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Discover a Victoria that never stands still. Visit us at toursandvictoria.com My name is Hallie, and this is the Morbid Curiosity Podcast. Since we're exploring ghost hunting tools, I thought it would be interesting to look at one of the most popular tools for talking to spirits. The Ouija board has been around 100 years or more and has enjoyed ups and downs in popularity but has never completely gone away.
The Ouija board is the massed produced version of the Talking Board, which was developed to aid mediums in receiving messages from the beyond. Let's explore where talking boards come from and other aspects of supposed spirit communication. As with previous explorations of these topics, I want to preface with the fact that I'm a skeptic. That doesn't mean I don't consider the existence of ghosts to be a possibility.
It just means I need proof, proof that can stand the test of rigorous scientific investigation. That means the phenomena is observed in controlled conditions and is repeatable and measurable. Despite this skepticism though, I tend to avoid using methods for communication with ghosts because most have reputations of being dangerous. The Ouija board is one of the most feared spirit communication devices, and I'll explain why after some historical context.
The Ouija board was born out of the spiritualism movement in the 19th century. The spiritualism movement was a significant cultural and religious phenomenon that emerged primarily in the United States and Europe. Spiritualism rejected many traditional religious doctrines and emphasized personal experience and direct communication with the spirit realm. Central to spiritualism was the belief that the spirits of the dead who could communicate with the living through mediums.
These self-proclaimed mediums would often conduct seances during which they would enter a trance-like state and purportedly convey messages from the spirit world. Spiritualism came to America in a big way in 1848 thanks to the sudden popularity of the Fox Sisters of upstate New York. Margarita, Leah, and Kate Fox claimed the ability to communicate with the spirit of a deceased peddler through a series of knocks and wrappings that could be heard by all present. They would call out the letters of the alphabet and the peddler supposedly knocked when the letter he wanted came up.
Amy and Isaac Post, a radical Quaker couple and long-standing friends of the Fox family, invited the girls to their Rochester home. Quakers are people who belong to the religious society of friends, a historically Protestant Christian set of denominations who have a specific set of beliefs. They refused to participate in war, refused to swear oaths, wear plain dress, oppose slavery, and practice teetotalism. They also practice philanthropic efforts, including prison reform and social justice.
Immediately convinced that the Fox Sisters spirit communication phenomena was genuine, the Post's helped to spread the word among their Quaker friends. This group became the early core of spiritualists. In this way, American spiritualism became associated with radical political causes, such as abolition, temperance, and equal rights for women. On the 14th of November, 1849, the Fox Sisters demonstrated their knocking communication method at the Corinthian Hall in Rochester.
This was the first demonstration of spiritualism held before a paying public, and it began a tradition of public events featuring spiritualist mediums and attended by leaders in the United States. Kate and Margaretta Fox became famous mediums and held seances for hundreds of people. Almost immediately, there were skeptics. Magician Harry Houdini, who devoted a large part of his life to debunking spiritualist claims, publicly denounced their abilities.
In 1851, Mrs. Norman Culver, a relative of the Fox family, released a signed statement claiming that Kate and Margaretta had revealed to her, that they produced the knocking sounds by snapping their toes and cracking the joints in their knees and ankles. Over the years, Sisters Kate and Margaretta developed serious drinking problems. Around 1888, they both became embroiled in a quarrel with their sister Leah and other leading spiritualists, who were concerned that Kate was drinking too much to care for her children.
Eventually, Margaretta confessed that the knocking method had been hoaxed and publicly demonstrated how they did it. However, before the Sisters confessed, they aided in the wildfire spread of the spiritualism movement. Spiritualism offered a small comfort in an era when the average lifespan was less than 50 years old. Women died in childbirth, children died of disease, and men died in war.
Spiritualism was also compatible with Christian dogma, meaning you could go to a seance one night and go to church the next without guilt or fear. Following the end of the American Civil War in 1865, mediums became increasingly popular, as they allowed survivors to contact relatives that had been killed in the war. The knocking method of communicating with the spirits championed by the Fox Sisters was very popular, but it took a long time to spell out the messages letter by letter. This frustration led to the invention of the talking board, a precursor to the Ouija board, which made communication with spirits faster.
These were wooden boards with the alphabet and the numbers 0 through 9 written on them, as well as the words yes, no, hello, and goodbye. The medium then used a planchete to select letters whilst channeling the spirit. A planchete, which means little plank in French, is a small, usually heart-shaped, flat piece of wood, equipped with two-wheeled casters and a pencil holding aperture pointing downwards. It was mostly used in automatic writing, another form of spirit communication used by mediums.
