![[tmbchr]™](/journal/popocculture-blog-logo.jpg){kind=logo}
The Ouija Board
The Ouija Board traces its roots to spiritualist practices of the mid-nineteenth century using “talking boards”, planchettes and pendulums, and perhaps indirectly beyond that to divinatory and shamanistic practices throughout history. The board as we know it today though came into use in 1901 when a businessman named William Fuld stole the idea from his boss Charles Kennard, and an associate named Elijah Bond who’d created something similar in 1890. Fuld was the originator of the “Ouija” brand though, which he obsessively protected in court until his death in 1927. The word “ouija” comes from the French and German words for “yes” - oui, and ja. In 1966, his estate sold the rights to the game company Parker Brothers, which still holds them today.
Above is a magazine advertisement from 1968 for the Ouija Board (found via the very cool blog Swapatorium). The text under the graphic reads:
Funny how a boy seems to make the best partner!
Especially if he’s open-minded and willing to give the OUIJA Talking Board a fair try. You can ask it absolutely anything… questions about love, school, money, travel, work, other people or the future. Makes a great Christmas present for anyone who likes the fascinating experience of exploring the unknown.
I’ve never actually tried using a Ouija Board myself, but it’s one of those things that seems to be a lightning rod for speculation, criticism and fear. That may not be all it’s a lightning rod for though. Christians have long claimed that using the board is an invitation for demonic and spirit possession. The 1973 movie The Exorcist is based on a supposedly real demonic possession from 1949 which arose as a result of use of a talking board.
Of course, not everybody believes such things are even possible, nevermind happening as a result of a simple board game. As the ever-predictable Skeptic’s Dictionary elucidates on the subject:
Some users believe that paranormal or supernatural forces are at work in spelling out Ouija board answers. Skeptics believe that those using the board either consciously or unconsciously select what is read. To prove this, simply try it blindfolded for some time, having an innocent bystander take notes on what letters are selected. Usually, the result will be unintelligible non-sense.
The movement of the planchette is not due to paranormal forces but to unnoticeable movements by those controlling the pointer, known as the ideomotor effect. The same kind of unnoticeable movement is at work in dowsing.
“Usually, the result will be unintelligible non-sense.” Okay, wait… usually? Does that mean sometimes it’s not unintelligible? In other words that explanation doesn’t hold up at all, because they’re admitting their test doesn’t always work. Anybody who’s got a board and who’s willing to experiment with the blind-fold test outlined here, see if you can come up with a result that’s actually intelligible. I’d be curious to hear your findings.
Going back to the so-called ideomotor effect though, the Straight Dope’s explanation of the Ouija describes this concept very well:
The basic point is that your muscles can move without your consciously thinking, “move to the word YES.” As the Skeptic’’s Dictionary says, “suggestions can be made to the mind by others or by observations. Those suggestions can influence the mind and affect motor behavior. What is purely physiological, however, appears to some to be paranormal.” In other words, if you believe this stuff and are trying to get the spirits to answer questions proving that they are all-knowing, and you ask a question that you already know the answer to (for example, “What’s my father’s name?”), odds are that your own hands will do the rest by spelling out your answer.
Then there’s the third camp of people who believe that maybe it is the ideomotor effect at work, but that it offers a viable way of communicating with your subconscious well of knowledge. The online Museum of Talking Boards also offers several interpretations of how the Ouija works.
Interestingly, it’s not just Christians who say that Ouija Board shouldn’t be played around with. Dale Kaczmarek, President of the Ghost Research Society penned a much repeated article called “Ouija: Not A Game” in which he writes:
Most often the spirits whom are contacted through the Ouija are those whom reside on “the lower astral plane”. These spirits are often very confused and may have died a violent or sudden death; murder, suicide, etc. Therefore, many violent, negative and potentially dangerous conditions are present to those using the board. Often times several spirits will attempt to come through at the same time but the real danger lies when you ask for physical proof of their existence! You might say, “Well, if you’re really a spirit, then put out this light or move that object!” What you have just done is simple, you have “opened a doorway” and allowed them to enter into the physical world and future problems can and often do arise.
