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Ouija Board - Spiritual Communication · HOLOSKY PODCAST

0:16
[UNKNOWN]: You
1:10
[SPEAKER_02]: Welcome back to the Holis guy podcast.
1:11
[SPEAKER_02]: We're your host.
1:12
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm Stephen and Kyle and if you're here You know what that means it's monday holocole Which is an us hang out with you to get you through the work week with a little bit of weirdness a bit of strangeness
1:26
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1:29
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1:34
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1:35
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1:41
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4:10
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5:03
[SPEAKER_02]: All right, just like that, we are back.
5:08
[SPEAKER_02]: So today, we're the show.
5:13
[SPEAKER_02]: I've kind of dove into something that I'm interested in, but hadn't really, I guess, looked into a whole lot.
5:24
[SPEAKER_02]: And I've kind of been on this route of like, spirit communication.
5:30
[SPEAKER_02]: The whole concept of that is really interesting to me, whether it be like talking to dead loved ones or talking to other entities in other rooms, like the whole concept of that has just been really playing on my brain a lot lately.
5:49
[SPEAKER_02]: And I've been kind of looking into YouTube and podcast and stuff,
5:54
[SPEAKER_02]: The new Kirk's over a haunted objects are releasing a four part series about like electronic communication the spirits and in true new Kirk facts fashion like they put in the research the production quality is great I suggest go over there and check it out it is it is meant they know what they're doing over there it is good.
6:18
[SPEAKER_02]: But on that note, I'm not going to go down the electric voice phenomenon or any of that.
6:22
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm going to go kind of back to the beginning, talk about some Ouija boards.
6:28
[SPEAKER_02]: I've got it start, get some interesting little tidbits, some cases.
6:32
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm going to make a multi-parter out of this.
6:34
[SPEAKER_02]: Today we're just going to kind of do some light fun stuff.
6:39
[SPEAKER_02]: Next week, it's going to get into some not-so-light fun stuff and then we're just going to go off the rails after that.
6:44
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes.
6:45
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
6:45
[SPEAKER_01]: That's where I love to be as way off the rails.
6:48
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
6:49
[SPEAKER_02]: That's what we kind of do.
6:52
[SPEAKER_02]: So in the 1800s, advertisements for a new paranormal product started appearing in the papers, quote,
7:03
[SPEAKER_02]: boomed a Pittsburgh toy and novelty shop describing magical device that answered questions quote concerning the past present and future with marvelous accuracy and provided a link which unites the known with the unknown the material with the immaterial.
7:21
[SPEAKER_02]: So that's that's pretty good pretty good advertisements and the 1800s.
7:24
[SPEAKER_02]: It's going to catch you.
7:25
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a long time ago.
7:27
[SPEAKER_01]: I didn't realize that it was that long ago.
7:29
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
7:30
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
7:31
[SPEAKER_02]: Another advertisement in a New York newspaper declared it, quote, interesting and mysterious and testified that it had been, quote, proven at a patent office before patent was allowed price $1.50.
7:44
[SPEAKER_01]: I wonder what prompted this individual to create a Ouija board?
7:50
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, only that you ask because the concept of like,
7:58
[SPEAKER_02]: I guess spirit contacting and spirit writing, which is kind of what Luigi board is, you know, is not it's old old.
8:07
[SPEAKER_02]: I didn't I didn't realize that it went so far back.
8:10
[SPEAKER_01]: I figured I figured it did go far back.
8:13
[SPEAKER_01]: That's why I was kind of curious as to where this particular person drew the idea from or, you know,
8:21
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, I think it came to a point to make spirit communication marketable, but it's such a weird niche to try to punch into the same time you would almost feel like it's taboo.
8:39
[SPEAKER_02]: Interestingly enough, it only kind of became only kind of started grabbing like real public negative context recently, like really, fairly recently.
8:49
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I kind of get into that later on.
8:51
[SPEAKER_01]: That's interesting.
8:52
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
8:53
[SPEAKER_02]: So some of the ancient cultures that that kind of delved into
9:07
[SPEAKER_02]: form of planchette, writing called Fuji.
9:10
[SPEAKER_02]: And it's from the Liu Song Dynasty, which ran from 420 to 479 AD, probably older, but they're just kind of ballparking it there.
9:22
[SPEAKER_01]: That's old as fuck.
9:23
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, that's a long time ago.
9:25
[SPEAKER_01]: Could you imagine being like an archaeologist and digging up a fucking hyper ancient Ouija board?
9:31
[SPEAKER_02]: And this, this isn't exactly a Ouija board, but the way that they did it, the equivalent of, yeah, they suspended a stylist or a stick held by two people, so two people were holding like a rope with a suspended stick and it was over either sand or ashes and as they held it there, it began to move and it would write things in the sand.
9:53
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, that's cool.
9:55
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, they would take that as like messages from deities or from spirits or ancients, and which is, it's just like, I mean, it is, it's like using a plant shed.
10:08
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, exactly.
10:09
[SPEAKER_01]: Multiple people on it in the same time, almost like dausing rods.
10:14
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, and they believed it was a way to receive like messages or divine guidance from from spirits and deities.
10:23
[SPEAKER_02]: There was also something similar in ancient Greece and Rome where they used or cools and prophetic writings, which that's that's all 800 to 400 A hundred BCE to 400 CE.
10:34
[SPEAKER_02]: not necessarily like automatic writing in a sense, but these, these oracles would enter like trans states and they would, they would receive messages from, from deities that they would later on write out like they would be told what to write.
10:50
[SPEAKER_02]: So it was kind of like using the person as the medium to, to get the information out there.
10:57
[SPEAKER_02]: In the middle, at east, you had the gin and possession writings through Islamic traditions, which started around the seventh century, writings claimed to be through possessed people that were possessed by the gin.
11:09
[SPEAKER_02]: Some Sufi mystics in his Islamic cultist received writings believed to be divinely or supernaturally inspired.
11:18
[SPEAKER_02]: have something similar in India where ancient Sears claim to hear received divine knowledge called Sruti, Paulajava pronounced that wrong, and they would write down similar messages received through deities.
11:36
[SPEAKER_02]: You get into medieval Europe where you have saints and mystics
11:44
[SPEAKER_01]: and from from other saints, and it kind of goes on from there in and around about way, almost every religion slash civilization has had a form of spirit communication at one point or another.
12:02
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah pretty much pretty much.
12:04
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm really at this point, I am really really interested in trying to figure out when and why it
12:14
[SPEAKER_01]: Because that is that has been a topic that I think forever fascinates me because you have in modern day religion that it is extreme taboo so much so that it's considered a sin and you're not supposed to dabble at all with it and I've always wondered the logic behind that.
12:40
[SPEAKER_02]: Yep, I think it kind of plays out from the Catholic church and their views on like spiritualism and how you're not supposed to like go to any other sources essentially, but like aside from God, but it's it's weird because like in medieval Europe, you literally had like Saints receiving, I guess receiving messages from God, but that
13:03
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know, it gets real weird gray area there, and that's what is so interesting to me is that it is kind of this gray area and I'm just, I'm just really interested in in that topic because I know, like, and I don't, I don't believe that it's fair.
