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The Ouija (ˈwiːdʒə , -dʒi ), also known as a spirit board or talking board, is a flat board marked with the letters of the Latin alphabet, the numbers 0–9, the words "yes", "no", occasionally "hello" and "goodbye", along with various symbols and graphics. It uses a planchette (small heart-shaped piece of wood or plastic) as a movable indicator to spell out messages during a séance. Participants place their fingers on the planchette, and it is moved about the board to spell out words. "Ouija" is a trademark of Hasbro (inherited from Parker Brothers), but is often used generically to refer to any talking board. Spiritualists in the United States believed that the dead were able to contact the living and reportedly used a talking board very similar to a modern Ouija board at their camps in the U.S. state of Ohio in 1886 to ostensibly enable faster communication with spirits. Following its commercial introduction by businessman Elijah Bond on 1 July 1890, the Ouija board was regarded as an innocent parlor game unrelated to the occult until American spiritualist Pearl Curran popularized its use as a divining tool during World War I. Paranormal and supernatural beliefs associated with Ouija have been criticized by the scientific community and are characterized as pseudoscience. The action of the board can be most easily explained by unconscious movements of those controlling the pointer, a psychophysiological phenomenon known as the ideomotor effect. Mainstream Christian denominations, including Catholicism, have warned against the use of Ouija boards, considering their use Satanic practice, while other religious groups hold that they can lead to demonic possession. Occultists, on the other hand, are divided on the issue, with some claiming it can be a tool for positive transformation, while others reiterate the warnings of many Christians and caution "inexperienced users" against it. The popular belief that the word Ouija comes from the French and German words for yes is a misconception.

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Related concepts (16)

Automatic writing

Automatic writing, also called psychography, is a claimed psychic ability allowing a person to produce written words without consciously writing. Practitioners engage in automatic writing by holding a writing instrument and allowing alleged spirits to manipulate the practitioner's hand. The instrument may be a standard writing instrument, or it may be one specially designed for automatic writing, such as a planchette or a ouija board.

Mediumship

Mediumship is the practice of purportedly mediating communication between familiar spirits or spirits of the dead and living human beings. Practitioners are known as "mediums" or "spirit mediums". There are different types of mediumship or spirit channelling, including séance tables, trance, and ouija. Belief in psychic ability is widespread despite the absence of objective evidence for its existence. Scientific researchers have attempted to ascertain the validity of claims of mediumship.

Dowsing

Dowsing is a type of divination employed in attempts to locate ground water, buried metals or ores, gemstones, oil, claimed radiations (radiesthesia), gravesites, malign "earth vibrations" and many other objects and materials without the use of a scientific apparatus. It is also known as divining (especially in water divining), doodlebugging (particularly in the United States, in searching for petroleum or treasure) or (when searching for water) water finding, or water witching (in the United States).

Parallel and Distributed Neural Models of the Ideomotor Principle: An Investigation of Imitative Cortical Pathways

Aude Billard, Eric Sauser

Humans’ capacity to imitate has been extensively investigated through a wide-range of behavioral and developmental studies. Yet, despite the huge amount of phenomenological evidence gathered, we are still unable to relate this behavioral data to any specif ...

2006