![]() "Communicating with the dead was common, it wasn't seen as bizarre or weird," explains Murch. It was an acceptable, even wholesome activity to contact spirits at séances, through automatic writing, or table-turning parties, in which participants would place their hands on a small table and watch it begin shake and rattle, while they all declared that they weren't moving it. Spiritualism worked for Americans: It was compatible with Christian dogma, meaning one could hold a séance on Saturday night and have no qualms about going to church the next day. Aided by the stories about the celebrity sisters and other spiritualists, spiritualism reached millions of adherents at its peak in the second half of the 19th century. ![]() Spiritualism, which had been around for years in Europe, hit America hard in 1848 with the sudden prominence of the Fox sisters of upstate New York the Foxes claimed to receive messages from spirits who rapped on the walls in answer to questions, re-creating this feat of channeling in parlors across the state. THE OUIJA BOARD, in fact, came straight out of the American 19th-century obsession with spiritualism, the belief that the dead are able to communicate with the living. Ouija historian Robert Murch has been researching the story of the board since 1992 when he started his research, he says, no one really knew anything about its origins, which struck him as odd: "For such an iconic thing that strikes both fear and wonder in American culture, how can no one know where it came from?" Truth in advertising is hard to come by, but 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 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 talking board was basically what's sold today: a flat board with the letters of the alphabet arrayed in two semicircles above the numbers 0 through 9 the words "yes" and "no" in the uppermost corners, "good bye" 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. ![]()
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