Note: This article discusses Ouija boards, history, folklore, psychology, religion, and personal opinions. I encourage you to draw your own conclusions.
Most people hope they’ll hear from a beloved relative. I’d be sitting there, worried I’d just invited Jack the Ripper into the conversation. That’s always been my problem with Ouija boards. We don’t know what we don’t know. Besides, I don’t believe the dead are entertainment. Is that a strange statement coming from someone who writes dark paranormal thrillers? Maybe.
I’ve spent years researching ghost stories, haunted places, unexplained experiences, and the mysteries surrounding life after death. The subject fascinates me. But fascination and invitation are two very different things.
And that’s why you’ll never find a Ouija board in my house. But you will find them in my stories—like the time Grace left a session open in Marnie Reilly Mysteries Book 2, Torn Veil. What a mess!
Ghost Stories, Campfires, and the Adirondacks
Growing up in northern New York, I learned early that people love a good ghost story. The Adirondacks are full of them. Spend enough time around a campfire, a hunting camp, an old cemetery, or a fog-covered lake, and by the end of the evening somebody will tell you a story they swear is true.
I come from a long line of storytellers, and my mother was one of the best. She could scare the dickens out of us. The details changed depending on the audience, but the effect was always the same. By the time she finished, every creak in the house sounded suspicious, shadows seemed a little darker, and a late-night trip down the hallway became an act of courage.
Maybe that’s one reason ghost stories intrigue me. Not because I’ve believed every one of them. But because I’ve experienced the power they have.
A good ghost story doesn’t just make you wonder what’s hiding in the dark. It makes you ponder whether the world is bigger and stranger than you thought.
I believe there is a thin veil between this life and whatever comes next, and it deserves respect. If the dead wish to reach out, they’ll find a way. I have no desire to go knocking on doors that were never meant to be opened. And that’s another reason Ouija boards don’t appeal to me.
Now, the Adirondacks have produced more than their share of mysteries. One of the most famous began with a heartbreaking fatality.
Adirondack Mountains
In 1906, twenty-year-old Grace Brown was murdered at Big Moose Lake by her lover, Chester Gillette. The case became a national sensation and later inspired Theodore Dreiser’s classic novel An American Tragedy.
More than a century later, stories persist of a sorrowful young woman appearing on foggy nights near the lake where she died. People are still talking about Grace Brown more than a hundred years after her death.
Perhaps that’s what ghost stories are. A way of refusing to forget.
The murder was so powerful that it inspired a book and a movie, and more than a hundred years later, visitors still arrive at Big Moose Lake searching for traces of the story.
Can I prove that Grace’s ghost haunts Big Moose Lake?
Nope. But I understand why the story survives.
Then there’s Champ, the legendary creature said to inhabit Lake Champlain. Indigenous traditions spoke of great serpent-like beings inhabiting deep waters long before European settlers arrived. Generations later, sightings continue to be reported, photographs are debated, and Champ remains one of the North Country’s most enduring mysteries.
Fact or fiction, these stories live on because human beings are drawn to mystery.
That same curiosity helped give birth to the Ouija board…and the Marnie Reilly Mysteries Series.
No Warning Labels
I find it odd that Ouija boards come with only brief instructions:
- Setup: Place the board on a flat surface between the players.
- Contact: Players rest two fingers on opposite sides of the planchette.
- Questioning: Ask a single, clear question, and allow 1 to 5 minutes for the planchette to move to spell out an answer.
- Ending: Always wrap up by moving the planchette to “Goodbye” to close the session.
Can you believe modern Ouija boards are sold as a game? And while scientists explain the movement of the planchette through the ideomotor effect—small, unconscious muscle movements made without the participant’s awareness—I am not comfortable with the simplicity of the explanation. AND…The boards should come with a second set of instructions, highlighting the Dos, Don’ts, and the Hell No!
Here’s what I recommend:
- Never use it alone.
- Don’t try this in a cemetery.
- Do not, under any circumstances, ask when you’ll die.