Even our own Rev Max, author of Enemies.com, frequent reader of Pop Occulture and someone with a broad occult knowledge adds:
From what I hear Ouija boards actually are dangerous even for people who work with the dead on a regular basis. Shamans & witchdoctors use traditional rituals with built-in boundaries to communicate with them in a controlled way, these have been perfected through trial and error over hundreds if not thousand of years
ouija boards are just sort of like unlocking the security door of anaprtment building in a bad neighborhood so that any random crackhead/thug/hooker can wander on in and hang out for as long as they feel like it.
I’m interested in hearing the opinions of other people who are involved in occult practices and alternative religious traditions where they would weigh in on this issue. I’d also love to hear first-hand tales of ordinary readers’ experience using the Ouija Board or similar devices. Did something crazy happen or was it just boring gibberish you received?
For people interested in further dabbling, I might recommend these links:
- How to use a Ouija Board (from Paranormal.About.com)
- Ouija Tips for a Smooth Session
- Ouija, Using it Without Harm (from PaganPath.com)
- How to Make a Talking Board (Museum of Talking Boards)
- Online interactive talking boards (Museum of Talking Boards)
- Witchboard World - Antique Ouija Board Gallery
- Crystal Links also has more information on and advice about how to make your own talking board
September 24th, 2005 at 8:17 pm
I’ve never experienced anything odd. I’m of the opinion that the board usually says whatever the most skeptical of your friends is thinking, since they take a what-the-hell attitude and just move it wherever they want it to go. When I was thirteen, I was briefly confounded by how often the spirit realm thinks of boobs, but then I figured it was probably just Phillip.
September 24th, 2005 at 9:37 pm
I grew up with Ouija boards– I guess my mom had one since she was young and she passed it on to me. I still have it somewhere, but it’s missing the little viewfinder pointer and the felt leg tips are all worn off. Over the years I’ve bought another one. I never really thought of them as being particularly weird but it could be because I’ve had weirder experiences with unknown-stuff, but they were always fascinating to me regardless, in the same way that dream analysis is.
I remember a few times at parties we tried to “contact ghosts in the house” (as if every house has a ghost or five) and talk to them. And then these probably-imaginary characters would concoct probably-random answers to all of our questions. I remember we let one get us freaked out about how our friend Jenny was going to get hit by a car that evening by one of the other kid’s moms. We got all worked up about it because it was fun, and then, of course, nothing happened. Ouija Boards are damn good story tellers for sure.
On the other hand, I’ve never been able to get the ouija board to do ANYTHING when I’m just by myself. It just doesn’t work, in my experience. You have to have that other person there, regardless of gender (although I’ve heard that a feminine/masculine force is preferred for some reason) for it to make it work.
Apparently this whole thing is similar to automatic writing and pendulum oracles. So one time I decided I would see if it had more to do with the board itself or with the force itself. My friend Nate and I wrote a bunch of letters/numbers, drew some random symbols, and “yes” and “no” on a piece of cardboard and used a super nintendo cartridge as the oracle thing. And it worked exactly the same as a OUIJA board. So, I’m slightly amazed that more companies haven’t capitalized on the weirdness of the feeling you get from yelling “stop pushing it!” while the other person does the same thing with both parties swearing that they’re not. It’s pretty great.
Either way, I can’t really fully explain the weird push-pull force that happens when you’re asking questions. It’s really rather clever. But the OUIJA board oracle- I wonder if it’s a really good facilitator for people with ESP or a connection to spiritual forces. A more concrete way of organizing feelings into action so that you don’t second-guess yourself when you’re feeling psychic, perhaps?
September 24th, 2005 at 9:57 pm
Oh, and I just realized that the retro advertisment is for the same version I have, with the creepy grim-reaper guy on the front. (I was never really sure what his deal was…) But now they market it with psychedelic purple New-Age graphics so it can match your budding crystal collection and the glow-in-the-dark stars on your ceiling.
September 24th, 2005 at 10:27 pm
Actually, it looks like they make a glow-in-the-dark ouija set now, so I guess you can turn the lights off, and don’t even need a candle or anything.
September 24th, 2005 at 10:39 pm
Wow, what a great “reviews/comments” section below that version on Amazon!! hahahaha. It’s interesting to me that someone would go to Amazon in particular to shun anyone who would want to buy one. Particularly as a consumer report of sorts. “I’ve tried this, and I’ve been possessed by demons. But it works well. 3-out-of-5 stars.”
