Ouija Board: History, How to Use One and How to Make Your Own

A Ouija board is a "talking board": a flat board printed with the alphabet, the numbers 0–9 and the words YES, NO and GOOD BYE, used with a small sliding pointer called a planchette. Two or more people rest their fingertips on the planchette, ask questions, and read the letters it moves to as answers. It was patented in Baltimore in 1891 as a parlour novelty growing out of American Spiritualism, and psychologists explain its movements by the ideomotor effect: small, unconscious muscle movements made by the sitters themselves.

What a Ouija board is§

"Ouija" is a registered trademark, now owned by Hasbro, but the word is used loosely for any talking board, also called a spirit board or witch board. The classic layout has two arcs of letters from A to Z across the middle, a straight row of numbers 1 to 0 beneath them, YES and NO in the upper corners (often next to a sun and a moon) and GOOD BYE along the bottom edge. Many boards add decorative symbols, but they have no fixed meaning.

The planchette is a small heart-shaped or triangular piece of wood or plastic standing on three short felt-tipped legs, so that it slides easily. It usually has a clear window or a pointed tip. Whatever letter shows through the window, or sits under the point, is read as the answer. The word planchette is French for "little plank" and originally named a different device, described below.

Users have always understood the board in different ways. Spiritualists treated it as a channel for messages from the dead. Most buyers, from the 1890s to today, have treated it as a party game or a curiosity. Some people treat it as a tool for exploring the unconscious mind. This article describes the history and the usual way a session is run, and it does not assume that any of these views is correct.

Origins: Spiritualism, table-turning and the planchette§

The Fox sisters and Spiritualism§

The talking board's prehistory begins in March 1848 in Hydesville, New York, when the teenage sisters Margaretta (Maggie) and Catherine (Kate) Fox reported that rapping noises in their farmhouse answered questions. Their visitors worked out a code in which raps stood for yes, no, or letters of the alphabet as someone recited them. The sisters became famous mediums, and their story launched Spiritualism, a religious movement built on the belief that the living can communicate with the spirits of the dead. Barbara Weisberg's Talking to the Dead (2004) is the standard modern account. In 1888 Maggie Fox publicly said the raps had been faked, then later took her confession back.

Spelling out messages by calling the alphabet aloud was slow. Over the following decades Spiritualists tried faster methods. The urge to read messages from a spirit world letter by letter was not new. John Dee and Edward Kelley had taken down angelic dictation one letter at a time from tables of characters in the 1580s (see Enochian magic). Even so, the methods of the 1850s were made for the middle-class parlour, not the learned magician's study.

Table-turning and planchette writing§

In the early 1850s a craze for "table-turning" or "table-tipping" spread from the United States to Britain and continental Europe. Sitters placed their hands on a small table, which then seemed to tilt, turn or rap out answers. Around the same time the planchette appeared in France: a small heart-shaped board on two castors with a pencil fixed as its third leg. One or two people rested their hands on it, and it wrote, or seemed to write, by itself on a sheet of paper below. Planchettes were sold commercially in the United States from the late 1860s and were a popular novelty.

The talking board combined these ideas. It replaced the pencil with a printed alphabet, so that messages could be read straight away. Homemade boards of this kind were in use among Spiritualists by the 1880s. A widely reprinted 1886 newspaper report described a new "talking board" in use in Ohio, and that report is usually cited as the spark for the commercial product.

The Kennard Novelty Company and William Fuld§

Elijah Bond's 1891 patent§

In 1890 the Baltimore businessman Charles Kennard formed the Kennard Novelty Company with a group of investors that included the lawyer Elijah Bond and Colonel Washington Bowie. Bond filed the patent application, and US Patent 446,054 for a "toy or game" was granted on 10 February 1891. Advertisements began the same month, presenting the board as a wonder that would answer questions about past, present and future.

Company lore, collected by the Ouija historian Robert Murch, says that the patent examiner wanted proof the board worked before he would grant it. Bond is said to have brought his sister-in-law, Helen Peters, who described herself as a medium, and the board correctly spelled out the examiner's name. Murch points out that Bond may simply have known it already.

Where the name "Ouija" came from§

The usual explanation, that "Ouija" combines the French oui and the German ja, both meaning "yes", was a later marketing story. According to the account Murch reconstructed, Helen Peters asked the board what it wanted to be called, and it spelled O-U-I-J-A, which it then said meant "good luck". Peters was reportedly wearing a locket with a picture of a woman labelled "Ouida", the pen name of the popular English novelist Maria Louise Ramé. This suggests where the word may really have come from. Kennard's company used the "Egyptian word for good luck" story in early publicity.