13:21
[SPEAKER_01]: Like if I were to sit and have a conversation with somebody about it, that is on the far religious side, which I'm 100% fine with.
13:30
[SPEAKER_01]: Uh, if I were to have a conversation with someone like that, I would, I would want to make it very clear.
13:36
[SPEAKER_01]: You do not get to use.
13:39
[SPEAKER_01]: Because God said so.
13:41
[SPEAKER_01]: You can't that that that that that equates to nothing to me.
13:46
[SPEAKER_01]: You have to have definitive reasons as to why.
13:49
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and that's going to feel like it's going to stop a lot of people in their their defense most people I believe so I do think that there are people out there who are well read enough that would be able to continue the conversation because the whole point of that conversation is
14:19
[SPEAKER_02]: father Dan Rihill and he goes on there and he he puts puts forward a pretty good case is to why they think you shouldn't mess around specifically with Ouija boards and like, oh, it's like ex or anything.
14:36
[SPEAKER_02]: And I'll get into that in tomorrow's episode.
14:38
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay, go down the realm of the not so good Ouija experiences.
14:45
[SPEAKER_02]: I suggest definitely go listen to
14:50
[SPEAKER_02]: Sean Ryan, I know he was on Sean Ryan.
14:51
[SPEAKER_02]: I think he was on blurry creatures too.
14:53
[SPEAKER_01]: I have to check that out.
14:54
[SPEAKER_01]: Look at also real quick.
14:56
[SPEAKER_01]: Another question I would be interested in is, you stated that saints and we've all heard that.
15:04
[SPEAKER_01]: We're saints have had communications with God, so on and so forth.
15:09
[SPEAKER_01]: So my question would be, if you compared that to conversations through a Ouija board,
15:16
[SPEAKER_01]: Because my initial thought here is, well, who's just say that every communication through a Weegeboard has to be negative, right?
15:24
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, the same could be said with saints, acquiring information from God.
15:32
[SPEAKER_01]: How did they know?
15:34
[SPEAKER_01]: specifically that this is a positive entity and not a negative entity.
15:38
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, we're like, is this something I would be interested in hearing from something like the only logically the only thing that is going to weigh in on that topic is either somebody who's had that happened to them or they've communicated with God.
15:57
[SPEAKER_02]: or someone who has is highly researched in those topics with firsthand accounts from these saints, which is like listening to Dan Reheal talk about it, he, he, it is in a very religious context, but he does make some interesting points.
16:19
[SPEAKER_01]: I'll have to, I'll have to definitely if you go down that route.
16:23
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I'll definitely have to listen to that because I, I am, it's always been a topic that's extremely curious to me.
16:31
[SPEAKER_02]: It delves into like, like, obviously it goes, it goes quickly in angels and demons, right?
16:38
[SPEAKER_02]: Of course.
16:38
[SPEAKER_02]: So he, as he's sitting there talking to Sean, he's like, there are at least three guardian angels in this room.
16:45
[SPEAKER_02]: And there's just as many demons in this room.
16:47
[SPEAKER_02]: And he's like that you have to understand that they're around you all the time.
16:51
[SPEAKER_02]: And they're constantly
16:53
[SPEAKER_02]: absorbing and picking up everything that you're saying.
16:57
[SPEAKER_02]: Everything that happens in your life, both of these entities are consuming.
17:03
[SPEAKER_02]: He's like, so when you go to a psychic or you use a Ouija board, and they tell you that your grandmother is communicating with you.
17:12
[SPEAKER_02]: Your grandmother wants to talk to you.
17:14
[SPEAKER_02]: He said, your grandmother doesn't want to talk to you.
17:17
[SPEAKER_02]: If she's in heaven, she's happy.
17:19
[SPEAKER_02]: She's there.
17:20
[SPEAKER_02]: She's going to stay there.
17:21
[SPEAKER_02]: She's not going to try to reach out to you.
17:23
[SPEAKER_02]: She doesn't, he says it doesn't matter like, it doesn't negate how much she loved you, but she is at the place where she is always wanted to be.
17:32
[SPEAKER_02]: And then he said, if she's in purgatory, she can't contact you.
17:35
[SPEAKER_02]: She's in purgatory, you need to pray for her.
17:38
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, and this is from a Catholic context, of course, because he's a Catholic priest.
17:43
[SPEAKER_02]: Right.
17:43
[SPEAKER_02]: And he's like the other option is she's in hell.
17:46
[SPEAKER_02]: And she's never getting out of there.
17:47
[SPEAKER_02]: She can't contact you from that.
17:49
[SPEAKER_02]: He's like, so, well, who you're communicating with is not who you think you're communicating with.
17:55
[SPEAKER_02]: He says you're communicating with a demon that's posing as your grandmother who has taken in all this information, all this knowledge that you think he wouldn't know.
18:04
[SPEAKER_02]: But in your lifetime, it is absorbed while just kind of being in the periphery of your existence.
18:11
[SPEAKER_01]: But don't you feel like that's also kind of arrogant to say, considering the fact that he's stated.
18:17
[SPEAKER_01]: there are three angels and three demons in the room.
18:21
[SPEAKER_01]: Therefore, by statistics alone, you have a 50 shot of communicating with negative or positive.
18:28
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, yeah, I mean, you know what I mean?
18:34
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, yeah, you have to prove to me that this is, you would have to come up the way to figure out which one you're talking to at the point.
18:45
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know.
18:45
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know.
18:46
[SPEAKER_01]: It's so because it's a weird line of thinking.
18:48
[SPEAKER_02]: It's it's like it's like assuming that every car is a bad car because Sean Sean does Sean you have to give Sean credit because he's he's pretty open minded about it, but he's like so so essentially saying that the psychics are are demonic tool guys like yeah.
19:07
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I see I don't believe that I don't believe that every mystic.
19:13
[SPEAKER_01]: capability is always negative.
19:16
[SPEAKER_01]: I just don't buy that and that's why I would be curious to have conversations.
19:22
[SPEAKER_01]: It would be really interesting to get somebody on the show that is very well versed, like annoyingly so well versed in these topics.
19:31
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, for us to roll these questions at them and really dig into the topic.
19:37
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
19:38
[SPEAKER_01]: And you kind of see where the fallout lands.
19:40
[SPEAKER_01]: I think it would be really really interesting.
19:42
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, and you have to you have to take what he's saying with the grain of salt because he does have and For lack of a bit of terminology of to push because he is a Catholic priest and he has to go by by that, you know, so it's isn't he also have to give people grace because we all operate.
20:00
[SPEAKER_01]: With a selective set of lenses, you know, we all, that's, that's, we all view the world extremely different, and so we have to give each other grace in these conversations and realize that this is why, you know, we, we feel the way that we do and we, we, all that, you know, just, yeah, and there's not enough of that in these conversations.
20:20
[SPEAKER_02]: No, and it's always, it's always interesting and refreshing to get different perspectives.
20:24
[SPEAKER_01]: Absolutely.
20:25
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, which is why I think that stood out so much to me because you're getting it from like he takes he he is an exorcist this this I mean, I can't remember his name again and father reheal he is an exorcist he's been in an exorcism because that's that's kind of what the show's about okay kind of delve off on to like spiritualism and contacting spirits and stuff so definitely worth it worth checking out.
