The Extremely Creepy History Of Ouija Boards

The Ouija board itself is barely 130 years old, according to Smithsonian Magazine, but the idea of using "talking boards" to communicate with spirits or ghosts is very ancient. Attempting to divine the will of the gods or spirits through earthly interpretation was common among many civilizations. The ancient Romans used augury, in which specially trained "augurs" watched the patterns of bird flight, the ways sacred chickens pecked the ground, and the entrails of sacrificed animals to determine the right thing to do in given situations. The practice of literomancy, or deciphering characters, also has a strong history in Chinese tradition for telling the future. However, the rumor that the ancient Greek philosopher Pythagoras had a "talking board" — thus lending the Ouija a hint of legitimacy — is, in fact, not supported by any historical evidence, according to the Museum of Talking Boards.

The specific characteristics of modern talking boards, in which letters on a table were used as a way for spirits to communicate, may have originated with the Fox sisters, three famous 19th century American mediums, per Smithsonian Magazine. They used table-turning and rapping as signs that ghosts were "talking" to them, and also employed "automatic writing," in which they wrote whatever came into their heads while ghosts "controlled" them. It may have been their idea to use letters to produce more defined messages. But spiritualism was so popular in 19th century America that it's hard to narrow down the idea's exact origin.

"Talking boards" were actually pretty common in the 19th century in the United Sates, but none were as popular as the Ouija. J. Edward Cornelius, in his history of the Ouija board, explains that the first modern Ouija was marketed in the United States in 1890, as the country was gripped by interest in spirits and mediums. While details are scant, it appears to have been invented by a man named E.C. Reiche, a coffin-maker in Maryland with a strong interest in spiritualism. The name "Ouija" was first applied to the board at this time, and it was marketed as "Ouija, The Wonderful Talking Board," per Smithsonian.

A patent was filed by Reiche's business partner Elijah Bond in 1892, though it's not clear exactly who came up with the idea and who took it onto the market. (Smithsonian Magazine reports that the patent officer only allowed them to get a patent if the device spelled out his name correctly, which it allegedly did.) Cornelius notes that the design was further refined in 1910, when the device had a circle added to its planchette to see the letters underneath, as you still see today.

The name "Ouija," it seems, doesn't come from the French and German words for "yes," as the myth goes. According to The Ouija Board Jurors: Mystery, Mischief and Misery in the Jury System, a history of the Ouija board by criminal justice historian Jeremy Gans, the name came from Elijah Bond's seance with his sister-in-law. Apparently Bond held a session on the board in the late 1890s to ask the spirit world for a name for his new product: "It spelled out O-U-I-J-A. When I asked the meaning of the word it said Good Luck."

Gans concludes that whether this was true or not, the name was a success, distinguishing the board from other products through a "combination of luck, catchiness and canny marketing."

The board started to acquire a sinister reputation almost immediately after its production. In 1919, J.G. Raupert published a book called The New Black Magic & The Truth About The Ouija-Board, in which he reported that doctors had told him about three people for whom "the use of the Ouija-board has brought about a state of dementia."

It was even the subject of a court case in the mid-1920s to determine whether it counted as a "toy," and should therefore be subject to the 10% tax levied on U.S. toy sales. Judges battled over the question, with one arguing that it "is unique, in a class by itself." In the end, it was judged to be a toy because it was "used mostly as a means of social entertainment or play," even if people also used it as a serious means of communicating with spirits.

In 1994, the English Court of Appeals had to answer a crucial question: were jurors in a murder trial allowed to use a Oujia board? Stephen Young, 35, was initially convicted of murdering Harry and Nicola Fuller, but the order for a retrial was given after it was revealed that several of the jurors in his case had used a Ouija board to attempt to contact the souls of the deceased and make their verdict. The court decided that wasn't admissible, and Young got a retrial. (Even without a Ouija board, he was convicted of murder a second time.)