I Ja, You Ja, We All Ja for Ouija

We had a Ouija board when I was a kid.  For some reason it layed on the ground in our furnace room.  And it freaked me out.  My sister had told stories of how it had predicted who she would marry, providing the initials of the person she did in fact end up marrying. I was pretty afraid of anything potentially ghost related. Yeah, I was a chicken.

I've gotten over that fear and had no problem buying this Ouija board.  In fact, I picked up 4 of them this season.  There was an odd run where I kept finding Ouija boards. 

Even when I was afraid of them, I always loved the art on these. This version dates from the 1960's.

Elijah Bond applied for a patent for the game in 1891, though "Talking Boards" date back further having sprung out of the spiritualism movement brought on by the casualties of The Civil War.  It's said Bond received the patent only after proving it worked by spelling out the patent clerk's first name.

An employee of Bond's, Willliam Fuld took over production of the game around 1901. It was sold to Parker Brothers in 1966 who gave it its now iconic look.

There are a couple different legends about the name "Ouija".  One being that it's simply the combination of Oui and Ja, the French word for "Yes" and the German word for "No".  Seems plausible.  Another says the board itself gave its name, spelling out the letters and stating that it meant "Good Luck".  Yet another story says that the woman that acted in the session where the board spelled out its name was wearing a locket with a picture of then-popular female author and activist Ouida and that it was simply a misspelling of that name.

This graphic particuarly freaked me out as a kid.  Something about that floating head behind the woman.

I picked up this 1972 version only a few weeks after the first. 

But let's get back to that 1960's box art.

The Fuld family referred to it as "The Blue Ghost".  Most people believe it was inspired by the grave of Dexter Graves over which stands a sculpture by Lorado Taft titled "The Eternal Silence".  You can see why that's likely.

Grave of Dexter Graves

The grave of patent holder Elijah Bond sports a representation of the board

Ouija has had impact in many mediums.

In 1916, Pearl Curran claimed she was in contact with a 17th century English poet named Patience Worth via a Ouija board and produced a number of novels, short stories and poems, many of which received high literary praise.

In 1920, Norman Rockwell painted a scene of a young couple using a Ouija board for the Saturday Evening Post.

In a 1951 episode of "I Love Lucy", Lucy seeks an apology from a big producer whom she had hung up on due to something she'd read in Ricky's horiscope.  Coming to his office, we find that he too is superstitious and even uses a Ouija board.

Even The Walton's used a Ouija-like board in the 1974 episode "The Ghost Story" in which John Boy comes in possesion of a "spirit board" that seems intent on warning him of impending danger to a young boy that's staying with the family.  That episode is worth a watch if only for the scene in which the Baldwin sisters use the Ouija to determine who they should source their moonshine jars from.

In 1973's "The Excorcist", it's implied that a Ouija board lead to the main character's possession.  This lead to the Ouija board being maligned as evil and capable of summoning demons rather than speaking with your dear departed. Since then, the Ouija has been shown as evil in a number of movies ranging from 1986's "Witchboard" through the 2014 movie entitled "Ouija" and it's 2016 sequel.

If you search YouTube for "Ouija", you'll find an inordinate amount of videos claiming they had summoned demons, in particular one evil chap named "Zozo", and which go on to explain why Ouija boards shouldn't be used at all. Personally, I'm using mine as a Halloween decoration.

The scientific explanation for the seemingly ghostly movement of the planchette on a Ouija baord is the ideomotor response.  Participants unconsiously and unwillingly move the planchette providing answers supplied by their own subconscious.

Enjoy this gallery of Ouija and variants I pulled from eBay.  And let me know if you've ever had a strange encounter with a Ouija board.

Ouija circa 1890's

Mystic Buddha 1920

1920

1938

American Novelty

Barrels of Fun Talking Board 1940s

Cardinal Swami Talking Board

Drueke Mystic Soothsayer

Hasko Mysic Board

J. W. Stanley Whitchy Board

Mystic Answer Board

Ouija Queen