20:49
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I'm, I would really be interested in hunting some way down.
20:53
[SPEAKER_01]: That's really, really, really well versed.
20:55
[SPEAKER_01]: And very open-minded too.
20:57
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't want like a, a 24-7 lecture of why we need to follow Christ.
21:02
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, and I feel like just, just like I know he's out there to, to send a message in like, again, push an narrative.
21:09
[SPEAKER_02]: But the fact that he's even like, open to like having conversations from both sides is pretty interesting.
21:16
[SPEAKER_01]: That's awesome.
21:17
[SPEAKER_02]: All right, back to the 1800s and the Ouija board.
21:22
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm going to go off with a pity here.
21:24
[SPEAKER_02]: The Ouija, also known as the Ouija board, the spirit board, the talking board, or the witch board, is a flat board marked with letters to the alphabet, the numbers 0 through 9.
21:34
[SPEAKER_02]: The words yes, no, an occasionally hello and goodbye along with various symbols and graphics.
21:39
[SPEAKER_02]: It uses a plan chat, which is a small heart-shaped piece of water plastic, as a movable indicator
21:47
[SPEAKER_02]: participants place their fingers lightly on the plant shed, which is moved about the board to spell words.
21:53
[SPEAKER_02]: The name of weja is trademark is a trademark of Hasbro, inherited from Parker Brothers, but has often used to generically refer to any kind of modern talking board.
22:04
[SPEAKER_02]: So what kind of spark this off was the the 1800s, you know, the civil war was going on and you had hundreds of thousands of Americans dying.
22:20
[SPEAKER_02]: So you had math deaths in the Civil War, which sparked a widespread desire to want to contact dead loved ones.
22:31
[SPEAKER_02]: People really got like everybody.
22:35
[SPEAKER_02]: They were losing sons.
22:35
[SPEAKER_02]: They were losing fathers.
22:37
[SPEAKER_02]: They were losing brothers.
22:39
[SPEAKER_02]: And mediums kind of began capitalizing on that.
22:45
[SPEAKER_01]: And so it realized that that would be a thing.
22:47
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, when I read that also, it's also extremely interesting that there was this culture, like almost cultural movement where people turned to like, mysticism and like this taboo area.
23:03
[SPEAKER_01]: It's very bizarre to think that and like almost a country, like an entire country
23:13
[SPEAKER_01]: over, I guess, tragedy decides to turn to, I guess, what I would call a mysticism and up until a very weird up until a very specific point.
23:26
[SPEAKER_02]: Weachy board sales would spike based on the geopolitical activity going on, like around the Vietnam War, weachy board sales spiked.
23:38
[SPEAKER_01]: See, in that right there, Steve, that could be an argument as to why someone would say, don't use them, because
23:49
[SPEAKER_01]: tragedy facilitates opportunity.
23:53
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
23:54
[SPEAKER_01]: You know what I'm saying?
23:54
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
23:55
[SPEAKER_01]: So I could do like if you were going to run that argument at me.
23:57
[SPEAKER_01]: All right.
23:58
[SPEAKER_01]: All right.
23:58
[SPEAKER_01]: You might you might have a leg to stand on here.
24:00
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
24:01
[SPEAKER_01]: I might fuck with that.
24:02
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
24:03
[SPEAKER_01]: Because that, you know, that that creates an opportunity for you to delete itself in.
24:08
[SPEAKER_01]: I get that.
24:09
[SPEAKER_01]: All right.
24:09
[SPEAKER_01]: Cool.
24:09
[SPEAKER_01]: We're on to something here.
24:11
[SPEAKER_02]: So, uh, post the Civil War.
24:14
[SPEAKER_02]: Everybody knows someone that's died.
24:16
[SPEAKER_02]: These mediums begin marketing their services around major cities.
24:22
[SPEAKER_02]: So, um, that was kind of the first time the Civil War was kind of the first time that, like, real significant, I mean, there's other things that could be argued
24:41
[SPEAKER_02]: So there's this guy's name is Robert Merch and he's like the the leading Weegee board historian and a lot of these a lot of these statistics and quotes come from him so many families had to grapple with like losing loved ones and not only that losing loved ones and they're like bodies never being recovered they don't have any closure you know these guys went off to war and a lot of them just didn't come back so you you don't have any closure from death
25:12
[SPEAKER_02]: So they started moving to like sayances and mediums and stuff to try to contact to like get that closure, you know, try to I'm sorry that is so weird to me.
25:23
[SPEAKER_01]: Like it's not weird for like you and me, but it's just like when you think of Jen pop.
25:31
[SPEAKER_01]: And you think of a massive amount of people that just turned to like let's talk to the dead.
25:37
[SPEAKER_01]: Bro, it's so big that sucks my head up.
25:40
[SPEAKER_02]: We till you hear the numbers.
25:43
[SPEAKER_02]: What's the most popular board game in the all time?
25:47
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know monopoly monopoly.
25:49
[SPEAKER_02]: There's years when we ge boards out sold monopoly exponentially that's crazy crazy.
25:57
[SPEAKER_01]: That is crazy to me.
26:00
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and then if you like I'm going to make this episode unnecessary long because I'm so.
26:05
[SPEAKER_01]: I am so vested in it, like I think it just because it adds this element, the way that we're approaching it as like almost theology and like us trying to tap into the greater existence of mankind, and I think that's it's just super fascinating to me and I love it.
26:25
[SPEAKER_01]: It's just crazy that people turned, like just for whatever reason they turned to this taboo
26:35
[SPEAKER_01]: to communicate with the dead.
26:39
[SPEAKER_01]: It's just weird, because you would think by statistics, the majority of people, because look at how in the past how people looked at witchcraft, especially in America.
26:53
[SPEAKER_01]: We would burn and drown people for witchcraft, but for some reason, we each board almost gets a pass.
27:04
[SPEAKER_01]: You know what I mean, but I guess, yeah, it's, it's, it's fucking fascinating.
27:10
[SPEAKER_02]: There's one pivotal movement, one pivotal moment that changed everyone's perspective on the way to board.
27:17
[SPEAKER_01]: Really, I'm excited to hear it.
27:19
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
27:20
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, of course, you had like, like, people of like Christian faith and Catholic faith who who frowned on it, but up to that point, it was very much like an accepted thing.
27:34
[SPEAKER_02]: Anyway, so all this math that mass death, no closure, people started like leaning toward
27:49
[SPEAKER_02]: get answers that they couldn't get from the physical world like it gave people a peace of mind because they couldn't they couldn't get they didn't get an answer the other way your dad could go off to war and that like he walks out the door you never seem again you don't know if he's dead you don't know if he's alive you don't you don't get anything it's just just emptiness which is all which is almost worse than knowing someone has passed away you know for sure
28:12
[SPEAKER_02]: So people started reaching out to these alternate methods of communication and it just kind of spiraled from there.
28:21
[SPEAKER_02]: And then like around the 19th century and the 1800s, you get this rise and obsession with spiritualism, which we talked about heavily in the lead mass case.
