How did ouija board become so overrated? Ouija is not overrated just because the board's power isn't real. We know it's powered by the psychological ideomotor effect. A type of subconscious movement that guides the responses. However it doesn't explain why the board has existed a part of our lives and why ouija and ouija rip offs are what you see over and over again in T.V and movies. Really bad movies. But the real shock is that the piece of cardboard has a story that spans two centuries and it actually says something about our history and our culture. ‘There is no Death, what seems so is transition’. This life of mortal breath is but a suburb of the life of Elysian whose portal we call death that's from Longfellow the same legendary poet who wrote about the midnight ride of Paul Revere. In the 1800s, spiritualism and Americanism were intertwined in weird ways. Though what we call spiritualism started in the early to mid 1800s in Europe- seances, ghost stuff, etc. It really picked up on the US in the 1850s and 1860s. The civil war caused around a million casualties. But more broadly death was a constant. In 1857 hundreds of spiritualism newspapers like Banner of light. It even had a column filled with messages that claimed to be from the spirit world beyond. The spiritual fixation endured. The Long fellow poem was the epigraph to a hit book in 1891- the bestselling “there is no death”. Where does the Ouija come in? For that you have to go to the patent office.

A patent from 1891 has a direct ancestor to the Ouija Board. Fittingly the game has a murky origin. But Americans Elijah Bind and Charles Kennard were behind that version. It had all of the ingredients on the board with the yes and no and a planchette- that's the name for the pointy things that picks your letter. There were theories about the name- Some say It was for the novelist Ouida. Others claimed the board itself spelled its own names. But the most likely explanation is that it was Egyptian- sounding, since that's how it was marketed and explained on that first patent. The next year, Entrepreneur William Fuld Patented his own talking board. However Ouija was the brand that took off so Fuld and company bought it. The spirits pointed to profit. He fended off tons of competitors including his own family members and built a name he had legal backings. The spirit world finally had what had eluded it in life: a solid brand identity. When the Washington times did a puff article on mental trouble in DC, they didn't mention they didn't mention boards, but they did mention about “Ouija” When Pearl Curran Claimed to have written novels by channeling her ouija board. She wrote the name that she allegedly contacted Patience worth she used Ouija. This brand kept Ouija Going through the 20th Century, Along with Fulds legal maintenance.

The spirit world went corporate, further merging into pop culture and the occult. Today, Ouija is a little horror, a little kitsch, and a little fun. There have been corporate shifts, but the board is a staple, which is a very impressive journey for a simple image and a piece of plastic. That journey was powered by the beliefs of people like Longfellow and the mysterious forced United states patent systems. And we are being spoken to, in a way, by people from the past. Not through the messages from the spirit realm, but through the history of a decorated piece of cardboard. Ouija might be overrated, and it's probably not real.

The Beliefs from the Ouija Board has evolved over time and It is honestly now a cult classic in the horror franchise as we speak, Often used by spiritual entities to contact unwanted spirits. In conclusion the Ouija Board had changed universally who knows if they are real, maybe they are or maybe they aren't.