[ BEHAVIOR & BELIEF

STUART VYSE

Stuart Vyse is a psychologist and author of Believing in Magic: The Psychology of Superstition, which won the William James Book Award of the American Psychological Association. He is a fellow of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry.

I have been writing about the discredited technique facilitated communication for several years, and to explain one of the mysteries of facilitated communication, I’ve tossed off the phrase “it is a Ouija-like phenomenon.” I’ve also seen writers use the reverse formulation, describing the actions of Ouija board players as similar to facilitated communication. Recognizing that neither of these statements is a real explanation, I think it might be time to provide both a description of and an upto-date explanation for the Ouija board phenomenon. You may be surprised to know there is a substantial amount of psychological research, both modern and classic, that bears on the case of the magic talking board.

Background

The beginnings of the Ouija board game go back to the Spiritualism movement of the nineteenth century. Several social forces came together to make the possibility of communication with the dead a reality for many people, and séances became wildly popular. The Fox sisters of Hydesville, New York, claimed to be able to communicate with a murdered traveling salesman through tapping sounds, and they toured the countr y demonstrating their remarkable mediumship. This was at a time when the average life expectancy worldwide was roughly half of what it is today, and approximately 30 percent of children did not live to see their fifth birthday. Then, in 1861 came the American Civil War, and suddenly almost everyone was touched by loss. Soon both professional and amateur mediums were conducting séances featuring tipping tables, knocking ghosts, flying musical instruments, disembodied voices, automatic writing, and many other methods of communicating with the dead (Vyse 2019). It was out of this background that someone figured out a way to make money by marketing a board that would allow anyone to communicate with spirits at home.

The identity of the inventor of the Ouija board is a disputed question, but we know that in 1891, Elijah J. Bond of Baltimore, Maryland, was awarded a patent for a “talking board,” which he soon sold to William Fuld, who went on to make a fortune selling them (Hunt 1985). There is also some debate about where the name “Ouija” came f rom. For years, we were told the name was an amalgamation of oui and ja, the French and German words for yes. But according to Ouija board historian (who knew there was such a thing?) Robert Murch, the name came through the board itself when asked what it should be called (McRobbie 2013).

The Ouija board was and is quite literally a parlor game. The Spiritualist movement f rom which it came was largely conducted in the parlors of nineteenthand early-twentieth-century homes. In a 1920 tax case, the Baltimore Talking Board Company argued otherwise: “[The Ouija board] is a form of amateur mediumship and not a game or sport. By means of this board one is enabled to get in touch with the other side.” As a result, the company attorneys argued the board should be tax exempt (Hunt 1985, 6). The Internal Revenue Service took the opposing view, which the court found persuasive, and the company was obliged to pay taxes. But game or not, Ouija has an enduring following, and long after the Victorian spiritualist era ended, some people continued to believe that the board is a portal to a spirit world.