The Ouija board is one of the most instantly recognizable occult symbols in world history. There are all kinds of stories about people who use them incurring the wrath of malevolent spirits or receiving a message from a dead loved one.
Whether or not those stories are true is up for debate, but how did the Ouija board come to be in the first place in our history and why are so many people convinced of its supernatural powers?
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Looking back in the history, in the 1920’s the population of a small town in Southern California went insane after they fiddled around with an Ouija board. It all began when the police arrested seven people after they began to act completely insane and unstable.
Over the course of the next few days, the insanity spread like wildfire throughout the town. The police officers were even found stripping down naked and running into stores and banks while yelling hysterically.
The town hall officials were terrified that this insanity would spread to other nearby towns so they brought in a ton of mental health specialists to examine all of the people who went insane.
Even though they weren’t able to conclude the actual reason, the government didn’t want to take any risks so they banned Ouija boards within their town limits.
Spiritualism
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In the late 19th century, the spiritualism movement had taken the USA by storm. The idea that loved ones could be contacted after they died was attractive to people at a time when the average life expectancy was only 45 years.
The spiritualists believed that the souls of the deceased existed on a different plane and that they were constantly evolving and becoming more enlightened.
Thus the spirits were seen as guides who could offer advice about everything from relationships to financial matters or anything you could think of.
Spiritualists claimed to be able to convene with these souls and they used all kinds of strange methods in order to accomplish this.
One of the most popular methods was automatic writing, where a medium would use a pen to write down a message that a spirit supposedly channeled through them.
The Origin
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As the spiritualism movement evolved, so did the tools of the trade. Mediums started using a heart-shaped wood tool known as a planchette, which had wheels to facilitate movement and a hole that was used to hold a pen.
The problem with these planchettes is that they were difficult to navigate and the results were often messy, so the spiritualists came up with all kinds of inventions to make it easier.
Some of these inventions, like the spirit scope, were ridiculously over-designed and were probably even more effective than just using a planchette.
It wasn’t until 1886 that the talking board hit the scene and revolutionized the way that mediums made contact with so-called spirits.
The object itself was simple: a wooden board with letters printed on it accompanied by a small table-shaped tool. The participants would place their hands on the tool and ask a question.
The small table would seemingly move by itself and its legs would point at different letters, eventually spelling out a message.
Ouija: Good luck
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On May 28th, 1890, Elijah J. Bond, Charles Kennard, and William Maupin filed a patent for the talking board and it was granted on February 10th, 1891.
The name for the board allegedly came from the board itself during a session between Bond and his sister-in-law, Helen Peters. The board apparently spelled out the word Ouija, and then claimed that it meant “good luck.”
It’s more likely that Peters got the idea for the name from a locket she was wearing that contained the portrait and name of civil rights activist Ouida.
The board was a huge success for the Kennard Novelty Company, and then for the Fuld Company, until it was sold to Parker Brothers in 1966. It even outsold Monopoly.
A lot of people today think that the public’s perception of the game changed when it was used in the horror classic The Exorcist and that it went from being a harmless toy to a tool of the devil, feared by religious people and denounced by the church.
But this actually isn’t true at all. In fact, the Ouija board had always been seen as a conductor of evil by the God-fearing public, and spiritualism in itself was also hated by the church.
Skepticism
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Skepticism about the Ouija board has also been around since the very beginning. In 1852, a scientist named William B. Carpenter hypothesized that the game’s seemingly supernatural powers were actually caused by something called the ideomotor effect.
Basically, it’s the idea that suggestions and expectations can influence your actions without you being consciously aware of it.
In a 2012 study by the University of British Columbia, scientists found that blindfolded subjects who used Ouija boards to answer “yes or no” questions that they didn’t know the answers to, were 15% more likely to answer correctly than those who just answered verbally.
This is interesting because it indicates that Ouija boards may actually help harness some subconscious part of your brain that has information stored away that you aren’t aware of.
The idea that you could summon demons and poltergeists using an object you can buy at Toys ‘r’ Us seems ridiculous to a lot of people, but there are still others who claim to have been haunted and even hurt by Ouija boards.
In Popular Culture
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Since its inception, the Ouija boards have figured prominently in horror movies, games and media as devices summoning malevolent spirits and demons to spook their users.
Ouija board was the main culprit in the popular horror flick The Exorcist where a young girl contacts an entity named Captain Howdy and later becomes possessed by a demon.
Other popular movies like 13 Ghosts, What Lies Beneath, Paranormal Activity, and Ouija, also showcased the Ouija Board as the main instrument for all the chaos.
What Do You Think?
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Skeptics believe that the brain is way more suggestible than most people realize and stuff like this is only as powerful as the belief you put into it.
However, a contrary belief is that Ouija boards or spirit boards are used to communicate with spirits and demons. There are a lot of warnings against Ouija boards but despite all of these cautionary tales, people still use Ouija boards.
So, have you guys ever played or have any history with the Ouija board? Did anything creepy or scary happen to you? Tell us in the comments.
