The Ouija Board
- Nicole Klein
- Nov 9
- 8 min read
Updated: Nov 10
"That's where I draw the line"
At a recent Halloween event I was talking to somebody about spirits, honouring the ancestors and as it was Halloween, we talked about hauntings and the like, which they were hugely interested in. When I mentioned they could use a Ouija board to check what’s happening I got the line above.
So I started wondering….
What is it about the Ouija board that makes a lot of people recoil as soon as you mention it?
I find it incredibly fascinating, but also pretty weird, that I have met so, so many people who are disproportionately scared of the Ouija board. Even people who are very much into the occult, witchcraft, other forms of divination even spirits and ghosts, but mention Ouija and you will often get the response:
“Oh no, I wouldn’t touch that! You don’t know what you let in there!”
Usually followed by a hearsay story about someone who was pestered by demons after using one. I have even heard stories about people going mad or committing suicide after using the board, which is truly terrifying!
Go on the internet and ask a question about the Ouija board and you will always immediately get “Don’t use it!”
Words like demonic possession, hauntings, evil spirits and more will then be hurled your way and any form of level-headed discussion goes out of the window.
Before I dive deeper into the likely reasons for those fears, I should give you full disclosure. I own a talking board at the moment, I have owned several since my teenage years, I have used them plenty of times and I haven’t been threatened by demons in response yet.
That doesn’t mean I consider the use totally harmless, but we’ll get to that later.
I even have a bit of a thing for the classic Ouiija board design to the extend that my tarot business cards are based on it and you can find it as decoration in our house lots of times!
First, lets have a look what these things even are, shall we?
Where did they come from, who invented them?
And what does “Ouija” actually mean?
The Ouija board, which is also sometimes called spirit board, witch board or talking board, was patented by Charles Kennard, founder of Kennard Novelty Company and his business partner Elijah Bond, with the help of his sister-in-law, Helen Peters Nosworthy, who was a spiritualist and medium, in 1891.
They even claim to have invented the actual talking board, but similar techniques like automatic writing (the practice of channeling and writing words without a conscious effort) with a planchette, very like the one used on a talking board, were used as far back as 1100 AD in China.
The late eighteen hundreds saw a huge surge in interest in the spirit world. The spiritualist movement, which originated in the US after the Civil War, had its greatest increase in followers from the 1840s to the 1920s.
The movement was responsible for a peak in people claiming to be mediums or able to contact the dead in some way.
This comes at a time where people were often hit by sudden loss, frequently didn’t even know if their loved ones were alive and had no way of finding out.
Communication with the spirits was seen as a legitimate way of coping with loss and grief.
Obviously at the same time more and more methods of spirit communication were developed and one of them was the talking board.
The name ‘Ouija’ is reported to have came from the board itself!
When spiritualist and medium Helen Peters Nosworthy (Yes the same one I mentioned above who was also a stockholder in the company producing the first proper commercially available board) asked the board what it wanted to be called it apparently spelled out:
O-U-I-J-A.
She then asked the board what the word meant and got the message:
G-O-O-D-L-U-C-K
The Ouija board became a commercially successful parlour game and was often used as a form of harmless entertainment and it was specifically marketed as such too. It was even sometimes used on dates, allowing coupes to sit close together and pose flirty questions via the board.
It was a totally acceptable past time and absolutely nobody talked about dangerous spirits, demonic possession or similar things.
Acclaimed authors used it, like W.B.Yeats whose later poetry was inspired by it or Emily Grant Hutchings, who claimed she had received an entire novel by Mark Twain’s spirit via the board (Jap Herron: A Novel Written from the Ouija Board) and there were lots more.
Obviously Aleister Crowley was highly fascinated by it, no surprise there and even briefly considered making his own design, together with one of his students Frater Achad (Charles Stansfeld Jones). I would have loved to see that!
Even as late as 1967 Ouija was outselling Monopoly as a board game!
2 million boards were sold in that year alone.
It was likely to be found in every other household at the time.
So what changed?
When did we suddenly consider the Ouija board to be a portal to the demon world that is dangerous and scary and should never be touched?
Guess what, you can put an exact date on it!
26th of December 1973
The opening night of “The Exorcist”
Regan, the girl that becomes possessed in the movie and subsequently exorcised in a rather horrific good vs evil battle, is briefly seen to be playing with a Ouija board at the beginning of the movie and through it she becomes possessed by a demon.
The problem was that the movie was based on a real story!
