The Dark History Of The Ouija Board You Probably Didn’t Know About
I’m sure many of you have heard about a haunted game called the Ouija Board. Some of you might have even used one at a sleepover or hangout session with your friends back in middle school or high school. Some of you may have simply heard of them through the horror movies based on this supernatural game. But did you know that there’s a dark and sinister history attached to the Ouija Board?
It wasn’t always so dark and evil. Originally, the Ouija Board was simply made for people to practice spiritualism and to even predict the future. Think of it as a crystal ball or the Magic Mirror in the Disney movie “Snow White.” When the board was created in the 1890s, people weren’t scared of using the board. In fact, they were extremely intrigued by it.
It became part of historic civilizations all around the globe for many years. Back during Victorian times, there was a movement called “Spiritualism.” Spiritualism is when people believe heavily that the spirits of the dead are existing around them, and there are ways to contact those spirits and speak to them. One of the ways to do this was to simply use the Ouija Board. One time a Ouija Board was even used in Rome to try and predict who the next King would be.
The assumption that this board was a simply benign way to talk to the dead or make predictions came to a screeching halt in 1973 due to the movie based on a true story about Roland Doe, The Exorcist. Roland Doe had a very long and very terrifying exorcism back in the 1940s. In the movie, it was stated that Roland Doe had used the Ouija Board, thus letting evil and sinister entities into his home and into his very own body. However, there’s no confirmation of whether or not the Ouija Board was actually used by Roland Doe, therefore we can’t be exactly sure how his possession came to be. It’s possible that the Ouija Board was used in the movie just for dramatic effect.
Nonetheless, ever since that movie was released, people started becoming very fearful of the Ouija Board and associated the board with demons and Satan. More and more books and movies flooded the world, warning people of the potential dangers that come with using a Ouija Board. Eventually, spiritualism went from contacting the spirits of loved ones to being associated with contacting the devil—therefore forever being seen as evil.