William Fuld and the Baltimore factory§

Kennard lost control of the company within about two years. One of the employees and stockholders, William Fuld, was running production by the mid-1890s and took over the Ouija licence in 1898. Fuld was a very successful promoter. He had a falling-out with his brother Isaac, who left to make a rival board, and the two fought a long legal battle. Fuld also encouraged the myth that he had invented the board, a claim repeated in his obituary.

The Fuld company made boards in Baltimore, and sales boomed during the First World War and its aftermath, when grief and interest in Spiritualism ran high. In 1927 Fuld died after falling from the roof of his new Baltimore factory, where he had been supervising work. His children continued the business for nearly forty years.

Parker Brothers, Hasbro and the 1960s boom§

In 1966 the Fuld family sold the business to Parker Brothers, which moved production to Salem, Massachusetts. In 1967 the board reportedly sold around two million copies, outselling Monopoly that year. Like many fads, the boom of the late 1960s and early 1970s came with a broader interest in the occult and alternative religion. Hasbro acquired Parker Brothers in 1991 and has owned the Ouija trademark since then, issuing variants that include glow-in-the-dark and "classic" reprints.

The horror reputation and famous claimed communications§

The Exorcist and after§

The board's image changed in 1973 with William Friedkin's film The Exorcist, based on William Peter Blatty's 1971 novel. In the film, the possession of a twelve-year-old girl begins after she plays with a Ouija board alone and talks to an entity she calls "Captain Howdy." From then on the board became a stock prop of horror cinema. In the 1980s it was drawn into wider fears about occult danger to young people (see the Satanic Panic). Stoker Hunt's Ouija: The Most Dangerous Game (1985) gathered both historical material and alarming case reports, and helped fix this reputation.

Pearl Curran and "Patience Worth"§

The most famous claimed Ouija communication began in St Louis in July 1913, when Pearl Curran, a housewife with little formal education, and her friend Emily Hutchings were using a board. It spelled out a message from someone who called herself Patience Worth, said to be a seventeenth-century Englishwoman. Over the following years Curran produced, at first through the board and later by direct dictation, a very large body of poems, novels and aphorisms in an archaic-sounding English. Some of it drew favourable reviews. The journalist Casper Yost described the case in Patience Worth: A Psychic Mystery (1916). Researchers have argued ever since about whether it shows paranormal authorship or a remarkable creative dissociation.

Other claimed communications§

Emily Hutchings later published Jap Herron (1917), a novel she said had come through the board from Mark Twain. The book was withdrawn after Twain's publishers sued. The author Jane Roberts began her "Seth" material with a Ouija board in 1963, before moving to speaking in trance. The poet James Merrill based his long poem The Changing Light at Sandover (1982) on decades of Ouija sessions with his partner David Jackson. Whatever their source, these works show how the board could serve as a frame for sustained creative and religious work.

How a Ouija session is traditionally conducted§

The following describes how people have customarily used talking boards. It is a description of practice, not a claim that the board contacts anyone.

Participants and roles§

The board is normally used by two people sitting facing each other, with the board resting on their knees or on a small table between them. Fuld's instructions recommended a lady and a gentleman. Groups of three or four are common, though more than that becomes awkward. Each sitter places the fingertips of one or both hands lightly on the planchette, without pressing. Many groups choose one person as the moderator or asker. This person speaks all questions aloud so that the session does not descend into crosstalk. Another person sits outside the circle as a note-taker and writes down each letter as it is indicated, because messages are often run together without spaces and are easy to misread in the moment.

Opening the session§

Sessions usually begin in a quiet room with low light, sometimes with a candle. The sitters may start by moving the planchette in a slow circle to "warm up" the board. The moderator then opens with a simple greeting or a question such as whether anyone wishes to communicate. Early questions tend to be simple ones that can be answered YES or NO. Names, dates and longer answers come later. Patience is expected: in many sessions the planchette moves slowly or not at all for some time.

Etiquette and conventions§

Long-standing etiquette among regular users includes:

• Asking one question at a time and waiting for the planchette to come to rest.
• Speaking politely and not mocking or provoking whatever answers.
• Not asking questions about death, such as when a sitter will die, which many users regard as both pointless and upsetting.
• Not using the board alone. This is a superstition, but it is widely observed.
• Treating any answer with scepticism rather than acting on it, especially in matters of health, money or relationships.

Closing with GOOD BYE§

Almost every tradition of use stresses ending the session properly. The moderator says that the group is finishing, and the sitters move the planchette to GOOD BYE together before they lift their hands. If the planchette has already gone to GOOD BYE by itself, users treat the session as over. Folk practice adds that the planchette should not be left resting on the board afterwards, and that the board should be put away face down.