28:32
[SPEAKER_02]: like I'll bring it up later but go back and listen to that case and you can see the how big spiritualism really was and that's that's now which is a fraction of what it was in the 1800s because people really lean into it and spiritualism all go into a little bit as the belief that the dead that are the dead are able to communicate with the living.
28:58
[SPEAKER_02]: Spiritualists in the United States believe that the dead are able to contact the living and reportedly use talking boards very similar to the modern Ouija at their camps in Ohio, which is kind of where the spiritualism movement started in 1886 with the intent of enabling faster communication with spirits.
29:16
[SPEAKER_02]: So that's where the OG kind of board came from.
29:26
[SPEAKER_01]: But regardless, like we were talking about how the board is a tool.
29:35
[SPEAKER_01]: And it almost more easily facilitates that conversation whereas like we were talking about people who are mediums or mystics, that requires your brain to be operating on a different level where most people aren't to that level, to be able to achieve these quicker results, therefore,
29:57
[SPEAKER_01]: It's almost like you're your Ouija board is like a game, Jeannie.
30:00
[SPEAKER_01]: It's giving you the cheat code, you know what I mean?
30:03
[SPEAKER_01]: The easy path.
30:04
[SPEAKER_01]: I take exactly what they're going for.
30:06
[SPEAKER_01]: I feel that, you know, I fuck with that idea.
30:09
[SPEAKER_02]: Yep, that's exactly what they were going for.
30:13
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
30:14
[SPEAKER_02]: A little more about spiritualism as a social religious movement according to a Wikipedia, popular in the 19th and 20th centuries, according to which an individual's awareness persists after death and may be contacted by the living.
30:26
[SPEAKER_02]: The afterlife or the spirit world is seen by spiritualists not as a static place but one which spirits continue to interact and evolve.
30:34
[SPEAKER_02]: These two beliefs that contact with spirits as possible and that spirits are more advanced than humans lead spiritualists to the belief that spirits are capable of advising the living on moral and ethical issues as well as The like theology kind of stuff like the nature of God and some spirit spiritualist follow actual spirit guides, it's been very specific spirits they rely upon for spiritual direction and life direction.
31:02
[SPEAKER_01]: I was going to bring that up too about how cultures throughout time have always leaned on like their ancestors and their spirit guides and stuff like that to help them through hardships and celebrations and shit like that.
31:17
[SPEAKER_01]: So and then even like I don't know that it's a fair equation to the topic of spiritualism but like by like what we know today as far as like quantum
31:31
[SPEAKER_01]: Like I feel like even that has could have a root in, at least the assumption that spirits, like our essence, once we are extinguished, has the ability to somehow in some way make contact.
31:50
[SPEAKER_01]: with the energy that ties us to like because like you're in my friendship has a forming function in my life that will always have a
32:06
[SPEAKER_01]: an energetic pool, you know, I'm saying so it's hard for me to believe that once one of us dies, that one of those tethers to this world is just forever gone, just severed, yeah.
32:21
[SPEAKER_01]: And it like, like, the kind of that how you talk about the priest was like, you know, your grandmothers and heaven, she could give a fuck less now.
32:28
[SPEAKER_01]: like that that fucks me up a little bit.
32:31
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I think it's of course he didn't say it like that, but that to me that's like those are the words that I hear like she's in a better place.
32:38
[SPEAKER_01]: She could give a fuck less about what you're doing down here on earth.
32:41
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't believe that because the people that we surround ourselves with in life mean so much because I like and I know you feel the same way about yours.
32:54
[SPEAKER_01]: I know for a fact that if it came down to it, and I had to gorshe earth the planet for mine, I would do it without a moment's notice.
33:06
[SPEAKER_02]: Yep.
33:07
[SPEAKER_01]: Without question, I don't care that they're mine.
33:10
[SPEAKER_01]: Yep.
33:10
[SPEAKER_01]: People, the people in my life mean that fucking much to me that I would go scorched earth for them.
33:18
[SPEAKER_02]: Yep, because he, you could tell he had to, he had to double back where like,
33:24
[SPEAKER_02]: It doesn't say anything about how much she loves you, but she just works she wants to be.
33:30
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm like, and I also know people, right?
33:35
[SPEAKER_01]: And I know, but even if it's a fucking no no, even though damn good and well, the people are gonna be like, you know what, he's been asking for my help for a minute.
33:44
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, I'm gonna figure out how to help my dude.
33:47
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, because we're just, that's just how we're kind of geared.
33:52
[SPEAKER_01]: We're geared to do kind of sketch ass things once.
33:55
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, I don't know.
33:59
[SPEAKER_02]: uh, circling back to, to a spiritualist here because Kyle kind of had touched on, they believe that spirit mediums are gifted to carry on communication between the living and the dead, but that anyone can become a medium through study and practice.
34:11
[SPEAKER_02]: They believe the spirits are capable of growth and perfection by progressing through higher spheres or planes and that the afterlife is not a static state, but one in which the spirit evolves.
34:21
[SPEAKER_02]: So essentially,
34:28
[SPEAKER_02]: easy for everyone, like you said, I gained.
34:31
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
34:31
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
34:32
[SPEAKER_01]: So another real quick question.
34:34
[SPEAKER_01]: Do you think everyone has the ability to be a medium?
34:42
[SPEAKER_01]: A medium in the, whatever the phrasing you just said, how they're, they kind of portrayed it that everyone could be a medium even through like study
34:56
[SPEAKER_02]: I want to say, yes, I feel like we all have the ability.
35:00
[SPEAKER_02]: Can everybody tap into that ability?
35:02
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't know.
35:06
[SPEAKER_01]: I lean more to the know really.
35:09
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, that's a flip flop of us.
35:12
[SPEAKER_01]: Not the, I don't know.
35:15
[SPEAKER_01]: I just, I feel like certain people just fucking have it.
35:20
[SPEAKER_01]: You know what I'm saying?
35:21
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like, you say that, right?
35:22
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like the, it's the difference in,
35:26
[SPEAKER_01]: how you take Michael Jordan and me, like that motherfucker was he's naturally gifted.
35:36
[SPEAKER_01]: Like we all know somebody in our life that is just ridiculously naturally gifted at some.
35:46
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's not to, you know, maybe maybe there is an argument that we can learn, because most people like I could learn to play the guitar.
35:54
[SPEAKER_01]: But I'll never be better than best guitarist out there.
35:59
[SPEAKER_01]: You know what I'm saying?
36:00
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, that's it's like we can learn to play basketball.
36:04
[SPEAKER_02]: We can learn to be good at basketball.
36:06
[SPEAKER_02]: We might be even play college basketball.
36:09
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, never be.
36:10
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to be on the air.
36:11
[SPEAKER_00]: I got to be in the NBA.
36:12
[SPEAKER_01]: No.
36:14
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, that's, and that's why I mean, like, I, I just, I feel like some people just have a fucking knack for it.
36:20
[SPEAKER_01]: And I kind of feel like, and this may be like the,
36:25
[SPEAKER_01]: The whatever coming out in me like, I think it's a really fucking cool idea that there are just special fucking people out there.
