Rissa, Tea & Smoke — The Ouija Board Story”

In this spine-tingling episode, host John Radtke is joined once again by Rissa from Tea & Smoke for an in-depth journey into one of the most infamous paranormal tools of all time — the Ouija Board. From its eerie Victorian origins to its pop culture legacy, they trace how a “toy” became one of the world’s most feared gateways to the unknown.

👻 Episode Summary

What started as a parlor game during the Spiritualist movement of the 1800s soon transformed into a cultural phenomenon. Rissa walks us through the dark, tragic, and surprisingly entrepreneurial history of the Ouija board — from its creation by businessmen in Baltimore to the spooky myths and moral panics that followed. You’ll learn how a locket, a séance, and a clever marketing plan birthed a legend that refuses to die.

Together, John and Rissa explore:

• The Fox Sisters and the birth of American spiritualism

• How Helen Peters named the Ouija board — and how it betrayed her

• Why Hasbro now owns one of the world’s most “haunted” brands

• The Exorcist effect that turned a game into a demonic symbol

• The Satanic Panic years — and how fear fueled sales

• Modern science’s explanation: the ideomotor effect

• And whether Ouija boards are truly dangerous… or just misunderstood

💀 Highlights

• 📜 The Ouija board’s link to the Civil War, grief, and loss

• 🪦 The mysterious death of inventor William Fuld

• 🧠 How scientists once used Ouija boards to access hidden memories

• 🎬 Pop culture moments from I Love Lucy to The Exorcist

• 🔥 The surprising rules of play — and what not to ask

🕯️ Why You’ll Love It

This episode blends history, folklore, and psychology with John and Rissa’s trademark humor and insight. Whether you’re a skeptic, believer, or just love a good ghost story, you’ll come away with a whole new understanding of why the Ouija board endures — and why it might not be as evil as you think.

📅 Episode Out: Halloween Week

🎧 Listen now on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your chills. 💬 Rate, review, and share to keep the spooky stories alive!

Episode Transcript

Speaker A (00:00):
Foreign.
This is John, your host of Dairyland Frights.
And make sure wherever you listen to Dairyland
Frights to rate and subscribe this, give usfive stars.

(00:20):
We truly appreciate it.
And make sure you give us a review so we can
see how we can improve the show, make itbetter,
and stay spooky.
Hello and welcome to Dairyland Fights, theparanormal podcast that covers everything
spooky, creepy and mysterious in the Midwestand beyond.
And today I have one of my favorite spookyfriends on Rissa from Tea and Smoke.

(00:47):
Excuse me.
Thank you so much for joining me again.

Speaker B (00:50):
Hi, John. It's great to be back.
I can't wait for our topic today.
It's been very exciting and one of myfavorites.

Speaker A (00:57):
Yes, it is one of my favorites, too, that I think people,
my spooky friends have either probably triedor thought of trying.
And when this episode comes out, Arisa and Iwere talking about this about, you know,
probably around Halloween, because a lot ofpeople start to think about this about
Halloween.

(01:17):
And the topic today we're going to talk about,
with great insight from Ressa, is is Ouijaboard.
So.
Yeah. So, Rissa, whenever you want to startand start talking a little bit about the
history or.
Yeah, wherever, that'd be awesome.

Speaker B (01:35):
So I think before we in earnest get into the Ouija board, we have to say it's now
owned by Hasbro, and it's important to notethey make games.
Right?

Speaker A (01:46):
Yeah.

Speaker B (01:46):
Actually, I think my little friend here, John's getting a little hot.
I might put her.
Put her down.
Okay,
so she's starting to pant because we are notrecording this at Halloween time.

Speaker A (01:56):
No, no, no, we are not.
No, we are not.

Speaker B (01:58):
Yeah. So if you ever are in a group of people and you want a lively conversation,
all you need to do is say the word Ouijaboard.
Right?

Speaker A (02:07):
Yeah.

Speaker B (02:07):
For more than a century now, this has been like the staple of all things spooky.
Because people are like, are they dangerous?Do they work?

Speaker A (02:15):
Are they.

Speaker B (02:16):
Are they a scam? Are they a toy?
I mean, they are made by Hasbro.
So, you know, when I was growing up, and maybe
when you.
They were kind of like the thing you pull out
when you sleep over at a friend's house,right?
Yeah.
And, you know, it's interesting, as much asthe world has changed, that hasn't changed.
I know.
Friends with teenagers and the Ouija board is

(02:36):
still a staple of middle school and highschool and college sleepovers and parties.
It's still a thing.
And isn't.
Isn't it amazing how this this thing has such
amazing longevity and I think the men whoinvented it would be pleased about that.
And I'll come back to that in a minute.

Speaker A (02:58):
Absolutely.
And really quickly, what, what's interesting
about the Ouija board is too,
like Rissa said,
is it, it has longevity.
I mean there's very few games you can think
off the top of your head.

Speaker B (03:11):
Maybe Monopoly, I think Monopoly and of course the classic cards.
Like just cards?

Speaker A (03:17):
Yeah, just playing.
Yeah, just playing.
Yeah.
Getting out with your friends and playing a
deca card game or whatever, you know,
and being that this has supernatural elementsto it makes it even more interesting because
it's not, it's like we said, not typicallylike a Monopoly game where you're like, hey

(03:38):
everybody, let's play Monopoly and get Grandmaand Grandpa involved, you know.

Speaker B (03:43):
Well, even better.
Monopoly can last for days.

Speaker A (03:46):
Yeah, right, exactly.

Speaker B (03:48):
Nobody wants to play with the Ouija board for days.

Speaker A (03:51):
No,
you might have a issue if you're doing that.
Yeah, I hope you don't.
Yeah. So like you were saying, the gentleman
who made this game, you can talk about them.
And I like, you're right, they're probably
like, really?
Is this still around?

Speaker B (04:06):
Well, no, they're, they're not still around.
All of them are from the Victorian era.
And you, you know that that's a great place to
begin our story.
This is a story about innovation and death and
the unknown and fear and belief.
And this isn't an object, by the way, with alight hearted past.
John.
There's a lot of tragedy and darkness behind

(04:26):
the Ouija board.
So we're going to go back now to the Victorianera and we're going to go back to an, a part
of history that was called the Spiritualisttime.
So if this is all new to any of yourlisteners, I want you to think corsets and
consumption and the Civil War.
That is the stage we are going to open on whenspiritualism sort of explodes onto the scene.

(04:50):
This is America in the mid 19th century.
It was a nation that was sort of grasping for
answers.
Right.
There was a lot of uncertainty and upheavaland grief.
I mean it sounds like I could be talking aboutright now, but also then this was also the
time like right after the IndustrialRevolution.
Sorry, my brain.
And the cities were growing rapidly and

(05:11):
industry was expanding like it was booming.
But with progress and change came anxietyagain.
You could parallel this right now to thetechnology revolution.
So scientifically people at that time periodin the Victorian era were sort of caught
between worlds.
Electricity was new.
Darwin had sort of Shaken the foundation of
religion.
And the telegraph made instant communicationpossible for the first time ever in human

(05:37):
history.
So people were like, if these invisible forcescan send a message across the country,
can the dead do the same?Right now, emotionally, loss was everywhere.
Childhood mortality was really high, and insome places, as high as 60%.
Now think about that.
That's a lot.
And a lot of that is due to tuberculosis andcholera.

(06:00):
And then in adults, syphilis was a thing thatwas not yet treated.
And so you have all of these people dyingduring this time from really bad illnesses
that we didn't have the science yet to treat.
And then the Civil war.
So we're 1861, 18 to 65.
It kind of left this nation ripped apart.
And there were hundreds of thousands of dead

(06:21):
soldiers and the families that were grieving.
You know, like, you would write a letter andyou would hope for a response,
But, I mean, it's not like.
It's not like this thing, you know,
it's not like this at all.
Like, it could be months if you're going to
hear back from someone to.
You received that letter, even if you sent
letters every day.

(06:42):
So everybody lost somebody during the CivilWar.
A father, son, an uncle, a grandfather, acousin, a neighbor.
Like, everybody knew someone who died.
And they didn't have dog tags yet.
So. And I mean, on the soldiers.
And it was kind of like the bodies weren'treturned.
So you think, like, my dad, my son, my brotherwent away to war.

(07:04):
Will he come back?
What if his body never comes back?So death kind of is touching everybody in a
way that's never happened before in history orin the United States at all.
So people had to sort of grapple with all ofthis.
And traditional religion had some comfort, butspiritualism promises direct personal answers.

(07:26):
And who doesn't want that?

Speaker A (07:29):
Yeah.

Speaker B (07:30):
So this brings us to the Fox sisters.
We're in Hyattsville, New York, now, andsomething very big begins here.
Two teenage girls, Maggie and Kate, claim theycan communicate with a ghost in their home.
Now, the ghost can only answer yes, noquestions, which kind of makes it like a
spooky eight ball, Right?But it wraps on the wall or some of the wood.

