Ouija

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For the photographer, see Weegee. For the 2007 Philippine film, see Ouija (film).
File:D056449.png
U.S. patent D056449. Design patent for toys (D21/813) which was filed May 26, 1920. Issued Oct 26, 1920. Patentee was Clifford H. McGlasson.

An ouija (often pronounced "wee-gee") is any flat surface printed with letters, numbers, and other symbols, to which a planchette or movable indicator points, supposedly in answer to questions from people at a séance. The fingers of the participants are placed on the planchette that then moves about the board to spell out messages. Ouija is a trademark for a talking board currently sold by Parker Brothers [1]. While the word is not considered a genericized trademark, it has become a trademark which is often used generically to refer to any talking board. In popular culture these boards are a spiritual gateway used to contact the dead; however, the only evidence for this is the various accounts of users, which have not been scientifically proven.

Etymology

There are several theories about the origin of the term "Ouija". According to one of these, the word is derived from the French "oui" (for "yes") and the German/Dutch "ja" (also for "yes"). An alternative story suggests that the name was revealed to inventor Charles Kennard during a Ouija séance and was claimed to be an Ancient Egyptian word meaning "good luck." It has also been suggested that the word was inspired by the name of the Moroccan city Oujda. Despite its common usage, "Ouija" is a registered trademark[2][3] (but the term "Ouija Board" has been abandoned as a registered trademark[4]).

According to some sources, the first historical mention of something resembling a Ouija board is found in China around 1200 B.C., a divination method known as Fu Ji (扶乩).[citation needed] Other sources claim that according to a French historical account of the philosopher Pythagoras, in 540 B.C. his sect would conduct séances at "a mystic table, moving on wheels, moved towards signs, which the philosopher and his pupil, Philolaus, interpreted to the audience as being revelations supposedly from an unseen world."[5] However, other sources call both claims into dispute, claiming that Fu Ji is spirit writing, not the use of a spirit board, and that there is no record of Pythagoras or his students actually having used this method of achieving oracles or divinations.[6] In addition, the claim of ancient Greek use is called into doubt by questions of historical accuracy, as Philolaus was never the pupil of Pythagoras, and indeed was born roughly twenty-five years after Pythagoras's death.

The first undisputed use of the talking boards came with the Spiritualism movement in The United States in the mid-19th century. Methods of divination at that time used various ways to spell out messages, including swinging a pendulum over a plate that had letters around the edge or using an entire table to indicate letters drawn on the floor. Often used was a small wooden tablet supported on casters. This tablet, called a planchette, was affixed with a pencil that would write out messages in a fashion similar to automatic writing. These methods may predate modern Spiritualism.

During the late 1800s, planchettes were widely sold as a novelty. The businessmen Elijah Bond and Charles Kennard had the idea to patent a planchette sold with a board on which the alphabet was printed. The patentees filed on May 28, 1890 for patent protection and thus had invented the first Ouija board. Issue date on the patent was February 10, 1891. They received U.S. patent 446,054. Bond was an attorney and was an inventor of other objects in addition to this device. An employee of Kennard, William Fuld took over the talking board production and in 1901, he started production of his own boards under the name "Ouija".[6] The Fuld name would become synonymous with the Ouija board, as Fuld reinvented its history, claiming that he himself had invented it. Countless talking boards from Fuld's competitors flooded the market and all these boards enjoyed a heyday from the 1920s through the 1960s. Fuld sued many companies over the "Ouija" name and concept right up until his death in 1927. In 1966, Fuld's estate sold the entire business to Parker Brothers, who continues to hold all trademarks and patents. About 10 brands of talking boards are sold today under various names.[6]

People believe the motion of the planchette is explained by the ideomotor effect. A typical session with the board has two or more people touching the planchette with at least one hand each, so that no single person need apply much force in order for the group as a whole to cause it to move. Each person experiences the illusion that the planchette moves under its own power.

Skeptic and magician James Randi, in his book An Encyclopedia of Claims, Frauds, and Hoaxes of the Occult and Supernatural, points out that when blindfolded, Ouija board operators are unable to produce intelligible messages.[7] Magicians Penn & Teller performed a similar demonstration in an episode of their cable television show Bullshit! in which the operators moved the planchette into what they thought was the positions of "yes" and "no" without knowing that the board was turned upside-down, which caused them to move the planchette into blank spaces on the board.

