There is a simple explanation for how the Ouija board works: they are not ghosts, but how you think about them.
You remember the ouija board, don’t you? If you went to overnight as a kid, you might have played with one. You gathered with a couple of friends, put your fingers on the pointer, and asked a question. The pointer seemed to move on its own as it voiced answers to your questions. Maybe you thought it was a fun game, or maybe you were actually talking to the dead. Perhaps you thought that more sinister forces would move him, or just someone else sitting around the table.
This piece originally appeared on 10/24/17.
It is widely accepted by scientists that the Ouija board works through the ideomotor effect. The people, with their hands hovering over the little pointer that slides across the board, actually move it to spell the answers, even when they don’t want to. Ideomotor movements are unconscious gestures that we make in response to strong ideas or emotions. Although there are different ones Theories of the ideomotor effect, Expectation, and imagination play a key role – anticipating an action, be it performing it or defending yourself against it.
From the design to the myths that surround it, the Ouija Board is buzzing with the urge to move. We got this idea of the pointer pivoting around the board. Maybe we think about it because we want it to happen or because we fear it will. These thoughts unconsciously, almost irresistibly, prepare our hands to cause that first twitch. Once the movement starts, the excitement and drama builds up –Who is moving it? I’m not; are you?– makes us all the more susceptible to ideomotor movements and all the more unconscious that we are doing them.
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If you want to experience the effect with some friends without risking the wrath of the underworld / expenses Money on a Ouija board, you can always try this trick: Gather two groups of four or five people, stand them in two rows, and ask everyone to take turns with their outstretched arms, their own hands clasped, and their forefingers out. Now balance something like a bamboo stick along that finger line and tell everyone to lower it to the ground. To their disbelief, they will all start lifting the stick higher and higher in the air. It’s the same deal, the ideomotor effect works like everyone unconsciously adapts for everyone else’s micro-movements, and the result is a movement that no one can explain.
Since ideomotor movements are unconscious, they can easily be traced back to external forces: ghosts in the case of the ouija board. We think the Ouija board writes things that we couldn’t possibly write or know, but we’re just so caught up in the moment that we don’t realize we’re doing it ourselves. Sometimes the questions asked of the board are answered by one of the participants who unwittingly begins to spell an answer and inadvertently encourages others to do the same. At other times, the question is broad and open, leaving room for an eager group to invent it together. Despite the powerful nature of ideomotor movements, the otherworldly functioning of the ouija board was exposed simply by blindfolding the participants. If users can’t see the letters on the board, it spells gibberish or misses the letters altogether:
If you are a believer this could be a disappointment. The Ouija board is something some people want to believe is real, a hope that has kept the object relevant in American culture since the 19th century. The board does unexpected, inexplicable things that its users think they couldn’t do on their own. This potential for surprise was part of the appeal of spiritualism, the religious movement from which the board of directors of Ouija emerged.
Popular in Europe as a fad that focused on making contact with the dead, spiritualism caught on in America in 1848 with the Fox sisters. It was young New York state girls who claimed to be communicating with a ghost in their home through a series of inexplicable knocks. From then on, spiritualism flourished, with as many media popping up as there were ghosts willing to reveal the secrets of the afterlife.
Originally known as the Spirit Board or Talking Board, the first Ouija boards were made with household items in the mid-19th century. User pushed a glass towards alphabet cards on a table or even moved the table itself. The Planchette– the moving indicator we associate with the blackboard today – appeared in the 1850s as the blackboard’s popularity increased. Moving a planchette was easier than chasing a flying table across the room. Some planchettes had a hole for a pencil to make automatic writing easier. Feminist scientist Anne Braude Remarks that the planchette “was easy to use, required no experience or expertise, and could lead to the discovery or encouragement of mediumship in unsuspecting investigators”. Spiritism found power in communal domestic spaces such as the kitchen and living room and in each of its residents – mostly women – with an open mind and a few simple tools.
During the late 19th to mid-20th centuries, spiritualism declined in popularity as more and more of the media emerged as fraudsters. But the mystery and opportunity at the heart of the board remained appealing, and people outside of spiritualist circles wanted to make money. In 1890, Charles Kennard and several other investors formed the Kennard Novelty Company to manufacture the board as a toy. Smithsonian reports that the name Ouija was not, as generally assumed, a mixture of French and German words for “ja” (prominent on the board), but a name given to the board by the sister-in-law of one of the investors, Helen Peters. The name is possibly the wrong spelling of the name of a suffragette named Ouida, whose picture Peters wore in a medallion at the time, a fact that would certainly fit into the history of the board of directors. According to Ouija historian Robert MurchIn order to prove that the board was working to secure a patent, the chief patent officer demanded that she spell his name, which was allegedly unknown to the patent seekers. The board did so, to the official’s astonishment, and the patent was granted.
Despite the fact that the ideomotor movement has already been studied in relation to spiritistic practices such as the Spirit Board 1852, Mystery was one of the Ouija board’s biggest selling points. The only way to see if the Ouija board worked was to try it out for yourself. William Fuld, an employee of Kennard, took over the Ouija patent in 1892. While the original patent made no mention of how the Ouija board worked, 1892 patent claims that it worked via “the involuntary muscular movement of the players’ hands or by some other authority” which satisfied both science and the mystical.
In the years that followed, the Ouija board continued to talk about everything that preoccupied Americans the most, be it spiritual enlightenment or more mundane joys. advertisement from the 1920s for Fulds Ouija boards present it as a happy party game. Romantic Songs and Norman Rockwell Paintings from this period emphasize his frivolity and lightheartedness. The board experienced renewed popularity during World war II How the Americans sought consolation wherever they could. In the late 1940s and early 1950s the board became family friendly and mainstream. In the late 50’s and early 60’s, as American interest in esotericism increased, the board reached out to people curious about psychological phenomena.
The Ouija board experienced a boom in the 1960s and 1970s following a wave of new spiritual and countercultural movements affecting the occult. Parker Brothers acquired board rights from William Fuld’s descendants in 1966, and sales soared. While the board was still having some fun and romance, a more eerie mood has crept in, supported by films like 1973 The exorcist. The possibility that dark forces might be at work added to the appeal of the Ouija board, especially to young people who want to rebel against their parents’ conservative values. It was especially popular with young women, the same population group who first used it during its spiritistic heyday.
Hasbro acquired Parker Brothers in 1991 and interest in the board declined in the 1990s. Newer boards have been redesigned to glow in the dark or tie in with movies or other popular media franchises. Although Ouija boards are still commercially available and several films have been made about them recently, they are nowhere near as popular as they used to be.
The Ouija board is not made in a demon-occupied magical factory as a unique portal to another world. Its power comes from a combination of psychology and our deep human need to give meaning. In the story of the board’s original patenting, something as mundane as the patent officer’s name becomes astonishing. The ideomotor effect in the heart of the board works due to the scene we set when opening the box, the curiosity and desires that we jointly channel through it. The Ouija board lets us write, say, or know things that we think we can’t. Instead of being a disappointment, that ruined our childhood, the truth behind the ouija board takes that power from ghosts and spirits and puts it back into our hands.
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