(07:52):
Woodwork on the wall.
Once for yes and twice for no. They call this
the knock heard round the world.
And it happened in 1848.
So word about this just spreads like wildfire,and these sisters become,
like an overnight success.
Newspapers are running headlines, crowds aregathering.
Next thing you know, they're in New York Citywith Barnum and they're A huge sensation.

(08:15):
Spiritualism is mainstream.
This is not fringe, this is popular, this is
fashionable.
And everybody wants to talk to either the Foxsisters or another medium because they want to
know what has happened to their loved ones,whether war or disease or whatever has taken
them.
So the groundwork for spiritualism actuallydid happen first in Europe.

(08:36):
The Fox sisters kind of struck the math, butthe kindling was laid by Swedish mystics and
European mesmerists.
And table turning in France and England
happened before that too.
So there were seance parlors in France andEngland in the Victorian era.
And they were kind of considered a scientificcuriosity.

(08:58):
Note I say scientific curiosity.
People believed that what was going on with
these tables levitating and turning was realand not a parlor trick at all.
Now we, we know since then that it was prettymuch a parlor trick.
Yeah, but because illusionists have taught usthat, you know, kudos.
But spiritualists believe this to be science.

(09:19):
And because the very rich and royal of thetime period are touting it as real,
everybody is on board.
Now, spiritualism was not just a thing forparlors.
It was kind of considered a religiousmovement.
And by the time the 1870s roll around, it'sestimated that millions of Americans
considered themselves spiritualists.

(09:41):
Spiritualist churches emerge all over theplace.
Mediums are everywhere.
Seances are happening in homes and halls, and
they have dedicated church type buildings forthis kind of thing.
Famous people like Mary Todd Lincoln, wife ofAbraham Lincoln,
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, author of SherlockHolmes, and even abolitionist Frederick

(10:03):
Douglass are all on board with spiritualism.
You know, an interesting side note about
spiritualism is that it gave the suffragettesa way to be heard.
This is the first time ever in American andEuropean history that women have found a
voice.
Mediumship gave women a public influence in away that nothing did prior to that, because

(10:28):
women could take the stage.
You didn't need to go to college, you didn't
need any special training.
And in fact, it was kind of considered betterto have a young female medium than any other
kind of medium because they were very pure.
So because women have the stage, they're ableto share it with early suffragettes who are
speaking for women's rights.

(10:49):
I kind of like to call this, like there was an
opportunity for ghosting the patriarchy.

Speaker A (10:54):
Nice.

Speaker B (10:55):
I mean, I'm making a joke, but also, it's not actually a joke.
It's kind of exactly what it was.

Speaker A (11:01):
Absolutely.
Yep.

Speaker B (11:02):
So in the history of the physical board, the plan check comes first.
Automatic writing was a thing that was alreadyin existence,
and it Was called graphy Psycho Psychography.
It's the practice of writing without conscious
control.
And so supposedly you're guided by spirits orthe subconscious or some third party entity
when you do this.

(11:22):
Now I've tried it and there are no words.
This is obviously not my gift, but Tyler
Henry, who's a famous medium right now, usesautomatic writing and you can even see his
automatic writing pieces, which look more likeartwork on his Netflix specials.
So some of your listeners might be familiarwith him.
Yeah, so the planchette comes from that.

(11:44):
So basically a practitioner is going to hold apen or a pencil and like close their eyes and
let their hand move on on its own.
And this became really widely acknowledged as
a way to spell out messages from either thedead or some sort of higher beings.
This method, however, proved to be slow,inconsistent and sometimes physically
exhausting to people.

(12:05):
So they are looking for a faster way.
A planchette is it.
It comes from the French word meaning littleplank, which is kind of what it is.
Like, you know, you could, you could sort ofsee it's a little plank, right?

Speaker A (12:16):
Yeah.

Speaker B (12:16):
And the original ones were invented in France around 1853.
It was like a heart shaped wooden board.
They do have some of these amusements and I've
seen them.
They're.
They're actually roughly the size of like aphone, but heart shaped.
And they have wheels on casters and there's alittle pencil attached.
And how it works is that users would placetheir fingers on the planchette and that

(12:39):
would.
The wheels would move it around a piece of
paper,
allegedly guided by a spirit.
So these became really popular in England, the
United States, France, and they were sold inlike stationary shops as an intimate parlor
game.
It was also a great way to,
if you were a gentleman, maybe touch a lady'shand because remember,

(13:00):
this is the Victorian era and nobody touchesmembers of the opposite sex unless you're
married.
That's it.
So, so the idea of putting your hands togetheron the planchette is very exciting.
And hold onto that thought because it's goingto get even better.
The Ouija board.
So this concept moves forward, right.
So the planchette becomes used for the boards.

(13:21):
And there are talking boards that do exist
before Luigi, So some of the lesser knownones, around mid-1880s,
people are starting to get frustrated withseances because they're explicit, offensive,
they can be very ambiguous.
People want to actually have personal, direct
contact without a medium.
And in Chesterville, which is fair, I mean,

(13:43):
especially if you can't afford a medium,
because, I mean, they weren't for everyone.
This is kind of like hiring a real artist to
paint your portrait versus getting aphotograph made, you know?

Speaker A (13:54):
Exactly.

Speaker B (13:55):
So around 1886,
there are spiritualist camps in Ohio.
One is in Chesterville, Ohio,
and they are starting to use a talking board.
And it is a board printed with the Alphabet
numbers and yes and no. And they're using apointer.
It's like a planchette.
And it is used to spell out messages.
This sounds familiar, right?

Speaker A (14:16):
Yeah.

Speaker B (14:16):
But these were all homemade still.
And newspapers across the country started
picking up on these.
The news about these.
These things.
And it becomes a really popular idea.
Now, I also found that Massachusetts had awitch board,
that's what they called it, Made by a companynamed Reed Toys right around this time.

(14:37):
But aside from an ad, I can't find anythingelse about it.
Anyway, these talking boards,
spirit boards, witchboards, whatever you wantto call them, they were described by the
Associated Press as a mysterious new device.
Yeah.
So what happens next in Maryland was not theinvention of a new idea.
It was the commercialization and branding ofsomebody else's idea to make it mass

(15:03):
marketable.
And the guys who did it were brilliant.
They were brilliant.

Speaker A (15:08):
Yeah.

Speaker B (15:09):
They understand that people are willing to pay what they can for a spiritual
experience that they can have directly, thatthey can hold it in their own hands.
Right.
And some of the specifics about Ouija's
history are lost to time.
But all of that said, we do know these next,
this next cast of characters.
So let's go to Maryland, so to speak,

(15:30):
and meet the crew.
Charles Kennard, he is kind of the guy behind
it, Right.
He is the entrepreneurial visionary.
He was born in 1857 in Delaware.
He was the son of merchants.
So he grew up learning and understanding howto run a business.
So in 1880, ish.
He moves to Maryland.
He's in the fertilizer business.

(15:51):
He's very innovative.
And he comes up with a fertilizer made fromcrushed bone, which is a waste product.
So he founds the Kennard Novelty Company,
and his whole deal is to make these boards.
Now also,
we have EC Reach.
He is a cabinet and coffin maker fromChestertown, Maryland.

(16:13):
He plays a very.
Yes, right.
He plays a very pivotal role because he
develops the physical board.
He's approached by Kennard, who wants to
create this that has letters, numbers, andsimple words, and they can receive messages by
a planchette.
And his contributions were absolutely pivotalbecause he really.

(16:33):
The design that we have now is pretty similarto what he came up with in the 80s wow.
And it's interesting because I won't get toomuch into all the legal shenanigans about this
board,
but after the.
The Kennard family no longer has it.
Richie's family's kind of like, how come henever got paid for this?
So they do eventually compensate him, hisfamily, rather he even passes away.

(16:58):
In the meantime,
they do compensate his family for hiscontribution to this thing that becomes a big
commercial success.
So next, the legal mind behind the patent isElijah Bond.
And he is probably the most famous personbecause if you go to Baltimore, Maryland,
you can go to his gravestone in GreenmontCemetery and it is shaped like the Ouija

(17:22):
board.
You can Google it.
It's super cool to see it.
Yeah,
yeah.
So he graduates from University of Maryland
Law School.
He has a booming legal practice in Baltimore,
and he actually patents the board on May, May28, 1890.
He files the patent and it's granted onFebruary 10, 1891.

(17:45):
So he is the legal mind here.
Now, it is noteworthy that his sister in lawplays a role and I'm going to come back to her
in a minute.
Now, the money behind this project is Colonel
Washington Bowie.
He. He is the one who brings some businessacumen and money to make this happen.
He has a long background working for thegovernor in Maryland.

(18:10):
And he, he basically has a lot of governmentaland independent, how I say, administrative
skills.
So he works as treasurer for the CanardNovelty Company and he later sells his share
of the company to another man for $1.
Right.
So Harry Russ is a politician, a United StatesCongressman.

