Ouija

For something which is only about 150 years old, the grip that Ouija or Spirit Talking Boards have on the cultural imagination is staggering. For some, it has been used to great effect to help them write their best work. For others it is a demonic tool which allows evil spirits or even the devil into your life. Yet for most of us who have used them, they never seem to disappoint; there is always seemingly an interesting story attached. The Ouija board has been explained away by science and skeptics, but I think it is past time we reconsider what it is about these amazing objects which keeps us coming back decade after decade.

Show Notes

• Museum of Talking Boards – An awesome website and resource. Click around and explore!
• Alectryomancy
• Fuji
• Planchette
• Occult America: The Secret History of How Mysticism Shaped Our Nation by Mitch Horowitz – Must read
• The Strange and Mysterious History of the Ouija Board
• Ouija Board: Topics in Chronicling America
• WilliamFuld.com
• 9 Oldest Ouija Boards in the World
• History of ouija in Baltimore museum of industry – YT video
• Talking Board Historical Society – Pretty neat!
• Dial Plate Talking Boards
• Ouija: The Most Dangerous Game by Stoker Hunt – it’s an okay book
• Aleister Crowley and the Ouija Board by J. Edward Cornelius – You can read most of it online for free here
• Ghost Writer: The Story of Patience Worth, the Posthumous Author
• Occultism as Source and Symptom in Sylvia Plath’s” Dialogue over a Ouija Board”
• Sylvia Plath’s Spirit Guide
• The Changing Light at Sandover – This is such a masterpiece and amazing project. Well worth knowing about
• Familiar Spirits: A Memoir of James Merrill and David Jackson by Alison Lurie – I enjoyed this enough. Interesting to read certainly
• The James Merrill Digital Archive
• Out of This World – James Merrill’s Supernatural Muse
• “Ouija board, are there any communications?” Agency, ontotheology, and the death of the humanist subject, or, continuing the ARS conversation
• What’s The Spooky Science Behind The Ouija Board?
• This Bizarre Effect Gives the Ouija Board Its “Mysterious” Power
• ‘Who killed you?’ The jurors who used a Ouija board to find a murderer guilty
• Communing With the Spirits: The Magical Practice of Necromancy Simply and Lucidly Explained, With Full Instructions for the Practice by Martin Coleman – I love this book
• Will Storr vs. The Supernatural: One Man’s Search for the Truth About Ghosts by Will Storr – I enjoyed this book way more than I expected to
• Predictive minds in Ouija board sessions
• 10 Chilling Crimes Involving Ouija Boards
• Ouija – Last Podcast on the Left
• The Ouija Board and Real Cases of Mass Illness
• 666, Sex and the New Aeon of Horus by Richard T. Cole
• Ouija Board Magick – Archangels Edition: Communicate And Harness The Power Of The Great Archangels by Baal Kadmon
• How a Ouija board sprung two British officers from a WWI Ottoman prison camp – Love this for them
• Carnivalia – Talking Boards – Some of these are astonishing
• Spiritualism & Spirit Mediumship with Jack Hunter