5/7/2023 0 Comments Seance boardsThough truth in advertising is hard to come by, especially in products from the 19th century, the Ouija board was “interesting and mysterious” it actually had been “proven” to work at the Patent Office before its patent was allowed to proceed and today, even psychologists believe that it may offer a link between the known and the unknown. The biggest difference is in the materials the board is now usually cardboard, rather than wood, and the planchette is plastic. The idea was that two or more people would sit around the board, place their finger tips on the planchette, pose a question, and watch, dumbfounded, as the planchette moved from letter to letter, spelling out the answers seemingly of its own accord. This mysterious talking board was basically what’s sold in board game aisles today: A flat board with the letters of the alphabet arrayed in two semi-circles above the numbers 0 through 9 the words “yes” and “no” in the uppermost corners, “goodbye” at the bottom accompanied by a “planchette,” a teardrop-shaped device, usually with a small window in the body, used to maneuver about the board. So they began using the Ouija board as a communication device, a very normal way to ask your family a question.In February, 1891, the first few advertisements started appearing in papers: “Ouija, the Wonderful Talking Board,” boomed a Pittsburgh toy and novelty shop, describing a magical device that answered questions “about the past, present and future with marvelous accuracy” and promised “never-failing amusement and recreation for all the classes,” a link “between the known and unknown, the material and immaterial.” Another advertisement in a New York newspaper declared it “interesting and mysterious” and testified, “as sProven at Patent Office before it was allowed. The historian Robert Murch told Smithsonian Magazine the Ouija board allowed the Victorians to believe they really could talk to their relatives who've passed. Mediums actually hated the Ouija board because it cut out their role as a spiritual middleman. It was easier and cheaper to buy an Ouija board to contact your dear departed grandmother than hiring a medium or the more elaborate knock system developed by the Fox sisters, explained Bustle. Many seances were held at private homes because the church declared speaking to the dead a sin. It was a seance that ruined Arthur Conan Doyle and Harry Houdini's friendship.Ī big part of these Victorian seances was the planchette, and eventually, it's mass-market version, the Ouija board. Many famous people began attending seances to talk to the dead. It was eventually sold to William Fuld, who coincidentally died in 1927 after falling from a factory the Ouija supposedly told him to build.Īround this time, mesmerism, or manipulating the flow of "animal magnetism," and other forms of spiritualism became popular. Kennard created the Kennard Novelty Company and built two factories in Baltimore, two in New York, two in Chicago, and one in London to keep up with the demand. Baltimore Magazine claimed around 2,000 Ouija boards were sold a week in the early 1890s. Even so, the Ouija board became a hit, especially in the United Kingdom. The Ouija board may have been invented in the United States, but it as based on a French idea. The spirits told her it wants to be called Ouija. They even concocted a story that a medium asked the spirits what name the board should get. But Kennard's idea was to market the planchette. Planchette, French for little plank, had been used by some spiritualists since the 1850s. The Ouija board burst onto the scene in 1890, described Smithsonian Magazine, when Charles Kennard of Baltimore got together with other investors to patent a planchette to communicate with spirits. It's in this environment that the Ouija board, or planchette, came about. So much so that seances became a fad and a fixture of social life to boot. Spiritualism was at an all-time high in the 19th century.
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