Belief, Illusion and the Ouija: Contacting the Dead

Harry Houdini once said, “What the eyes see and what the ears hear… the mind believes.” This quote was stated by one of the greatest escape artist and illusionist of all time, and it reveals his secret. The human mind is structured to believe what it sees and fear what it does not see. An example of this is contacting the dead. Contacting the dead has been around for many centuries. Throughout the ages people have made several “devices” to contact the dead, but only spiritualists were able to. This changed in 1890 when the Ouija board was invented. An Ouija board is a board filled with letters, numbers, and a planchette. This invention changed everything by letting families contact the dead. Now, normal people could communicate with the

dead, not just spiritualist. As a result of the human obsession with the supernatural and successful marketing, the Ouija board became a part of our culture.
In this episode we will go over the origin, the history, and the success of the Ouija board. We will discuss many questions like… What is the history of the Ouija boards? Who invented it? Does it actually work? I’m Gautier Saillard and this is Contacting the Dead.
During the mid to late 1800s the was an obsession with spiritualism.

Many people made different devices to contact the dead. In 1890 a man by the name of Elijah Bond released the elusive Ouija board selling for only $1.50. It became a huge success, people across the United States wanted this “game”. One of the main groups targeted by this marketing were families because the Ouija board was not sold as a spiritualist device, it was sold as a board game
In the early 1900s there were many anti spiritualists that were determined to prove that devices, such as the Ouija board were false. The most famous of these anti spiritualists was Harry Houdini. Although there were large efforts to expose spiritual devices they never succeeded. People were too obsessed with spiritualism to believe them. Plus spiritualism and contacting the dead was considered normal.
In 1929 outside of Buffalo New York at the Cattaraugus Reservation, a woman named Nancy Bowen was curious about her husband's recent death and demanded answers. She used an Ouija board to contact her dead husband. The board said that he was murdered. In shock Nancy dug even deeper to find more answers. The eventually revealed that Clothilde Marchand was the murderer. Filled with rage Nancy went to Marchand’s house and beat her down with a hammer. Shortly afterwards Clothilde was dead. An Ouija board had created a

murderer.
In the later decades of the 20th century many horror films started using Ouija board as props. This would forever change the impression of the Ouija board. It was no longer a “toy”, it made it even more mysterious and evil like the the work of demons, because of this... The Ouija board became an even stronger symbol of our culture.
In recent years scientists have came to the conclusion that Ouija boards are a work of psychology. Your mind is thinking of an answer to the question you asked the Ouija board. Then the brain moves your hands to the letters and numbers to spell out the answer. The catch though, is that you are not conscious while this is happening.
In the end, the Ouija board’s success is a perfect example of being in the right place at the right time. The Ouija board came out at the peak of the spiritualism phase in America, and it was marketed as a game reaching out to even more people. Real or fake, the psychology behind your brain or the work of demons we can all say that the the mysterious Ouija board has became not just a part, but a symbol of our American culture.