(18:33):
He is one of the invest initial investors aswell, of course.
Do you get the idea that there's not muchspiritual happening here, John?

Speaker A (18:41):
Yeah, right.
Yeah, I get it.

Speaker B (18:44):
Yep.
He brings a bit of a political clout to theproject.
No wonder the patents approve.
And he is kind of the credibility to theproject.
Right.
So the last name involved was a man namedWilliam Maupin.
And very little is known about him.
He was one of the original incorporators of

(19:06):
the Kennard Novelty Company.
And he was listed in all this early paperwork
and I can't find anything about him.
Nobody else seems to have much about himeither.
I did find his obituary and he died from alaudanum overdose.
So aside from that and the fact that he wasinvolved in this project, I have not much to
tell you about him, unfortunately.

Speaker A (19:25):
Yeah, sure.

Speaker B (19:26):
So Kennard pulls together all of these people to start the Kennard Novelty
Company.
And it is exclusively to make and market
talking boards.
None of these men are Spiritualists,
they are not believers that we know of, butthey are very keen businessmen and they think
they've identified a niche and they did.

Speaker A (19:43):
Nice.

Speaker B (19:46):
Next comes Helen Peters.
Nosworthy Helen names the board.
She is Elijah Bond's sister in law and she isa medium and she plays a very pivotal role in
its history.
So she was described as being very strongwilled,
self identified medium, and very welleducated, which is not surprising considering

(20:08):
what she's about to do.
She was considered to be very gifted as a
medium.
And they have a seance in Charles Kennard's
home in Baltimore.
And she asked the board, what do you want tobe named?
And it spells out O, U, I, J, A.
Hmm. And she's very confused.
This is an unfamiliar word to all of them.
So. So she says, what, what does this mean?And then it spells out good luck.

(20:33):
Oh,
we don't know if it means good luck or goodluck.

Speaker A (20:38):
Yeah, good luck.

Speaker B (20:40):
Yeah. We don't know.
The tone is lost.
Right.
Because the board is always silent.
But, yeah, good luck.

Speaker A (20:47):
Yeah, good luck.
You mean good luck, good luck or good luck
like bad luck?

Speaker B (20:53):
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah. As I read that, like, it twisted around
in my mind, like there are times I've said topeople like, well, good luck,
you know,
and there are times that I'm like, oh, goodluck, you know?

Speaker A (21:04):
Yep. Hey, wait a minute.
Is that what it really meant?

Speaker B (21:09):
Exactly.
Oh, no.
So, you know, there is a side story, and Idon't know if this part, John, is folklore or
real, that Helen was wearing a locket with theportrait of a British novelist named Maria
Louise Rame,
who had the nickname Ouida.
W U I D A.
And some people speculate that that wasactually what it says, but again, I cannot

(21:35):
confirm this.
No expert or historian knows.
And you know how there's always, like inhistory, those bits of folklore that just
linger?
This is one of them.

Speaker A (21:44):
Yeah.

Speaker B (21:45):
So this moment when the board is named becomes part of the origin myth.
It is even referenced in the patent filing.
And it is fascinating to note that that
building does still exist in Baltimore.
It is now a Seven Eleven convenience store.
And the Seven Eleven has a huge plaque on thewall commemorating this part of history.

(22:06):
So you could go in there, you know, getyourself a Big Gulp and see this plaque
memorializing this moment when Helen Petersnames the board.

Speaker A (22:15):
That's great.
I love it.

Speaker B (22:17):
Right? So, yeah, it's maybe not the mystical
experience you're expecting, but this, this isreal life.

Speaker A (22:24):
Yeah, exactly.

Speaker B (22:25):
So Helen was also part of the patent filing process with Elijah Bond.
Now she not only witnessed it, but she helpedgive it its sort of spiritual clout in this
experience.
So what they say is when Elijah Bond and Helengo into the patent office and meet with the
patent officer, the man says, if it doesn'twork, you don't get the patent.

(22:47):
Simple as that.
So he demands a demonstration of its accuracy.
And since they've never met him, he says, youhave to speak, spell out my name accurately.
Which allegedly was unknown to both Bond andPeters.
Now, when I interviewed the curator of theSalem Witchboard Museum, his name is.
His name is also John, by the way.

(23:08):
He says, he goes, the reality is that ElijahBond was a working lawyer.
He could have asked weeks ahead of time, like,for the names of all the different patent
officers, just to see, like, who's tough,who's friendly.
You know what I mean?So.

Speaker A (23:21):
Right.

Speaker B (23:22):
He could have already had some idea,
like, we'll.
We'll actually never know what really
happened.
But allegedly, Helen sits there with the board
and spells out the patent officer's full name.
And true to his word, the officer approves the
application.
So, allegedly, the way it works is that thisevent has legitimized the Ouija board forever.

(23:45):
It can now be manufactured and sold and makethe commercial claim of what it will be.

Speaker A (23:51):
Yeah.

Speaker B (23:52):
Yep. The patents granted.
Like I said, February 10, 1891, under US
patent 446054.
And it was called a toy or cane, described as
a board with letter numbers and a movableindicator.
Very, very blah description of the board.

Speaker A (24:09):
Pretty boring.

Speaker B (24:10):
Yep.
The patent makes no explanation on how itworks,
just that it does.
And this ambiguity basically becomes part of
its legend.
So, as you can see, though, Helen's
contribution was incredibly instrumental inmaking the Ouija board what it is, what we
know it to be.

Speaker A (24:26):
Absolutely.

Speaker B (24:27):
And her role has been recognized by historians, and she was honored with a
memorial at her grave site in Denver,Colorado.

Speaker A (24:35):
Nice.

Speaker B (24:36):
Now, Helen Peters actually had a parting of the ways with the board at some
point.
Point they say that some items in her family
that were very valuable because they were partof, like, a legacy of someone who had died,
went missing from their home.
And when she asked the board who took them, itsays it was a member of their family who, of

(24:57):
course, denied it.
Apparently, this splits the family, and it's
so painful and difficult for Helen.
That is why she leaves Maryland and moves toColorado.
And at that point, she sort of takes herselfout of the entire Ouija board story
intentionally.
She publicly tells people not to trust it
because it betrayed her family.

Speaker A (25:19):
Yeah.

Speaker B (25:19):
Which is Kind of sad.
And one of the first Ouija board doesn't feel
quite right kind of moments.

Speaker A (25:26):
Yeah.

Speaker B (25:27):
So it's February 1891 now, and the first advertisements are coming out for Ouija,
the wonderful talking board.
That's exactly what they called it.
It is described as a magical device that
answers questions, questions about the past,present and future with marvelous accuracy and
promises never failing.

(25:47):
Amusement and recreation for all classes.
So this board, it was wood at the time, but wenow.
It's now cardboard when you buy one now, it'snot the same, but they are wood at that time.
And honestly, aside from decor, they're prettymuch the same now as they were then.
Their.
Their core has changed very little.

(26:07):
And this accompanied by, of course, the
planchette and very few instructions, except Ido love this piece of data.
It is noted that you should always have a manand a woman together using it.
And the board should sit on the lady's lap.
Do you remember what time period this is?

Speaker A (26:25):
Yeah.

Speaker B (26:26):
The board should sit on the lady's lap and the gentleman can reach his hand onto
the planchette on the lady's lap.
So who's buying this board?
Every man.

Speaker A (26:36):
Yeah. Hello.

Speaker B (26:38):
Every dude out there.
Yeah, every dude out there has run out to
purchase a board back in 1891, because that isthe closest he's going to get to a lady.
Yes. It was a little bit scandalous.
They even have in the advertising drawings,
when you see the old newspaper ads, thepicture of the man and the lady together and

(26:59):
like, how close you can get to each other whenyou're using this board.

Speaker A (27:03):
There we go.

Speaker B (27:03):
I'm telling you, John, this is like marketing genius.

Speaker A (27:07):
Totally genius.

Speaker B (27:08):
Yes. I think a lot of people who see the board with mystical eyes are kind of
like, this all sounds like a business story.
And it is.
It is a. It is a business story of a bunch ofdudes who really knew their stuff and
absolutely knew how to sell a product and howto make money.
And you know who despised the Ouija board?

(27:29):
Mediums. Mediums.
Hated it because it makes them irrelevant.

Speaker A (27:34):
Oh, right, right.

Speaker B (27:35):
It makes them irrelevant.
People no longer need to hire them for their
services as a go between.
Between the land of the living and the land ofthe dead.
Because you can go out and get, for verylittle money, a Ouija board and DIY it at
home.

Speaker A (27:49):
Russa, just really quickly, would you happen to know how much it cost at that
time?

Speaker B (27:56):
You know, I'm trying to remember if it was like a $20 or just a dollar.
It was around that.
That amount.

Speaker A (28:04):
Okay.

Speaker B (28:04):
And remember, money was very different then.

Speaker A (28:07):
Yeah, yeah.
So what you would say is probably,
I mean, there wasn't really a middle class inthe Victorian year, but you would have to be.
You would have to be not rich, but you,
you would have,
you know, you would have to have a job and youwould have to have.

