🎃 Talking to the Dead: The Haunted History of the Ouija Board

Cardboard, ink… and maybe the afterlife.

Oct 02, 2025

It’s late. The lights are low. Four friends sit cross-legged in a circle, a rectangle of cardboard between them. Letters, numbers, and a single word printed at the bottom: GOODBYE. A heart-shaped planchette waits under their fingertips. No one wants to ask the question, but someone does anyway.

“Is anyone here with us?”

The planchette trembles. A nervous laugh escapes, but then it slides—slowly, deliberately—across the board.

The Ouija board has been a fixture on toy store shelves for more than a century, its presence both intriguing and unsettling. To some, the activity seems like harmless fun with no consequences. To others, it's a doorway that leads to the deepest, darkest pits of Hell. For those in between, it's a game that refuses to fade, a bizarre and enduring phenomenon.

🕯 The Birth of the Board

The Ouija board didn’t rise from ancient tombs or forbidden grimoires—it was born in Baltimore, Maryland, during America’s restless obsession with the spirit world in the late 19th century. By the 1880s, the United States was deep in the Spiritualist craze, a movement that promised communication with the dead through séances, table-rapping, and trance mediums (Braude, Radical Spirits, 2001).

In 1891, a Baltimore businessman named Charles Kennard teamed up with attorney Elijah Bond to patent a curious device they called a “talking board” (U.S. Patent No. 446,054, 1891). It was simple: a flat surface printed with the alphabet, numbers 0–9, Yes, No, and Goodbye. A small heart-shaped pointer—the planchette—was meant to glide beneath participants’ fingertips, spelling out messages from the unseen.

The name itself became legend. According to Ouija historian Robert Murch, Bond’s sister-in-law, Helen Peters, asked the board what it wished to be called. The planchette spelled O-U-I-J-A. When they asked what it meant, the board’s answer was chilling in its simplicity: “Good luck.” (Smithsonian Magazine, 2013).

From the beginning, the board’s roots were not mystical but entrepreneurial. Early advertisements promised that it would provide “a link between the known and unknown, the material and immaterial” (Baltimore Sun, 1891). Depending on who you asked, the device was viewed as a parlor amusement, with cheerful laughter, or as a serious supernatural tool, imbued with hushed tones.

And yet, that mix—playful novelty laced with the suggestion of real danger—was exactly what America wanted. Driven by a society's desire for fun and paranormal explanations, the Ouija board gained popularity.

💀 Death, Grief, and Demand

When World War I ended in 1918, the United States was still counting its dead—more than 100,000 American soldiers never returned home from the trenches of Europe (CDC, 1918 Pandemic H1N1). That same year, the Spanish Flu pandemic swept across the globe, killing an estimated 675,000 Americans and over 50 million people worldwide (Barry, The Great Influenza, 2005). The losses were relentless: fathers, sons, children, and neighbors taken in an instant.

Grief became a national language. Parlors that once echoed with piano music now filled with whispered questions to the beyond. The need to connect with the dead wasn’t a fringe obsession—it was an everyday craving, and Spiritualism—a movement that had already taken root in the 19th century—surged back into prominence as people sought comfort in séances and psychic mediums (Braude, Radical Spirits, 2001).

And in that vacuum of sorrow, the Ouija board flourished.

It promised something both terrifying and comforting: the possibility that the departed could still speak. No expensive medium required, no mysterious gifts—just cardboard, a wooden planchette, and trembling fingertips. Families huddled around the board, asking questions they couldn’t let go of: Are you still with us? Are you at peace? Will we see you again?

The Ouija board was a popular pastime by the 1920s, offering a unique form of solace to a grieving America. Department stores stocked it. College students played it in dorms. Couples used it for flirtation as much as for fortune-telling (Smithsonian, 2013; NPR, 2013).

Even the nation’s most beloved illustrator, Norman Rockwell, captured its popularity. In May 1920, he painted a playful scene for The Saturday Evening Post: a young man and woman leaning across a Ouija board, the planchette between them, their knees touching beneath the table (Saturday Evening Post archives, 1920). The message was clear—this wasn’t occultism. This was America’s pastime.

And yet beneath the innocent charm of Rockwell’s brushstrokes lingered the truth: the board thrived because people were desperate. A game became a lifeline, and in the process, it bound the ordinary with the supernatural in a way that felt almost natural.

👻 A Reputation Turns Dark

As the Ouija board spread into American homes, so too did the stories of what happened after the candles were blown out.

By the early 20th century, newspapers were filled with unsettling tales: a group of schoolgirls in New York claimed the board told them when their teachers would die; in 1921, The New York Times reported on a woman committed to a psychiatric hospital after she told doctors that Ouija voices had instructed her to leave her husband and run off with another man (New York Times, 1921). Other accounts described families who claimed the board predicted accidents, hauntings, or worse.

It wasn’t long before clergy across denominations began denouncing the board as a dangerous gateway to the demonic. Catholic priests in particular warned their congregations that Ouija was not a game but a “Devil’s Doorway,” a spiritual snare disguised as cardboard and ink (The Atlantic, 2016). What began as a parlor amusement was slowly acquiring a far darker reputation.

And then came 1973.

