Interviews with Ouija

1920

By FREDERIC J. HASKIN,
Director Janesville Daily Gazette Information Bureau, Washington, D.C.

Washington, Feb. 20.—"Why don't you interview ouija?" asked a friend the other day.

We thought it over. Our relations with "weegee" have always been rather distant. We have met at parties and at the home of ouija janes. But always we have passed the time of day in a few trifling queries, and let it go at that. Certainly, we never expected to start interviewing spirit celebrities so long as the earthly supply held out.

Still, we reflected, there were advantages to this kind of interview. Ouija, once cornered, could not plead a previous engagement or a conference, and judging by his reputation he would have a lot to say.

So we decided to borrow a staid, serious minded old ouija and ask him about the Sims-Daniels scrap, and who ought to be the next president, and if there were any messages from cousin Lon, who is either dead or in Chicago. We knew the board to borrow. It belongs to an elderly woman who goes in for higher thought and concentration, and undoubtedly her ouija has never been asked a silly question in its life.

Borrowed Board and Book

The old woman promptly offered to get the board, and also a book on how to set the best results with ouija. We hauled ouija home, corralled a friend to act as accomplice, and with the setting arranged, settled down for the interview.

First we read the book carefully. We found out that "the solar plexus -- that never sleeping brain of the individual -- is the witch board or receiving station for the messages." We also discovered that "the great secret why some individuals can successfully use the board and some cannot is "that the successful person must have, so to speak, a diseasedly sensitive solar plexus." That worried us, as our solar plexus has always been pretty healthy, and was feared the message germs might not have any effect. For a while we held on to the hope that maybe the writer was mistaken about the solar plexus being the brain of the soul, but further on we found that ouija himself had told her, "The solar plexus is the spiritual brain." With his inside information and a warning that to get best results you must think high thoughts we invited "little weegee" to the interview.

For the property of a higher thought sort of person this ouija board certainly had a remarkable line of talk and interesting opinions. It told us that there would be a big message for us.

Aunt Harriet Is Happy

After a rest it condescended to tell us that Aunt Harriet, who died some years ago, "is happy, but when we asked for Dumas to come and tell us who was the man in the iron mask, it wouldn't write anything except, "They don't answer."

When we returned the board we commented on the rather flippant attitude that it seemed to have. "Well," said the old woman, "I never tried the board myself. It's the maid's board."

Having talked to "little weegee" we decided to find out something about his life history. The messenger at the patent office was frankly amused at our mission.

"Weejah?" he repeated with a huge grin. "Yessuh. Try de toy division, suh."

The toy division was also moved to laughter over the password, but soon recovered sufficiently for a pleasant young patent examiner to get a collection of the patents.

"There are now 30 or 40 patents along this line," he explained. "Some are ouija board type, worked by a moving index, and others are planchettes and have a pencil to write the message."

"The first ouija board, called 'little wonder,' was patented in 186S. Since then, the idea has been adapted and the board improved by numerous inventors, mostly toy makers. The ouija board and similar inventions can be patented in the United States only as a toy. The patent office does not inquire into any mystic properties, and it does not permit inventors to claim or describe such properties in their patent papers."

It's Different in England

In England inventors often go into detail to explain the supernatural power of such devices. Thus, one British patentee inserts the following on his patent:

"If the person or persons are of temperament suitable for the reception of spiritualistic or telepathic messages, sentences may be spent out obtained from such sources and possibly conveying information unknown to the operator; the largest number of messages are automatic, i.e., communications from the subliminal consciousness finding expression through muscular workings controlled in a method hitherto only imperfectly understood."

"What does ouija mean, anyway?" we asked the patent office, for we have heard all sorts of cabalistic meanings attached to the queer syllables. "Well," said an obliging clerk, "the name is trademarked just as a word, but we understand that it means 'yes, yes,' being derived from oui, which is French for yes, and ja, which is German."

This seems plausible, if we discount ouija's own statements that its name signifies "The Master Hand," or "The Unknown," or that it is Hawaiian for "Truth." If ouija had not told so many people such different names for itself it might be easier to believe that the name savors of the occult. As it is, we fear that some prosaic toymaker, French perhaps, or German, accidentally put these two syllables together and found the effect pleasing, so that he named the board which answered yes and no, ouija, a union of languages not offensive.

Inventor Doesn't Understand

The ouija board most used in the United States was patented by William Fuld, a Baltimore toy manufacturer. Mr. Fuld invented his board simply as a game of the puzzle or mystic variety. He is careful to say that he does not claim any remarkable powers for his invention, but on the other hand, he tells the public that he does not himself know exactly what makes the little table move in so uncanny a manner.

This Solomon-like verdict is the only safe one for the inventor, for to deny outspokenly that his little board held any kinship with spirits would greatly injure the trade in his best seller, while if he claimed mysterious powers in league with the bits of wood, then he might be held responsible for some of little ouija's playful jokes.

Take the recent case of the woman who was unable to account for the disappearance of a sum of money. Ouija told her that a certain neighbor had taken it, and this startling advice was accepted as a clue from heaven. The neighbor was dramatically accused of theft, and the case went to court, one woman claiming a charge of theft, and the other after a libel suit. In such an instance the inventor of ouija is safe from attack as the cause of it all, as he never claimed that his invention was infallible.

Comedy and Farce

Most of ouija's history has been comedy, so far, and a good deal has been farce, but in a few cases an unaccountable force is said to have guided the board. The outstanding example of this is the well known story of Patience Worth who sent messages to a St. Louis woman through a ouija board. The mystery of Patience was that she talked in the language of seventeenth century England, using words and figures of speech which the medium could not possibly know, but which were almost always found in dictionaries of archaic English. Patience is still a mystery -- a seventeenth century English spinster who came to St. Louis to give her poems to the twentieth century, and for social chats with the medium and her friends, all through the ouija board.

We had talked to the ouija board, and delved into its history, and there was one more thing we wanted to know about that ouija -- how does it work, anyway? We called up the bureau of standards, the government scientific laboratory. The chief clerk answered, after his secretary had gurgled our message to him between fits of giggles, easily heard over the phone. The chief clerk was amused too, but the third commandment of the government is to give a serious answer to inquiries.

"Of course," he said, "we have never made a study of this matter. Unofficially, I should say that there is a tendency for the eye to guide the table toward some letter. The influence of the eye is shown in that is almost impossible to get any results blindfolded.

"Yes," he continued, "it is probably the working of the sub-conscious mind."

Still, we wonder. Thousands of people play with the board every night when the supper table is cleared off, and weegee tells them what day Jim will come home, and who is playing at the Main street picture show. Sometimes weegee hits the answer, sometimes he fails. It is a game. But out of these thousands of ouija fans comes one who calls up a Patience Worth, to upset the common sense theories and keep us wondering.

--Janesville Daily Gazette, Janesville, Wisconsin, February 26, 1920, page 4.