Save 20% on eerie tales

OUIJA BOARD

Why the Ouija board was present at Bohlandor… but not mentioned in the book – The Bohlandor Haunting: Three Spirits and a Demon.

I. T. Thompson

9/3/20267 min read

January 21, 2022 – Extracts from Chapter 22 - Touched by the Entity.

‘David saved the final session for the kitchen. Spirit communication was once again on the agenda. All the basement equipment had been gathered together and placed back into the heavy-duty case on the kitchen counter’.

‘His heart hammered violently against his ribs as he struggled to steady his breathing. The overwhelming surge of fear had triggered something deep within him. For the first time since the investigations had begun, David felt as though the haunting had reached inside him rather than merely surrounding him. The sensation was impossible to shake’.

‘An uneasy tightness remained across his chest, while every creak of the house now seemed amplified. His senses had become painfully alert, searching every shadow and every silence for the next unseen movement’.

‘It was an emotional response he had never experienced before’.

‘The heightened vigilance, the sudden rushes of anxiety, and the instinctive expectation that something unseen was always nearby would quietly follow him into future investigations’.

‘It was an invisible warning… one that had penetrated deep and would cling to him far longer than the cold itself’.

The Ouija board has a history far stranger than the sinister reputation it carries today. Its roots reach back to the nineteenth-century Spiritualist movement, when communicating with the dead had become a popular fascination in America. Before the Ouija name existed, various forms of “talking boards” were already being used to obtain messages by moving a pointer across letters. In 1890, Charles Kennard and his associates began manufacturing the board that would become known as the Ouija in Baltimore, with Elijah Bond among those involved. The following year, the Kennard Novelty Company registered the Ouija trademark, with the Patent Office classifying it as a game or toy. – Research Guides. June 12, 2025.

And that is perhaps the strangest part of its history.

It was not born as some forbidden occult artefact hidden away in the darkness. It was manufactured and sold. Advertisements presented it as an intriguing and mysterious talking board, promising answers about the past, present and future. The company successfully turned the fascination with Spiritualism into a commercial product, and the board spread rapidly. By the early 1890s, Ouija production had expanded beyond its original Baltimore operation, while competing talking boards appeared on the market. – Smithsonian Magazine. October 27, 2013.

For decades, the Ouija existed somewhere between entertainment, spiritual practice and curiosity. People gathered around tables, placed their fingers lightly upon the planchette and watched it glide from letter to letter. Some believed they were communicating with deceased relatives; others regarded it as a harmless game. The board's appeal was its ambiguity. Something appeared to be answering them… but what? Even the original marketing benefited from leaving that question unanswered. – Smithsonian Magazine. October 27, 2013.

Then something changed.

As popular culture began to embrace darker interpretations of the supernatural, the Ouija gradually stopped looking like an innocent parlour curiosity and started looking like a doorway. Stories of hostile spirits, possession and evil entities transformed its image. Film and television pushed that idea even further, repeatedly presenting the board as an instrument capable of inviting something malevolent into the home. The same object that had once sat among toys and novelty games could now be portrayed as a mechanism for opening a door that should never have been opened. – Smithsonian Magazine. October 27, 2013.

The planchette is essentially the Ouija board's pointer. Without it, the alphabet and numbers are simply printed symbols; the planchette provides the moving element that indicates letters, numbers, “YES,” “NO,” and ultimately spells out a message. Early talking boards used pointer devices before the Ouija became commercially established, and Elijah Bond's 1891 patent describes a movable device used to indicate letters on the board. – US446054A Elija J - Google Patents. February 10, 1891.

The classic planchette is heart-shaped or teardrop-shaped, usually with a small opening or viewing window near its centre. The players place their fingertips lightly on it, and as it moves across the board, the window identifies the selected characters. Historically, some planchettes were made from wood and fitted with small casters or wheels, allowing them to glide across the board. Modern versions are commonly plastic with felt feet, which reduces friction and makes movement easier. - Smithsonian Magazine. October 27, 2013.

There have also been some fascinating variations. Older planchettes could be relatively substantial wooden objects, while later commercial versions were manufactured from pressed wood, cardboard-based materials, plastic and other moulded materials. The Strong National Museum of Play notes that early Ouija boards were wooden, with later boards also being produced on cardboard; modern boards can use plastic as well. – The Strong National Museum of Play. October 20,2023.

What's particularly interesting for the sealed-iron-filings Ouija experiment at Bohlandor is that planchettes don't have to be purely decorative. You could theoretically construct one from wood, acrylic, plastic, or another non-magnetic material, keeping the planchette itself completely separate from the iron filings beneath the glass. That would allow you to distinguish between movement of the planchette and movement occurring independently inside the sealed board.

