Speaker 1: Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey, Brainstuff. Lauren
Speaker 1: Vogelbaum here. If you've ever seen the horror classic The
Speaker 1: Exorcist from nineteen seventy three, you might remember that Reagan's
Speaker 1: troubles all began when she started to play with a
Speaker 1: Ouiji board. Granted, that was just a movie, but there
Speaker 1: have been some weird happenings in real life attributed to
Speaker 1: this game. In nineteen twenty, a Luigi boom in the
Speaker 1: tiny town of Elserrito, California, led to mass hysteria and
Speaker 1: landed several residents in an asylum. In nineteen thirty five,
Speaker 1: at Nelly Heard of Kansas City learned during a WIGI
Speaker 1: session that her husband was having an affair, though he
Speaker 1: denied it. She tortured him until he killed her in
Speaker 1: self defense. The tales of sudden inspiration, insanity, and death
Speaker 1: have circulated ever since eighteen ninety one, when attorney Elijah
Speaker 1: Bond patented what he called the Ouiji Egyptian luck Board.
Speaker 1: Egypt probably had nothing to do with it. There's no
Speaker 1: real evidence of wigi's reputed ancient roots, and the word
Speaker 1: is not in fact Egyptian for good luck. It's more
Speaker 1: likely that Bond attached Egypt to his board due to
Speaker 1: the pervasive American fascination with Egyptology at the time. Over
Speaker 1: the next seventy years, ownership of the patent moved around
Speaker 1: from Bond to businessman Charles Kennard, who manufactured and sold
Speaker 1: the new toy, and then from Kennard to his former
Speaker 1: employee William Fold, an inventor who ran with it. A
Speaker 1: Fold filed numerous Ouigi related patents over the years, and
Speaker 1: discredited with mass marketing the Ouiji board into a real
Speaker 1: moneymaker if he also said the name is adjoining of
Speaker 1: the French and German words for yes, a, wei and ja,
Speaker 1: but who knows. Fuld finally sold the rights to toy
Speaker 1: making company Parker Brothers in nineteen sixty six, which was
Speaker 1: by Hasbro in nineteen ninety one, which holds the trademark today.
Speaker 1: Since then, the old stories and continuing popularity of the
Speaker 1: board have created a sort of modern renaissance of horror
Speaker 1: fiction featuring it, including two movies that were made in
Speaker 1: collaboration with Hasbro twenty fourteen's Upon Miss Ouigi and its
Speaker 1: prequel Ouigi Origin of Evil from twenty sixteen. That prequel
Speaker 1: by the way, was directed by Mike Flanagan, and is
Speaker 1: better than it has any right to be if you're
Speaker 1: into that sort of thing anyway, One thing is for sure.
Speaker 1: The Ouiji board's creators had timing. In the mid eighteen hundreds,
Speaker 1: a movement called spiritualism swept through the United States. Mediums,
Speaker 1: mainly women, who claimed they could contact the dead, gained
Speaker 1: large followings, perhaps partially because deadly disease epidemics were rampant,
Speaker 1: and other spiritual outlets at the time seemed stodgy and
Speaker 1: paternalistic for such a modern time. By the early nineteen hundreds, seances, readings,
Speaker 1: and trances were all the rage as entertainment and or
Speaker 1: serious attempts to make contact with those who had passed on.
Speaker 1: In this mystical context, the simple, straightforward Ouiji board was
Speaker 1: an exciting development. Its design has hardly changed to this day.
Speaker 1: A rectangular board a first wood now paperboard with a
Speaker 1: small heart shaped pointer or planchet, and meant to glide
Speaker 1: around the board on three smooth, nubby legs. Some versions
Speaker 1: of the plantchet have a glass or plastic window near
Speaker 1: the center. Printed on the board itself are letters and numbers.
Speaker 1: The English alphabet in two arct rows and a row
Speaker 1: of numbers directly below it. In the upper left is
Speaker 1: the word yes, in the upper right the word no,
Speaker 1: and across the bottom goodbye. Sometimes images of the sun,
Speaker 1: the moon, stars, and clouds mark the corners. Mediums had
Speaker 1: been using similar talking boards or spirit boards for decades
Speaker 1: before the Wiji board got its patent. There was the
Speaker 1: dial plate, a spinning wheel with letters and numbers along
Speaker 1: its circumference, which stopped it characters to spell out a
Speaker 1: spirit's message, and the alphabet board, which was similar to
Speaker 1: the Ouiji but had people pointing consciously to various letters
Speaker 1: until the spirits responded noisily, eventually spelling a message. The
Speaker 1: planchette had been around for decades too, in the form
Speaker 1: of a writing device with the whole for a pencil
Speaker 1: instead of a window. The idea was that a medium
Speaker 1: working with the spirit could let the spirit write out
Speaker 1: its own message, but the Wiji board put divination into
Speaker 1: a neat, mass marketed package. Anyone, it seemed, could talk
Speaker 1: to a long dead family member or household ghost, or
Speaker 1: any random spirit using this convenient wooden board and pointer,
Speaker 1: or as an ad from nineteen twenty put it at
Speaker 1: least inject some great mirthmaking into a party. The instructions
Speaker 1: to have changed very little in its century. On the shelves,
Speaker 1: two or more players lightly rest their fingertips on the
Speaker 1: plan chet. One asks a question while everyone concentrates A
Speaker 1: player's then watches a plan chet glides around the board
Speaker 1: seemingly of its own accord to various letters or numbers
Speaker 1: or the words yes or no. The answers may be
Speaker 1: immediately clear or may require some interpretation, but that's a
Speaker 1: pretty bare bones approach. The Internet has many tips for
Speaker 1: improving chances of contact, including setting the mood with candles
Speaker 1: or creating a personalized ritual to begin contact, perhaps including
Speaker 1: a message of peaceful or serious intentions. Mister fold himself advised,
Speaker 1: and I quote, if you use it in a frivolous spirit,
Speaker 1: asking ridiculous questions, laughing over it, you naturally get undeveloped
Speaker 1: influences around you. But okay, you've seen it. You get
Speaker 1: the idea, what if anything is really going on, our
Speaker 1: spirits really moving the pointer? What or who could be
Speaker 1: driving the motion of the plan chet has always been
Speaker 1: controversial in the spiritual crowd. It's a force from beyond.
