The Ouija board, which we can find in plastic or much more traditional, in wood, is an essential element for all those who want to be able to contact the afterlife. But do we know how to use it exactly? Or who was its creator? Attentive because we tell you everything about the Ouija: what it is, who invented it and curious facts Ouija: what it is, who invented it and curious facts The Ouija table is made up of all the letters of the Latin alphabet, numbers from 1 to 9 plus the 0, as well as the words ‘yes’, ‘no’ and ‘goodbye’. The board is usually accompanied by another small piece of wood that is often referred to as a “drop”, which will allow communication with the spirits. An inverted glass or a pointed object can also replace the drop. From what has been explained, we have all seen a Ouija board at friends’ gatherings, or we know what it is due to the movies, but what is its origin? There is the belief that it is something very old, but the truth is that it is not like that at all … The Ouija board and spiritism It was with the rise of spiritism and the practice of this in the nineteenth century, when many objects of communication with the afterlife, without the need to go through a medium. Trays engraved with letters and numbers were reportedly found in houses where spiritism was practiced in the United States in the mid-1880s.The ancestor of the Ouija board undoubtedly appeared around the same time, although not We know who really invented it, but it was on February 10, 1891, when two American businessmen filed the patent for creation. Elijah Bond and Charles Kennard thus became the two official creators of the Ouija board.However, the name “Ouija” corresponds to the businessman Charles Kennard, who would have claimed that it meant “good fortune” in ancient Egyptian, which today has been denied, but without knowing exactly how the word was inspired by seeing the board . One year after the filing of the patent to make this type of board, the company went bankrupt. But two former employees saw the potential of the object, took over the business and began to launch a large-scale production of the Ouija board, recovering the exploitation rights.The Ouija board and the mediums It was the brothers William and Isaac Fuld who industrialized the board. Ouija, making it happen to the field of board games, and with it, ending with a certain discredit in the eyes of the public. It was not until 1912 that a medium used it during one of his sessions, which gradually launched the practice until it exploded in the 1920s. William Fuld took the opportunity to make people believe that he was the only inventor, without hesitation to take legal action against any company attempting to produce a similar item. He died in 1927, and his descendants continued to produce boards until the 1966 purchase of the company by game publisher Parker Brothers. Today, the patent for the Ouija board is officially held by the Hasbro gaming company. As an anecdote we can mention that Elijah Bond has, since 2007, a grave whose stone is engraved with a Ouija board, thanks to a collector who spent fifteen years searching for the creator’s grave. Despite all its history, the board is today one of the main tools used in attempts to communicate with the afterlife.Followers of spiritism see it as a way of speaking to the spirits of deceased people.The “danger” of the Ouija according to the churchFor most religious representatives, especially Christians, the use of the Ouija board is strongly discouraged, since, according to them, it could attract demons instead of the sought after spirits. In the 1910s, Pope Pius X even warned his followers of the imminent danger posed by such an object.The opinion of scienceFor scientists and the most skeptical, the Ouija board does not allow to communicate with spirits. But they explain the success of certain sessions by the ideomotor effect, that is, unconscious micro-movements that allow us to move the cursor without our conscious awareness. To test this theory, some experiments have been done. And it turns out that if the participants are blindfolded, the words obtained no longer have any meaning, or even do not write.