36:34
[SPEAKER_02]: The spiritual is kind of touch on that a little bit.
36:37
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
36:38
[SPEAKER_02]: They say anyone can receive messages.
36:44
[SPEAKER_02]: But a medium can receive and put out message can actually communication.
36:52
[SPEAKER_01]: That's interesting.
36:56
[SPEAKER_02]: But mediums are able to communicate.
36:59
[SPEAKER_01]: It's also a crazy thought too that like, you could be on the other side of the veil, screaming at me and I could hear you, but I could never scream back.
37:09
[SPEAKER_02]: And think about things that like, that we ride off, like man, that was weird.
37:16
[SPEAKER_02]: It's weird that this just popped into my head right now that I'm not thinking about anything, pertaining to it and it pops into my head and I'm like, man, that's strange.
37:24
[SPEAKER_01]: or even even beyond that like think about all the times where you've been doing something and you think you hear somebody talk or you think you hear this or you think you hear that you feel something like yeah and then like nothing's there and you know that's fucked up.
37:43
[SPEAKER_02]: I feel like it's kind of like
37:46
[SPEAKER_02]: Kind of like the like I almost feel like JJ would be a medium or she can she can contact and right Unicate but like me and you we can receive it, but we don't know how to fuck this all yeah, you know We're out there yelling at it.
38:00
[SPEAKER_01]: I can't your shit.
38:01
[SPEAKER_02]: No, we're we're like writing it off like Oh, you know, I felt something talking on the back of my shirt.
38:06
[SPEAKER_02]: I was probably messing you know.
38:07
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
38:08
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
38:08
[SPEAKER_01]: Absolutely
38:09
[SPEAKER_02]: back to the history of spiritualism.
38:11
[SPEAKER_02]: So the beginning of modern spiritualism in America is often linked to an incident upstate New York in 1848.
38:18
[SPEAKER_02]: Two sisters named Kate and Maggie Fox claimed that they had received messages from spirits who wrapped on the walls and answers to in answer to questions that they were asking.
38:28
[SPEAKER_02]: Later, recreating this feat of channeling and parlors across the state.
38:33
[SPEAKER_02]: So they went
38:39
[SPEAKER_02]: Aided by the stories about the celebrity sisters and other spiritualists, the movement reached millions of participants in the next, in the upcoming years.
38:49
[SPEAKER_02]: So spiritualism was big, big.
38:52
[SPEAKER_02]: It's still big, as we noticed from the lead mask case, just not necessarily so much in America anymore.
38:58
[SPEAKER_01]: It's also weird, like, I have an issue with people, like these, these ladies, for example, that like,
39:06
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm going to try to like mainstream their ability and like sell it like I haven't I have a problem with that it's it's and I think it's like the even I don't know like I'm cool goes hunting show but I don't know and I think it's just myself because I have this imagery of like a real mystic or medium like in my head it's this like
39:36
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm searching for answers and I talked to this guy and he's like, yeah, listen, like, there's a old shack, had on this dirt fucking road.
39:45
[SPEAKER_01]: You're going to go there and you're going to talk to this lady and she's going to fucking like, it's not someone that openly advertises their abilities.
39:54
[SPEAKER_01]: It's almost like this hidden little gym that you have to seek out.
39:57
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think it's, I think it's more like that now since it became taboo.
40:01
[SPEAKER_02]: Because at the time period,
40:03
[SPEAKER_02]: like spiritualism was accepted by Americans, like it was not far-fetched to for a family to hold the sounds on Saturday night and then have no qualms about going to church on Sunday morning.
40:16
[SPEAKER_02]: Like the two were not separated the way that they are now.
40:20
[SPEAKER_01]: And it was like it was like when we went to the spirit conference and I had my little reading my tarot card reading.
40:26
[SPEAKER_01]: The individual that I got my reading from was kind of like doing her own little thing like she wasn't like grasping for attention.
40:36
[SPEAKER_01]: She was kind of tucked in her own little like like you know I mean like yeah like she would move through everything by herself like I would.
40:46
[SPEAKER_01]: Yep.
40:46
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, like I always move through areas like I'm a ghost, essentially.
40:51
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't try to be noticed by anybody.
40:52
[SPEAKER_02]: Yep.
40:53
[SPEAKER_01]: She's a human.
40:54
[SPEAKER_02]: Hey, hey, would you like a reading?
40:57
[SPEAKER_02]: No.
40:57
[SPEAKER_02]: You went to hurt.
40:58
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, like I'm just I'm walking through checking shit out and I'm like, I feel like I need to sit down and get a reading by this woman for some reason.
41:08
[SPEAKER_01]: I just I feel like I this is what I need to do right now.
41:11
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
41:12
[SPEAKER_02]: And at the time period, in the late 1800s, early 1900s, it was even like a wholesome family activity to try to hold seances and contact spirits through automatic writing or table wrapping table turning parties, in which participants would place their hands on a table, such as a planchette, and listen to some of the call letters of the alphabet.
41:35
[SPEAKER_02]: When the letter was called, they'd watch the table begin to shake and rattle, declaring that all of them were not
41:42
[SPEAKER_02]: So it sounds similar to you that's kind of like, you know, what went on in the, uh, the lead mask case where they were trying to use weedy boards to contact Granted, dead people from Mars, but regardless, the spiritualism kind of hangs together there.
42:02
[SPEAKER_01]: It's fucking crazy that that essentially used to be their family game night.
42:07
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, like, let's just sit around and play with the Ouija board.
42:09
[SPEAKER_02]: We would have say on its parties where you get all your friends together and you would do table turning parties.
42:15
[SPEAKER_01]: It's crazy.
42:16
[SPEAKER_02]: If you want to listen to the lead mask case, two episode 277, the lead mask, Mr. Sell that bitch.
42:22
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, listen to it, spiritualist movement.
42:24
[SPEAKER_02]: Spiritualism also offered solace in an era where life spans were much shorter than they are today.
42:32
[SPEAKER_02]: So that kind of played into it too.
42:34
[SPEAKER_02]: We're not listening too long.
42:36
[SPEAKER_02]: a notable Mary Todd Lincoln wife of Abe Lincoln conducted Sanchez in the White House after their 11-year-old son died of a fever in 1862.
42:45
[SPEAKER_02]: So it was all echelons of life were trying to contact the dead through this time period.
42:52
[SPEAKER_01]: Which crazy mind you, for everybody listening, how many people knew that?
43:01
[SPEAKER_02]: I knew it because I read about it before.
43:03
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
43:04
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
43:05
[SPEAKER_01]: But I mean like that seems to be a section of history that is trying to be pushed away and yeah quarantine.
43:14
[SPEAKER_02]: It's crazy.
43:15
[SPEAKER_01]: It is crazy.
43:17
[SPEAKER_01]: It's crazy that it's never like it's never openly talked about like it's a it's one of them taboo topics now where they just
43:23
[SPEAKER_01]: They're trying to which is fucking nuts to think about even on a basic non-conspiratorial Just a basic human level to think about Even though historically and factually This took place The world goes They talk about it.
43:43
[SPEAKER_01]: We're just gonna we're just gonna essentially Not talk about it in a race of from history.
