Ouija Explained
The first historical mention of something resembling a Ouija board is found in China around 1200 B.C., a divination method known as fuji ·öØÀ ¡°planchette writing¡±. Other sources claim that according to a French historical account of the philosopher Pythagoras, in 540 B.C. his sect would conduct s¨¦ances at ¡°a mystic table, moving on wheels, moved towards signs, which the philosopher and his pupil, Philolaus, interpreted to the audience as being revelations supposedly from an unseen world.¡± However, other sources call both claims into dispute, claiming that fuji is spirit writing, not the use of a spirit board, and that there is no record of Pythagoras or his students actually having used this method of achieving oracles or divinations. In addition, the claim of ancient Greek use is called into doubt by questions of historical accuracy, as Philolaus was never the pupil of Pythagoras, and indeed was born roughly twenty-five years after Pythagoras¡¯s death. The first undisputed use of the talking boards came with the Modern Spiritualist Movement in The United States in the mid-19th century. Methods of divination at that time used various ways to spell out messages, including swinging a pendulum over a plate that had letters around the edge or using an entire table to indicate letters drawn on the floor. Often used was a small wooden tablet supported on casters. This tablet, called a planchette, was affixed with a pencil that would write out messages in a fashion similar to automatic writing. These methods may predate modern Spiritualism. During the late 1800s, planchettes were widely sold as a novelty. The businessmen Elijah Bond and Charles Kennard had the idea to patent a planchette sold with a board on which the alphabet was printed. The patentees filed on May 28, 1890 for patent protection and thus had invented the first Ouija board. Issue date on the patent was February 10, 1891. They received U.S. Patent 446,054 . Bond was an attorney and was an inventor of other objects in addition to this device. An employee of Kennard, William Fuld took over the talking board production and in 1901, he started production of his own boards under the name ¡°Ouija¡±. The Fuld name would become synonymous with the Ouija board, as Fuld reinvented its history, claiming that he himself had invented it. Countless talking boards from Fuld¡¯s competitors flooded the market and all these boards enjoyed a heyday from the 1920s through the 1960s. Fuld sued many companies over the ¡°Ouija¡± name and concept right up until his death in 1927. In 1966, Fuld¡¯s estate sold the entire business to Parker Brothers, who continues to hold all trademarks and patents. About 10 brands of talking boards are sold today under various names. Etymology There are several theories about the origin of the term ¡°Ouija¡±. According to one of these, the word is derived from the French ¡°oui¡± (for ¡°yes¡±) and the German ¡°ja¡± (also for ¡°yes¡±). An alternative story suggests that the name was revealed to inventor Charles Kennard during a Ouija s¨¦ance and was claimed to be an Ancient Egyptian word meaning ¡°good luck.¡± It has also been suggested that the word was inspired by the name of the Moroccan city Oujda. Despite its common usage, ¡°Ouija¡± is a registered trademark (but the term ¡°Ouija Board¡± has been abandoned as a registered trademark).
Explanation
Scientific explanation
Users subconsciously direct the path of the triangle to produce a word that is in that person¡¯s subconscious thought process. This subconscious behavior is known as ideomotor action, a term coined by William Carpenter in 1882. It is also known as automatism. Some people may be convinced the ¡°powers¡± of the ouija board are real because they are unaware that they are in fact moving the piece and therefore assume that the piece must be moving due to some other ¡°spiritual force¡±. The subconscious thought process may produce an answer that is different from what the user expected in their conscious thought process¡ªthus perpetuating the idea that the board has ¡°mystical powers¡±.
Spiritualist explanation
Spiritualists who believe Ouija boards can be used to make actual contact with the spirit world feel that the act of hindering a medium¡¯s ability to use his or her own eyes while the board is in use effectively places too great of a handicap on the whole exercise. This argument stems from the belief that contacted spirits actually utilize the eyes of the medium during a Ouija session in order to point to the letters and words needed to form a message. Most believers of this notion believe that the board has no intrinsic power in and of itself, but rather, is used simply as a tool to aid a medium while in communication with the spirit world.
Literature
Talking boards have become an iconic part of culture, demonstrated by their appearances in many books and movies. Their roles in such vary from being a benign object to an evil entity. A more peculiar role of talking boards in literature stems from authors using the board to channel complete written works from the deceased. In the early 1900s, St. Louis housewife Pearl Curran used her Ouija board communications with the ubiquitous spirit Patience Worth to publish a number of poems and prose. Pearl claimed that all of the writings came to her through s¨¦ances, which she allowed the public to attend. In 1917 writer Emily G. Hutchings, a friend of Pearl Curran¡¯s, believed she had communicated with and written a book dictated by Mark Twain from her Ouija board. Twain¡¯s living descendants went to court to halt publication of the book that was later determined to be so poorly written that it could not have been written by Twain dead or alive. Sylvia Plath¡¯s poem Ouija was influenced by the experiments she and Ted Hughes made with a board. Her Dialogue over a Ouija Board, written in 1957, incorporates the text of one of the sessions. Author John G. Fuller used a Ouija board in his research for his 1976 book The Ghost of Flight 401. As he was skeptical of its effectiveness, he worked with a medium and claimed they both contacted Don Repo, the flight engineer on the flight which crashed into the Everglades en route to Miami. According to Fuller, the information divined described facts that neither he nor the medium previously knew. More recently, Pulitzer Prize winning poet James Merrill used a Ouija board and recorded what he claimed were messages from a number of deceased persons. He combined these messages with his own poetry in The Changing Light at Sandover (1982).
