well, eventually, they do. It's important to go through a bunch of ritutalistic brew-ha-ha first, apparently.

Then, they lift you.

So you're a kid, and you're like, what? 90 pounds maybe? So that weight is being divided by your 6 friends (15 pounds a piece) and then again along each of their two arms (7 pounds per arm).

Of course, as soon as you realize it's working, you start moving your muscles around, breaking that natural tension, and then the weight distrbution becomes uneven and one of your friends is suddenly carrying too much of your weight for her to handle, so she drops you, and then the next person and so on.

Anyway, nothing magical here; in fact, we do this all the time. Haven't you ever asked someone to help you carry something heavy? The object didn't suddenly get half as light, you're just dividng it between you.

The reason this seems so magical is predominantly in presentation. You scare yourself into thinking something supernatural is going on. That combined with each girl not knowing her own strength, and the fact that the labor to move you is being done through the combined effortt of several of your friends, it's what's going on here. You didn't get lighter. Your load is just being shared.

Sorry folks, gravity is here to stay. :-)

Answer 19

Me and my friends use to play that to! its sorta like a team work thing! And its the work of all the people there. and cuz one person isnt doing all the work its an equal pressure all around the persons body so they dont feel one persons hands or anything. As long as everyones lifting equaly they wont feel it. esp. if there eyes are closed and there concentrating on the supposedly "scary story"

Answer 20

It never worked. We played it several times at sleep-overs when i was a kid but to no avail. So we always ended up doing the "Bloody Mary" game. Which still terrifies me.

My mom said when she was young, they played light as a feather and they raised her friend up two feet. It scared her so much she attended church every sunday after that!

Answer 21

YESS!!! I PLAY IT ALL THE TIME WITH MY FRIENDS!!

answer my question please

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