The Ouija board is a flat board marked with the letters of the alphabet, the numbers 0 to 9, the words ‘yes’, ‘no’ and ‘good bye’, along with various symbols and graphics. It uses the movements of people’s hands on a small device to spell out a message.
SPIRITUALISM
The Ouija board developed out of Spiritualism, a religious movement that became very popular in mid 19th century America. It was based on the belief that the spirits of the dead communicate with the living. Other phenomena related to the movement were prophecy, clairvoyance, gift of tongues, visions, trance, as well as automatic writing on which the Ouija board was based. This was, of course, a slow process as the ghost had to spell out a message letter by letter. Nevertheless, in 1917, two mediums, Emily Grant Hutchings and Lola Hays, claimed that the ghost of Mark Twain had dictated an entire book to them, Jap Herron, via the Ouija board.
a game
By the 1920s, Spiritualism’s popularity had fallen as many frauds were revealed. Then, the Ouija board was sold as a family game with no connections to the occult. However, the Catholic Church had become alarmed at the potential of the board for evil. In 1901 Pope Pius X had commissioned a psychic investigator called J. Godfrey Raupert to warn Catholics about it. In his book, The New Black Magic and the Truth About the Ouija Board, Raupert warned: “The board should not be tolerated in any Christian household or placed within the reach of the young.”
NOTORIETY
This, of course, proved to encourage the young in particular, and the Ouija board was widely used on college campuses. Sales peaked in the 1960s when the Ouija board outsold Monopoly. In 1971, William Peter Blatty’s novel The Exorcist and its film adaptation cemented its sinister status. Blatty based his story on a real-life case of an allegedly possessed boy who had been introduced to the Ouija board by an aunt.
GOOD BYE
Ouija boards are still used today. Issues addressed on the social media site Reddit include ‘How to deal with spirits with a basic level of English’ (stick to ‘yes’ or ‘no’), or ‘wWhat to do about distracted spirits who lack the patience or clarity to spell out a long message’. Ouija boards are equally of interest in a more scientific sense as an exercise in what is called ‘the ideomotor response’, revealing how the mind makes unconscious decisions that have physical consequences.