Speaker B (28:25):
If you had a job, and I mean, you could probably afford one, you didn't have to
be a lawyer to get one.

Speaker A (28:32):
Yeah, that's what I'm.
That's what I'm trying to think about.
Like, you don't have to be like a lawyer or adoctor or a.

Speaker B (28:39):
I don't know, these are for everyone.
Like, if you, if you have a job and you canafford to, like, go see a movie, you can do
this.
This is also doable to you.

Speaker A (28:50):
That makes sense.

Speaker B (28:51):
So the other thing to note about the board is that you can use it over and
over,
whereas if you bring someone like the Foxsisters in, it's a one and done deal.

Speaker A (29:00):
Yeah, it's one and done.
Right.

Speaker B (29:01):
If you have a board at home and you have lost someone in the war or to disease,
you can talk to them all the time,
not just when Maggie Fox is around.
So it cuts out this spiritual middleman joband makes it completely accessible to be a
spiritualist on your own time and in your own.

Speaker A (29:22):
Yeah, absolutely.
That's the genius of it, too.
It's, you know,
it's the ease of,
like, everyone loves that now.
Like, I can do this at home, you know, I don't
have to go out and risk my life or spend a lotof money.

Speaker B (29:39):
Right.

Speaker A (29:40):
Just to try to talk to my, you know, loved one, you know?

Speaker B (29:43):
Exactly.
So it also is important to put intoperspective that at that time period, it
wasn't seen as bizarre or weird to want tocommunicate with the dead.
So we have scary movies now that teach us whatto think about ghosts,
but they didn't have that then.
And it was just not the same within their

(30:03):
culture because death was so present.
Yeah, we're a little bit removed from deathnow.
But remember, undertakers and cemeteriesweren't even a big thing yet in the 1800s.
That came at the end of the 1800s and into theearly 1900s that people started using the
services of an undertaker.
Back then, it was normal to die at home.

(30:24):
That's why the Victorians had all those, like,strange morning rituals, you know, like
covering the mirrors and stuff.
It just wasn't that odd to want to talk to a
dead relative or to have quite A few.

Speaker A (30:35):
Right.
And it wasn't uncommon to have your dead
relative or whoever in your living room kindof on display.

Speaker B (30:45):
Exactly.

Speaker A (30:46):
The neighborhood to come in and pay their respect.

Speaker B (30:48):
Absolutely.
That's completely correct.

Speaker A (30:51):
Yeah.

Speaker B (30:52):
Yeah. I mean, times have changed, and we know a little bit more now about
patient and things like that,
but that was just not the practice at thattime or any time before that, actually.
I mean, it was completely societally normal todeal with death more directly than we do now.

Speaker A (31:08):
Yes.

Speaker B (31:09):
So basically, the initial Ouija board start in Baltimore, Maryland.
There's one factory, and that initial factoryaddress is kind of like, lost to time.
But I can tell you that business right out thegate was so very good.
The board grew so fast that within just a fewyears.
I'm sorry, in just a year, they went from onefactory in Baltimore to two in Baltimore, two

(31:33):
in New York, two in Chicago, and one inLondon.

Speaker A (31:35):
Wow.

Speaker B (31:36):
That is a lot of fast growth.
Good thing they had multiple men on board to
hand.
Well, I should say multiple business people on
board to handle it.
There weren't very many female business people
back then, but I will say that between 1890and 1966, Baltimore was the epicenter of the
Ouija board.
There are 13 factories within the city overthat time to create these boards.

(32:02):
It is deeply embedded in Baltimore's historyand manufacturing history as well.

Speaker A (32:08):
That's. That's unbelievable.
And, you know, it's different from the
factories of, like, well, coal mine or.
Or maybe you're making a ship or maybe you're,you know, textiles or.
You know what I mean?

Speaker B (32:21):
Right.
It's not a sewing factory.
It's a.

Speaker A (32:23):
Right.

Speaker B (32:23):
Right factory.

Speaker A (32:24):
Yeah. And I think that's really interesting because we don't have a lot.
Even though you were just saying there was bigbusiness in it and a lot of factors you don't
like.
I would be fascinated if I knew somebody who'sgreat grandpa, Great, great, great grandpa,
whatever, worked at one of these, becausethat'd be like, you know, if something came

(32:44):
down, like somebody' going to the.
You know.

Speaker B (32:48):
To the Ouija factory today.
Yeah.

Speaker A (32:51):
I mean, you know, what's your.
What's your day like?
Like, how do you.
I just think it's interesting because I know
I've had relatives who have worked infactories like.
Like Briggs and Stratton making lawnmowerengines, for example.
And obviously, as we know, it's prettytedious.
You got to have the right.

Speaker B (33:08):
Sometimes backbreaking work in factories.

Speaker A (33:10):
Yeah, right, right.
So in this case,
again, I'm fascinated by it.
Because, you know,
it's just someone has to package it.
Someone has to make the board.
Someone has to make sure it's all togethercorrectly.
And I just.
I just find that just fascinating.
I don't know why, but I just do.

Speaker B (33:29):
Well, I mean, there weren't tons of changes in the boards over the years.
Now the decorations have changed.
The decorations change all the time, to be
honest.
But the basics of the board,
they went from, say,
wood to thinner wood to cardboard.
That's about it, you know, and the planchets
went from wood to plastic.
But honestly, there's very little other

(33:51):
change.
Like some.
There were some that were like this big andthere were some that were this big.
And it's just.
It's a fascinating thing that this board is so
popular even to this day,
and it has changed so very little since the1890s.
It's kind of wild, right?

Speaker A (34:07):
Yeah.

Speaker B (34:08):
So back into the history of the board,
they kind of all get into a kerfuffle.
And taking a word from that time period, it's
a kerfuffle.
And Kennard and Bond are out.
And then Fuld, who is a man named WilliamFold, is in.
He has started as a foreman and a woodvarnisher at age of 20 with the Kennard

(34:30):
Novelty Company wood varnisher.
That was a job in the factory.
And he,
with the blessings of Colonel Bowie, becomes amajority shareholder.
And by 1919,
all the remaining business interest in Ouijagoes to Fuld for $1.

Speaker A (34:46):
Jeez.

Speaker B (34:47):
Yep.

Speaker A (34:48):
What a deal.

Speaker B (34:49):
I know.
I wish it would happen to me.

Speaker A (34:51):
Yeah.

Speaker B (34:52):
Because William Fuld becomes a very much a millionaire in the 1920s.
That's probably not quite a billionaire in ourmoney, but it's close.
So let me take you through that.
William Fuld is born in Baltimore, Maryland.
He, like I said, joins the Kennard Noveltycompany at age 20 as a foreman and varnisher.
And he improves the board and files for hisown unique patents.

(35:15):
In 1892, he aggressively.
This is important.
He aggressively defends the talking board'spatents for his entire career.
He's a very shrewd businessman.
He is a very brilliant marketer.
And he keeps it tight with the board likethere is no nonsense in his company.
Like there's no bs.

(35:36):
Under his leadership, the board becomes aneven bigger sensation.
And at his most, he was worth, in our moneytoday,
about 15 million.
Wow,
that's.
That's impressive.
And then that time period.
That's a lot.

Speaker A (35:51):
Yeah, that's a lot of money.

Speaker B (35:54):
So he is really great at selling these Boards, he proves that they're
scientifically proven to work.
Now we don't have the legislation back then
around advertising that we have now.
And he also taps into like wartime grief.
And he's really good at following these sortsof trends.

(36:15):
Right.
And then anybody who tries to create a rival
board,
he takes them to court and sweet squashesthem.

Speaker A (36:21):
Wow.

Speaker B (36:21):
His death is considered yet another Ouija mystery.
So we've already had Helen Peters and hersituation, and then we have the kerfuffle of
the original founders.
Now comes another bizarre story.
So first it's important to note that Williamhad his own Ouija related troubles.
He had to cut his brother out of the business,

(36:44):
like completely.
And they say that the two never speak again
their entire life.
And then he continues opening new factories.
William does.
He is building the largest one yet, a threestory building in Baltimore that the Ouija
board itself told him to build.
Allegedly it spelled out for him, prepare forbig business.

(37:06):
So William takes that as, yes, I will do this.
I will build an even bigger, better, huger
factory for these Fords.
The year is 1927.
He goes up to the roof of the building tosupervise the placement of a flagpole.
And according to the Baltimore.
Yeah, yeah, wait till you hear this.
According to the Baltimore sun, he wasstanding near the edge of the roof, grasping

(37:28):
it onto an iron support to steady himself, andthe support suddenly pulled away and he
toppled over backwards off the edge of theroof.
During the fall, he grabs hold of an openwindowsill and you think he's gonna be okay,
but then the window slams shut on its own,
his hands come off and he crashes down to thesidewalk below.
But John, he's okay.

