She had a reputation as a medium, so on April 25, 1890, she had a session in Baltimore with the entrepreneurs and the board. That name came courtesy of Helen Peters, Elijah Bond's sister-in-law. Their board's name was unique as well, with a surrounding mystical myth. The early origin stories of the board show how "Ouija's" meaning changed
Its design - an arc of letters, a planchette, and handy "Yes," "No," and "Goodbye" prompts - was unique. Though we don't know the inventor, we do know that the Ouija board, made and sold by Kennard and his colleague Elijah Bond, represented a step forward for talking boards. As he watched his hand move, he realized he'd found a way to access his subconscious. "According to Kennard," Murch says, "he came up with the idea while sitting in the kitchen of his new house." Kennard said he placed a breadboard on the table and held a teacup over it, the same way you'd hold a planchette over a Ouija board. The most common belief is that Reiche sold his invention to Kennard, though it's hard to know for sure (Reiche later claimed it was stolen). Reiche, while others say it was Charles Kennard. The inventor of the 1886 Ouija board remains disputed - some credit a cabinetmaker named E. Often, these early planchettes had a hole so a pencil could write the answer.Ī planchette that uses a pencil, from 1880. Myth says it's named after a French medium, but it's a word for a small board dating back to medieval France). Some devices even used planchettes (that's the name for the thing you hold when you operate a Ouija board. Other fortune tellers relied on knocking sounds on the bottom of a table to convey messages. Some used dial plates, in which you pressed your hand on a device and the pressure directed a needle to different letters. Murch says early versions featured different ways of receiving messages. Some pre-1886 Ouija boards looked like Ouija boards, and some didn't. "Talking boards existed years before Ouija," Murch says. Ouija was just one of many talking boards of its era That fad led to lots of unique business opportunities. In 1868, for example, there were no less than 150 lectures on spiritualism advertised in the Spiritual Telegraph newspaper. Via the lecture circuit, seances, and other activities in which people attempted to talk to the dead, spiritualism became a significant cultural force. It was significant from the 1860s on, David Nartonis writes in his history of the spiritualist movement's growth. As Americans dealt with a changing country, life in the wake of the Civil War, and other drastic changes, some sought answers in a spiritual - but not traditionally religious - realm. Ouija was an outgrowth of a real spiritualist movementĪ sincere spiritualist movement arose in the second half of the 19th century. It turns out that the real meaning of "Ouija" is as pliable - and mysterious - as the game itself.
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As the chair of the Talking Board Historical Society, he served as a consultant on the 2014 horror movie Ouija and recently celebrated his passion at the inaugural OuijaCon. But its history is less well-known, so I asked someone to help me understand the layered meanings of Ouija: Robert Murch, who has the unique distinction of being a Ouija expert.
The board game, which uses movements of people's hands on a small device to send a "message from beyond," is still a popular toy. If you've ever hovered over a Ouija board, you may have wondered, "What does 'Ouija' mean?"
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