43:48
[SPEAKER_01]: That's crazy.
43:49
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm not gonna talk about it
43:51
[SPEAKER_02]: which is it's bizarre man.
43:53
[SPEAKER_01]: It's crazy and insanely concerning.
43:56
[SPEAKER_02]: How wild is it that like a Friday night would be spent gathering around with your family or with your best friends trying to contact the dead?
44:07
[SPEAKER_01]: For you, me doesn't sound that crazy.
44:09
[SPEAKER_01]: No, but for everyone, that's nuts.
44:13
[SPEAKER_02]: I can't imagine my mom in like, hey, what come over?
44:18
[SPEAKER_02]: I made some spaghetti.
44:19
[SPEAKER_02]: We're going to try to contact your great uncle.
44:21
[SPEAKER_02]: It's cool.
44:21
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, like, that'd be awesome.
44:24
[SPEAKER_01]: It's crazy.
44:25
[SPEAKER_01]: Robin, you should do that.
44:27
[SPEAKER_01]: If you're listening, you should do that.
44:28
[SPEAKER_02]: It's shaking her head.
44:29
[SPEAKER_02]: No, she is probably pissed off.
44:30
[SPEAKER_02]: That we're even talking about a week.
44:32
[SPEAKER_02]: You were right.
44:32
[SPEAKER_01]: No, I'm just saying that she should call you and just play that situation.
44:35
[SPEAKER_01]: Not actually mean it.
44:36
[SPEAKER_01]: Just be okay.
44:37
[SPEAKER_02]: Just be kidding.
44:37
[SPEAKER_02]: They're going to be spaghetti.
44:40
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay, so now we're kind of getting in the Ouija board world.
44:43
[SPEAKER_02]: So we talked about spiritualism, table wrapping sayonses.
44:46
[SPEAKER_02]: Now we're coming into the Ouija board where people are starting to see that Americans are very interested in contacting the dead.
44:52
[SPEAKER_02]: How can we make money on it?
44:56
[SPEAKER_02]: So a couple of men and Baltimore started the Kinnerd novelty company, the first producers of a Ouija board in the late 19th century.
45:10
[SPEAKER_02]: contacting demons and open in the gates of hell was kind of like not in their periphery, which is what we do boards are known for now oddly enough, interestingly enough.
45:20
[SPEAKER_01]: And at a time was like religion was a big staple then, right?
45:26
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it just gives us a big deal.
45:28
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
45:29
[SPEAKER_02]: Because that was like the point that Robert Merch was trying to make is like it was so widely accepted in society that like it didn't go against like Christian dogma like you could hold a say on its party right before you or right after you came home from church that's the two things were not separated.
45:49
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, let's see here.
45:51
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, they weren't as stated in this article that I pulled they weren't interested in opening the gates of hell instead they were more interested in opening America's wallets
46:00
[SPEAKER_02]: A spiritualism has grown in American cultures, so too did the frustration with how long it took to get many meaningful messages out of the Spirit, says Brandon Hodge, a historian of spiritualism.
46:12
[SPEAKER_02]: Calling out the alphabet and waiting for a knock at the right letter, for example, was deeply boring.
46:17
[SPEAKER_02]: After all, rapid communication
46:19
[SPEAKER_02]: with breathing humans at a distance was possible now.
46:22
[SPEAKER_02]: The telegraph have been around for decades, so why shouldn't spirits be easy to reach?
46:27
[SPEAKER_02]: People were desperate for methods of communication that were quicker.
46:31
[SPEAKER_02]: While several entrepreneurs realized that it was the kindergarten novelty company that nailed it.
46:36
[SPEAKER_02]: In 1886, newspapers reported on a new phenomenon taken over the spiritual camps in Ohio, and it was for all intents and purposes, the Ouija board.
46:45
[SPEAKER_01]: With letters, so real quick, with all that being said, the way you just worded that that could be another reason, like convince me, Ouija boards are bad.
46:57
[SPEAKER_02]: that it was like monetized.
46:59
[SPEAKER_01]: No, more so on the lines that.
47:03
[SPEAKER_01]: If fast tracks, please, if fast tracks.
47:05
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
47:07
[SPEAKER_01]: Once, because it's taken a shortcut into something that now that I think about it, back in the day, like with shamans and stuff, that was a cherished ability.
47:22
[SPEAKER_01]: Like that took grooming to do,
47:27
[SPEAKER_01]: and everything like it was a big deal.
47:30
[SPEAKER_01]: And in the fact that they decided to shortcut it, maybe that's where it starts getting muddy.
47:36
[SPEAKER_02]: And mass market it.
47:38
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
47:39
[SPEAKER_02]: Yep.
47:40
[SPEAKER_02]: So again, we went through like what the Ouija board is with the letters and the numbers and the planchette to move it around Charles Kinnerd, who had visited some of these spiritualist camp
47:57
[SPEAKER_02]: In 1890, he pulled together a group of four other investors, including Elijah Bond, a local attorney, Washington Bowie, a surveyor, and they decided to start the Kiner Navalty Company, which would exclusively make and market these new talking boards.
48:12
[SPEAKER_02]: But first, Kiner's talking board needed a name.
48:18
[SPEAKER_02]: contrary to popular belief, a Ouija is not a combination of the French word, yes, which is we, and the German equivalent, Ja, which is Ouija, which would be yes, yes, kind of an answer to the board.
48:30
[SPEAKER_02]: According to Robert Merch, it was Bond's sister-in-law, Helen Peters, who, uh, Bond said was a strong spiritualist medium, who supplied the now instantly recognizable handle.
48:47
[SPEAKER_02]: that when she asks the board what its name should be, the board spelled out a wager.
48:55
[SPEAKER_02]: So the board picked its own name, which but the name is different now, correct?
49:02
[SPEAKER_02]: No, it's the same.
49:02
[SPEAKER_02]: It's all UIGA.
49:05
[SPEAKER_02]: We do.
49:05
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay.
49:05
[SPEAKER_01]: It's pronounced.
49:06
[SPEAKER_01]: So pronounced.
49:07
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, she didn't.
49:09
[SPEAKER_02]: She didn't recognize it.
49:11
[SPEAKER_02]: So she asked what the word meant and the board spelled out.
49:17
[SPEAKER_02]: Good luck.
49:19
[SPEAKER_02]: Which is kind of creepy.
49:21
[SPEAKER_01]: That's ominous kind of creepy.
49:25
[SPEAKER_02]: According to merch interviews with the descendants of the Ouija founders and original Ouija patent file itself, which he'd seen, the story of the board's patent request was true, which I need to get into now.
49:39
[SPEAKER_02]: The men knew, so they went to go get it patented.
49:42
[SPEAKER_02]: They knew that they would not get this patented unless they could prove that the board worked.
49:53
[SPEAKER_02]: brought the Ouija board to the Patan Office in Washington, D.C.
49:57
[SPEAKER_02]: when he filed for his application.
49:59
[SPEAKER_02]: There, the Chief Patan Officer demanded a demonstration.
50:03
[SPEAKER_02]: If the board could accurately spell out his name, which was supposed to be unknown to bond and Peters, he'd allow the Patan application to proceed.
