Mystery Of Ouija Talking Spirit Board
Is it the device to get glimpse of the unseen world of spirits? or just a game for fun? or the tool to peep into one’s unconscious mind?
Ouija board or spirit board or talking board is a board game with alphabets, and the numbers 0–9, also the words “yes” and “no”, and some boards have “hello” and “goodbye”, in addition to various symbols and graphics. A small heart-shaped piece of wood or plastic planchette is used as a movable pointer upon which the participants place their fingers, and it moves around the board to spell out messages during a seance.
Mystery of the name *Ouija*
The shocker of all is that the name *Ouija* was suggested by the talking board itself.
Scary and crazy?
One night in the year 1890 at Baltimore, Helen Peters was playing this board game with her brother-in-law Elijah Bond, the chief investor on this mysterious board game business. She placed a question, “By what name should they call it?” The planchette spelled out the name “Ouija”, and the board also told her what it meant — good luck.
Well! It is interesting to note that Helen Peters was wearing a locket bearing the picture of a woman with the name Ouida. The woman in the locket was famous author and popular women’s rights activist Ouida, whom Helen highly regarded. Ouija might just be the misspelling of original name.
Is it possible that this naming can be because of Helen Peters’s profound admiration for the lady activist?
Helen Peters in fact got patent on the Ouija board and gained popularity and profit.
It is worthy to share the interesting and eerie patent story: Peters and Bond would get the patent approved only if the board answered the patent officer’s question. The officer demanded that the board spells out his name.
The spirit was communicated. The question was asked. The planchette moved. The correct name was spelled.
There can be two possibilities. Bond, who was a local district attorney might have already known the officer’s name or the strange Ouija knew it.
But whatever the reason, the officer’s face turned pale and he awarded Bond a patent without delay on the same day, February 10, 1891.
But soon, Helen Peters washed her hands off Ouija business and she didn’t want to have any connections with it whatsoever cos of serious losses in her life that she believed was the doings of Ouija.
Robert Murch, the researcher working on the history of Ouija reports this incident from Helen’s life as shared by her grandson —
To know about the whereabouts of her missing family heirlooms, Helen had asked the Ouija board, “Who had taken them?”. The board referred to a member in the family.
Some believed it whereas some didn’t, including Helen. However that incident lead to serious conflicts in the family and destroyed family ties.
Don’t play the Ouija board because it lies, she had kept saying it repeatedly until her last breath.
Mystery of origin
No one knew when exactly it came into existence.
Robert Burch says, “For such an iconic thing that strikes both fear and wonder in American culture, how can no one know where it came from?”
No one not knowing anything about its origins had struck him as odd.
Ouija is believed to be created for business owing to the belief that the dead can communicate with the living.
The curiosity and the longing of people to see or hear about their dear ones who were lost to deadly diseases or wars unexpectedly, even at young age had been the reason behind creation of such boards that claim to connect to the unseen world.
People’s desperation to connect with the unseen world led to the origin of Ouija.
The business idea was started in 1886 when Charles Kennard of Baltimore, Maryland formed a group of investors — Elijah Bond(Helen Peters’s Brother-in-law), a local attorney, and Col. Washington Bowie, a surveyor to start the Kennard Novelty Company to make and market talking boards. They weren’t spiritualists but passionate businessmen with thirst for dollars. Gradually, the word spread, and the business evolved.
According to sources, Ouija — the mysterious talking board came into limelight in the year 1891 when a toy and novelty shop at Pittsburgh advertised the Ouija board in Pittsburgh Dispatch on a Sunday, February 1, 1891 —
The American entrepreneur William Fuld marketed the board in national catalogs, Sears. His brilliant marketing strategy is the reason the Ouija is even known to the world.
William Fuld’s Mysterious Death
William Fuld had a successful business, earning about one million dollars from the Ouija board, as reported by Baltimore Sun in the year 1927.
He expanded his business, opening brand new factories of Ouija, and built the largest three-story factory at Baltimore, as advised by Ouija — Prepare for big business.
According to the Baltimore Sun —
In the year 1927, “William Fuld was standing near the edge of the roof of that tall building to supervise the replacement of a flag pole. He toppled over backward when the iron pole he was holding onto suddenly pulled away. He initially held onto the sill of an open window, which soon closed unexpectedly, and he crashed down on the sidewalk, breaking his ribs. Since it was just the broken ribs, he was expected to be saved. But on the way to the hospital, a bump on the road caused a fractured rib to pierce through his heart and death eventually.