- At no time allow the planchette to leave the board. Why? Legend says that if you let the planchette float or fly off the board, you’ll break the boundaries of the game and the veil. This lets the spirit escape into your home, causing it to linger and wreak havoc.
- Always say goodbye.
Call me cautious, but better safe than possessed.
Before the Ouija Board
Most people assume the Ouija board came first. It didn’t. Long before talking boards appeared in toy stores, people were already trying to communicate with the dead. Their tool of choice was the planchette.
Invented in France during the 1850s, the original planchette wasn’t a pointer gliding across letters and numbers. It was a small wooden writing device, often heart-shaped, mounted on tiny wheels. A pencil protruded through an opening in the board, acting as a third leg.
Participants rested their fingertips on the planchette while it moved across a sheet of paper. As it rolled, the pencil recorded words, messages, symbols, and sometimes pages of writing through a process known as automatic writing. So, before people were spelling messages on a “game” board, they were allowing unseen hands to communicate with ink on parchment.
Whether those messages came from spirits, the subconscious mind, or some combination of the two is debatable. But the people using planchettes believed they were communicating with something beyond themselves.
The Rise of Spiritualism
It’s easy to dismiss Ouija boards as spooky toys or Halloween curiosities. History suggests something deeper was at work.
The rise of Spiritualism (circa 1848) coincided with periods of extraordinary loss. The American Civil War (April 12, 1861, to May 26, 1865) left hundreds of thousands of families grieving loved ones who never came home. Traditional Victorian “good death” practice—surrounded by family and offering last words of comfort—was replaced by battlefield deaths hundreds of miles away.
Families wanted answers, reassurance, and conversations with their dearly departed. Spiritualism offered hope, and mediums claimed to relay messages from departed loved ones. Séances (don’t get me started) promised communication beyond the grave. Automatic writing and planchettes offered another avenue of contact.
Then the movement found fertile ground in New York. In 1848, the Fox Sisters of Hydesville claimed they could communicate with a spirit through mysterious rapping heard inside their home. Whether those claims were genuine, mistaken, or fraudulent is unknown.
The Fox Sisters helped launch a movement that spread across America and beyond, and the pattern repeated decades later.
World War I (July 28, 1914 to November 11, 1918) and the 1918 influenza pandemic claimed tens of millions of lives worldwide. During the years that followed, Ouija boards exploded in popularity. For many people, the board represented something more than a game. It represented possibility.
From Spiritual Tool to Toy Store Shelf
In 1891, the Ouija board became a commercial product. Unlike séances or professional mediums, anyone could purchase a board and conduct a session in their own home.
It boggles my mind that a device intended to communicate with the dead became a board game. Commercialism?
Anyway…despite being sold as entertainment, stories of unsettling experiences followed the board everywhere it went.
What Science Says
Scientists have long pointed to the ideomotor effect as an explanation for Ouija board experiences. According to this theory, unconscious of their actions, participants guide the planchette without realizing they’re doing it.
It’s a reasonable explanation and it may support many experiences, but it doesn’t reveal why so many people walk away from a session feeling unsettled. Is that brand of anxiety the fear of the unknown raising its ugly head?
The Woman Who Became Someone Else
Not every famous Ouija board story ends with a haunting. Some are far stranger.
In 1913, a St. Louis housewife named Pearl Curran claimed a Ouija board introduced her to a seventeenth-century English woman named Patience Worth. What followed remains one of the most unusual episodes in American literary history. Then something remarkable happened. The board stopped producing simple messages and began producing literature.
Over the next two decades, Curran produced millions of words of poetry, novels, plays, and short stories attributed to Patience Worth. The writings attracted serious attention from critics, scholars, and literary reviewers.
Am I a broken lyre,
Who, at the Master’s touch,
Respondeth with a tinkle and a whir?
Or am I strung in full
And at His touch give forth the full chord?
—Patience Worth
The original records still exist. Universities and historical institutions continue to preserve the manuscripts, correspondence, and documentation surrounding the case.
Believers argue that Curran did contact a spirit. Skeptics point to subconscious creativity, automatic writing, dissociation, or hidden literary influences that may have fueled the phenomenon.
