If unconscious suffering before or why the study of paranormal phenomena can tell a lot about ourselves in February 1891 in U.S. newspapers advertisement appeared Miracle talking board under the name Ouija» (Ouija). Pittsburgh children and adults were promised that magical device amazingly accurate answers to questions about the past, present and future, linking and know the unknown, tangible and intangible. In general, the constant activity and recreation for all classes.
New York City residents were assured that all the claims are certified by the Patent Office. Price - $ 1.50.
Photo Robert Murch.
The mysterious talking board is not much different from what one can buy in the department of board games: a flat board with the alphabet, which was built over the next two semicircles of numbers from zero to nine, the words yes and no in the upper corners, good-bye - at the bottom. Comes with teardrop-shaped plaque - usually with a small hole. The participants of the session touched her fingertips to this planchette are asked in amazement and see how it moves from letter to letter, giving the answer.
The only difference is that the current board is usually made of cardboard, a ouija board - plastic.
Advertise never tells the truth, and the XIX century it was particularly true. Nevertheless, the Ouija was indeed an interesting and mysterious and indeed has been approved by the Patent Office. Even today, psychologists recognize that it is able to communicate and know the unknown.
The story of this game is no less mysterious. Historian Robert Murch became interested in the subject in 1992, found to his surprise that his last little is known, in spite of the landmark status of Ouija for American popular culture.
Photo Bettmann / Corbis.
The roots of Ouija is to be found in spiritualism enthusiasm that swept the United States in the XIX century. The belief that the dead communicate with the living, came from Europe. Over the ocean, the excitement began in 1848, when all of a sudden began talking about the Fox sisters of New York State. Women argued that receive messages from the spirits in the form of a knock on the wall.
In the second half of the century was attended seances for millions of Americans, the press of the young country excitedly wrote about the most famous mediums.
Europeans and Americans of the time easy to understand: the average life expectancy was less than fifty years, infant mortality was high, women died in childbirth, men - in the war. In 1862, died 11-year-old son of the U.S. President, and Mary Todd Lincoln conducted sessions right in the White House.
In the Civil War the number of followers of spiritualism was growing by leaps and bounds, hundreds of thousands of loved ones left home, never to return.
In this new hobby does not contradict the Christian religion could engage in table-six days a week, and on Sunday quietly go to church. Communication with the dead was a common practice, it did not see anything strange, - says Mr. Murch. - It's now like we associate with the attempt to open the gates of hell.
Of course, no one is going to open the gates of hell, creating a firm Kennard Novelty Company and has started producing Ouija. Open just wanted purses gullible consumers.
Charles Kennard.
Historian Brandon Hodge explains the popularity of spiritualism grew along with fatigue from it. Typically, a session was held as follows: call letters of the alphabet one by one, until you hear the sound of the mysterious, and then started over again. Be thus offer - more than a tedious task.
Meanwhile, communication with human beings are far ahead: the telegraph existed for several decades. Why did the spirits behind? And the founders of the Kennard Novelty Company figured out how to capitalize on this situation.
In 1886, the newly-fledged news agency Associated Press reported about the new product, which caused a sensation among spiritualists Ohio - a talking board. It was, in essence, Ouija, then there is a board with letters, numbers, and Ouija board to refer to them. Read many of the other note, but only Charles Kennard from Baltimore (Maryland) saw in it a guide to action.
In 1890, he drew four other investors, including local attorney Elijah Bond and Colonel Washington Bowie, land surveyor, and was created Kennard Novelty Company, has the exclusive right to manufacture and market talking boards. None of them was a spiritualist, but all had a great business sense and could not miss the chance to take up a new market niche.
Ouija did not yet exist: a talking board Kennard has not had a name. Contrary to popular belief, Ouija is not a blend of French and German words meaning yes. If you believe the surveys of Mr. Merca, its name product must Helen Peters - Bond's daughter, who, according to the same Bond, was a strong medium.
She just up and asked the board itself, as it is called. When it received an incomprehensible word Ouija board asked to clarify its meaning, and that corresponded: Good luck! That's such a supernatural picture emerges from the letters themselves the founders of the company. However, Bond acknowledged that Peters was a medallion with a portrait of a woman over the head which adorned this word.
Rather, it was a popular English novelist and campaigner for women's rights Ouidah (Ouida), and d j instead took by mistake.