Practitioners engaged in automatic writing by holding a writing instrument or planchete with a pencil attached and allowing alleged spirits to manipulate the practitioner's hand. The writer is supposedly not conscious of what they're writing. Using a planchete for automatic writing has ancient origins. One of the first mentions of automatic writing using a device similar is from China around 1100 CE.
In historical documents of the Song Dynasty, a method of spirit writing, known as Fujii, was mentioned alongside necromancy and communication with the spirit world. The method used a sieve or tray suspended over sand or incense ashes to guide a stick as it wrote in Chinese characters. Two people held the sieve, one of which was a medium. Another person stood by to interpret the writing, while another recorded what was written.
A fifth person smoothed out the sand between the characters. The practice eventually became part of special rituals and regulated by doctrine. It was a central practice of the Juan-Jian school of Taoism, a philosophical and religious tradition. In the early 1500s, the Jia-Jing Emperor built a special altar in the Forbidden City, the royal palace in Beijing, specifically for Fuchi.
However, the practice was outlawed by the King Dynasty in the mid-1600s. On June 10th, 1853, during a seance in Paris, a participant grew frustrated with the knocking method of communication. The participant turned a basket upside down and pushed a pencil through the weave. Multiple participants took hold of the pencil and cooperatively wrote out messages from spirits.
It's not known if the participant had any prior knowledge about Fuchi. The basket method was refined, and the planchett automatic writing method is spread by word of mouth across Europe with a small cottage industry of producers. Much like the planchett we recognize from today's Ouija boards, the automatic writing planchett was a heart-shaped plank of wood, but it was much larger than today's planchett's and rested on wheels or casters. One or several people would rest their hands on the planchett and see what messages came through.
The use of planchett's to produce mysterious written messages led to the belief that the device itself allowed communication with spirits. Planchett's were popular in seances during the Victorian era, and it seemed natural to use them with the talking boards as a pointing device. I'll get into what makes the planchett move in both of these cases in a moment. The talking boards became so popular that Charles Kennard of Baltimore, Maryland, created his own version called the Ouija board.
The board was named by Helen Peters-Nosworthy, a medium who asked the board what they should call it, and it spelled out Ouija. To get a patent on the design, Kennard needed to prove that the board worked. Helen Peters accompanied the board to the patent office in Washington, D.C. The patent officer, whose name was unknown to Peters, demanded the board spell out his name.
The planchett miraculously did so. Whether or not it was mysticism or Peters' prior knowledge of the man's name is unknown. On February 10th, 1891, the Ouija board was patented. The Ouija board quickly became a commercial success leading to the expansion of Kennard Novelty Company.
Despite internal pressures and changes in ownership, the popularity of the board endured. It was marketed as both a mystical tool and family entertainment, appealing to a wide audience. The only group that seemed opposed to Ouija boards were mediums, as the board took away the need for a professional medium. The Ouija board tends to rise in popularity in uncertain times, the end of the Civil War, the mid-60s with Vietnam and the Civil Rights Movement, and today.
In these times, people look for answers and comfort from just about anywhere. People want to believe that something else is out there, a higher power in afterlife. The board allows them to explore and express that belief. Ouija existed on the periphery of American culture, its popularity waxing and waning, but never falling too far.
There were no issues from religious groups with its use. It was mysterious, interesting, and non-threatening. However, this perception of the Ouija board shifted after the release of the film, The Exorcist, in 1973. The film was based on a book, which was based on real events recorded by an exorcist in the 1940s.
A teenage boy known as Roland Doe had been taught to use a Ouija board by his aunt, who was a spiritualist. Supposedly after Roland began using the board, strange events began occurring around him, and his family believed he was possessed by demons. Several exorcisms took place to relieve Roland of his demons. Many of the details of Roland's story were embellished in the book, and then further so in the film.
After the film was released, the concept of demon possession changed, as did the reputation of the Ouija board. It was denounced by religious groups as Satan's preferred method of communication. Christian religious groups, especially Catholic denominations, still remain wary of the board, calling it far from harmless and an invitation for demons. Even within the paranormal community, Ouija boards have a dodgy reputation.
There are fears of possession, contact with demons, and attachments of a malevolent entity to the user. Still, many ghost hunters and psychics use the boards, with precautions that are said to prevent such dangers. I couldn't find where these so-called Ouija safety rules originate, but I would guess they probably came out of past the war. Here's a summary of how to use a Ouija board safely.
I got these rules from the websites of several psychic mediums and from a J-Store Daily article. These rules assume the user believes in spirits and demons, and draws from several other religious practices, such as Native American Spiritualism, Wicca, Christianity, and Modern Pakenism. Most of the sources I looked at stated that it was important to cleanse the space and the Ouija board before beginning a session. They recommended using salt, rosemary, water, or incense around the room, and possibly surrounding the board with a circle of salt.