In February 1916, Henry Holt and Company published Patience Worth, A Psychic Mystery by newspaperman Casper S. Yost. It’s an intriguing read whether you are a believer or not. The preface pulled me in :
The compiler of this book is not a spiritualist, nor a psychologist, nor a member of the Society for Psychical Research; nor has he ever had anything more than a transitory and skeptical interest in psychic phenomena of any character. He is a newspaper man whose privilege and pleasure it is to present the facts in relation to some phenomena which he does not attempt to classify nor to explain, but which are virtually without precedent in the record of occult manifestations. The mystery of Patience Worth is one which every reader may endeavor to solve for himself. The sole purpose of this narrative is to give the visible truth, the physical evidence, so to speak, the things that can be seen and that are therefore susceptible of proof by ocular demonstration. In this category are the instruments of communication and the communications themselves, which are described, explained, and, in some cases, interpreted, where an effort at interpretation seems to be desirable.
Is Patience a spirit? I’d like to think so. Pearl Curran described her association with Patience Worth as “one of the most beautiful that can be the privilege of a human being to experience.”
For me, I am happy that a Ouija board session changed the course of Pearl Curran’s life for the better, unlike Roland Doe’s spirit board experience.
The Boy Who Inspired The Exorcist
A discussion about Ouija boards would not be complete without mentioning the case that inspired The Exorcist.
In 1949, a thirteen-year-old boy, known as Roland Doe, became the subject of one of the most famous alleged possession cases in American history.
The story began with grief. Roland was close to his Aunt Harriet, a practicing Spiritualist who introduced him to the Ouija board. Reports claim that when she died, the teen began using the board to contact her.
Not long after the first session with “Auntie”, family members started reporting strange disturbances. According to contemporary accounts, scratching sounds echoed through the house. Objects appeared to move, and the boy experienced an increase in disturbing behavior.
His parents reported the young man was calm and normal during the day, but at night, he would erupt into wild tantrums and become violent. A trance-like state followed the boy’s fits, and he would make guttural sounds and speak in an odd voice and break out in scratches and red lines all over his body.
The family sought help, bringing in a team of Catholic priests who documented the case in remarkable detail. Father Raymond Bishop kept a day-by-day diary logging the events and observations.
Yet even among eyewitnesses, opinions differed. Some believed the case demonstrated genuine supernatural activity. Others proposed psychological explanations, behavioral disorders, family dynamics, or medical conditions that were misunderstood at the time.
Over seventy-five years later, people still disagree about what happened.
What they agree on is how it began. A grieving boy sat down with a Ouija board, hoping to speak with someone he loved.
Why So Many Religions Warn Against It
One of the most interesting things about Ouija boards is that objections to them aren’t limited to skeptics, psychologists, or paranormal investigators. Many of the world’s major religions discourage or prohibit attempts to communicate with the dead.
The details differ from one faith to another, but there is one common thread. Across cultures, centuries, and theological traditions, people arrive at a similar conclusion: approach the unseen world with caution.
Why I Leave Them Alone
I understand the appeal. Human beings are curious by nature. We want answers and reassurance that the people we love still exist somewhere beyond our reach. But I believe there are some questions that shouldn’t be pursued. The dead are not entertainment. Let them rest.
Call me a scaredy-cat, if you will, but the entire premise depends on trusting an unseen voice to be truthful when identifying itself. Sorry, folks. I do not want a serial killer running amok in my house. I deal with them enough in my fictional world.
Maybe every experience can be explained away by psychology. Perhaps some can’t. I don’t know, and to be truthful, neither does anyone else.
What I do know is that if there is a veil between this life and whatever comes next, I have no interest in throwing open the door and asking random strangers to introduce themselves. The dead deserve peace, and so do the living. And that’s why you’ll never find a Ouija board in my house.
What do you think? Have you ever used a Ouija board? Did anything happen that you still can’t explain? Let me know in the comments.
Sources & Further Reading
Planchettes, Automatic Writing & Ouija History
- University of Toronto – Fisher Rare Book Library: Psychical Research Collection (Planchette)
- Harvard Library – Before the Ouija… There Was the Planchette
- Mary Baker Eddy Library – What Was Planchette?