Spiritualist explanation

Spiritualists who believe Ouija boards can be used to make actual contact with the spirit world feel that the act of hindering a medium’s ability to use his or her own eyes while the board is in use effectively places too great of a handicap on the whole exercise (see ad hoc hypothesis). (This argument stems from the belief that contacted spirits actually utilize the eyes of the medium during a Ouija session in order to point to the letters and words needed to form a message. Most believers of this notion believe that the board has no intrinsic power in and of itself, but rather, is used simply as a tool to aid a medium while in communication with the spirit world. Although many people have made positive conncections with the Ouija board, there have been several horrifying myths and stories. There has been a popular rumor that Ouija board users whose names begin with a V and end with a vowel will be cursed for life for experimenting with a Ouija board.)[8]

Literature

Talking boards have become an iconic part of culture, demonstrated by their appearances in many books and movies. Their roles in such vary from being a benign object to an evil entity. A more peculiar role of talking boards in literature stems from authors using the board to channel complete written works from the deceased.

In the early 1900s, St. Louis housewife Pearl Curran used her Ouija board communications with the ubiquitous spirit Patience Worth to publish a number of poems and prose. Pearl claimed that all of the writings came to her through séances, which she allowed the public to attend. In 1917 writer Emily G. Hutchings believed she had communicated with and written a book dictated by Mark Twain from her Ouija board. Twain's living descendants went to court to halt publication of the book that was later determined to be so poorly written that it could not have been written by Twain dead or alive.

A key scene in Arthur C. Clarke's 1953 novel Childhood's End centers around characters using a Ouija board to uncover a key piece of information. Though it is not called a Ouija board, the description makes it clear that it is intended to be a similar device.

Sylvia Plath's poem Ouija was influenced by the experiments she and Ted Hughes made with a board. Her Dialogue over a Ouija Board, written in 1957, incorporates the text of one of the sessions.

Author John Fuller used a Ouija board in his research for his 1976 book The Ghost of Flight 401. As he was skeptical of its effectiveness, he worked with a medium and claimed they both contacted Don Repo, the flight engineer on the flight which crashed into the Everglades en route to Miami. According to Fuller, the information divined described facts that neither he nor the medium previously knew.

More recently, Pulitzer Prize winning poet James Merrill used a Ouija board and recorded what he claimed were messages from a number of deceased persons. He combined these messages with his own poetry in The Changing Light at Sandover (1982).

Also, James Patterson used a Ouija board in Maximum Ride: The Angel Experiment. Max learned from it that she had to save the world.

