talking board – Museum of the Weird

Posted on September 30, 2015 by MOTW Admin

Mark Twains final work dictated by Ouija board?

It’s 1917 and there is a deal of controversy about a new book called Jap Herron. Why the controversy? The publishers claimed that the book was written by Mark Twain, dictated through a series of sessions with a Ouija board. The book can be read in its entirety through the publicdomainreview.org site. This was weird in a number of ways. Twain was one to poke fun at such things. In 1866 he wrote an account of attending a seance in the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise.

Twain’s family was not happy about the book. His daughter Clara sued to halt publication. The woman who published the work, Emily Grant Hutchings, was not interested in a court battle, so she agreed to halt distribution and most copies were destroyed. It is a blessing of the technical world that we can have access to it at all. I hate when any kind of creation is completely destroyed.

While Twain was the most famous, he was not the only author said to reach across the veil and type their works through a planchette. In 1913, a 17th-century woman named Patience Worth, who said she was killed in an Indian raid, began to communicate with Pearl Curran. Shortly after the first sessions, Patience began to dictate poetry, novels, and plays. The link between Pearl and Patience became so strong that they were eventually able to abandon the board and the words just came into Pearl’s mind so she could speak them outright. (Dictating one letter at a time must be grueling!)

The site patienceworth.org contains a large collection of her poems. Her books Hope Trueblood and The Sorry Tale are available to read online. There is also a contemporary book, Patience Worth : a psychic mystery by Casper Yost, that gives you an idea of how this was seen at the time.

Jane Roberts began communicating in 1963 with an entity that identified itself as Seth. Over time they accumulated a good deal of information that was published as The Seth Material. I also found some interesting video on YouTube of Roberts talking about her encounters with Seth. All of this work seems more geared to spiritual teaching rather than literature.

Recently, the band The Mars Volta claimed their album The Bedlam in Goliath was inspired by a Ouija board. This NPR review lets you hear some of the album and considers the Ouija claim. There is also a YouTube video of an interview with Omar Rodriguez-Lopez (WARNING: CONTAINS SOME ADULT LANGUAGE) where he talks about the more troubling aspects of that experience.

If we consider talking boards to be gateways to other worlds and other beings why wouldn’t they want to express themselves? It seems like a great way to keep in touch with one’s public. Of course, who gets the royalties?

If you are in the Austin, Texas area, I will be participating in a special event presented by the Austin Horror Society centered around talking boards. It’s at Sherlock’s pub on Tuesday, October 13th and it’s free! See more on the Facebook event.

Saul Ravencraft's signature

Posted on July 23, 2015 by MOTW Admin

Ouija does it…

ouija_boards — Three talking boards await clearing by Doc Saul Ravencraft.

As I give tours to visitors at the Museum of the Weird I tell them about my role in making sure that everything our owner, Steve, brings to the Museum is safe for display to the public. We have young people and drinking people who come in and we don’t want anything that will be spiritually challenging or that might follow you home.

Recently, Steve walks in with these three talking boards that I think he bought from an estate sale. If you are alive, you know that talking boards (Ouija is treated as a trademarked brand name by Parker Brothers) have a reputation for ghostly activity and demonic possession that would make for a good horror film. Though, it usually makes for a bad horror film; the 2014 film Ouija only hit 7% on Rotten Tomatoes. If you are dead, you might find these corridors of communication to be pretty interesting. (I’m not sure what our readership is from beyond.)

Are talking boards dangerous? Are they invitations to dark spirits? Are they a telephone to relatives on the other side? Are they a party game that is more hoax than hex?

ouija_does_it — May 1, 1920 cover featuring Ouija board art by Norman Rockwell

Talking boards haven’t always had this terrible reputation. When they were first made commercial by William Fuld in 1890 spiritualism was in its heyday. People didn’t have an Xbox to gather around so they found other ways to entertain themselves. A séance made for a fun evening, whether you were a true believer or not. (It still does.) It was a common enough part of Americana that Norman Rockwell chose it for the May 1, 1920 cover of The Saturday Evening Post.

To get a feel for all of this, I highly recommend looking through the on-line Museum of Talking Board’s gallery. There are some beautiful and quirky versions of the talking board.

The darker reputation of the Ouija board is a more recent phenomenon. It’s not hard to find terrifying tales by people whose game turned into something supernatural. Religious and skeptical groups cry out against them, though for opposite reasons. Even so, the boards remain popular, with the classic boards selling more. Beautiful, artistic versions of the board are widely produced.

Of course, you don’t need to buy a fancy board to make a connection. You can make your own talking board with a piece of paper, Scrabble® tiles or any number of methods. For homemade methods it’s common to use an overturned glass. There are also games, such as the more recent Charlie Charlie, that look to connect with nothing more than a piece of paper and a couple of pencils. (Some of the Charlie Charlie videos are pretty funny.)

On my end, I used my own methods to clear these talking boards of any previous spiritual presence they might contain. The Ouija Queen board went to another collector and the other two came into my own. Will they be tools for amusement or will they open gateways into terror? Time will tell. Until then, I leave you with this brief TV ad by Parker Brothers.