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Science or Supernatural: The Ouija Board
A board game for game night; pop culture’s vogue every Halloween or a portal to Hell?
“ The ouija boards became so well acclaimed that the New York Times compared its popularity to ‘chewing gum’, in an article printed in 1920.”
“If you call it we-ja or wee-gee, it still spells good fun.”
Ouija boards have equal parts intrigued and intimidated their way into pop culture. The Exorcist is a 1973 American horror film through which the board made its blockbuster debut. By this time it had already been an integral part of spiritualism for decades. The Ouija board (known also as a Spirit board or Talking board) is a device for divination, commonly believed to be a portal to the spiritual world. The central part of the board comprises of the alphabet, with numbers (0–9) appearing right below them. A ‘yes’ and a ‘no’ is inscribed on the top left and right corner, respectively, while a ‘Goodbye’ is positioned in the centre, below the numbers. Each board comes with a teardrop shaped piece of wood or plastic called the ‘planchette’ meaning ‘little plank’ in French. The planchette acts as a pointer. The board works when two or more people are seated around it, with their fingertips placed on the planchette. When a question is asked, the planchette supposedly moves on its own, to…
