Words by Kate Gray
Puberty is one hell of a drug. It makes you do the stupidest, most ill-advised things: going to nitrous oxide-fuelled parties in a cave, having your cleavage pierced, getting an ankle tattoo of your boyfriend’s face. My pubescent experimentation involved talking to ghosts. After all, being a teenager is all about being cool, and what’s cooler than a demonic tête-à-tête?
The Ouija board is a way of talking to those who cannot usually talk – ghosts who hover around the board, presumably having waited their entire afterlife for someone to bring out a very specific lettered piece of wood to give them a voice. However, the design that has become the popular image of Ouija boards was sold commercially and used as a parlour trick in America in the 1890s. It was marketed as less of a spiritual telephone and more of a game – to this day, the Ouija name is still owned by Hasbro.