October 31, 2024 • 10 mins
This board game brought communing with spirits to the mass market in the mid-1900s. Learn about Ouija's storied history -- plus how science says our subconscious is responsible for moving the planchette -- in today's episode of BrainStuff, based on this article: https://science.howstuffworks.com/science-vs-myth/unexplained-phenomena/ouija-boards.htm
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey, Brainstuff. Lauren
Vogelbaum here. If you've ever seen the horror classic The
Exorcist from nineteen seventy three, you might remember that Reagan's
troubles all began when she started to play with a
Ouiji board. Granted, that was just a movie, but there
(00:24):
have been some weird happenings in real life attributed to
this game. In nineteen twenty, a Luigi boom in the
tiny town of Elserrito, California, led to mass hysteria and
landed several residents in an asylum. In nineteen thirty five,
at Nelly Heard of Kansas City learned during a WIGI
session that her husband was having an affair, though he
(00:46):
denied it. She tortured him until he killed her in
self defense. The tales of sudden inspiration, insanity, and death
have circulated ever since eighteen ninety one, when attorney Elijah
Bond patented what he called the Ouiji Egyptian luck Board.
Egypt probably had nothing to do with it. There's no
(01:07):
real evidence of wigi's reputed ancient roots, and the word
is not in fact Egyptian for good luck. It's more
likely that Bond attached Egypt to his board due to
the pervasive American fascination with Egyptology at the time. Over
the next seventy years, ownership of the patent moved around
from Bond to businessman Charles Kennard, who manufactured and sold
(01:31):
the new toy, and then from Kennard to his former
employee William Fold, an inventor who ran with it. A
Fold filed numerous Ouigi related patents over the years, and
discredited with mass marketing the Ouiji board into a real
moneymaker if he also said the name is adjoining of
the French and German words for yes, a, wei and ja,
(01:52):
but who knows. Fuld finally sold the rights to toy
making company Parker Brothers in nineteen sixty six, which was
by Hasbro in nineteen ninety one, which holds the trademark today.
Since then, the old stories and continuing popularity of the
board have created a sort of modern renaissance of horror
(02:12):
fiction featuring it, including two movies that were made in
collaboration with Hasbro twenty fourteen's Upon Miss Ouigi and its
prequel Ouigi Origin of Evil from twenty sixteen. That prequel
by the way, was directed by Mike Flanagan, and is
better than it has any right to be if you're
into that sort of thing anyway, One thing is for sure.
(02:34):
The Ouiji board's creators had timing. In the mid eighteen hundreds,
a movement called spiritualism swept through the United States. Mediums,
mainly women, who claimed they could contact the dead, gained
large followings, perhaps partially because deadly disease epidemics were rampant,
and other spiritual outlets at the time seemed stodgy and
(02:56):
paternalistic for such a modern time. By the early nineteen hundreds, seances, readings,
and trances were all the rage as entertainment and or
serious attempts to make contact with those who had passed on.
In this mystical context, the simple, straightforward Ouiji board was
an exciting development. Its design has hardly changed to this day.
(03:21):
A rectangular board a first wood now paperboard with a
small heart shaped pointer or planchet, and meant to glide
around the board on three smooth, nubby legs. Some versions
of the plantchet have a glass or plastic window near
the center. Printed on the board itself are letters and numbers.
The English alphabet in two arct rows and a row
(03:43):
of numbers directly below it. In the upper left is
the word yes, in the upper right the word no,
and across the bottom goodbye. Sometimes images of the sun,
the moon, stars, and clouds mark the corners. Mediums had
been using similar talking boards or spirit boards for decades
before the Wiji board got its patent. There was the
(04:04):
dial plate, a spinning wheel with letters and numbers along
its circumference, which stopped it characters to spell out a
spirit's message, and the alphabet board, which was similar to
the Ouiji but had people pointing consciously to various letters
until the spirits responded noisily, eventually spelling a message. The
planchette had been around for decades too, in the form
(04:26):
of a writing device with the whole for a pencil
instead of a window. The idea was that a medium
working with the spirit could let the spirit write out
its own message, but the Wiji board put divination into
a neat, mass marketed package. Anyone, it seemed, could talk
to a long dead family member or household ghost, or
any random spirit using this convenient wooden board and pointer,
(04:50):
or as an ad from nineteen twenty put it at
least inject some great mirthmaking into a party. The instructions
to have changed very little in its century. On the shelves,
two or more players lightly rest their fingertips on the
plan chet. One asks a question while everyone concentrates A
player's then watches a plan chet glides around the board
(05:13):
seemingly of its own accord to various letters or numbers
or the words yes or no. The answers may be
immediately clear or may require some interpretation, but that's a
pretty bare bones approach. The Internet has many tips for
improving chances of contact, including setting the mood with candles
or creating a personalized ritual to begin contact, perhaps including
(05:36):
a message of peaceful or serious intentions. Mister fold himself advised,
and I quote, if you use it in a frivolous spirit,
asking ridiculous questions, laughing over it, you naturally get undeveloped
influences around you. But okay, you've seen it. You get
the idea, what if anything is really going on, our
(06:00):
spirits really moving the pointer? What or who could be
driving the motion of the plan chet has always been
controversial in the spiritual crowd. It's a force from beyond.