50:13
[SPEAKER_02]: They set up the board, they communicated with spirits and the planchette successfully spelled out the Patan Officer's name.
50:21
[SPEAKER_02]: whether it was mystical spirits or maybe like Bond kind of knew who the the patent officer was regardless they got the patent.
50:35
[SPEAKER_02]: So it's kind of an interesting lore also behind the Ouija board of pigments name.
50:40
[SPEAKER_02]: It's secured its own patent.
50:42
[SPEAKER_02]: Makes it kind of strange.
50:44
[SPEAKER_01]: I did hear about the patent, but I didn't know that it picked its own name.
50:47
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
50:49
[SPEAKER_02]: Um, let me see where else we got here.
50:55
[SPEAKER_02]: uh uh the first patent describes the device but offers no explanation to how it works.
51:01
[SPEAKER_02]: That ambiguity was part of more or less a conscious marketing effort.
51:06
[SPEAKER_02]: They were very shrewd businesses.
51:08
[SPEAKER_02]: Businessmen says Robert Merch.
51:10
[SPEAKER_02]: The less the kindergarten company said about how the board worked, the more mysterious it seemed, and the more people wanted to buy it.
51:17
[SPEAKER_02]: Ultimately, it was a money maker and they didn't care why people thought it worked.
51:22
[SPEAKER_02]: And it was a money maker by 1892.
51:24
[SPEAKER_02]: The kindergarten novelty company went from one factory and Baltimore to two in Baltimore, one in New York, two in Chicago and one in London.
51:34
[SPEAKER_02]: So now your mass producing Ouija boards in multiple countries.
51:42
[SPEAKER_02]: So you're really hammering them out now.
51:43
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
51:45
[SPEAKER_02]: soon after kindergarten bond were out owing to some internal pressures and the old added about money changing everything by this time a man by the name of William Fould who had gotten in on the ground floor of the business as an employee and stockholder was running the company.
52:02
[SPEAKER_02]: Keep that, keep him in mind.
52:03
[SPEAKER_02]: We're going to go back to Helen Peters, who was Bond's sister-in-law, who was also a medium.
52:08
[SPEAKER_02]: As the board's popularity and profit increased, most of the early investors sought out to highlight the role in the creation of the Ouija board, but Helen Peters wanted nothing more to do with it after the board caused serious damage to her family.
52:21
[SPEAKER_02]: When some civil war heirlooms went missing from the Peters home, Peters asked the board who had taken them.
52:27
[SPEAKER_02]: According to Peter's grandson, the board indicated that a member indicated a member of the family had.
52:33
[SPEAKER_02]: Half-to-family believed it, half of the other family said bullshit, including Helen.
52:38
[SPEAKER_02]: The event created such a conflict that was never resolved and tore the family apart.
52:43
[SPEAKER_02]: After the fight, Peter sold all of her stocks in the company, until her dying day she was telling everyone, don't play the Ouija board because it lies, March said.
52:57
[SPEAKER_02]: We're coming back to Mr. William Fould.
53:00
[SPEAKER_02]: William Fould has his own, we'd you related to family troubles.
53:06
[SPEAKER_02]: In 1919, he cut his brother out of the business and the two never spoke again.
53:10
[SPEAKER_02]: That year was a particularly good year for sales because as I had stated before, the sales spike around tragedy.
53:19
[SPEAKER_02]: Because you have World War I and the mass flu epidemic that went through killed a bunch of people.
53:27
[SPEAKER_02]: people wanted to contact with that.
53:30
[SPEAKER_02]: In a 1920s article, the New York Times compared the popularity of a Ouija board to that of bubble gum.
53:36
[SPEAKER_02]: That's how common it was.
53:38
[SPEAKER_01]: That's nuts.
53:39
[SPEAKER_01]: Crazy.
53:40
[SPEAKER_01]: And also just by the background that you've ran like, not gonna lie, the evidence seems to be mounting more and more as to why this might be a dirty thing.
53:53
[SPEAKER_02]: the these numbers about to get real crazy.
53:56
[SPEAKER_02]: In 1927, the Baltimore Sun reported that fold had personally made $1 million from sales of the board.
54:05
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, shit.
54:06
[SPEAKER_02]: For those keeping track, that's almost 19 million in today's money.
54:12
[SPEAKER_01]: That's crazy.
54:13
[SPEAKER_02]: So that's doing pretty good.
54:15
[SPEAKER_01]: Selling some shit ass little board and spirit boards.
54:20
[SPEAKER_02]: He continued to open new factories, just raking it in, getting real greedy.
54:25
[SPEAKER_02]: The largest a three story building in Baltimore after the Ouija board itself told him to build here and prepare for big business.
54:35
[SPEAKER_02]: In early 1927, after the crux of the building's construction, Mr. Fold went up to the roof
54:47
[SPEAKER_02]: the replacement of a flagpole for the American flag.
54:50
[SPEAKER_02]: According to the Baltimore sun, he was standing near the edge of the roof, grasping an iron support of the pole to steady himself.
54:56
[SPEAKER_02]: The workman said, when the support suddenly pulled away from the pole and he toppled backwards over the wall, falling to his death.
55:07
[SPEAKER_01]: It does seem like some shady shit going on, man.
55:10
[SPEAKER_01]: Yep.
55:12
[SPEAKER_01]: Like he might have made a deal with something early on.
55:18
[SPEAKER_01]: And he paid the piper for him, man.
55:21
[SPEAKER_02]: Yep, it's a, it gets weirder to it.
55:25
[SPEAKER_02]: Almost as if in a movie, fold initially grabbed hold of the sill of an open window, which suddenly closed, sending him crashing down to the sidewalk below.
55:35
[SPEAKER_02]: He had broken several ribs, but was expected to survive.
55:40
[SPEAKER_02]: Unfortunately, on his trek to the hospital,
55:45
[SPEAKER_02]: hit a massive pot hole in the road, which sent one of the fractured rib bones directly through his heart.
55:53
[SPEAKER_01]: To final destination, shit.
55:54
[SPEAKER_02]: Final destination, we do board shit.
55:59
[SPEAKER_02]: The family continued to run the business until 1966 when they sold it to Parker Brothers, which was later bought by Hasbro, whose website warns handle the we do board with respect and it won't disappoint you.
56:11
[SPEAKER_02]: The board's incident, and now more 130 years later, prolonged success showed that it had tapped into a weird place in American culture.
56:19
[SPEAKER_02]: It was marketed with both the mystical oracle, but also was family fun in entertainment.
56:25
[SPEAKER_02]: It kind of rode that gray area line where you can hang out with your kids and contact the dead, or you can use it to contact the dead.
56:34
[SPEAKER_01]: That's really fucked and strange.
56:37
[SPEAKER_01]: Humans are weird, we're selling point.
56:43
[SPEAKER_02]: So it was marketed to both the mystical Oracle and family entertainment, the fun element with the 10-Jove-Otherworldly excitement.
56:52
[SPEAKER_02]: This meant that it wasn't only spiritualist who got interested in the board now.
56:56
[SPEAKER_02]: In fact, people who just liked the Ouija board and most tended to be spirit mediums.