Doing this supposedly removes negative energy. Lighting black candles is said to help keep negative energy at bay during a session. Cleansing the board and space after the session is also said to be important to make sure any lingering spirits move on. When beginning a session, it's said to be important to invite only friendly spirits to communicate.
It's also polite to ask their names first. After that, the user should be careful what they ask as the spirits can get upset. It's also important to take everything with a grain of salt as spirits can lie or play tricks. Some believe that the spirits can see the future, while others believe they can't, but they'll pretend to know things.
One consistent tip was never to ask the board when you or anyone else will die. This type of question is believed to draw in negative entities. Another thing said to be Ouija is where you use Ouija board, as the energy that comes through can linger well after the board is put away. If you don't want your house to be haunted, don't use the board at home.
Another tip was that if you start to feel like you've connected with a malevolent energy, then to the session immediately and make sure to close the board after. Closing the board is done by moving the plan chat to goodbye and then removing the plan chat from the board. If you don't say goodbye, you could potentially leave away for the spirits to come through. Other rules I saw were, don't use a Ouija board in a graveyard.
You'll get too many spirits trying to talk at once, resulting in gibberish. Be sober, as you have less control over yourself when drunk, leaving room from a level of entities to take control. Good vibes bring good spirits, so make sure to be in a good mood. Never ask the spirit for a physical sign of their presence.
This gives them permission to move outside the board. Never take your hands off the plan chat, as this is like ending the session without saying goodbye. Don't store the plan chat and the board together, as this could be an open invitation. Many sources said that the chances of connecting with dark energy allegedly increases when the participants aren't true believers or don't have a purpose to their questions.
That's when things supposedly get out of control, as malevolent spirits can sense when someone doesn't know what they're doing. These sources were adamant that a Ouija board is not a toy. It's a powerful tool and should be treated as such. Getting rid of a Ouija board is also supposedly risky.
Many people believe there's a connection between the user and the board that must formally be severed. What this connection entails I was unable to find out. The first step in disposing of a Ouija board is to make sure it's properly closed. Once the board is closed, it should be broken into seven pieces, sprinkled with holy water, and then buried.
Absolutely under no circumstances should you burn a Ouija board. Again, no reasons were given for why this method of disposal should be done. Despite the fear surrounding it, Ouija has grown popular yet again, driven in part by the current world uncertainty. This reflects a broader cultural fascination with the supernatural and the search for meaning beyond traditional religious institutions.
The same things that spawned the spiritualist movement. Both then and now, skeptics have doubted the purported abilities and mystical properties of the Ouija board. Nineteenth-century skeptics suggested that the participants may be influenced by unconscious thoughts, biases, or expectations. This led to the random movements of the planchette being interpreted as meaningful messages from the beyond.
Another criticism is that the mediums using the boards were also using cold reading techniques. Cold reading is often used by mentalists, psychics, fortune tellers, and mediums. Without prior knowledge, a practiced cold reader can quickly obtain a great deal of information by analyzing a person's body language, age, clothing, or fashion choices, hairstyle, ethnicity, manner of speech, and other things during a line of questioning. The reader makes high probability guesses and uses signals from the person they're reading to assess whether their guesses are correct.
They then emphasize correct guesses and quickly move on from missed guesses. Psychologists believe that this appears to work because of the Barnum effect, where vague information that is tailored to an individual is taken as an accurate description of their personality. People find their own meaning in the vague statements they receive, and thus the statement becomes personal to them, and they perceive that the reader has knowledge from the beyond. The reader will also often say something along the lines of, I often see images that are a bit unclear to me, but which may mean more to you than to me.
If you help, we can uncover new things about you together, or something like that. As for mediums using Ouija boards, the mediums manipulate the board into giving vague or ambiguous messages that could be interpreted in multiple ways. This opens the door to further cold reading techniques. More recently, mentalists such as Darren Brown have shown that these techniques are incredibly effective and are used by many so-called psychics.
Skilled practitioners of cold reading can create the illusion of accurate spirit communication without any genuine supernatural abilities. Cultural beliefs and expectations surrounding Ouija boards can also influence participants' experiences. Ouija has been portrayed in popular culture since the 1900s as a tool for communicating with spirits, and more recently, demons, thanks to horror movies and supernatural fiction. These cultural representations can shape participants' perceptions and contribute to the belief in the board's mystical powers.
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Reach out today. Reenax, the experts close to home. Each office independently owned and operated. There is a lack of scientific evidence that the Ouija board is channeling messages from spirits.
