We all have fun stories about messing around
with a Ouija board, whether it was that one
night in college, a Halloween party, or that
time we actually summoned a demon who spoke
Latin and threatened to set us on fire.
It's one of those board games that's fun no
matter what you think of it, and it doesn't
matter if you think you can speak to the dead
or if you just think it's a great opportunity
to mess with someone.
"What we're going to be doing…it's actually
a ouija board.
Oh!
Are you serious?"
"I know, right?"
But no matter how many times you've played
it, there are probably some things you don't
know.
Heartbreaking popularity
The Victorian era was a strange time, and
one of the movements sweeping across Europe
and America was spiritualism.
It was basically the idea the living could
communicate with those who had passed via
seances and things like tapping out messages
on the walls.
The idea picked up steam in America during
the Civil War, when the overwhelming majority
of families were touched by the war in some
way and wanted to know what happened to their
loved ones.
When you're looking for those kinds of answers,
you're willing to look anywhere.
In the late 1880s and early 1890s, newspapers
began reporting some spiritualists were using
a "talking board" in their seances, but it
wasn't until entrepreneur Charles Kennard
got wind of the story that magic really happened.
He gathered investors who were as psyched
as he was at the prospect of having this massive
market of mourners to exploit, and they started
the Kennard Novelty Company to become the
exclusive manufacturer of the talking boards.
The Ouija board gave the promise of answers,
and even if it didn't actually give those
answers, hope was enough to make it popular.
Sales of the board continued to rise in the
years following the Civil War, with sales
surging during various wartimes.
Parker Brothers bought the Ouija board in
1966 at the height of the Vietnam War.
The next year, 1967, 2 million Ouija boards
were sold, outselling Monopoly.
What's in a name?
The popular story is that the Ouija board
was named from the words for "yes" in French
and German: "oui" and "ja" , but historian
Robert Murch says that's absolutely not true.
According to an article published in 1919
regarding the Ouija board, Charles Kennard,
Elijah Bond, and Bond's sister-in-law Helen
Peters were trying to figure out what to call
their official talking board, so they decided
to ask the board itself.
It replied "Ouija," and when they inquired
as to what the heck that meant, it replied
"good luck."
That's exactly the sort of thing a demon might
do to lure you into a false sense of security,
but there's still more to the story.
At the time, Peters was wearing a locket with
a picture of a woman, with the name "Ouija"
written inside.
She claimed she hadn't been thinking of it
when the board started spelling, but there's
a footnote: Murch thinks the woman in the
locket was Maria Louise Ramee, a 19th-century
writer.
They probably just misread her pen name, which
was actually Ouida.
Is the Ouija board a misspelled tribute?
Probably.
It was a nice thought, at least.
Liar liar
Helen Peters — the medium with the locket
— had her family destroyed by the board
she helped name.
Peters went from being an original investor
and working on the patent application to completely
condemning the Ouija board as something evil,
an opinion later shared by a few.
"Actually it is communicating with demonic
spirits.
And it is a dangerous thing and I strongly
urge people not to get involved in it."
It started when her family found some of their
Civil War memorabilia was missing and decided
to ask the board what happened to it.
As you can guess, it didn't end well.
The board identified one family member as
the thief, and while some believed the board,
Peters didn't.
The feud tore the family apart.
Peters condemned the board as a liar and warned
others not to use it.
"I think you're evil.
Evil!"
Patience Worth
In 1913, Pearl Curran was mucking about with
her Ouija board when she contacted a spirit
she named as Patience Worth.
Worth, she said, was a 17th century poet who
not only spoke to her, but wrote through her.
It was a seriously incredible feat, too.
Between 1913 and 1917, Curran — who had
a limited education — wrote around 4 million
words, including seven books, and a ton of
poems, plays, and short stories.
Sometimes she worked on them all simultaneously,
with the Ouija board jumping between works
without missing a word.
Curran, and Patience, toured the country,
sitting with the board and turning out original
works.