Some Catholics, for example, say Ouiji board's contact spirits and
always the evil type. Thus they strongly discourage wigi board
use of any kind. In an article originally published in
(06:22):
the National Catholic Register in the year two thousand, the
official exorcist for the Archdiocese of New York noted a
rise in exorcism requests that he attributed to the popularity
of divination tools like wigi boards. In the science crowd,
the forces are considered much more earthly. The short explanation
(06:42):
is that things move when we push them. The long
version is a lot more interesting. Scientists call it the
idea motor effect. Essentially, the idea motor theory claims the
unconscious mind can cause the body to move without the
conscious mind knowing about it. A take, for example, the
(07:02):
pendulum test that's sometimes been used to help a pregnant
person determine the sex of their baby. In this test,
you hold a string weighted with a ring or other
object over your belly and wait for it to move
on its own back and forth. Swinging means a boy,
circular motion means a girl. But without consciously willing it,
(07:23):
your finger muscles will make tiny movements which will build
up until the pendulum starts to swing in one way
or another. The self moving pendulum, in fact, was the
subject of some earliest studies of the idea motor effect.
In the mid eighteen hundreds, a researcher by the name
of Anton Chevrol found that the movements of everything from
(07:44):
pendulums to divining rods could be chalked up to involuntary
muscle movements driven by subconscious thoughts or suggestions. In a
much later study that focused specifically on the Ouiji board,
published by psychologists at the University of British Columbia in
twenty twelve, the researchers positive that the effect is strongest
(08:04):
when multiple people have their fingers on the plan chet.
Each subject was blindfolded and told they were one of
two people touching the pointer, and as the plan chet moved,
the subject often claimed the other player was pushing it,
when in fact there was no other player involved. They
concluded that a person's conscious belief that they're not moving
(08:25):
the pointer actually enhances their unconscious mind's ability to trigger
the movement without them knowing it. In this way, the
games two or more players instruction makes a lot of
sense the more people are touching the pointer, the easier
it is to believe that you aren't moving it. Often,
at least one player will have a preference for a
(08:46):
specific outcome and unconsciously move the plan chet in the
desired direction. Not that it always moves or spells anything
remotely intelligible. Here's one test to try. If you blind
fall your players and turned the board ninety degrees to
foil layout memorization, the nonsensical results will tend to discourage
(09:07):
a mystical explanation. Note, however, that even the earliest Wigi
patents made no direct claims of other worldliness. One of
Fold's patents explained the pointer's motion as caused by quote,
the involuntary muscular motion of the hands of the players,
or through some other agency. In fact, when asked by
(09:31):
a reporter if he believed in the Ouigi board, Fold replied,
I should say not. I'm no spiritualist. I'm a Presbyterian. Yet,
even if there is nothing spiritual going on while playing
with a Wigi board, perhaps the release of unconscious thoughts
is itself fascinating enough to give us pause. When Pulitzer
(09:52):
Prize winning poet James Merrill was asked about his use
of the Ouigi board in his writing, he said, you
could think of the board as a a laying mechanism.
It spaces out into time and language. What might have
come to a saint or a lunatic in one binding zapp.