The Exorcism of Roland Doe was the story behind the Exorcist and Roland, sometimes called Robbie, was a 14 year old boy (real name Ronald Edwin Hunker), who allegedly had also been playing with a Ouija board before he became possessed.
However, none of what actually happened to this poor kid was properly recorded, most so called ‘facts’ were eventually disproved and records were shown to be little more than hearsay.
The story was printed in several newspapers in mid-1949, citing the family pastor as the source of information.
At some point there was a claim that up to 48 people saw the exorcism happen, but not one of them ever made a ‘on-the-record’ statement that the boy was indeed possessed by a demon.
It is true that he had played with a Ouija board, which he was introduced to by his Aunt Harriet, who was a spiritualist, like so many during that time.
It is said that Roland had a very close bond with his aunt and spent a lot of his free time with her.
The disturbances of the “possession” started shortly after his aunt's death.
My guess is that the entire story is a very sad affair and if you are interested, please read it up, I will just leave it here at this point with the fact that eventually somebody did a more scientific research into this case and found that most of the hyped up things that apparently happened, just didn’t occur and that Roland was likely to have suffered a mental breakdown from grief.
But as we all know…“Never let the truth get in the way of a good story”
The movie “The Exorcist” had huge cultural influence at the time and if you consider that almost every household likely had a Ouija board lying about somewhere, it was perfect to feed the fear that something evil could just sneak into your house.
Suddenly this harmless thing might just open the gates of hell!
What a fabulous bit of PR!
Then more spooky movies came like “Witchboard” and its sequels, “Paranormal Activity” featured it, “13 Ghosts”, “What lies beneath” all showing talking boards as a source for something nasty coming for you or as a way of empowering something evil.
So yes, the reputation, I should actually call it a myth, of the Ouija board as something scary and demonic is completely based on the entertainment industry!
What a laugh eh?
But wait a minute…did I not say at the beginning that I don’t consider it totally harmless either?
So have I watched too many horror movies?
That is a fact, but has not much to do with my opinion about talking boards.
Science can explain what happens when you use a spirit board. The words forming are a result of the ideomotor phenomenon, a psychological phenomenon that physically moves objects involuntarily, first described by no other than Michael Faraday.
Further modern studies (in 2012) have shown that it can provide answers to questions often more accurately than pure guesswork, which could indicate a connection to the subconscious.
And that’s where, in my opinion, there is plenty of room for a bit magick or connection to something larger than ourselves.
I personally don’t believe that a Ouija board can make any involuntary connections to demons or the Devil even. It will only connect to anything you already carry in your mind and that’s where some danger might lurk.
If you are in a frightened mood, full of fear that something terrible is going to happen, then the chances of that actually coming true increase exponentially.
Nobody should be using a Ouija board when they are not in the right frame of mind.
It could potentially reinforce any doubts, fears, worries already present and if you do believe the Devil speaks to you through a board game, then there is little anyone can do to convince you otherwise and I am not saying that to mock! If you expect demons, then demons might just come, whatever that means to you.
I think a talking board session should be considered the same way we would consider any other attempt to connect with the subconscious or the spiritual world. You need to be at ease with the process and yourself in it.
So the bottom line is, if you are curious about a Ouija board, check it out and don’t let others frighten you into thinking you just opened the door to a horror movie happening in your house.
It’s a thing made of wood, plastic or hard cardboard, absolutely no different to a “Monopoly” board!
If you are one of those who truly believe these boards to be evil, I do invite you to read a bit more about it or at least don’t immediately scream “EVIL” at anybody who has a question about it or talks about using one.
And to end this on a funny note…although the Catholic church condemns the use of Ouija boards (because any form of divination is a sin), there are “Holy Spirit Boards”, which apparently helps you connect to Christ!
Not joking, they were on sale on Amazon, but are currently unavailable, but check out the link.
Please make sure you subscribe to the blog to never miss a post and scroll down to leave a comment if you wish!
Blessings to you all
Good post! We used one as kids and, although it was weird the glass moving on its own, nothing scary ever happened.
The only time I had problems with an apparent evil force was when I was in a bad frame of mind coupled with my uncle visiting me briefly as he passed from this world to the next. He literally shook me awake in my hotel bed and, after a few minutes wondering what had happened to me, I realised my uncle had died and had come to say goodbye. I was happy about that but, with me already being in a fragile state of mind, from then on, in that bed in that room, I had problems wi…