Speaker 1: Some Catholics, for example, say Ouiji board's contact spirits and
Speaker 1: always the evil type. Thus they strongly discourage wigi board
Speaker 1: use of any kind. In an article originally published in
Speaker 1: the National Catholic Register in the year two thousand, the
Speaker 1: official exorcist for the Archdiocese of New York noted a
Speaker 1: rise in exorcism requests that he attributed to the popularity
Speaker 1: of divination tools like wigi boards. In the science crowd,
Speaker 1: the forces are considered much more earthly. The short explanation
Speaker 1: is that things move when we push them. The long
Speaker 1: version is a lot more interesting. Scientists call it the
Speaker 1: idea motor effect. Essentially, the idea motor theory claims the
Speaker 1: unconscious mind can cause the body to move without the
Speaker 1: conscious mind knowing about it. A take, for example, the
Speaker 1: pendulum test that's sometimes been used to help a pregnant
Speaker 1: person determine the sex of their baby. In this test,
Speaker 1: you hold a string weighted with a ring or other
Speaker 1: object over your belly and wait for it to move
Speaker 1: on its own back and forth. Swinging means a boy,
Speaker 1: circular motion means a girl. But without consciously willing it,
Speaker 1: your finger muscles will make tiny movements which will build
Speaker 1: up until the pendulum starts to swing in one way
Speaker 1: or another. The self moving pendulum, in fact, was the
Speaker 1: subject of some earliest studies of the idea motor effect.
Speaker 1: In the mid eighteen hundreds, a researcher by the name
Speaker 1: of Anton Chevrol found that the movements of everything from
Speaker 1: pendulums to divining rods could be chalked up to involuntary
Speaker 1: muscle movements driven by subconscious thoughts or suggestions. In a
Speaker 1: much later study that focused specifically on the Ouiji board,
Speaker 1: published by psychologists at the University of British Columbia in
Speaker 1: twenty twelve, the researchers positive that the effect is strongest
Speaker 1: when multiple people have their fingers on the plan chet.
Speaker 1: Each subject was blindfolded and told they were one of
Speaker 1: two people touching the pointer, and as the plan chet moved,
Speaker 1: the subject often claimed the other player was pushing it,
Speaker 1: when in fact there was no other player involved. They
Speaker 1: concluded that a person's conscious belief that they're not moving
Speaker 1: the pointer actually enhances their unconscious mind's ability to trigger
Speaker 1: the movement without them knowing it. In this way, the
Speaker 1: games two or more players instruction makes a lot of
Speaker 1: sense the more people are touching the pointer, the easier
Speaker 1: it is to believe that you aren't moving it. Often,
Speaker 1: at least one player will have a preference for a
Speaker 1: specific outcome and unconsciously move the plan chet in the
Speaker 1: desired direction. Not that it always moves or spells anything
Speaker 1: remotely intelligible. Here's one test to try. If you blind
Speaker 1: fall your players and turned the board ninety degrees to
Speaker 1: foil layout memorization, the nonsensical results will tend to discourage
Speaker 1: a mystical explanation. Note, however, that even the earliest Wigi
Speaker 1: patents made no direct claims of other worldliness. One of
Speaker 1: Fold's patents explained the pointer's motion as caused by quote,
Speaker 1: the involuntary muscular motion of the hands of the players,
Speaker 1: or through some other agency. In fact, when asked by
Speaker 1: a reporter if he believed in the Ouigi board, Fold replied,
Speaker 1: I should say not. I'm no spiritualist. I'm a Presbyterian. Yet,
Speaker 1: even if there is nothing spiritual going on while playing
Speaker 1: with a Wigi board, perhaps the release of unconscious thoughts
Speaker 1: is itself fascinating enough to give us pause. When Pulitzer
Speaker 1: Prize winning poet James Merrill was asked about his use
Speaker 1: of the Ouigi board in his writing, he said, you
Speaker 1: could think of the board as a a laying mechanism.
Speaker 1: It spaces out into time and language. What might have
Speaker 1: come to a saint or a lunatic in one binding zapp.
Speaker 1: It's made me think twice about the imagination. If the
Speaker 1: spirits aren't external, how astonishing the mediums become. Today's episode
Speaker 1: is based on the article how we gi boards work
Speaker 1: on how stuffworks dot com, written by Julia Layton. Brain
Speaker 1: Stuff is production of iHeartRadio and partnership with how stuffworks
Speaker 1: dot Com, and it is produced by Tyler Klang. For
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