(37:49):
He's okay.
He has several broken ribs and a doctorarrives and he's expected to survive.
So they put him in to what must have been avery early ambulance at that time.
And on the way to the hospital,
if you, any of you, if you have any listenersin Baltimore, this will make sense to them.
On the way to the hospital, the roads are sobad and bumpy that a bone, a fractured bone,

(38:11):
punctures his heart.
And he dies on the way to the hospital,
of course.
So a lot of folks cite his death as one of thecursed by Ouija incidents in its history.

Speaker A (38:23):
Yeah, she's like, I'm still alive, I'm still better.

Speaker B (38:29):
It sounds like a ****** Doo episode, doesn't it?

Speaker A (38:31):
Yeah, yeah, right.
Like, boom, bang, I'm okay, he's dead.

Speaker B (38:38):
So this the factory then goes to his son, William Jr. Called Billy and his
daughter Catherine.
And they manage the business for a very long
time until it sold to Parker Brothers.
They keep his name on the board.
U L D, Liam Fold. And they maintain its strongbrand identity by suing the pants off of
anybody who tries to copy it.

(38:58):
And they continue to operate out of Baltimorefor their entire time with it.
So despite any public shifts in perception,they keep at it until 1966.
And that's when they sell it to ParkerBrothers, who at the time also may Monopoly,
Clue and Risk.

Speaker A (39:14):
Makes sense.

Speaker B (39:14):
Yep, it does.
It was probably a smart move.
Now Parker Brothers is like, why Baltimore?We're moving the production of the board to
Salem, Massachusetts.
And they do.

Speaker A (39:25):
Okay.

Speaker B (39:26):
They do.
So the year now is 1967, and it has its numberone selling year in American history.
Over 2 million units are sold in 1967.
Out selling monopoly.
Do you know why?Do you know what's going on in 1967 stuff?

Speaker A (39:44):
No.

Speaker B (39:44):
I bet you do.

Speaker A (39:46):
Well, the, like.
Well, was it Vietnam or something or.
Yeah, there we go.

Speaker B (39:51):
That's it.
Yeah, that's why it's the Vietnam War.
Yeah.

Speaker A (39:54):
Yeah.

Speaker B (39:54):
So during times of war, people are always looking for answers.
And because it's just so uncertain, and thiswas considered a way to get there.
So the Parker Brothers rebrands it as amystifying oracle, and they market it as safe
fun.
And its tagline is part of one of the taglineson one of their ads is it's just a game, isn't
it?

(40:15):
So back into its history in the 1910s and 20s.
We have World War I and the wild years of the
Jazz Age and Prohibition.
And of course, during all of that, Ouija's
popularity surges.
It is so normal to have a Ouija board duringthis time that on May 1, 1920, Herman
Rockwell's cover of the Saturday Evening Postshows a man and a woman sort of playing with a

(40:40):
Ouija board on the COVID of the SaturdayEvening Post.
It is wholesome.

Speaker A (40:44):
Yeah.

Speaker B (40:45):
Can it get more wholesome than that?
Really?

Speaker A (40:47):
Yeah. Right? No.

Speaker B (40:49):
Yeah.

Speaker A (40:50):
Yeah. Put some apple pie on there, too, and a flag and we're ready to go.

Speaker B (40:55):
Just like that.
So even during the Great Depression, Ouijafinds a place on kitchen tables.
It is considered a chance cheap entertainmentfor the whole family.
And despite the really intense economicdownturn, people still need entertainment.
They still need something to do with their.
With themselves, with their kids.

(41:15):
Like, except.
And Ouija is considered an affordable way to
sort of soothe stress and keep connected withother people.
They were cheap.
They were reusable.
They're emotionally engaging and they actuallyoffer people hope.
So the way they're marketed through this time,according to the folds will change again.
So then we come into war times again.

(41:37):
We have World War II.
Right.
It is, again,
super popular.
They even have boards that say the outcome of
the war.
I don't have any pictures, but I. They are inthe museums and it says things like Hitler
will surrender as one of the options on theboard.

Speaker A (41:54):
Nice.

Speaker B (41:54):
Yeah. Um, it's.
It's wild how they were able to remarket them
and repackage them for whatever time periodthey were in.

Speaker A (42:03):
Yeah. Genius.

Speaker B (42:04):
Yep. There were even stories about people who couldn't get messages from their
soldiers, their loved ones, and they wouldturn to like, Ouija circles to get messages
from their.
Their sons, you know, out on the field during
World War II.

Speaker A (42:21):
Yeah. Wow. Sure.

Speaker B (42:23):
Now, I'm only going to take a short sideways step here because it's really fun,
but a lot of creative people use the Ouijaboard as well.

Speaker A (42:30):
Okay.

Speaker B (42:31):
There are some super duper famous writers that.
And musicians that have used the board asinspiration.
So some of these things are kind of consideredwhat they call spirit transmissions.

Speaker A (42:45):
Okay.

Speaker B (42:46):
Right.
So there's a woman named Pearl Curran, C U R RA N. And she's a St. Louis housewife.
She gets a Ouija board and she begins sort ofchanneling this 17th century English woman
named Patience Worth.
So Patience dictates entire novels to her andshe ends up writing like, lyric poems and

(43:10):
dramas and two books that Hope, Dr. True Bloodand the Sorry Tale.
One of those is 600 pages, by the way.
The literary value of this is even brought upby the New York Times during her lifetime as
just absolutely remarkable writing.

Speaker A (43:26):
Yeah.

Speaker B (43:26):
A woman named Emily Grant Hutchings says that she can channel the spirit of Mark
Twain on her Ouija board.
She writes a book called *** Heron.
It's published in 1917 and marketed as a novel
from the Spanish spirit of Mark Twain.
It is interesting to note that Mark Twain'sestate sues her and says, if it is absolutely

(43:49):
by him, we get the money.

Speaker A (43:51):
Of course they do.

Speaker B (43:53):
Great.
His kids are like, we'll take it.
Thanks.

Speaker A (43:55):
Yeah, we'll take that.

Speaker B (43:56):
Yep. Absolutely.
There are a good, good number of examples of
this, but one of them actually wins Pulitzer.

Speaker A (44:04):
Okay.

Speaker B (44:05):
A writer named James Merrill has used the.
Used the Ouija boards for.
For decades,
him and his partner, David Jackson.
And they commune with deceased friends and
historic figures and even archangels.
And he writes an epic poem trilogy.
Part of it is in 1976 called the Book ofEphraim.
And then in 1978, the Book of Numbers fromMirabel.

(44:27):
And then finally in 1980,
pageant scripts for a Pageant.
And this whole trilogy is called the ChangingLight at Sandover.
The New York Times Book Review calls it themost ambitious American poem of the later 20th
century.
And, of course, he gets Pulitzer.

Speaker A (44:44):
Wow.

Speaker B (44:45):
Right? It's pretty wild, isn't it?

Speaker A (44:47):
That is wild.

Speaker B (44:48):
So Morrissey, who some people might remember,
released a single in November 1989 calledOuija Board.
Ouija Board.
It is about someone using the board to contact
a dead friend, and the dead friend tells himto push off.
So,
yeah, what can you do?Sometimes they don't want to talk to you
anymore.

Speaker A (45:08):
Yeah, not in the mood.
Leave me alone.

Speaker B (45:11):
So, and then, of course, there is the famous Ouija board guitar.
Kirk Ham Hammett lists the guitar for salenow, and it is only,
let me see,
$350,000 if you want to pick it up foryourself.
Yeah,
yeah.
He. Hang on.

(45:32):
I don't want to say the wrong thing.
He was a guitarist for.
He was the guitarist for Metallica.
Now, I had to know if science has a position
on the board, and it turns out that there isone.
Scientists say the boards are not powered byspirits, angels, or demons.
This is disappointing, but also potentiallyuseful.

(45:54):
Scientists say they're powered by us.
Even when we say we're not doing it, I swearI'm not moving.
The planchette, wink, wink.
They call this the ideomotor effect, and it's
I, D e o m e T e R.
This is a psychological phenomenon in which aperson makes teeny, tiny, like, not even

(46:15):
noticeable to the eye, involuntary movementsof small muscles in response to their
thoughts.
And they do usually have no awareness that
this is happening.
So literally, the word combines as thought,
movement.
So this idea was first conceptualized in 1852
by a physician named William Carpenter,

(46:37):
and it was first written up in the report forthe Royal Institute of Great Britain.
Basically, he says, there are automatic musclemovements that take place without our
conscious will.
Kind of think of like crying when you're sad,right?

Speaker A (46:49):
Yeah.