Why the planchette moves: the ideomotor effect§

Carpenter and Faraday§

The standard scientific explanation predates the Ouija board itself. In 1852 the English physiologist William Benjamin Carpenter gave a lecture to the Royal Institution on what he called "ideo-motor" action: muscle movement prompted by an idea or expectation, without conscious will. He used it to explain dowsing rods and pendulums. In 1853 Michael Faraday tested table-turning directly. He placed layered cards, held together with a soft cement, under the sitters' hands, along with a lever that showed tiny lateral pressure. His instruments showed that the sitters' hands moved before the table did, and that the movement stopped when sitters could see the indicator. He published his results in The Times and The Athenaeum that summer.

Blindfold demonstrations§

A demonstration often repeated since then follows Faraday's logic. If the sitters are blindfolded and an observer quietly turns the board around, the planchette keeps heading for where the letters used to be. Coherent spelling breaks down into nonsense. If the board guided the hands, rotating it should not matter. Since it does, the guidance appears to come from what the sitters expect to see.

The 2012 UBC study§

Modern psychologists have used the board as a research tool. In a study published in Consciousness and Cognition in 2012, Hélène Gauchou, Ronald Rensink and Sidney Fels of the University of British Columbia asked participants yes/no trivia questions, both out loud and through a Ouija board. In the board trials, participants were blindfolded and told they were working with a partner, who quietly took their hands off the planchette. When participants believed they were only guessing, their spoken answers were at chance level, about 50 per cent correct, while their answers through the board were correct about 65 per cent of the time. The authors concluded that ideomotor movement can express knowledge a person holds without being aware of it.

Shared expectation and group dynamics§

Several sitters also strengthen the effect. Each person feels the planchette move and believes someone else is moving it, so no one feels responsible. Tiny movements add together, and as letters start to form a familiar word, everyone's expectation pushes in the same direction. Daniel Wegner's The Illusion of Conscious Will (2002) treats talking boards as a classic case of actions that people really perform but do not feel as their own. This explains why sessions often feel genuinely uncanny to honest participants, and why messages mostly reflect what the group knows, fears or hopes.

Religious and cultural views of the Ouija board§

Christian objections§

Many Christian churches discourage or forbid Ouija use. They usually cite biblical prohibitions on consulting mediums and the dead, such as Deuteronomy 18:10–12 and Leviticus 19:31. The Catholic Catechism rejects all practices that claim to conjure the dead or reveal the future. Many evangelical and Pentecostal writers go further and regard the board as an open door to demonic influence. This view continues older Christian condemnations of necromancy and divination (see necromancy in the Middle Ages). Other Christians regard the board simply as a toy.

Occultists and Spiritualists§

Occult opinion has been divided. Many Spiritualists welcomed the board as a convenient aid, though some preferred trained mediums. Many practitioners of ceremonial magic have looked down on it as undisciplined: a method that invites whatever happens to be nearby, with no purification, protection or clear purpose. Others have used it as one of several divinatory tools, alongside the cards discussed in our history of tarot. Some modern esoteric users treat it psychologically, as a way of hearing from the unconscious, which agrees closely with the ideomotor explanation.

Popular superstitions§

Folklore around the board is extensive and mostly modern. Common beliefs include that the planchette moving in a figure eight, or counting down through the numbers or alphabet, signals a malevolent presence. Other beliefs hold that a planchette falling off the board means something has "escaped", that the board should never be used in a graveyard, and that an unwanted board must be broken into seven pieces, sprinkled with salt or holy water and buried rather than simply burned. None of these rules has a historical basis in the Fuld era. Most spread through horror films, playground lore and the internet.

A sensible note on safety§

There is no evidence that the board itself is dangerous. The ideomotor research suggests that its messages come from the people using it. However, sessions can be frightening, especially at night and in groups that expect something sinister, and alarming "messages" can stay with people. Anyone who is anxious, recently bereaved, prone to intrusive thoughts or otherwise vulnerable may prefer to avoid the board. No one should be pressured or dared into taking part, and the board should never be used to frighten or manipulate another person.

How to make your own talking board§

Homemade boards are as old as the commercial product, and making one is straightforward.

Materials§

• The board: a piece of smooth plywood, MDF or hardwood about 6–10 mm thick, or for a temporary board, heavy card or mounting board.
• Lettering: acrylic paint with fine brushes, paint markers, stencils, or a printed layout glued down with spray adhesive or decoupage medium.
• The planchette: thin wood, acrylic or stiff card cut into a heart or teardrop shape about 10–12 cm long. It needs either a round viewing hole of about 2–3 cm, fitted with clear acetate if you like, or a clear point at the narrow end.
• Feet: three small felt furniture pads, or smooth rounded buttons or beads glued under the planchette.
• Finish: clear varnish or polyurethane, satin or gloss, and fine sandpaper.