There is even an intriguing historical connection with electromagnetism. The Strong Museum has an approximately 1880 “Insulated Planchette” described as gathering the “magnetism or electricity” generated by the fingers placed upon it. That doesn't demonstrate that paranormal energy exists, but it shows that ideas about electrical or magnetic energy were already being associated with these devices long before the modern paranormal interpretation became dominant. – The Strong National Museum of Play. October 20,2023.

And perhaps that is why the Ouija board remains so disturbing.

It is only a board.

Letters. Numbers. A planchette…

Yet place one on a table, dim the lights, put your fingers upon it and ask a question into the darkness, and suddenly those harmless letters seem to become something else entirely.

A means of communication.

A doorway.

Or perhaps merely a mirror reflecting what we fear is waiting on the other side.

It had to be clean… Unused… Empty.

And it was… Because I had made my own using nothing more than paper, glass… and iron.

That’s right… Iron. The idea was simple enough to explain, but what might happen inside those sealed boards was anything but simple.

Buried between the layers of glass were iron filings, permanently sealed inside. I had fabricated two boards, one containing incredibly fine, almost powder-like filings, the other filled with larger, heavier iron shavings.

Two boards.

Two different textures.

One question.

Could something unseen move them?

I wasn't expecting a miracle at Bohlandor. Science gave me no reason to believe that a spirit could generate a magnetic force strong enough to manipulate iron. As far as established physics was concerned, iron filings respond to magnetic fields, not to spirits, intentions or paranormal energy.

But that was precisely why I wanted to try.

Because if the filings moved, there should be a reason.

A magnetic field.

An electromagnetic disturbance.

Something measurable.

Something physical.

The filings would have to overcome friction, gravity and the resistance created as thousands of tiny pieces of iron pushed against one another.

However, the important distinction is this:

· Electromagnetic energy can move iron filings… absolutely. A sufficiently strong magnet or electromagnet will make them align or move.

· A human body or alleged spirit energy producing enough EM field to move them, there is currently no scientifically established evidence that this occurs.

· A spirit moving them without a conventional magnetic source would therefore be an extraordinary claim requiring carefully controlled testing.

If you remember from the first book, ‘Three Spirits and a Demon’, the house was overwhelmed with remote electromagnetic energy along with surges of static energy.

From equipment, wood, doorknobs, table surfaces… So…

If the iron filings moved without any conventional source capable of doing it… then I would have a problem.

I introduced the two sealed boards into Bohlandor.

Yet they were placed inside the tough case, under a foam divider, and were not directly exposed to the house.

There they waited.

I wanted to see whether Bohlandor could do something that physics said it shouldn't.

I wanted to know whether anything inside that house could reach through the glass… and move the iron.

Once removed from the case, this was actually going to make a fascinating controlled experiment. However, if the filings appeared to form letters or a name while the boards remained sealed, I would want to rule out conventional causes before attributing it to spirit activity.

For example:

· Seal the board permanently so nobody can access the filings.

· Photograph/video the filings before and after every session.

· Keep magnets, phones, speakers, watches and electronic equipment at a controlled distance.

· Record the ambient magnetic field/EMF continuously with calibrated equipment.

· Perform a control session with nobody attempting communication.

· Have someone who doesn't know the intended word determine whether the resulting pattern resembles letters.

· Repeat the experiment multiple times.

· Ideally, have an independent observer document the procedure. (Not available).

One particularly important test would be to place a magnetometer beside the board while the filings supposedly move. If the filings rearrange themselves and there is no corresponding magnetic-field change, that would make the observation considerably more interesting, although it still wouldn't by itself establish that a spirit caused it. But I did not have such a device at hand.

And there's an important physical point: EMF meters such as a K2 aren't sufficient to demonstrate this. A K2 detects relatively broad changes in electromagnetic fields, but it doesn't establish that a field is capable of physically moving individual iron filings. A proper magnetometer/gaussmeter would be much more useful.

So… “Could electromagnetic energy theoretically move the filings?” — Yes.

But… “Has science demonstrated that spirits can generate sufficient electromagnetic energy to move sealed iron filings?” — No.

If one of the sealed boards really produced a recognisable word without an identifiable magnetic source, that would have been a very intriguing experimental observation, and the strongest approach would have been to document it as an unexplained phenomenon rather than immediately calling it proof of spirit energy.

But the two boards never left the tough case, they both remained under the foam divider.

So why were they never used?

And why was the mention of them removed from The Bohlandor Haunting book…

Because between the two Ouija boards… One had been manipulated whilst hidden within the case.

Only when I lifted the foam did I see…

But what was written?

…That… I will never tell… But what I will say is this… “I will take the answer with me to the grave."

I closed the tough case with only two words… “What If!”

Needless to say, the experience, albeit removed from the book, launched the second book in the series… ‘The Bohlandor Haunting II: The Rise of Qualja’.