That year, The Exorcist shattered audiences with its tale of a young girl possessed by a demon. Early in the film, the first sign of trouble comes when the girl, Regan, innocently plays with a Ouija board, contacting a spirit she calls “Captain Howdy.” What follows—levitation, guttural voices, violent possession—forever linked the Ouija board with unspeakable evil in the public imagination (Blatty, The Exorcist, 1971; Warner Bros., 1973).

The film was a cultural earthquake. Lines of terrified moviegoers stretched around theaters, and fainting, vomiting, and reports of religious conversions swept across America. Sales of Ouija boards spiked, but so did fear. For millions, the image of a plastic planchette sliding across the letters was no longer innocent—it was a direct invitation to Hell.

The Ouija board had become a means of terror, a far cry from its simple curiosity shelf life.

🧠 Trick of the Mind… or Something Else?

For all its dark legends, psychologists have long insisted that the Ouija board doesn’t summon spirits—it summons us.

The explanation lies in something called the ideomotor effect: tiny, unconscious muscle movements that we make without being aware of them. First described in the 19th century by physician William B. Carpenter, the phenomenon is evident in various forms, including dowsing rods, pendulums, and automatic writing. When participants gather around an Ouija board, their hands do, in fact, move the planchette—but they’re unaware of it. The unconscious brain takes control, nudging the pointer letter by letter across the board (Carpenter, 1852; Hyman, 1999).

And yet, the story doesn’t end there.

In recent years, researchers have found something unsettling: people sometimes perform better on the Ouija board than they do when answering consciously. A 2012 study at the University of British Columbia found that participants correctly answered factual yes/no questions more accurately when using the Ouija board than when answering directly. The unconscious brain, it seems, can access knowledge the conscious mind can’t immediately recall (Sidney Fels et al., UBC, 2012).

That raises a chilling possibility. The board may not be channeling spirits—but it may be tapping into the hidden corners of our own minds, pulling memories, associations, and intuitions we didn’t know we had. No wonder participants swear it’s not them moving the planchette: in a way, they’re right. It isn’t the conscious self doing it.

So the question lingers: when the planchette slides to spell out a message, is it a ghost at work—or the strange, shadowy intelligence of our own subconscious?

🎥 From Parlors to Pop Culture

Movies: Ouija, Paranormal Activity, The Exorcist.

Urban legends: the “Zozo demon.”
Still sold today by Hasbro alongside Monopoly.

A Halloween dare, a pop-culture icon, and a viral TikTok trend all at once.

🕸 The Closing Chill

Whether you see it as a party trick, a neurological illusion, or a genuine gateway to Hell, the Ouija board has one undeniable power: it refuses to fade away.

So tonight, if you dare to whisper, “Is anyone here?” … don’t be surprised if the answer is yes.

📌 Interactive Corner

🔮 Poll: Would you use a Ouija board on Halloween night?

👻 Yes, every year
🙅 Never—too dangerous
🤷 Just a silly game

💬 Tell me your story: Have you ever had a creepy Ouija experience? Share it in the comments—I might feature the eeriest ones in the next issue.

🪦 Closing Note

Thanks for reading this Halloween edition of The Ink Plots. If you enjoyed this morbid deep dive, consider:

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Until next time—keep the lights on.

📚Further Reading

Smithsonian Magazine – The Strange and Mysterious History of the Ouija Board (2013)
NPR–The Ouija Board’s Strange History: From Parlor Game to Horror Flick (2013)
Ann Braude – Radical Spirits: Spiritualism and Women’s Rights in Nineteenth-Century America (Indiana University Press, 2001)
U.S. Patent No. 446,054 (Elijah J. Bond, 1891)
Baltimore Sun Archives – Ouija advertisements, 1891
Barry, John M. The Great Influenza. Penguin Books, 2005.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) – 1918 Pandemic (H1N1 Virus)
Braude, Ann. Radical Spirits. Indiana University Press, 2001.
Smithsonian Magazine – The Strange and Mysterious History of the Ouija Board
NPR – The Ouija Board’s Strange History
Saturday Evening Post Archives – Rockwell, Norman. Ouija Board cover, May 1, 1920.
The New York Times, “Ouija Board Sends Woman to Insane Asylum,” March 1921.
The Atlantic – Ouija Board: Toy or Tool of the Devil? (2016).
Blatty, William Peter. The Exorcist. Harper & Row, 1971.
The Exorcist (dir. William Friedkin, Warner Bros., 1973).
Murch, Robert. Ouija historian, cited in Smithsonian Magazine – The Strange and Mysterious History of the Ouija Board (2013).
Carpenter, W.B. “On the Influence of Suggestion in Modifying and Directing Muscular Movement, Independently of Volition.” Royal Institution of Great Britain Lectures, 1852.
Hyman, Ray. “The Evidence for Psychic Functioning: Claims vs Reality.” The Scientific Review of Mental Health Practice, 1999.
Andersen, Kristian T., et al. “Ouija Board: Investigating the Ideomotor Effect and Unconscious Cognition.” University of British Columbia study, 2012. (Covered in Smithsonian Magazine, 2013).
Smithsonian Magazine – The Strange and Mysterious History of the Ouija Board.