Yes Yes? No No! The History of the Ouija Board

'The keyboard on this new laptop will take some getting used to. And the mouse seems to have a life of its own sometimes.' 

I cracked that joke - accompanied by the photo - on Facebook and Instagram yesterday. And it stirred up many funny comments about previous owners 'ghosting' me, 'spirited' attempts at working out the layout and there being no QWERTY in the afterlife. 

One person also commented, 'Hey, I know people are finding this funny but you must be careful with Ouija boards, you can get a splinter or drop the board on your toe.' And that led to an interesting discussion about the 'dangers' of Ouija Boards.

As you might already know, Ouija Boards have a curious and chequered history.

Divining boards are nothing new. Their first recorded use comes from China circa 1100, where the practice was known as Fuji planchette writing. It was used as a way to divine the future and to speak with the spirit-world. The practice continued for 500 years until it was forbidden by the Qing dynasty (1636-1812).

However, by this time it had attracted the attention of the growing Spiritualist movement in the UK and USA. Following the American Civil War, mediums did significant business in allegedly allowing families and survivors to contact lost friends and relatives. And in the UK, mediums used them to allow families to talk to their dead children - the child mortality rate was exceptionally high at this time, especially in the industrialised cities.

Enter Charles Kennard, a man from Baltimore, Maryland, who saw the commercial potential in divining boards. He created the basic design in 1890 - which has remained pretty much unchanged ever since - and pulled together a group of four investors. They formed the Kennard Novelty Company to exclusively make and market these new talking boards. 

It's at this point that we can lay a common  myth to rest - namely that the board got its name from the French and German words for 'Yes'. Why would it? Especially as it was marketed primarily to Americans (and wouldn't it then be pronounced 'wee-yah'?)

Two decades of research by Ouija historian Robert Murch - including access to family papers and company records - has revealed that the name was coined in 1890 by a woman called Helen Peters. She was the sister-in-law of attorney Elijah Bond, one of Kennard's initial four investors. Peters believed herself to be a medium and so Bond asked her what the board should be called. Peters arranged a séance and made contact with the spirit world using the board. The name OIUJA came through and, when asked what that meant, she replied, 'Good luck.' Kennard was also present at the séance and confirmed in his personal papers that the board had named itself through Peters. 

It was only when Kennard employee William Fuld later took over the company that the theory emerged that the name came from a combination of two different words for 'Yes'. Fuld was quite happy to run with the idea if it meant it was easier to market the boards. 

And now, back to the story.

The next step was to get the design patented. Kennard and his partners knew that they wouldn’t get their patent unless they could prove that the board worked. So he took Bond and Peters with him to the patent office in Washington. The chief patent officer, as expected,  demanded a demonstration so they conducted a séance. Helen Peters communed with the spirits and the board spelled out the patent officer’s name. Whether it was spiritual intervention or the fact that Bond, as a patent attorney, may have just known the man’s name, is a matter for you to decide. Whatever the truth, Bond was awarded a patent for his new 'toy or game' on February 10th 1891.

And that's how the board was marketed - as a bit of family fun. In time, a series of buy-outs and take-overs led to the Ouija board and name being owned by Parker Brothers and now by the global toy firm Hasbro - who also own games like Monopoly, Buckaroo and Trivial Pursuit as well as franchises like Transformers, Mr Potato Head, and Play-Doh.

Naturally, anything purporting to be magical has always attracted criticism from the church and staunch conservatives. Ouija boards were criticised by scholars early on, being described in a 1927 journal as 'vestigial remains of primitive belief-systems' and a con to part fools from their money. In the 1970s Ouija board users were described as 'cult members' by some sociologists, and the Catholic Church explicitly forbade any practice of divination which includes the use of Ouija boards. Catholic bishops in Micronesia even called for the boards to be banned and warned congregations that they were talking to demons when using them. In 2001, Ouija boards were burned in Alamogordo, New Mexico, by fundamentalist groups as 'symbols of witchcraft' and Human Life International has called for Hasbro to be prohibited from marketing them. 

Of course, this makes them all the more exciting to impressionable young people who delight in cocking a snook at authority. Just two days ago  it was reported that 28 Colombian schoolgirls were hospitalised with anxiety after playing with a Ouija board. The event was what prompted me to write this blogpost.

And, of course, use of the boards has led to some strange tales. As Linda Rodriguez McRobbie explains in an excellent article for the Smithsonian magazine (full feature here):

'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 thrilled to accounts of two women in Buffalo, New York, who’d murdered another woman, supposedly on the encouragement 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 honour 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 lucky, but bodiless spirit who’d contacted her via the Ouija board.'

Demonic portal or party game? You decide.

I suspect, like most of these things, it's all a matter of belief. And I, personally, find it very difficult to imagine anything demonic being produced by the same company that makes My Little Pony.

Hang on ...