Speaker B (46:50):
But other researchers were like,
this idea of motor effect is what's going onwith the spiritualists.
And so by just a few years after that,multiple physicians and physicists are looking
at things like table tilting.
And they're like, that is definitely not real.
And it's being caused by the people, whether

(47:12):
they know it or not.
So it is at that time that they sort of debunk
table tilting as being done by the ideom.
But the idea is that with the Ouija board,when you have more than one person resting
their finger on it, it feels like nobody'smoving it, but really both parties are.
And it's really easy because of the way it'sdesigned to glide, that you assume it's an

(47:36):
external force.
Now, I love this.
Next,
the University of British Columbia's VisualCognition lab have found ways to use the board
and tests to sort of access our subconsciousmind.
So they run all these tests, and I don't wantto get too far into it because I don't want
anybody to snooze out on your podcast,

(47:58):
but.
So these doctors are watching kids play with a
Ouija board at their Halloween party, andthey're like, this is fascinating.
How can we use this in a lab?Right?
And they do it by making a blindfolded personthink that somebody else is using the board
with them or that a robot is using it withthem.
And what they find is they're able to accessmemories of things that they can't access with

(48:22):
their conscious mind, but the board allowsthem to tap into their subconscious mind.
It's an amazing study.
It's super.
You know, like those things that, like, youknow, that, you know, but you can't remember
or memories that you just can't pull out.
Like,
you can do that with the board.
You can access your subconscious mind.

(48:42):
They start working on another study to use theboard to help people with dementia access
their hidden memories, and they find that thisis an effective system.
But they ran out of funding, of course.
Right.
This.
This is what happens.
Apparently, a lot of the funders were kind oflike, well, we think that using a Ouija board
for this is silly, and we don't want to keepgiving you money to do this.

(49:06):
But in the meantime, they were actuallyfinding that dementia patients were able to
access their.
Their, like, hidden subconscious memories
using the board.
So, you know, I don't know if they'll ever getmoney to go back to it, but if they do, I
think it's a really cool idea.
And what a gift to be able to give people who
have lost their memories of their family inlife.

Speaker A (49:25):
Right.
Yeah.

Speaker B (49:27):
So. So all of this science, that kind of poo poos on the magic of the board
opens up the door to this other amazingpossibility.
And I. I love that.

Speaker A (49:38):
Yeah.

Speaker B (49:38):
So let's get into the pop culture now.
And now this is going to be the pop culturepre 1973,
because we all know what happens that year.
So before 1973, the Ouija board is considered
kind of hokey.
I mean, it was on I Love Lucy and people make
fun of it in horror films.
Before 1973,
it's in on a show called Lost in Space wherethey use it to talk to aliens.

(50:02):
Like it's just really silly.

Speaker A (50:05):
Yeah.

Speaker B (50:06):
Right before the Exorcist, nobody thinks this thing is serious.
Everybody thinks this thing is a joke.
And in 1973, here we have it.
The Exorcist comes out and it changes thereputation of this board forever because it
alters the public perception of what it meansto be associated with demon possession and the

(50:28):
occult.
So this leads to incredible fear.
Incredible fear around this fun parlor gamethat up to now people have thought was silly.
And you know, it's.
Its whole vibe is now dark.
It's interesting to note that in the originalbook the Exorcist, there is no Ouija board.
It was added by the director because it wassuch a common household item.

(50:52):
It was more common, like I said, thanMonopoly.
Like everybody had one of these things.
It's like a shower, right?
Everybody has a shower.
But it wasn't scary till Psycho.

Speaker A (51:02):
Yeah.

Speaker B (51:03):
You know what I mean?

Speaker A (51:05):
Yeah.

Speaker B (51:05):
I mean, nobody was worried about getting in this shower until Norman Bates
came.

Speaker A (51:09):
Along and, or go in the ocean.
And for Jaws, be like,
you know,
Jaws came out.
I'm not getting in there.
Or maybe in your bathroom bathtub.
Maybe you're that freaked out.
I'm not getting my bathtub.
Jaws will get me like.

Speaker B (51:24):
Well, I mean, Jaws definitely has had some good spin offs too.
I was like, it's such a good movie anyway.
Yeah, we could talk about that another day.
But just like, nobody was afraid of the showerbefore Nurman Bates,
Nobody was afraid of a Ouija board before.
Linda Blair plays Reagan McNeil.
So she's playing the character of a 12 yearold girl.
She finds a board in the house and she'splaying with it alone,

(51:46):
claiming that she's talking to Captain Howdy.
I'm like, seriously, who comes up with these
names?But.
Right.
I was like, if your child's talking to Captain
Howdy, you should immediately cut, cut that.
But yeah, yeah,
her mother is unconcerned.
Her mother's like, oh, that's cool.
Eventually, Reagan, as we all know the story,is possessed by a demon head, spinning pea

(52:07):
soup, you know, the whole deal.
And they,
they imply that the Ouija board was thegateway through which the spirit enter.
And it refrains the board as a tool ofspiritual danger.
And it will always be that way from herebecause of the movie, not the book.

Speaker A (52:26):
Yeah.

Speaker B (52:26):
And Parker Brothers loves this, actually.
And they're like, thank you so much formarketing our board.
And now it's selling even more because of thenegative reputation.

Speaker A (52:38):
Wow.

Speaker B (52:39):
Right? This, this.
I think the enchantment of the Ouija board isthat it's a money making machine.

Speaker A (52:46):
Yeah.

Speaker B (52:46):
That's wild, isn't it? I didn't know this was going to be a business
podcast tonight, but here we are.

Speaker A (52:52):
This is turned into marketing 101.

Speaker B (52:55):
Right. It really.
This. It is the story of a business product
that we undoubtedly.
Yeah.
So at this point in time, we're getting closeto.
To what would be called the Satanic panic.
And I think you and I talked about this once
before, but it is a moral panic that hits theUnited States.
It starts in the late 1970s, and it goesthrough the early 1990s.

(53:16):
And if any of your readers.
I'm sorry, not readers, your listeners aren't
familiar with it.
It is a huge cultural anxiety about satanic
ritual abuse.
This is a long subject, but basically it is a
fear of other, and it is not all thatsignificantly different than witch trials in

(53:36):
the past.
People are afraid of everyone.
People are afraid of their neighbors.
They're afraid of the people who watch their
children.
And everyone is suspicious of everyone.
Just like in prior moral panics, like witch
trials in the 17 through 1600s.

Speaker A (53:50):
Yes.

Speaker B (53:51):
Now, a lot of innocent people are accused, a lot of things that never happen and
go to jail.

Speaker A (53:56):
Yeah.

Speaker B (53:57):
Were there a few people who were actually doing bad stuff?
Yeah, of course.
There always are.
But for the most part, this is an obsessionand not real.
The Ouija board is not the only thing thatgets wrapped up in this.
A lot of other toys do as well.
And I'll try not to laugh.
Everybody knows about the Dungeons and Dragonsthing getting caught up in this because they

(54:20):
say.

Speaker A (54:21):
Yeah.

Speaker B (54:21):
They say that D and D is recruiting people to Satanism.

Speaker A (54:24):
Ooh.

Speaker B (54:25):
But also he man and the Smurfs are implicated during the Satanic panic as pools
of the devil.

Speaker A (54:31):
Okay. All right.

Speaker B (54:33):
Allegedly, some.
Some people back then thought they were so
dangerous that if your child, your child'splaying with he man or Smurfs, that they are
going to.
It's going to lead to eternal damnation.

Speaker A (54:45):
Lord help us.

Speaker B (54:46):
Well, like I said, this was a moral panic.
I mean, I grew up during that time and Iremember my parents are pretty free thinking
people, but even then they were like, we can'tlet you go to such and such park because
there's a lot of weird stuff Going on rightthere.
And it's like, we don't act.
They were like, we don't actually think
they're a Satanist, but there's still somebodyup there cutting heads off chickens.

(55:07):
And it was probably teenagers,
but in the meantime, they were like, we don'twant you going up there just in case there's
somebody with a knife, you know?

Speaker A (55:15):
Yeah, yeah.
Well, understandable, right?

Speaker B (55:17):
You know, it is.
It is.
So the satanic panic hits, and everybodythinks the Ouija board is the tool of the
devil.
It's getting burned.
People are saying that you can't have it inschool.
And of course, this makes it all the moredesirable.
Yeah, it's kind of like when they were burningthe Harry Potter books, that was like the best
free publicity they could have given.

(55:38):
Harry Potter.
Yeah, It's.
It's kind of mind bending to me.
It's like, don't you get it?When you tell people you can't have something,
they're going to rush right out and go getfour.

Speaker A (55:48):
Absolutely.
Yeah.

Speaker B (55:49):
Parker Brothers is putting the stickers.
Thank you.

Speaker A (55:52):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Like putting the stickers when they.
On parental advisory on CDs.
I know some of our audience will be like, CDs,
but.
Yeah, I just remember that.
That's.
Then you'd be like, parental advisory.
Ooh,
I gotta listen to that.

Speaker B (56:09):
That's like, I must have one now.

Speaker A (56:12):
Yeah, yeah, right.

Speaker B (56:14):
It's kind of like invitation to buy.

Speaker A (56:17):
Yeah, yeah.

