Have you seen the movie Ouija? It was a horror movie that debuted in 2014. The gist of it is that a group of friends must confront their most terrifying fears when they awaken the dark powers of an ancient spirit board. So, that got me to thinking. I remember us playing with one when we were kids (and scaring ourselves silly) and that led me to do a little research on Ouija boards.
Is it just silly game or something more sinister?
According to Wikipedia, the Ouija board also known as a spirit board or talking board, is a flat board marked with the letters of the alphabet, the numbers 0–9, the words “yes”, “no”, “hello” (occasionally), and “goodbye”, along with various symbols and graphics. It uses a planchette (small heart-shaped piece of wood) or movable indicator to indicate the spirit’s message by spelling it out on the board during a séance. Participants place their fingers on the planchette, and it is moved about the board to spell out words.
It was invented by Elijah Bond on July 1, 1890. It was considered a fun parlor game until used by Spiritualist Pearl Curran during World War I. The Ouija board has been criticized by religious sects and the scientific community, but remains popular among many people. The rights to the Ouija board were sold to Parker Brothers in 1966. They, in turn, sold it to Hasbro in 1991. About ten brands of talking boards are sold today under various names.
As an author I am most intrigued by the use of the Ouija board by other writers and poets. For example:
Emily Grant Hutchings claimed that her 1917 novel Jap Herron: A Novel Written from the Ouija Board was dictated by Mark Twain‘s spirit through the use of a Ouija board after his death. Poems and novels written by Patience Worth, an alleged spirit, contacted by Pearl Lenore Curran, for more than 20 years, were initially transcribed from sessions with a Ouija board. In 1982, poet James Merrill released an apocalyptic 560-page epic poem entitled The Changing Light at Sandover, which documented two decades of messages dictated from the Ouija board during séances hosted by Merrill and his partner David Noyes Jackson. Sandover, which received the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1983, was published in three volumes beginning in 1976. The first contained a poem for each of the letters A through Z, and was called The Book of Ephraim. It appeared in the collection Divine Comedies, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1977.According to Merrill, the spirits ordered him to write and publish the next two installments, Mirabell: Books of Number in 1978 (which won the National Book Award for Poetry) and Scripts for the Pageant in 1980.Much of William Butler Yeats‘ later poetry was inspired, among other facets of occultism, by the Ouija board. Yeats himself did not use it but his wife did.[28]
According to Smithsonian, communication with the dead wasn’t bizarre or weird in the early 1900s. There was nothing sinister about it. To the contrary, Ouija boards and seances were comforting. For example, Mary Todd Lincoln (President Abraham Lincoln’s wife) often held them after her eleven-year-old son died. The Winchester rifle heir, Sarah Winchester, had a seance room built in her house. It certainly wasn’t the intention of the board makers for it to be a “portal to hell,” as some claim. It was meant to make them money–and it did! By 1892, the Kennard Novelty Company went from one factory in Baltimore to two in Baltimore, two in New York, two in Chicago and one in London. The company was sold several times over the years and its popularity has ebbed and flowed. Some see it as a “mystical oracle” while others view it as pure “spooky” fun.
The Ouija board has been used by all kinds of people in all kinds of ways over the years. For example, in 1920 national wire services reported that would-be crime solvers were turning to Ouija boards for clues in the mysterious murder of a New York City gambler, Joseph Burton Elwell. In 1921, The New York Times reported that a Chicago woman being sent to a psychiatric hospital tried to explain to doctors that she wasn’t suffering from mania, but that Ouija spirits had told her to leave her mother’s dead body in the living room for 15 days before burying her in the backyard. In 1930, newspaper readers learned that two men had murdered a woman because of Ouija board messages. In 1941, a 23-year-old gas station attendant from New Jersey told The New York Times that he joined the Army because the Ouija board told him to. In 1958, a Connecticut court decided not to honor the “Ouija board will” of Mrs. Helen Dow Peck, who left only $1,000 to two former servants and an insane $152,000 to Mr. John Gale Forbes—a spirit who’d contacted her via the Ouija board.
Things changed in 1973 The Exorcist was released. In the movie, 12-year-old Regan was possessed by a demon after playing with a Ouija board. Almost overnight, Ouija became a tool of the devil and, for that reason, a tool of horror writers and moviemakers—it began popping up in scary movies. Sales continued to thrive, but for different reasons. In recent years, Ouija is popular again. The hugely popular Paranormal Activity 1 and 2 both featured a Ouija board; it’s popped up in episodes of “Breaking Bad,” “Castle,” “Rizzoli & Isles” and multiple paranormal reality TV programs. This year, Hasbro released a more “mystical” version of the game, replacing its old glow-in-the-dark version; for purists, Hasbro also licensed the rights to make a “classic” version to another company.
Read more at Wikipedia and http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-strange-and-mysterious-history-of-the-ouija-board-5860627/#EpAwroV5GaeQKisL.99
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