Random facts about the Ouija board

admin sinfulldude · Random facts about the Ouija board

I'm sure there many people here who will know the info I'm about to tell, but I've yet to really see a post about the history, or with facts, about the board. I'm no expert on it, but thought I'd share this with you all since I found it to be interesting.

The Ouija board, as we know it today, dates back to the late 1800s. Spiritualism was at a great hight back then, and sceances and other methods for contacting spirits had become a popular parlor game. However, Ouija boards were made popular by the Fox sisters in the 1840's. Catherine (Kate- 12 years old) and Margaretta (Maggie- 14 years old) had just moved with their parents to a town near Rochester, New York. Not even three months after living in their new home, the girls were reporting it as being haunted. They made claims of furniture moving, instruments being played by invisable fingers, bangs and bumps being heard all over the house, etc. On March 31st 1848, Kate Fox challenged the ghost and asked it to repeat 'the snaps of her fingers'. The ghost obliged, duly stopping when Kate did. Maggie continued with the communication asking the ghost to copy her counting as she clapped her hands. To further their contact, the girls pasted letters onto a board in order to communicate better with the spirit. Rather than asking yes and no questions, they could now carry on a conversation. A similar version of their board was later made into a game in the 1890's.

No one is sure how many different types of Ouija boards there are. Some say it is up in the hundreds, possibly even thousands.

The first Ouija board was made available for retail sale by Charles Kennard.

To capitalize on the Ouija's reputation of conjuring spirits and foretelling the future, some Ouija board manufacturers added witches to their designs starting in the early 1900's. Swamis were also a popular design. They were called oddly enough, "Swami boards."

The use of Ouija-like objects and instruments dates back as far as 479 B.C.

Starting in the 1850's, alphabet boards made the transition to the dial-plate instruments, also known as psychographs, first in the United States and then in Europe. The first talking board with a detachable sliding message indicator appeared around 1886. That's a short thirty-eight year time frame. If the Ouija board has relatives they are the devices of this period: the talking tables, the alphabet pasteboards, and the early dial-plate instruments.

'Ask the Glass' is game similar to a Ouija board. With a board very similar to that of a Ouija, a small glass (often a shot glass) is used as the planchette. It works pretty much the same as Ouija board.