Speaker B (56:18):
But I mean, the media really played into this whole satanic panic thing.
And the Ouija board is in newspapers gettingblamed for murder and teen possessed after
using the Ouija board.
Ouija boards are being blamed for runaways andsuicides and all of these crazy things.
People are banning them, stores are banningthem, removing them from the shelves.

(56:39):
Of course, that makes them so much moreexciting.
And,
you know, this goes on, I mean, into the 1990swith the boards especially.

Speaker A (56:50):
Yeah.

Speaker B (56:50):
So. And then, of course, we decide sometime in the 90s that the satanic panic was
wrong.
And we shouldn't.
We shouldn't have done that because most ofthose people were innocent.
Sounds like a familiar story to me.
Didn't we already do this with the witches do
that?

Speaker A (57:05):
Yeah, yeah.

Speaker B (57:07):
But, you know, like I always say when I give my history talks, John, do we ever
learn?No,
no.
We humans are really bad at learning from thepast.
That's one reason that I do this.
I'm like, let me.
Let me help you learn from the past.

Speaker A (57:20):
Yeah. Yeah. And like, I tell people that you can go back and Find something
similar to what's happening now.
Right.

Speaker B (57:28):
You.

Speaker A (57:28):
You could go back.

Speaker B (57:29):
You can always find something similar.
Because we, as a. As a species, just keepdoing the same thing over and over again.
We're never like, oh, we already did this.
Let's go this way.
We're like, oh, let's.
Let's do it again.
Let's do it again.

Speaker A (57:41):
Let's do it again.
Let's act like idiots or whatever.
Right?Yeah.

Speaker B (57:44):
Yep. Yep. So I have a little bit more.
I know we're running out of time, but I'd liketo go over at least the rules of play.

Speaker A (57:55):
Yeah, please.

Speaker B (57:57):
Yeah. And also maybe the fact that some Ouija boards are really high value.
I do want to throw this in.

Speaker A (58:04):
Yes, please.
Please.

Speaker B (58:05):
I was looking up what it would take to find and buy one of the original Baltimore
wooden boards.
Turns out they can cost thousands of dollars,
and I mean thousands of dollars at auction.
And I did find a few online.
Now, their value depends on the shape thatthey're in and whether that they have

(58:27):
something called provenance, which is, like ahistory of ownership attached to.
To them.

Speaker A (58:31):
Sure.

Speaker B (58:31):
So somebody who, like, can show like, that, you know, this board has been in
their family for years, and it's in pristineshape.
It's not dented or scratched or whatever.
That board is going to be worth more than once
somebody, like, finds somewhere in an attic,you know, that they're cleaning out.
But there are boards out there that are worth,like, three grand.
It's wild.

(58:52):
It's wild.

Speaker A (58:53):
Yeah.

Speaker B (58:54):
And some of them are absolutely beautiful.
Really fun.
A really fun rabbit hole to go down.
If you have any listeners you want to do thisis to look up vintage and antique Ouija boards
at auction and see the ones that are aroundright now.
They can be really gorgeous and just kind ofto look at.

Speaker A (59:12):
Yeah.

Speaker B (59:13):
So the rules.
If you want to play Ouija, they say that these
are the rules.
You must never play alone.
Solo sessions are dangerous and leave you open
to negative entities.
I'll talk more about that in a second.

Speaker A (59:27):
Okay.

Speaker B (59:28):
Always say goodbye.
I mean, that's just polite, isn't it?

Speaker A (59:31):
Yeah.

Speaker B (59:32):
Don't use it at your house.

Speaker A (59:35):
Yeah.

Speaker B (59:35):
Somewhere else, huh?

Speaker A (59:38):
Yep.

Speaker B (59:38):
Your lucky friend's house, I guess.

Speaker A (59:41):
Yeah.

Speaker B (59:41):
Hey, good luck.
As the board said, good luck.

Speaker A (59:44):
Yeah, Good luck.

Speaker B (59:45):
Never ask about death.
And specifically never ask when you will die.
I feel like this is also common sense.
Don't ask it to prove itself, because this is
like a dare or a challenge.

Speaker A (59:58):
Sure.

Speaker B (59:58):
Don't let the planchette begin to count down apparently this means that a spirit
is trying to escape.
Avoid using it when you are emotionallyvulnerable.
Now this just makes good sense to me.
If you're in a state of grief or instability,
this is not the time because your judgmentwill be very clear.

Speaker A (01:00:15):
Correct.

Speaker B (01:00:16):
Never burn the board.
They say that if you burn it, it can releaseany spirit trapped in it.
If you have to get rid of it, you should buryit.
Always use it with a clear intention orpurpose.
This keeps your session safe and focused.
And I would say this is the one rule that I
can deeply get behind.

Speaker A (01:00:35):
Yeah.

Speaker B (01:00:36):
Optionally consider to protect yourself, such as making a circle or carrying
a protective item like a crystal or some salt,
to make yourself spiritually safe.
Now, I want to talk a little bit about what I
think about Ouija boards.
I think that they are just a tool,
like a tarot deck or any other divinationtool.

(01:00:56):
I do not believe they're different.
I don't think that there's any reason to be
afraid of a piece of cardboard any more thanyou would be afraid of any other divination
tool.

Speaker A (01:01:03):
Sure.

Speaker B (01:01:04):
Now that said, I think a lot of people use Ouija boards.
It's a wrong idea.
In their mind.
They're like, let's talk to a demon.
In fact, there's a pretty famous one named
Zozo.
Let's contact him.

Speaker A (01:01:15):
Yes.

Speaker B (01:01:16):
So people go out with this bad idea in their head with truly bad intentions, and
then they get a bad result.
Well, who's surprised, who's shocked by thatat all?

Speaker A (01:01:27):
Yeah, right.

Speaker B (01:01:28):
I don't know.
It's not like got on the board with the deep
intention to talk to their great grandma andsee if they can get her tomato soup recipe.

Speaker A (01:01:36):
Right, right, right.

Speaker B (01:01:37):
That is not the same as saying like, let's call a demon.
That's not the same thing.
And honestly, like, I, I do think there are
people who get onto the board with theirfriends and purposely move the planchette.
Um, I do think the ideal motor idea is worthconsidering.
And I do think having the right intentions,like not being emotionally vulnerable, I think

(01:02:00):
those things matter.
With any kind of divination,
it doesn't matter if you're using tarot cardsor looking at a teacup,
you, you kind of have to go into it clearminded and with yourself in the right place.
Does that make sense?

Speaker A (01:02:13):
Absolutely. Yes. Yes.
And you can't be unfortunately having, you
know, any suicidal thoughts or dark thoughts.
And that really goes for anything.

Speaker B (01:02:24):
I mean, even a Magic 8 ball can be a bad tool in somebody's hands.
That is in the wrong place to use it, youknow.

Speaker A (01:02:32):
Yeah,
yeah.
And this isn't, you know, what Rissa talked
about some of people winning the PulitzerPrize and becoming famous or writing, you
know, great literature or whatever, or musicor whatever.
It's, you know, that.
That's great and that happens.
But you shouldn't be using it for that either.
You know, again,

(01:02:53):
you should be using it in the right way, inthe right frame of mind,
in the right area.
And I think that's really important.
But it, as we know,
there's a lot of people out there who justtreat it as a joke or treat.
Treated as, you know,
whatever.
That they're just trying to find answers,

(01:03:14):
you know,
that's just not.
That's just not the way this is supposed to be
used or anything.
So. Yeah, I just find that really interesting.

Speaker B (01:03:21):
The one thing that happened with the.
The invent of the Ouija board, that when theytook.
When they took the mediums out now, were somemediums charlatan?
Well, yeah, sure.
That's always the case, right?

Speaker A (01:03:33):
Yeah.

Speaker B (01:03:33):
I mean, some.
Anybody is charlatans.
Right.

Speaker A (01:03:36):
Yeah. Right.

Speaker B (01:03:37):
But that said, a good medium, a person with ethics even still to this day, and
I know lots of great mediums that are veryethical people.

Speaker A (01:03:44):
Yeah.

Speaker B (01:03:45):
A good medium isn't going to read for someone who has the wrong idea or.

Speaker A (01:03:51):
Yeah.

Speaker B (01:03:52):
Is like you said, in a bad emotional place.
They're going to recognize that right away.
It doesn't matter if I'm talking about a
medium or some other kind of seer, like atarot reader or fill in the blank, but they're
going to immediately see what's going on andthey're going to use their humanity to pull
back,
whereas somebody who's just going to grab aOuija board or tarot deck or whatever else,

(01:04:13):
and there are, like I said, even a Magic 8ball, if they're looking into the shadow to
find more shadows, they're absolutely going tofind it.

Speaker A (01:04:21):
Yes, Absolutely. Absolutely.
Now, before we wrap up, I have to tell my
Ouija board story.

Speaker B (01:04:27):
I would love to hear it.

Speaker A (01:04:29):
Yeah. And it's not my in particular.
I just got involved in it, which I didn't wantto, to be honest with you.
So I used to be a manager of a retail storeand everything.
And I don't hide that I'm not in theparanormal.
I don't care.
I tell people, you know, because I'd love.
Because I'll have people come up to me and belike,
hey, John, I know you're in the paranormal.