It's made me think twice about the imagination. If the
(10:13):
spirits aren't external, how astonishing the mediums become. Today's episode
is based on the article how we gi boards work
on how stuffworks dot com, written by Julia Layton. Brain
Stuff is production of iHeartRadio and partnership with how stuffworks
dot Com, and it is produced by Tyler Klang. For
(10:34):
more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey, Brainstuff. Lauren
Vogelbaum here. If you've ever seen the horror classic The
Exorcist from nineteen seventy three, you might remember that Reagan's
troubles all began when she started to play with a
Ouiji board. Granted, that was just a movie, but there
(00:24):
have been some weird happenings in real life attributed to
this game. In nineteen twenty, a Luigi boom in the
tiny town of Elserrito, California, led to mass hysteria and
landed several residents in an asylum. In nineteen thirty five,
at Nelly Heard of Kansas City learned during a WIGI
session that her husband was having an affair, though he
(00:46):
denied it. She tortured him until he killed her in
self defense. The tales of sudden inspiration, insanity, and death
have circulated ever since eighteen ninety one, when attorney Elijah
Bond patented what he called the Ouiji Egyptian luck Board.
Egypt probably had nothing to do with it. There's no
(01:07):
real evidence of wigi's reputed ancient roots, and the word
is not in fact Egyptian for good luck. It's more
likely that Bond attached Egypt to his board due to
the pervasive American fascination with Egyptology at the time. Over
the next seventy years, ownership of the patent moved around
from Bond to businessman Charles Kennard, who manufactured and sold
(01:31):
the new toy, and then from Kennard to his former
employee William Fold, an inventor who ran with it. A
Fold filed numerous Ouigi related patents over the years, and
discredited with mass marketing the Ouiji board into a real
moneymaker if he also said the name is adjoining of
the French and German words for yes, a, wei and ja,
(01:52):
but who knows. Fuld finally sold the rights to toy
making company Parker Brothers in nineteen sixty six, which was
by Hasbro in nineteen ninety one, which holds the trademark today.
Since then, the old stories and continuing popularity of the
board have created a sort of modern renaissance of horror
(02:12):
fiction featuring it, including two movies that were made in
collaboration with Hasbro twenty fourteen's Upon Miss Ouigi and its
prequel Ouigi Origin of Evil from twenty sixteen. That prequel
by the way, was directed by Mike Flanagan, and is
better than it has any right to be if you're
into that sort of thing anyway, One thing is for sure.
(02:34):
The Ouiji board's creators had timing. In the mid eighteen hundreds,
a movement called spiritualism swept through the United States. Mediums,
mainly women, who claimed they could contact the dead, gained
large followings, perhaps partially because deadly disease epidemics were rampant,
and other spiritual outlets at the time seemed stodgy and
(02:56):
paternalistic for such a modern time. By the early nineteen hundreds, seances, readings,
and trances were all the rage as entertainment and or
serious attempts to make contact with those who had passed on.
In this mystical context, the simple, straightforward Ouiji board was
an exciting development. Its design has hardly changed to this day.
(03:21):
A rectangular board a first wood now paperboard with a
small heart shaped pointer or planchet, and meant to glide
around the board on three smooth, nubby legs. Some versions
of the plantchet have a glass or plastic window near
the center. Printed on the board itself are letters and numbers.
The English alphabet in two arct rows and a row
(03:43):
of numbers directly below it. In the upper left is
the word yes, in the upper right the word no,
and across the bottom goodbye. Sometimes images of the sun,
the moon, stars, and clouds mark the corners. Mediums had
been using similar talking boards or spirit boards for decades
before the Wiji board got its patent. There was the
(04:04):
dial plate, a spinning wheel with letters and numbers along
its circumference, which stopped it characters to spell out a
spirit's message, and the alphabet board, which was similar to
the Ouiji but had people pointing consciously to various letters
until the spirits responded noisily, eventually spelling a message. The
planchette had been around for decades too, in the form
(04:26):
of a writing device with the whole for a pencil
instead of a window. The idea was that a medium
working with the spirit could let the spirit write out
its own message, but the Wiji board put divination into
a neat, mass marketed package. Anyone, it seemed, could talk
to a long dead family member or household ghost, or
any random spirit using this convenient wooden board and pointer,
(04:50):
or as an ad from nineteen twenty put it at
least inject some great mirthmaking into a party. The instructions
to have changed very little in its century. On the shelves,
two or more players lightly rest their fingertips on the
plan chet. One asks a question while everyone concentrates A
player's then watches a plan chet glides around the board
(05:13):
seemingly of its own accord to various letters or numbers
or the words yes or no. The answers may be
immediately clear or may require some interpretation, but that's a
pretty bare bones approach. The Internet has many tips for
improving chances of contact, including setting the mood with candles
or creating a personalized ritual to begin contact, perhaps including
(05:36):
a message of peaceful or serious intentions. Mister fold himself advised,
and I quote, if you use it in a frivolous spirit,
asking ridiculous questions, laughing over it, you naturally get undeveloped
influences around you. But okay, you've seen it. You get
the idea, what if anything is really going on, our
(06:00):
spirits really moving the pointer? What or who could be
driving the motion of the plan chet has always been
controversial in the spiritual crowd. It's a force from beyond.
