Ouija Board
So there’s no gray-haired psychic in your town? And you can't sneak
another call into the astrology hotline without your mom noticing the
long distance charges? If you need some answers in your life, and
answers more specific than the good old Magic 8 Ball can provide, the Ouija Board might be your next stop. Not only, for example, can the Ouija tell you if you should go ahead and color your hair, it can tell you what color
you should choose. Fortune telling was never this specific! There is
much debate as to what moves the pointer around on the board—is it the
players themselves or the busybody spirit world? And if you think the 8
Ball has its fair share of literal-minded,
no-fan-of-anything-you-can’t-reach-out-and-grab opponents, you should
get a load of the apprehension and controversy that the Ouija inspires.
All of it would make William Fuld, the board’s quirkily entrepreneurial
patriarch, very, very proud.
In mid-nineteenth century New York, communing with the ‘other side’
was all the rage. Spiritualist churches were popping up everywhere, and
the city’s chic hostesses clamored for authentic mediums to attend
their gatherings, so that chatty members of the spirit world could
speak through them. As an alternative to all that zany vocalizing,
there was “spirit writing,” wherein the medium would establish contact
with a spirit, grab a pencil, and let the spirit do the rest. A
doohickey called the “planchette” was invented for such parlor
sessions—a small, heart-shaped plank (planchette means “little plank”
in French) with a pencil at the heart’s apex. The downside to spirit
writing was that the mediums, or ahem, their spirit-communicators,
didn’t always have the most legible penmanship, and message
transmission tended to be a bore—and nobody wants that at a sénce
party.
“Talking boards,” the brainchild of three Americans named E.C.
Reiche, Elijah Bond and Charles Kennard, came next. This rectangular
wooden slab provided a flat surface for the wooden-pegged planchette to
glide over, featuring the alphabet, numbers one through ten, and words
‘yes’ and ‘no.’ According to some, Kennard called the board “Ouija”
after an Egyptian word for good luck, and even better yet (at least
better for Ouija’s sometimes purposely murky history), Kennard claimed
the board itself suggested the word. In 1892, Kennard’s ex-foreman,
William Fuld, took the company over, named it the Ouija Novelty
Company, and began producing the board in high volume numbers.
Fuld, no marketing dimwit himself, concocted his own version of the
Ouija’s genesis: claiming he invented the whole enchilada himself, and
that the word Ouija was actually an amalgam of the French “oui” and the
German “ja”—possibly just a way to force people to pronounce it
correctly. Fuld didn’t own the market on talking boards (there was
Milton Bradley’s Genii, for instance), but he certainly cornered it. In
1927, Fuld fell from a factory roof in his native Baltimore—some say
suicide, some accident. Fuld’s children took over after that, and then
in 1966, Parker Brothers bought the company.
Today, the board is made of folding cardboard instead of wood, and
the planchette glides on velvet tabs instead of wooden pegs, but other
than that, it looks nearly the same as it did over one hundred years
ago. The alphabet spans the board in two crescent rows, the numbers are
below that, and in the corners are the words ‘yes’ and ‘no,’ and at the
bottom, ‘good bye.’ All this handy data faces the player who sits at
the base of the board, so if reading upside down doesn’t come easy,
savvy players sometimes recruit a note-taker to jot down the letters,
which can then be deciphered later.
The unspoken rules that go along with this game are legion. Never
play it alone. Never play angry. Never, especially in the case of
permanent hair color choices, let the Ouija be the final authority.
Play at night, because according to Ouija aficionados, there is less
traffic in the psychic atmosphere. Decide on one person who will ask
all the questions, because there is less confusion to any, um, spirits
who are out there, navigating said psychic traffic. Candlelight
is recommended (the spirit world having always been a big advocate of
energy conservation), and two players are best. The board is best
placed atop the two players’ knees, but a table is okay if the
candlelight is making a jittery player’s knees knock. Warm the
planchette, or pointer, up by moving it around in circles, but then
stop moving it altogether. Check for white around the fingertips, which
indicate someone is pressing down, and then ask a clearly stated
question. Hopefully, if the atmosphere is favorable and the traffic is
light, the spirits will take over.
Or will they? Some believe the board is just a reflection of the
players’ inner psyches—no spirits at all, just us good old fashioned,
earthbound folks who guide the pointer unconsciously. Fair enough, but
let’s face it, sometimes the pointing isn’t always unconscious. Those same rascals who occasionally “borrow” from the bank in Monopoly
when no one is looking are also known to form words on the Ouija Board
deliberately. And then, of course, we feign great surprise (with a sly
mental nod to their junior high drama class teachers) as that magic
planchette spells out exactly what we want to hear.
Parker Brothers likes to avoid negative Ouija connotations, but
when dealing with a supposed conduit for incorporeal intelligences,
there’s a certain degree of creepiness can’t be helped. The board was
supposedly banned in Britain during the 70’s, and there are plenty of
parents and religious groups today who’d just as soon their kids just
play checkers.
Of course, all the mystique just sells more boards and makes impromptu
Ouija sessions feel nicely forbidden and scandalous—a feeling you just
can’t get from checkers.