September 24th, 2005 at 11:20 pm
ideo-motor response works in hypnosis so that the person in a deep trance can still communicate. using small movements of a finger in response to yes/no questions, for instance. or it`s channeled spirits moving my client`s fingers. no matter what you call the process, the product is the same. information unavailable otherwise.
September 24th, 2005 at 11:28 pm
About ten years ago I made a ouija board by drawing it on paper and putting it on an old cookie sheet under waxed paper, and some friends and I played with it, using an upside down shot glass as the pointer. (Oddly, a crystal didn’t work.) We got clear intelligible answers, and given all I know about the “paranormal,” I’m quite sure we were using subconscious muscle movements to tap into something outside ourselves, just like in dowsing. It became clear that the spirits didn’t know much and were bullshitting us. But one answer I remember was when we asked the spirit what it wanted more than anything, and it said, to have a body.
September 25th, 2005 at 1:31 am
had a weird experience once. when i was about 12 or 13 a friend and I decided to push the validity of these things and make a “spirit” prove their existence. so we got his mom’s antique looking phone (it was for decoration and not plugged in), set it on the floor with us, lit some candles, warmed up our “spirit” with a few inane questions and then proceeded to say such things as “if you’re real, then make this phone ring” not 5 seconds later the phone rang. that is to say the other phone that was plugged in…it was his father. needless to say, we freaked out for a few minutes and put the board away, for about a day.
September 25th, 2005 at 5:55 pm
I was going to say that a pure glass tumbler or shot glass will work, sometimes even on a bare polished table; I’ve seen suggestions that some degree of static electricity might be involved. If you want ideomotor subconscious communication, then just bust out a pendulum; anything you can hold between thumb and forefinger will work if it can swing freely back and forth, left and right, and circular for a “yes/no/maybe”.
It’s odd that they suggest “a boy” be involved in the old copy. It reminds me of the princeton studies in apparent psychokinesis that show women have more influence but men more focus.
As far as pure “gibberish”: I’ve got a few theories about subconscious and spirit communications, at least four equally valid right now. I’ll maybe post some of to my site.
September 26th, 2005 at 8:31 am
I have played Ouija 1-2 times before, just for fun. I would not recommend people to indulge it. My understanding of it is that higher spirit being around the space will never descend for this kind of human request. The ones who answer the question through Ouija mostly are those low level of spirit. Therefore, the accuracy of the answer can be questioned.
My spiritual experiences have told me that high level of spirit are usually helping human being to solve mystery through a serious of very skillfull and intellegent manifestations. These manifestative activities are hardly acquired or observed unless one is of hight level of awareness which usually take years to get developed. This kind of maifestation are now also called INTELLEGENT DESIGN.
WHEN A STUDENT IS READY, A TEACHER APPEARS
WHEN ONE IS AWARE NERD, MANIFESTION MOVIES
September 26th, 2005 at 12:28 pm
“WHEN ONE IS AWARE NERD, MANIFESTION MOVIES”
i like that. can i quote this?
i don’t get all the ‘i don’t recommend people indulge in it’ stuff. maybe it’s just me, but parker bros. has been marketing it for so long to teenage prom victims and whatnot that it’s lost any inherent spookiness to me. 99 out of 100 people who use the danged thing ask the questions our little teen friends in the pic ask and get a good thrill out of it and then forget it the next morning.
same as with everything else: you get from it what you bring to it. it’s a fucking board with letters on it! if you wanna be all ooky and mysterious and scare yourself silly and get all pompous about how ‘this is not for the uninitiated,’ then fine, but it’s a pretty tired cliche, imho.
i’ve had some cool experiences with the ouija and would highly recommend it to anyone interested in such matters. last i heard, i haven’t been ‘possessed’ or ‘cursed.’ i’ve contacted some ‘entities’ with potty-mouths, and some ‘entities’ who claim to be able to grant enlightenment. i had great success using crowley’s 777 as a sort of gematria-based ’spirit to english’ dictionary. we’d take a long string of ‘gobbledy gook’ and work out its gematriac value and we’d come up with some great insights. at one point, we could ask the board for a specific word in a specific paragraph on a specific page in a specific book and it was right prolly 70% of the time.
i’m with ran– i think it’s subconscious movement that manifest something external.
ever heard of ‘messages from michael‘? it’s a whole religious belief system ‘channeled’ by a group of people using a ouija board. it’s pretty interesting.