Some Catholics, for example, say Ouiji board's contact spirits and
always the evil type. Thus they strongly discourage wigi board
use of any kind. In an article originally published in
(06:22):
the National Catholic Register in the year two thousand, the
official exorcist for the Archdiocese of New York noted a
rise in exorcism requests that he attributed to the popularity
of divination tools like wigi boards. In the science crowd,
the forces are considered much more earthly. The short explanation
(06:42):
is that things move when we push them. The long
version is a lot more interesting. Scientists call it the
idea motor effect. Essentially, the idea motor theory claims the
unconscious mind can cause the body to move without the
conscious mind knowing about it. A take, for example, the
(07:02):
pendulum test that's sometimes been used to help a pregnant
person determine the sex of their baby. In this test,
you hold a string weighted with a ring or other
object over your belly and wait for it to move
on its own back and forth. Swinging means a boy,
circular motion means a girl. But without consciously willing it,
(07:23):
your finger muscles will make tiny movements which will build
up until the pendulum starts to swing in one way
or another. The self moving pendulum, in fact, was the
subject of some earliest studies of the idea motor effect.
In the mid eighteen hundreds, a researcher by the name
of Anton Chevrol found that the movements of everything from
(07:44):
pendulums to divining rods could be chalked up to involuntary
muscle movements driven by subconscious thoughts or suggestions. In a
much later study that focused specifically on the Ouiji board,
published by psychologists at the University of British Columbia in
twenty twelve, the researchers positive that the effect is strongest
(08:04):
when multiple people have their fingers on the plan chet.
Each subject was blindfolded and told they were one of
two people touching the pointer, and as the plan chet moved,
the subject often claimed the other player was pushing it,
when in fact there was no other player involved. They
concluded that a person's conscious belief that they're not moving
(08:25):
the pointer actually enhances their unconscious mind's ability to trigger
the movement without them knowing it. In this way, the
games two or more players instruction makes a lot of
sense the more people are touching the pointer, the easier
it is to believe that you aren't moving it. Often,
at least one player will have a preference for a
(08:46):
specific outcome and unconsciously move the plan chet in the
desired direction. Not that it always moves or spells anything
remotely intelligible. Here's one test to try. If you blind
fall your players and turned the board ninety degrees to
foil layout memorization, the nonsensical results will tend to discourage
(09:07):
a mystical explanation. Note, however, that even the earliest Wigi
patents made no direct claims of other worldliness. One of
Fold's patents explained the pointer's motion as caused by quote,
the involuntary muscular motion of the hands of the players,
or through some other agency. In fact, when asked by
(09:31):
a reporter if he believed in the Ouigi board, Fold replied,
I should say not. I'm no spiritualist. I'm a Presbyterian. Yet,
even if there is nothing spiritual going on while playing
with a Wigi board, perhaps the release of unconscious thoughts
is itself fascinating enough to give us pause. When Pulitzer
(09:52):
Prize winning poet James Merrill was asked about his use
of the Ouigi board in his writing, he said, you
could think of the board as a a laying mechanism.
It spaces out into time and language. What might have
come to a saint or a lunatic in one binding zapp.
It's made me think twice about the imagination. If the
(10:13):
spirits aren't external, how astonishing the mediums become. Today's episode
is based on the article how we gi boards work
on how stuffworks dot com, written by Julia Layton. Brain
Stuff is production of iHeartRadio and partnership with how stuffworks
dot Com, and it is produced by Tyler Klang. For
(10:34):
more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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