![]() ![]() Lenore was not highly educated and never even finished high school. The feat was all the more amazing given that Ms. Curran, writing in the voice of this 17th Century woman, created an astonishing number of novels, plays and poems. One colorful example comes to us with the story of Illinois resident Pearl Lenore Curran who in 1913 claimed to have made Ouija contact with a 17th-century spinster named Patience Worth. The Ouija board also has had an impact on the literary world, especially in the United States. There’s also plenty of important spiritualist writings - the New Age “ Seth Material” comes to mind - originating from Ouija communication. (Just check out some of the online product reviews for a sample.) The board helped inspire Vietnam’s Cao Đài religion, which is based in part on Ouija-inspired prophesies. ![]() The board has influenced religious feeling, but also has been the object of fearful warnings among some evangelical Christians. Although the popularity of the “Ouija Talking Board Game” has ebbed and flowed over the years, some version of it has continued to be produced in one way or the other for the last century. The company purchased the rights in 1966, reportedly sold more than two million units in 1967 (topping its Monopoly sales that year) and then more than 10 million in the decades since. It was famously Fuld’s name that would be affixed to hundreds of thousands of Ouija boards created both by his own company and those later by Parker Brothers.Īnd it is Parker Brothers that launched this spiritualist novelty into the mainstream. Ambitious, Fuld, at age 19, already had filed for a separate patent for an improved planchette, and later would consolidate control over manufacturing and marketing. ![]() The firm’s management fell soon afterwards to its young varnisher, a man named William Fuld. The Kennard Novelty Company manufactured the board for several years, although founder Charles Kennard eventually left the firm after a series of financial disputes with his partner. The words GOOD BYE also was written across the bottom, all in capital letters. Like the previous version (and most subsequent ones) this board was rectangular, had two rows of letters across the top, numbers spaced along the bottom and the mysterious sun and moon symbols labeled respectively YES and NO. This early talking board (the patent was filed on May 28, 1898) was the first with the Ouija name. Bond, who in turn assigned the rights to Charles W. Six years after the appearance of that article a patent for a “Ouija or Egyptian luck-board” was filed by Baltimore attorney Elijah H. Horowitz cites a Maarticle appearing in the Sunday supplement of the New York Daily Tribune entitled “A Mysterious Talking Board and Table over Which Northern Ohio is Agitated.” The article included an illustration and description of an early talking board very similar to today’s version. If you want to get right to that last part then scroll down to the bottom, right to the “HOW TO” subtitle.Īccording to Mitch Horowitz, author of the critically acclaimed Occult America, the origins of the device known today as the Ouija Board can be traced back to the late 19th Century - although not reliably further back than that. Just below we provide a quick history of the Ouija Board, a brief recitation of some of its cultural impact, and some useful how-to instructions. Although manufactured and mass-produced by the very staid Parker Brothers corporation, Ouija was steeped in spiritualist traditions dating back at least a century and was associated with esoteric religions, paranormal exploration, art and literature. In small towns and large, from Los Angeles to New York, the famous wooden plank and planchette seemingly was everywhere, delivering titillating, subversive entertainment for teen-agers and grad students, housewives and poets. Consider this: by the late 1960s, sales of the Ouija board rivaled that of America’s best-selling board game, Monopoly. ![]()
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