Practiced on

Halloween

Country of Origin 

Automatic Writing: China

Use as a Board with Planchette: United States

Key Points / Halloween Connection

- Often included in Halloween celebrations due to their necromancy nature

Brief Bio

One of the first mentions of the automatic writing method used in the Ouija board is found in China around 1100 AD, in historical documents of the Song dynasty. The method was known as fuji "planchette writing". The use of planchette writing as an ostensible means of necromancy and communion with the spirit-world continued, and, albeit under special rituals and supervisions, was a central practice of the Quanzhen School, until it was forbidden by the Qing dynasty.

As a part of the spiritualist movement, mediums began to employ various means for communication with the dead. Following the American Civil War in the United States, mediums did significant business in allegedly allowing survivors to contact lost relatives. Use of talking boards was so common by 1886 that news reported the phenomenon taking over the spiritualists' camps in Ohio. The Ouija was named in 1890 in Baltimore, Maryland by medium and spiritualist Helen Peters Nosworthy.

Charles Kennard, the founder of Kennard Novelty Company, claims to have invented the board with his business partner, Elijah Bond, who patented it with help from his sister-in-law, spiritualist and medium Helen Peters Nosworthy. The local patent office at first refused a patent. Bond and Nosworthy then traveled to Washington, D.C. where they were also denied a patent until the chief patent officer asked the board to spell out his name, which it did. In 1901, an employee of Bond, William Fuld, took over the talking board production under the name "Ouija".