The traditional layout§

A comfortable size is about 45 × 30 cm (roughly 18 × 12 inches), close to the classic commercial board. Lay out the board in landscape orientation:

1. Put YES in the upper left corner and NO in the upper right. A sun and a moon beside them are traditional decoration.
2. Draw two shallow, concentric arcs across the centre: A to M on the upper arc and N to Z on the lower.
3. Below the arcs, run a straight row of numbers: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0.
4. Put GOOD BYE centred along the bottom edge.

Make letters large enough, about 2.5–3 cm high, that the planchette window can frame one at a time. Leave clear space between characters so answers are not ambiguous. Pencil the layout in first, using a string-and-pin compass to draw the arcs evenly.

Finishing§

Once the paint is fully dry, apply two or three thin coats of varnish, sanding lightly between coats with very fine paper. A smooth, hard surface is what lets the planchette glide. Rough or tacky finishes make it stick and jerk. Wax the felt feet lightly or replace them when they wear.

The glass or upturned cup method§

Before commercial boards, and in many places since, people used an upturned drinking glass or cup on a smooth table, with handwritten cards of letters, numbers, YES and NO arranged in a circle around it. Sitters place a fingertip on the base of the glass. This "glass divination" or "witchboard" variant was common in British and European households and works on exactly the same principle as the planchette.

Buying a Ouija board§

If you prefer to buy a board, there are two main types. The mass-market Hasbro board, descended from the Parker Brothers and Fuld designs, is inexpensive and recognisable, and you can find the classic board in our library. Artisan boards, made by independent woodworkers and printers, are made from solid wood or birch ply and often reproduce antique designs or new ones.

Whichever you choose, check these points:

• Surface: it should be flat, smooth and sealed, without warping.
• Planchette: it should be light, with a clear window and feet that glide rather than drag. Cheap plastic planchettes are often the weakest part of a set.
• Legibility: the letters should be well spaced and easy to read in low light.

Collectors look for early Kennard and Fuld boards, which are now sought-after antiques. For background reading, Stoker Hunt's Ouija: The Most Dangerous Game remains a widely read, if sensational, survey.

Frequently asked questions§

Who invented the Ouija board?§

No single person invented the talking board, which grew out of Spiritualist practice in the 1880s. The commercial Ouija board was patented by Elijah Bond, with the patent granted on 10 February 1891, and made by Charles Kennard's Kennard Novelty Company in Baltimore. William Fuld later ran the business and is often wrongly credited as the inventor.

What does the word "Ouija" mean?§

According to company tradition, the board named itself in a session with Helen Peters and said the word meant "good luck." The popular idea that it combines French oui and German ja was a later explanation. Historians suspect the word may come from "Ouida", the pen name of a novelist Peters admired.

Why does the planchette move?§

Psychologists explain the motion through the ideomotor effect: small muscle movements that people make without being aware of them, guided by their expectations. Faraday's 1853 experiments on table-turning and later blindfold tests support this. A 2012 University of British Columbia study suggested these movements can even express knowledge people do not know they have.

Is it dangerous to use a Ouija board?§

There is no evidence that the board itself causes harm. Some religious traditions regard it as spiritually dangerous, and sessions can be genuinely frightening. People who are anxious, grieving or vulnerable may wish to avoid it, and no one should be pressured into using one.

Why do people say GOOD BYE at the end of a session?§

GOOD BYE is printed on the board, and users have long treated moving the planchette there as the formal close of a session. Among believers it is seen as dismissing any presence. Among others it is simply a clear, shared signal that the session is over and the board can be put away.

Sources and further reading§

• Ouija: The Most Dangerous Game — Stoker Hunt, 1985
• Talking to the Dead: Kate and Maggie Fox and the Rise of Spiritualism — Barbara Weisberg, 2004
• "On the Influence of Suggestion in Modifying and Directing Muscular Movement, Independently of Volition" (Royal Institution lecture) — William B. Carpenter, 1852
• "Experimental Investigation of Table-Moving," The Athenaeum — Michael Faraday, 1853
• "Expression of Nonconscious Knowledge by Ideomotor Actions," Consciousness and Cognition 21 — Hélène L. Gauchou, Ronald A. Rensink and Sidney Fels, 2012
• The Illusion of Conscious Will — Daniel M. Wegner, 2002
• Patience Worth: A Psychic Mystery — Casper S. Yost, 1916
• Occult America — Mitch Horowitz, 2009
• Robert Murch's historical research on the Kennard and Fuld companies, published online (williamfuld.com and related sites)