Curran claimed Patience was an Englishwoman
who had come to the future United States in
the late 1600s, and she had been killed in
a conflict with Natives.
At the time, people believed it.
The writing was factual; it touched on history
from almost all eras, and disciplines from
botany and historical cuisines to anthropology.
Skeptics were charmed, scholars were shocked
at the quality of the work, and it still hasn't
been entirely explained just how all those
stories, poems, and plays came together.
Was it Curran's subconscious?
Was she a savant?
Or ... was Patience real?
...boo?"
Bizarre witch-murder
One of the weirder Ouija story begins with
Nancy Bowen, a Native American healer who
had lost her husband, and Lila Jimerson, Bowen's
friend.
Jimerson was working as a model for French
sculptor Henri Marchand when his wife, Clothilde,
was murdered with a hammer.
Police arrested Jimerson after a witness put
her at the crime scene, and she implicated
Bowen in the whole messy affair.
Both women confessed and revealed that the
Ouija board played a part in the bizarre murder.
Jimerson and Bowen had held a seance, presumably
to contact Bowen's dead husband, who had a
bizarre revelation in store for them: Clothilde
was actually a witch, and she'd killed him.
"Wait, is that what he's saying?
That he was murdered?"
In truth, Jimerson just wanted Clothilde out
of the way so she could have marchand to herself.
What followed was an insane trial that involved
exhuming Bowen's husband and lurid testimony
from Marchand detailing his many, many affairs.
Ultimately, Bowen pled guilty and got time
served, while Jimerson was acquitted.
The original dating game
It wasn't until 1973's The Exorcist that people
started making a major connection between
the Ouija board and the devil.
Reagan uses one to make contact with the demon
that goes on to possess her, and the world
never looked back.
The danger was there, the danger was legit,
and other movies tapped into it.
But before that, the Ouija board had a completely
different vibe.
It was featured in television shows as a vehicle
for humor and embarrassment rather than possession.
Go back even further, and in between the wars
that made the Ouija board popular, it was
actually marketed as a family game particularly
suited to couples.
It was a brilliant excuse to sit next to each
other, touch hands, maybe touch knees, and
hopefully not summon the devil.
It was such a popular way to send a romantic
sort of message, men often bought one for
their ladies.
Ouija and chill?
What's really going on
There's actually a pretty cool physiological
phenomenon at work with Ouija boards, moving
the planchette and spelling out all kinds
of weird stuff.
It's called the ideomotor effect, and it's
basically caused by our body's own tiny, imperceptible
movements.
They're so imperceptible that we don't know
we're making them and even when it's pointed
out to us, we still tend not to believe we're
causing it.
According to the BBC, it's the same principle
that makes things like dowsing rods work,
and it's not just as simple and straightforward
as having a case of the twitchies.
It brings up an important question about our
own consciousness.
Psychologist Daniel Wegner suggested the phenomenon
was proof that assigning ownership to an action
is nothing but an illusion, and it's entirely
possible to convince the human mind of pretty
much anything as far as causality is concerned.
That's pretty heavy stuff.
Voices in your head
What's creepier than demons from the great
beyond?
Demons in our very own heads.
In 2014, researchers at the University of
British Columbia blindfolded volunteers, put
them in front of a Ouija board, and asked
them questions.
The volunteers got the questions right about
two-thirds of the time, even if they were
sure they didn't consciously know the answer.
What's that mean?
It's possible the Ouija board can actually
give us a way to tap into the subconscious,
the part of the brain we're not aware of,
by encouraging movements we're not aware we're
making.
Ever had something on the tip of your tongue,
and just can't remember it?
It's possible a Ouija board might help.
"We've always thought the conscious mind was
it.
It's all there was.
And now we're becoming aware that there's
this second system that's within us and that
second system second intelligence that can
be quite useful."
Researchers think unlocking some of the secrets
here might help us understand what happens
to cause things like dementia and Alzheimer's,
and it might even allow us to communicate
with parts of the brain that are normally
off-limits.
Pretty nifty, right?
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