- National Park Service – Planchette: Highlights from the Museum Collections
- Smithsonian Magazine – The Ouija Board Can’t Connect Us to Paranormal Forces, But It Can Tell Us a Lot About Psychology, Grief, and Uncertainty
- The Strong National Museum of Play – Ouija Board History
Spiritualism, the Fox Sisters & Grief
- History – How a Hoax by Two Sisters Helped Spark the Spiritualism Movement
- Smithsonian Magazine – The Fox Sisters and the Rap on Spiritualism
- Encyclopaedia Britannica – Fox Sisters
- Lily Dale Assembly (historic Spiritualist community)
Mary Todd Lincoln & Séances
- White House Historical Association – Mary Todd Lincoln
- National First Ladies’ Library – Mary Todd Lincoln
Psychology & the Ideomotor Effect
Pearl Curran & Patience Worth
- Washington University in St. Louis Archives
- St. Louis Mercantile Library
- Missouri Historical Society
- Project Gutenberg – Patience Worth: A Psychic Mystery by Casper S. Yost
Roland Doe / The Exorcist
- Saint Louis University Special Collections & Archives
- Thomas B. Allen, Possessed: The True Story of an Exorcism (book)
- Mark Opsasnick, The Real Story Behind The Exorcist, Skeptical Inquirer (Vol. 25, 2001)
- Bill Brinkley, The Washington Post, August 20, 1949 (newspaper article)
Grace Brown & Big Moose Lake
- Hamilton College Library – Chester Gillette & Grace Brown Collection
- Adirondack.net – Grace Brown Historical Timeline
- Craig Brandon, Murder in the Adirondacks: An American Tragedy Revisited (book)
- Richard W. Couper Press, The Prison Diary and Letters of Chester Gillette (book)
- Theodore Dreiser, An American Tragedy (1925)
Champ of Lake Champlain
Religious Perspectives
Catholic
Biblical References
Judaism
Islam
Books Also Cited
- Possessed: The True Story of an Exorcism — Thomas B. Allen
- Murder in the Adirondacks: An American Tragedy Revisited — Craig Brandon
- Patience Worth: A Psychic Mystery — Casper S. Yost
- An American Tragedy — Theodore Dreiser
- The Prison Diary and Letters of Chester Gillette
A Final Note
This article explores a mixture of documented history, folklore, religious beliefs, psychological theory, and personal opinions. Some events discussed are matters of historical record. Others remain subjects of debate. While a few belong to the rich tradition of storytelling that has surrounded death, grief, and the unexplained for centuries.
I encourage readers to examine the evidence, explore the sources, and draw their own conclusions.
Check Out My Blogs
New to Marnie Reilly Mysteries? Start Here!
Hidden Soles: The Forgotten Tradition of Concealing Shoes
Technology Changes. The Art of Storytelling Doesn’t.
My Books
Check out the Marnie Reilly Mysteries series of psychic thrillers at Amazon. Just click the links below:
Divine Guidance, Marnie Reilly Mysteries Book 1
Torn Veil, Marnie Reilly Mysteries Book 2
Fatal Vow, Marnie Reilly Mysteries Book 3
Vacant Grave, Marnie Reilly Mysteries Book 4
Such an interesting post, Shari! And I had to chuckle when I saw your reference to the Fox sisters. This past weekend, my husband said: I’m in the mood to do something spooky. I said, well, let’s Goodle what’s going on up to an hour or so away. Hit this site: https://hauntedhistorytrail.com/explore/the-fox-sisters-propertyhydesville-memorial-park
We decided to do something different, but how strange for us to consider the Fox sisters just a few days ago and then see a nod to them in your post. 🙂
Re: Ouija boards. Hard. No. ‘Nuff said. 😉
I’ll stick to my Tarot.
By the way, I love this: The dead are not entertainment. Let them rest.
Coincidence? Maybe I was reading your thoughts. 🤣 Next up is a blog about Tarot and the Lenormand Cartomancy deck.
Thanks, Tracy.