September 26th, 2005 at 4:01 pm
First time I ever got stoned I played on a Ouija board with my friendly pot initiates. I didn’t buy it then and I still don’t buy it. But various members of my family swear that it works, and that it shouldn’t be taken lightly. My uncle (a very rational, non-superstitious person, a credible source) said he used to play with it and win at the race track because it would predict the winning horses! He said he stopped using it one day and I asked him why and he didn’t want to talk about it. He also said he gave away the money he made off of the racetrack, and to this day I haven’t the slightest idea why.
September 27th, 2005 at 5:10 am
Well, if any of the decisions are made from stats, that’s fine. You see, at least 30% of the error are there according to your experience.
Maybe one could play Ouija Board seriously by applying a statistic tech, but be careful not to be possesed by the spirit though ^___^
September 27th, 2005 at 11:19 am
A few of us recently got together and decided to try the Ouija Board…We had a great time laughing and talking about the answers. The last question asked was by my roomate who asked “is my mother in the room” well the pointer went to yes. It was after that we decided to put the board away. I got up the next morning and there was a strange message on the answering machine (older type with tape) that said “happy birthday” to my roomate (not even his birthday…it was an old message). I didn’t think much of it until my roomate got up and listened to it and said that was his mothers voice - she passed away almost 2 years to the date. That was freaky!!
September 27th, 2005 at 3:07 pm
I have witnessed several things that many people would attribute to the occult ie flowing phantasms and poltergeist activity and have had precognitive dreams since I was a child. But, I remain open to more down to Earth explanation to the supposed spiritual activity.
When I was a teenager (now 40 years of age) I spent the weekend with a friend who wanted to pull one over on his mother. We had decided to work my Ouija board honestly but would begin to make things up if nothing happened on its own.
My friend’s mother wanted to contact her deceased sister (her sister was murdered by a deranged boyfriend- a man who worked with my stepfather). The mother was having what today would be called a Jerry Springer moment. She had fallen in love with the murderer and visited him in prison. She wanted her sister’s approval for the relationship.
We set the mood by working by candle light. For the first 15-20 minutes we acted in good faith and attempted to let the board talk. When no messages emerged my friend began to steer the planchette. I followed, not knowing until later that he was faking it. Shortly after he began to spell out answers to his mother’s questions something strange and unexplainable happened. An emergency flashlight mounted on a nearby wall turned on by itself.
The flashlight was unique in its design in that it did not have a power switch. The batteries were separated by a forked tab which was part of the wall bracket. In times of emergency, one could grab the light from its mount and the battery contact spring would push the batteries together creating a completed circuit, thus, turning on the light.
The light came on spontaneously on three occasions during our session each time my friend faked another answer. I attempted to cause the light to come on by moving it while in the bracket and by pounding on the wall around it but could not recreate the problem. Upon returning to the board the light came on as soon as we spelled out another fake response.
I still own the board but have not had anyone since then willing to play with it. I am not convinced that the incident above was the work of spirits but have to admit that it was strange at the least.
September 27th, 2005 at 6:03 pm
I am a Witch and have found Ouija boards to be an interesting tool. I however would not use one outside of sacred space ie: a cast circle. I would also bless or consecrate the Ouija as I would any tool, to be used for benefit and not for harm.
Blessings,
Flora Green
September 27th, 2005 at 6:59 pm
hey. be real, what you’re doing is wrong and you will be punished on the day of judgement, so stop doing this while you still can, what’s wrong with you is that you seek excitment through the wrong things, find what you need to do in life and seek help
September 27th, 2005 at 7:00 pm
im talking about spirits and that stuff, stop this evil things now please
September 27th, 2005 at 7:01 pm
and please close this worthless site
September 27th, 2005 at 7:04 pm
Ah, nothing like useful additions to the conversation…
September 28th, 2005 at 3:16 pm
[…] d shamanistic practices throughout history. Read the article in the Pop Occulture Journal here. Also, check out the Online Museum Of Talking Boards, which f […]
October 20th, 2005 at 1:06 pm
[…] tists and others have been talking about this kind of stuff for ages. (Just check out this 1968 ad for a ouija board - even they knew it worked better with a male-female pair […]