(01:04:49):
I know it sounds crazy, but I thought my house
was haunted.
Love those stories and stuff.
Same.

Speaker B (01:04:55):
I love them too.

Speaker A (01:04:56):
Yeah? Yeah. So, you know, it's okay.
And if some were a little scary, that's greattoo, you know, it's a lot of fun, but, you
know, 90% of them were just like, oh, youknow, I would see my grandpa in the hallway or
something.
Hey, love it.
So anyway, one day a young woman came to me
and she said, john, I think I need your help.

(01:05:17):
And I said, okay.
And I thought it was something benign like,
you know, my mom's mad at me because I'mworking late or something like that, right.
I'm like, okay, I'll just redo your schedule.
And she says, well, this is what happened.
We took our Ouija board with my friends to acemetery and we started playing it and we

(01:05:39):
thought we saw something and we got scared andwe just ran.

Speaker B (01:05:43):
And I'm like, interesting choice.
Yeah, yeah.

Speaker A (01:05:45):
Okay, now these are 17, 18 year old kids.
All right, so they're kids.
Okay.
Anyway, so I said, okay, well, no problem.
All you did you.
I said, did you?
Obviously you didn't put goodbye.
She's no. And I said, okay, no problem.
Just go back and just, you know, go throughthe process and goodbye.
And she's like, well, I'm really, I'm reallyscared.

(01:06:07):
I don't want to do that.
And I'm like, well,
you know, we got to figure this out.
You, you get, you got to do it.
Talk to your mom.
Even though your mom might be a little bit,
you know, like, hey, what's going on here?
You know, just.
You got to get that thing out of there, right?
So a couple of days later, the mom comes inand I'm thinking, I'm going to hear it.
Why are you filling my daughter with all thesecrazy ideas?

(01:06:29):
The exact opposite.
She said that they were seeing strange thingin the houses,
in their house.
They were seeing like shadows.
They were seeing all this weird stuff happen.
And she was like, you know,
you know, we're kind of scared and everything.
We don't want to know.
Go through it.
So I said, okay,
let's go back to the cemetery.

(01:06:49):
We'll see at the Ouija board there.
We'll figure it out.
All right.
So we go back to the cemetery and guess what?The groundskeeper had ran over it and totally
destroyed it.
So I'm like,
yeah, there's just bits and pieces everywhere.
And I'm like, okay,
now what?So I have a friend of a friend who knows a

(01:07:10):
medium and I was talking very nice lady.
She's passed since.
And she goes, well, what you need to do,
get another Ouija board.
Go back.
And I'm like, look, I don't know how to dothis.
Could you please help?Very nice woman, like I said.
So she came over and we went to the cemetery,
you know,
well, before we went to the cemetery, she wentto the house and she was like, let's see

(01:07:32):
what's going on here first.
And she's like, yep, you guys invited
something in.
You shouldn't invited it.
So there's definitely something in this house,and I'm going to help you.
So she was able to, you know, sage the houseand take care of that.
Then we go back to the cemetery, right?
And we're all sitting around this Ouija board,
and it's kind of acting weird a little bit.
It's doing some weird stuff.

(01:07:53):
And she.
And she says, well, that's because the spirit
does not want to go back,
but we're going to put the spirit back andeverybody's going to be fine, and we're good.
And she made sure, like you said, we hadcrystals and protection.
And then we went to the Ouija board andgoodbye.
Everything was done.
And then she was like, if you have any other
issues, let me know.
She didn't charge anybody.

(01:08:14):
She was very, very sweet.
And then.
So I said, okay, let's go back.
And thankfully, it has a happy ending.
Everything was fine.
Everything was good.
And they were like,
you're not touching another Ouija board everin our life.
Forget it.
This was not fun.
It wasn't funny at all.

(01:08:34):
This was serious.
And to this day, you know, I didn't.
I didn't feel a certain way when I was there,
but I did feel like the people there,
the mom and the.
And the.
And the young woman, they were scared.
They had legitimately fear on their face.
So I just recommend to everyone,

(01:08:54):
even if you're thinking it's kind of fun.
And originally, like we talked about early in
the podcast, it was like, it's a joke.
It's funny.
There are some things, again,
that.
Who knows, maybe it's like anything in life.
You step on the wrong thing, you open thewrong door, you're right, whatever.
Timing, right,
just timing you at the wrong place at thewrong time.

(01:09:17):
That's what happens, too, in the paranormal.
Sometimes that just happens.
And who can explain it,
right?
So it was.
It was fun.
It was a great experience.
I have never personally used the Ouija boardafter that.
I was thinking about it, but I'VE never doneit, but I've had numerous people who said we
would do a session sometime and we would do itprofessionally and we would do it in the right

(01:09:42):
space and everything.
I'm like, okay, then I'll do it.
But other than that, no,
I'm not going to do it unless I have peoplearound who have done it and know how to do it
properly.
I'm totally, I'm totally cool with that.
So.

Speaker B (01:09:54):
Awesome.
Well, you know, I think what your story shows
me is it's just like what I said.
You have to, you have to be aware of your
intention when you go into these things,
you know, and that's,
you know, we could be talking about tarotcards and it's the same.
There's some people who are terrified of them.
Well, mostly because of movies, but.

Speaker A (01:10:11):
Right.

Speaker B (01:10:11):
And actually that's why people are terrified of the Ouija board, because of
movies.
So it, it's the same like if you go in and
you, you want to do something bad or you wantto be dangerous and haphazard, you will be
dangerous and haphazard.
There's this old expression, what is it likeif you shout into the void long enough,
eventually somebody answers.

Speaker A (01:10:30):
Yes.

Speaker B (01:10:32):
So I did think of one more little tiny thing I want to share.
There are two Ouija museums in the UnitedStates.
So if you have any listeners who are superinto the board,
they can go to the Salem which Ford Museum inSalem, Massachusetts or the which Ford Museum
in Baltimore, Maryland.
So both of those cities that where it's been

(01:10:52):
made have museums dedicated to the history ofthe board.
I have been to both.
They are absolutely excellent.
The Baltimore one is smaller and it has a selfguided tour when you walk through.
The curator John Kozak is in Salem and he willgive you an amazing tour if you ever go up
there.
It's definitely worthwhile if you ever getinto that area to see them.

(01:11:13):
The collections are both really impressive.
They're probably worth a lot of money too.

Speaker A (01:11:18):
Yes, yes, yes.
I definitely,
definitely would love to check that outsomeday.
So thank you again, Rissa.
This is again, as always,
an amazing experience,
sharing all the history and the lore behindOuija boards.
And when this comes out again,
you know,
hopefully you'll listen to Erisa and be like,okay, let's do this right again.

(01:11:42):
I know, take it with a grain of salt,everyone.
But it is still like we've talked about, ifyou don't have the right frame of mind,
whatever you're doing, things gonna turn outbad.
So awesome.

Speaker B (01:11:52):
Pretty much.
That's that's just a good rule of life.

Speaker A (01:11:54):
Yeah, it's just a good rule of thumb, you know, whatever.
You do it.
So, again, thank you so much.
And, you know,
as always, you're welcome back anytime.
And please,
when this episode comes out,
go to Rissa's website.
Check it out.
You know, I support her every way I canbecause she does such a wonderful job and

(01:12:14):
she's such an interesting person.
You know, again, if you're in the Baltimore
area, you know, hey, reach out, go on one ofher tours.
You will be smarter, wiser, and for thebetter, I can guarantee you that.

Speaker B (01:12:26):
Thank you so much, John.
And thank you for inviting me back.
It's always a pleasure.

Speaker A (01:12:30):
Thank you.

Speaker B (01:12:30):
I love doing these talks with you and adding a little bit of history seasoning
to your podcast.

Speaker A (01:12:36):
Absolutely. And I learned so much, so I get.
I get that out of the deal, too.
So now I can talk like I know something.
I don't know what I'm talking about.

Speaker B (01:12:45):
Well, now you know a lot about the business behind the Ouija board.

Speaker A (01:12:48):
Yeah, I know.

Speaker B (01:12:49):
And, like, it was such a brilliant business model.

Speaker A (01:12:52):
Yeah. And that's what people forget.
It was a business model.
This wasn't, like, too kooky.
People just were like, let's be weird andthrow this out here.
No, these were planned.
Marketing, sales,
you know, you name it.
This is plan.

Speaker B (01:13:08):
And really, Congressman, businessman, like.

Speaker A (01:13:11):
Yeah, yeah,
yeah, yeah, the same.
A bunch of people with weird hats on just
walking around trying to make a business.
This is.
This is real, folks.
So I love it.
That's what adds to it, too.
So much the better.
All right, well, thanks again, Rissa.
And you stay spooky always.

Speaker B (01:13:28):
You too, John.

Speaker A (01:13:29):
Bye. Bye. Bye.
Bye.