The beginnings of the Ouija Board really got it’s start in the Victorian era, with the rise of the Fox Sisters. On March 31, 1848, in Hydesville, NY, the Fox family had moved into a house which had a reputation for being haunted. In the middle of March of 1848, the family began experiencing strange noises – raps & taps – throughout the house. No matter how much they searched, the family claimed to find no source for the strange noises, which were getting progressively louder. On the night of March 31, Kate, one of two daughters living in the house, issued a challenge to the mysterious noises – “Mr. Splitfoot, do as I do”. She clapped her hands together several times, and the mysterious presence repeated the same amount of clapping noises back to her. This was the birth of the modern Spiritualist movement, and the beginning of modern “spirit communication”. The sisters went on tour, with their older sister, Leah, taking on the position of the girl’s manager. As their popularity grew, their performances became more involved – not only were they communicating with spirits, but the spirits were moving objects around and levitating tables.
Within two years of the Fox sister’s first encounter with “Mr. Splitfoot”, mediums had popped up all over the United States and Europe. It was also a very profitable business, as millions of people believed that such communication was legitimate. The medium was the center of the séance…calling forth the deceased, who brought messages from “beyond the grave”. This was accomplished through the medium changing their voice, a “spirit trumpets”, and other props. By 1853, over 30,000 people in the United States were claiming to be mediums (5).
As with any form of entertainment, each new performer had to take things to another level in order to stand out. This brought on two techniques that “raised the bar” – Slate Writing and Table Tipping. Slate writing is credited to the medium Henry Slate, who popularized the act. In common use, two slates would be shown to a sitter. They would then be hidden away, and when brought forth again…they would have a message written on one of the slate boards. Table Tipping involved spirits acting upon a table, tilting or levitating it, in response to questions.
In 1886, an article appeared in the New York Tribune, about “a mysterious talking board and table over which northern Ohio is agitated”. It went on to describe how to hand-make a Talking Board & Planchette, and how to play it. Charles Kennard picked up on this idea, and saw an opportunity. On February 10, 1891, Elijah Bond (a Patent attorney) assigned the first patent to William H. A. Maupin and Charles W. Kennard of the Kennard Novelty Company. The game went into production as the Ouija or Egyptian luck-board, ” a toy or game by which two or more persons can amuse themselves by asking questions of any kind and having them answered by the device used and operated by the touch of the hand, so that the answers are designated by letters on a board.”
By the next year, Elijah Bond and Charles Kennard had left the company due to financial differences. A restructuring of the company followed, and it was renamed the Ouija Novelty Company on March 8th, 1892, William Fuld had been appointed to run operations. Fuld would eventually take over the novelty firm and affix his name to every board. By the 1920s, a conservative estimate of profit off the Ouija board placed it over $1 million dollars. In the 1940s, another boom in sales came with a department store selling ten thousand boards a month. William Fuld died February 24, 1927. His family sold the company to Parker Brothers in 1966. In the following year, over 2 million Ouija Boards were sold, beating out the sales of Monopoly.
In the 1960s & 70s, the board was a popular teen pastime. However, the story of the Ouija Board took a darker turn in 1973, with the release of The Exorcist (cue the dramatic music).
In the next issue, we’ll take a closer look at how the board turned from a game to an evil doorway to Hell…
References
1 – First Spiritual Temple (Mediumship). 2001.
https://www.fst.org/fxsistrs.htm
2 – The Haunted Museum. 2003.
https://www.prairieghosts.com/foxsisters.html
3 – The Strange and Mysterious History of the Ouija Board. October 27, 2013.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-strange-and-mysterious-history-of-the-ouija-board-5860627/?no-ist
4 – “A Sceptical History of Spirit Mediums”. June 9, 2008.
5 – Karp, Catherine. The Gothic Imp. “The Bizarre History of Seances”.
https://www.francescamiller.com/seances.html
6 – Rodriguez McRobbie, Linda. October 27, 2013. “The Strange and Mysterious History of the Ouija Board”
https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83030214/1886-03-28/ed-1/seq-9/
7 – Murch, Robert. 2007. “The Story of America’s Most Unique Inventor”
https://www.williamfuld.com/ouija2.html
8 – Horowitz, Mitch. 2009. Occult America; The Secret History Of How Mysticism Shaped Our Nation”.