Notable users

  • Brandon Flowers, lead singer of The Killers, used a Ouija board and gained a fear of the number 621. This number also happens to be his birthday, June 21. He is convinced he is going to die on that day. He said: "It's just stupid, it is not a way to live. Once I had to fly to Glastonbury on my birthday; that was a real mess." [2]
  • GK Chesterton used a Ouija board. Around 1893 he had gone through a crisis of skepticism and depression, and during this period Chesterton experimented with the Ouija board and grew fascinated with the occult. [9]
  • Poet James Merrill used a Ouija board for years, and even encouraged entrance of spirits into his body. He wrote the poem "The Changing Light at Sandover" with the help of a Ouija board. Before he died, he recommended people not use Ouija boards.[12]
  • Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi held a séance in 1978 with other professors at the University of Bologna in which a Ouija board spelled the word Gradoli. This turned out to be the name of a street in Rome where a Red Brigades safe house was located.[13]
  • Bill Wilson the co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous used the Ouija Board to contact spirits.[14] His wife said that he would get messages directly without even using the board.[15]For a while, his participation in AA was deeply affected by his involvement with the Ouija board. Wilson claimed that he received the twelve step method directly from a spirit without the board and wrote it down.[16]
  • The investigators of Most Haunted have been known to use Ouija Boards.
  • Razorlight singer Johnny Borrell is said to have used an Ouija board to help him write songs, particularly "Keep the Right Profile" and "Hold On".
  • Bone Thugs-N-Harmony are noted for their use of the Ouija board during their highschool years. They made songs called "Mr. Ouija" and "Mr. Ouija 2". The group has since said that they quit using the Ouija board.
  • '70s powerpop band Cheap Trick got its name from an Ouija board. They asked it what was for dinner, and by collectively moving the planchette, they spelled out "Cheap trick."
  • On the July 25, 2007 edition of the paranormal radio show Coast to Coast AM, host George Noory attempted to carry out a live Ouija board experiment on national radio despite the strong objections of one of his guests, Jordan Maxwell, and with the encouragement of his other guests, Dr. Bruce Goldberg, Rosemary Ellen Guiley and Jerry Edward Cornelius. In the days and hours leading up to the show, unfortunate events kept occurring to Noory's friends and family as well as some of his guests, but these events would likely be considered coincidences by skeptics. After recounting a near-death experience in 2000 and noting bizarre events taking place, Noory canceled the experiment.
  • Morrissey was a prominent believer. Zachery Mark recorded a love ballad about communicating with dead lover using a Ouija board. He has a song titled Ouija Board, Ouija Board.
  • In 1963, Jane Roberts and her husband, Robert Butts, experimented with a Ouija board as part of Robert's research for a book on extra-sensory perception. According to Roberts and Butts, on December 2, 1963 they began to receive coherent messages from a male personality who eventually identified himself as Seth. Jane Roberts authored three books of channeled material from Seth.
  • In the music video of "Bittersweet" (Apocalyptica feat. Ville Valo and Lauri Ylönen), Ville and Lauri are seen using a Ouija board.
  • Matthew Bellamy, lead singer of rock band Muse, has said that his mother was a medium. When he was a young boy, he and his family played with Ouija boards.
  • 70%, a podcast radio show consisting of Israel Trudel-Denis, Tommy Gaudet and their numerous guests, played Ouija live during their october 2007 halloween special. They reportedly witnessed very weird thing as they supposedly conversed with "Katyn". The ex 26 years old had recently died as "it" replied a definitive yes to the only question they had time to ask: Do you play Magic" (intending Magic:The Gathering)
  • The Mars Volta (Who were cursed by the starting with V and ending with a vowel curse) have written the album, The Bedlam in Goliath in an attempt to reverse the bad luck from an Ouija board that Omar Rodriguez-Lopez bought on a trip to Israel and later buried after a disastrous tour. The Vinyl version will come with it's own Ouija board built into the gatefold.

Other types of boards

Other iterations of the board exist in Asia. These are all home-made, with words written on paper in local languages. The planchette is replaced by other items, most commonly a pen, a dish (Chinese condiment saucer) or a coin. It is often played by inquisitive teenagers.

Various horror movies have been made about the consequences of playing with these incarnations of the board, most notably by the Hong Kong and South Korea movie industry. One of the more well known movies to date is the 2004 South Korean film Bunshinsaba.

See also

References

Footnotes

  1. ^ United States Patent and Trademark Office retrieved 22/08/07
  2. ^ http://tess2.uspto.gov/bin/showfield?f=doc&state=vs2op0.2.3
  3. ^ http://tess2.uspto.gov/bin/showfield?f=doc&state=vs2op0.2.1
  4. ^ http://tess2.uspto.gov/bin/showfield?f=doc&state=vs2op0.2.2
  5. ^ Melton, J. Gordon (1996). Encyclopedia of Occultism & Parapsychology (4th ed.). Gale Research. ISBN 0-8103-9487-1
  6. ^ a b c http://www.museumoftalkingboards.com/ancient.html
  7. ^ Randi, James (1995). "An Encyclopedia of Claims, Frauds, and Hoaxes of the Occult and Supernatural". St. Martin's Press. Retrieved 2007-03-28.
  8. ^ Museum of Talking Boards
  9. ^ http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/history/greatlives/ingrams_chesterton.shtml
  10. ^ Cornelious, J. Edward Aleister Crowley and the Ouija Board. 2005 ISBN 1-932595-10-4
  11. ^ Mini site for Cornelious, J. Edward’s book, Aleister Crowley and the Ouija Board, http://feralhouse.com/press/mini_sites/ouija/
  12. ^ Ouija: The Most Dangerous Game, Stoker Hunt, Chapter 6, pages 44-50.
  13. ^ The London Independent, by Peter Popham, December 2, 2005
  14. ^ Pass It On, New York A. A., 1984, page 278.
  15. ^ Pass It On, New York A. A., 1984, pages 278-279.
  16. ^ Pass It On, New York A. A., 1984, pages 196-197.
  17. ^ [1]

Books

External links

External links of sites with information on talking boards

External links skeptical of talking boards

Other External links

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