Aside from a lack of evidence for ghosts and demons, controlled experiments testing the accuracy of Ouija board messages have failed to provide convincing evidence of paranormal phenomena. These experiments, however, did lead to some interesting insight into how the Ouija board works. That's right, it does work, but what it's doing has nothing to do with ghosts or demons. Ouija boards are powered by us, even though we protest that we're not moving it.
Ouija boards work on a principle known as the idiomotor effect. This psychological phenomenon occurs when subconscious movements of the participants guide the plan chat across the ward without their conscious awareness. In 1852, physician and physiologist William Benjamin Carpenter published a study where he examined the small muscular movements that take place without the conscious will or knowledge of the individual. Almost immediately, other researchers saw applications of the idiomotor effect in popular spiritualist pastimes.
Dr. Chris French, currently professor emeritus of psychology and anomalistic psychology at the University of London, states that the idiomotor effect, quote, can generate a very strong impression that the movement is being caused by some outside agency, but it's not, end quote. Other devices such as dowsing rods and pendulums work on the same principle of non-conscious movement. Dowsing rods are devices used for searching for specific substances without scientific equipment.
Dowsing is a type of divination which was originally used to locate underground water sources. It's also been used to locate buried metals, ores, gems, graves and many other objects. The process originally involved a Y-shaped twig but has evolved to use two L-shaped rods. When the rods cross, whatever the diviner is searching for has supposedly been found.
Dowsing was banned before 1500 and re-banned several times after that by the Catholic Church. It was viewed as superstitious or satanic. Most dowsing studies have found that dowsing is no more effective than guessing. When subjected to scientific testing, the rods failed to produce any significant results.
Pendulums, aside from being part of many scientific instruments and the original timekeeping devices, are purported to be useful tools for divination and dowsing. Often, a pendulum board is used, which is similar to a Ouija board, but round in shape. The user holds the cord of the pendulum in one hand and allows the pendulum, which is often teardrop shaped and made of metal or stone, to swing freely. The dowser then observes how the pendulum swings and interprets the motion to offer insight.
For all of these devices, quite a small muscular movement can cause a large visual effect. Plancets in particular are easily moved when multiple people's subconscious movements are driving them. Not only does the individual give up some conscious control to participate, no one person in the group can take credit for the planchette's movements, making it seem like the answers are coming from an otherworldly source. The expectation or suggestion that the board is somehow mystical or magical adds to the experience, making everyone ready to experience something supposedly supernatural, even if they're skeptical.
In his book, Pseudo-Science and the Paranormal, Professor of Neurology, Terence Hines, states that these unconscious muscle movements are examples of a class of phenomena due to what psychologists call a dissociative state. A dissociative state is one in which consciousness is somehow divided, or cut off, from some aspects of the individual's normal cognitive, motor, or sensory functions. Both dissociative states and the idiomotor effect rely on unconscious movement. The idiomotor effect, however, is based on the idea that just thinking that something might happen tricks the brain into doing it.
For example, thinking about not moving the planchette leads to the possibility of the planchette moving, which then makes someone unconsciously move the planchette. What you're actually communicating with is something you usually can't access, your own subconscious. Over the years, research has determined that the idiomotor effect is closely tied to subconscious awareness. The effect is most pronounced when you believe you have no control of your movements.
Paradoxically, the less control you think you have, the more control your subconscious mind has. The planchette focuses your subconscious muscle movements and directs them even when you believe you aren't in control of them. The idiomotor effect might turn the Ouija board into an effective tool to help tap into your own subconscious. A 2012 scientific study found that using a Ouija board allowed test subjects to recall factual information with more accuracy than they could on their own.
Participants were asked to answer a series of yes or no questions, and then rate how confident they were in their answers. They then had another round of questions using a Ouija board to indicate yes or no, again, rating their confidence level in their answers. In cases where participants believed they didn't know an answer, they were able to give more correct answers more often when using the Ouija board than on their own. This study made researchers speculate that a Ouija board could aid in recovering subconscious knowledge and could lead to a better understanding of neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's.
It could also give insight into how much and what the non-conscious mind knows, how fast it can learn, how it remembers, and even how it amuses itself. The idiomotor effect reveals something about every human we want to believe. Our desire to confirm the existence of ghosts, spirits, and other improbable possibilities is the thing that convinces Ouija board users, automatic writers, and dowsers that they've experienced something truly paranormal. But the board isn't relaying messages from the spirits, it's revealing what lies within our own subconscious.
And that, oftentimes, is just as creepy as talking to spirits, which is why Ouija boards draw out our curiosity. The Morbid Curiosity Podcast is produced by H. Lloyd. If you'd like to get in touch or suggest a morbid topic, you can do so on Facebook and Instagram at Morbid Curiosity Podcast or on our website, www.morbidcuriositypodcast.com.
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