OUIJA!
How this American Anomaly Became More than Just Fun and Games
(This article was among my first forays into chronicling occult history. Originally published in 2006 in the arts journal Esopus, OUIJA! has been widely reprinted, though in adapted forms, and appears here in its unexpurgated creepiness. — MH)
Ouija. For some the rectangular board evokes memories of late-night sleepover parties, shrieks of laughter, and toy shelves brimming with Magic Eight Balls, Frisbees, and Barbie dolls.
For others, Ouija boards — known more generally as talking boards or spirit boards — have darker associations. Stories abound of fearsome entities making threats, dire predictions, and even physical assaults on innocent users after a night of Ouija experimentation.
And the fantastic claims don’t stop there: Pulitzer Prize-winning poet James Merrill vowed until his death in 1995 that his most celebrated work was written with the use of a homemade Ouija board.
For my part, I first discovered the mysterious workings of Ouija nearly twenty years ago during a typically freezing-cold winter on eastern Long Island. While heaters clanked and hummed within the institutional-white walls of my college dormitory, friends allayed boredom with a Parker Brothers Ouija board.