The whole scene of his death in my mind sends chills down my spine.
Running his business for several years, his family sold Ouija to Parker Brothers in 1966, and from Parker to Hasbro.
Hasbro’s warning in the website—
“Handle the Ouija board with respect and it won’t disappoint you!
Strange, mysterious and interesting Literary Inspiration stories of Ouija:
In 1916, Mrs. Pearl Curran made headlines when she claimed that her poetry and stories were dictated by the spirit of a 17th century Englishwoman called Patience Worth through the Ouija board.
The following year 1917, Emily Grant Hutchings, Curran’s friend, claimed that her book, Jap Herron was spelled by the late Samuel Clemens alias Mark Twain.
Curran earned more success than Hutchings but the Pulitzer-winner James Merrill out beat both in success.
In 1982, his epic poem The Changing Light at Sandover, dictated by Ouija won the National Book Critics Circle Award.
Weird and eerie yet interesting! But is it really true? or these poets adopted Ouija strategy for their success?
Psychologists’ Take On Ouija Board And Their Research Outcome
Scientists say, Ouija board is not powered by spirits and demons. Maybe lil comforting?
In fact, it’s just the opposite. The Ouija is powered by us. Maybe it’s more eerie?
Ouija board works on one principle — the Ideomotor effect.
In 1852, William Benjamin Carpenter, the psychologist and physician examined the involuntary movements that occur without a person’s free will (Ideomotor effect), and published his study for the Royal Institution of Great Britain.
In 1853, chemist and physicist Michael Faraday conducted a series of experiments to find the cause of table-turning.He then reported that the ideomotor actions of the participants was responsible for table-motion.
Dr. Chris French, professor of anomalistic psychology at Goldsmiths, University of London, explained —
“It can generate a very strong impression that the movement is being caused by some outside agency, but it’s not.” “And with Ouija boards you’ve got the whole social context. It’s usually a group of people, and everyone has a slight influence,” .
In 2010-11, Dr. Ron Rensink, professor of psychology and computer science, psychology postdoctoral researcher Hélène Gauchou, and Dr. Sidney Fels, professor of electrical and computer engineering, observed what exactly happens when people sit down to play Ouija board.
The team used a Ouija-playing robot but participants were informed that they are gonna play with a person in another room via teleconferencing. The robot mimicked the movements of the other person. In reality, the robot’s movements amplified the participants’ movements and the person in the other room was just a ruse — an idea to get the participant to thinking that they weren’t in control of their movements or the game.
Participants were asked a series of yes or no, posing fact-based questions viz., Is Buenos Aires the capital of Brazil? Was the 2000 Olympic Games held in Sydney?
The surprising findings — Only 50% of participants gave correct answers verbally, but when they answered the same using the board, which they believed that the answers were coming from the other room, the percentage raised to 65%.
Fels said, “This is just weird, how could they be that much better? It was so dramatic we couldn’t believe it.”
But Fels explained that one’s non-conscious mind was a lot intelligent than anyone could believe.
In the following experiments, the participant played with a real human rather than with a robot. The participant was blindfolded, and the other player, a confederate, quietly took hands off the planchette. The participant believed that he or she wasn’t alone enabling the automatic pilot state the researchers were striving for.
This experiment had actually worked.
Rensink told, “Some people were complaining about how the other person was moving the planchette around. That was a good sign that we really got this kind of condition that people were convinced that somebody else was there.”
These results replicated the findings of the experiment with the robot that people in fact knew more when they believed that someone else is controlling the answers.
Fels said, “You do much better with the Ouija on questions that you really don’t think you know, but actually something inside you does know and the Ouija can help you answer above chance,”
These findings were published in Consciousness and Cognition, February 2012 issue.
Ouija Inspired Movies That Will Keep You Awake At Night
- The Exorcist
- Paranormal Activity
- Ouija
- What Lies Beneath
- Witchboard
- The Uninvited
- The Pact
Religious Perspective On Ouija Board
In the year 1973, the movie The Exorcist in which a 12-year-old Regan possessed by a demon after playing with a Ouija board scared the pants off people in theaters. That movie changed the perspective of people on the board.
Many religions declared Ouija board as a Satanic tool and banned the game for followers claiming that demons are trying to communicate with humans, and it might have serious consequences in their lives.
Believed to be originated in the 19th century, Ouija board is still enjoying a dodgy reputation, in the current 21st century.
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Chirag @ 2020