57:03
[SPEAKER_02]: which kind of leans the way you're going there, co.
57:06
[SPEAKER_02]: As it promised access to the spirit world without a knowledgeable middleman now, you just have every day people being able to make contact.
57:16
[SPEAKER_02]: Which apparently, I don't know if that was bad business for the mediums who were traveling around trying to offer their services or what the deal.
57:26
[SPEAKER_01]: I could see that.
57:27
[SPEAKER_02]: The Ouija Board appealed to people from across wide spectrum of ages, professions, and educational backgrounds, people wanted to believe they needed to believe that something else is out there, and that need to believe as powerful says merge.
57:41
[SPEAKER_02]: This thing is one of those things that allows them to express their belief in the afterlife.
57:47
[SPEAKER_02]: It's logical then that the board would find it's greatest popularity and on certain times, as I had mentioned before, the 1910s and 20s after the devastation of World War I and the Jazz Age and Prohibition witnessed a surge in Ouija board popularity in 1920, Norman Rockwell, who is a very famous illustrator, everybody seen Norman Rockwell's paintings, drew a picture of a couple with a Ouija board between them, which made the cover of the Saturday
58:18
[SPEAKER_02]: Over five months in 1944, as World War II raged, a single New York department store sold 50,000 Ouija boards.
58:28
[SPEAKER_01]: That's crazy.
58:29
[SPEAKER_02]: One in five months.
58:31
[SPEAKER_01]: We are in the wrong business.
58:33
[SPEAKER_02]: One damn department store sold 50,000 Ouija boards.
58:39
[SPEAKER_02]: In 1967, the year after Parker Brothers bought the game, two million boards were sold out performing monopoly, which is the most popular board game in history.
58:52
[SPEAKER_02]: The Ouija board outsold it.
58:53
[SPEAKER_01]: It's wild.
58:56
[SPEAKER_02]: And that was in 67, which isn't that long ago.
58:59
[SPEAKER_01]: It's really not.
59:01
[SPEAKER_02]: Crazy.
59:03
[SPEAKER_02]: The same year, it saw American troops dying Vietnam, the summer of love and racial riots in cities across the country.
59:10
[SPEAKER_02]: So times of unrest really made people want to look to the afterlife for answers.
59:17
[SPEAKER_02]: Also strange weed details kind of started making their rounds, which kind of sort of led more people toward it.
59:27
[SPEAKER_02]: As they were posting weird weedy stories and newspapers and across wire services, 1920 would be crime solvers.
59:35
[SPEAKER_02]: We're turning to their weedy boards for clues in about a mysterious murder in New York City, gambler by the name of Joseph Bound L. Well,
59:47
[SPEAKER_02]: And all they did was really frustrate the police, but they were trying.
59:51
[SPEAKER_02]: They were trying.
59:53
[SPEAKER_02]: Which reminds me of like armchair detectives of today on the internet, also doing similar things.
1:00:00
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
1:00:02
[SPEAKER_02]: In 1921, the New York Times reported that a Chicago woman was sent to a psychiatric hospital after developing, quote, religious hallucinations induced by a Ouija board.
1:00:14
[SPEAKER_02]: She described how the situation developed.
1:00:16
[SPEAKER_02]: Quote, we started by getting sermons from beyond.
1:00:19
[SPEAKER_02]: We have hundreds of these sermons that we type wrote and preserved.
1:00:23
[SPEAKER_02]: They're hidden away from crying eyes.
1:00:25
[SPEAKER_02]: These sermons grew more and more beautiful.
1:00:27
[SPEAKER_02]: All of them came from the Ouija board.
1:00:29
[SPEAKER_02]: I myself was doubtful, but after the Ouija board had been talking to us for several days, we had to believe.
1:00:38
[SPEAKER_02]: And it's weird that this Ouija board psychosis really feels similar to what we have going on today with AI.
1:00:47
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh yeah.
1:00:48
[SPEAKER_02]: Where people are looking to something beyond human realm for answers.
1:00:56
[SPEAKER_02]: It's like, I was right in this and doing the research, the correlation between the two, I'm like, holy shit, you know, like you have people, because that's one of the AI psychosis is really just psychosis where people think that the AI is a god-like deity.
1:01:12
[SPEAKER_02]: And this woman is getting sermons from what we assume is probably a god-like entity that made her also unelews it.
1:01:23
[SPEAKER_02]: Uh, what else we got?
1:01:23
[SPEAKER_02]: Similar incidents made appearances in the news for years in 1941, a 23-year-old gas station attendant from New Jersey told the Times that he'd joined the Army due to spiritual advice.
1:01:34
[SPEAKER_02]: When officials of the recruitment office asked what gave him the idea of becoming a soldier he answered, I want to learn a trade in the Army school and my Ouija board told me that the army was placed to do it.
1:01:46
[SPEAKER_02]: In 1956, a Connecticut judge heard a case of Helen Dowpeck, who left only $1,000 to each of her two former servants and a whopping $178,000 to one John Gale Forbes, a lucky, but unfortunately, bodyless spirit who contacted her via the Ouija board, so she left her
1:02:15
[SPEAKER_01]: that the government probably collected.
1:02:17
[SPEAKER_02]: I am not sure.
1:02:18
[SPEAKER_02]: I did find a case detail online from 56.
1:02:20
[SPEAKER_02]: This is March 12th.
1:02:23
[SPEAKER_02]: Can the disposition of 180,000 a state be determined by a wage board?
1:02:27
[SPEAKER_02]: That is the question judge, Avers, P. LaVella of Bethel, Connecticut, probate, court will ponder Wednesday when briefs are filed in a contest over the will of Miss Helen Dowpeck of Bethel, the widow of a New York insurance broker.
1:02:43
[SPEAKER_02]: So it doesn't say what it did happen in, but it does say that herner has been used to spend a lot of time contacting this spirit via the Ouija board, John Gale Forbes.
1:02:55
[SPEAKER_02]: So even like the nieces and nephews of them were like, hey, that should probably go to us not to this Ouija board ghost.
1:03:01
[SPEAKER_01]: Nah.
1:03:02
[SPEAKER_02]: I know.
1:03:03
[SPEAKER_02]: Don't worry about it.
1:03:04
[SPEAKER_01]: Given it's a ghost.
1:03:05
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, what use does a ghost have with fucking dollar bills?
1:03:08
[SPEAKER_02]: Apparently, apparently, he needed them.
1:03:11
[SPEAKER_01]: I guess.
1:03:12
[SPEAKER_02]: needed them.
1:03:16
[SPEAKER_02]: Other strange, wegeboard things that have come across or kind of leans toward the AI is that they have offered literary inspiration.
1:03:26
[SPEAKER_02]: One of the most well known is Pearl Curran.
1:03:29
[SPEAKER_02]: She made headlines when she began writing poems and stories that she claimed were dictated via the wegeboard.
1:03:37
[SPEAKER_02]: So that's very much like AI like, you know, having the Ouija board write your poems and then taking off.
1:03:44
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it is, it is a lot like AI.
1:03:46
[SPEAKER_02]: And when I started to see in the, the parallels, I'm like, man, this is fucking weird.
1:03:52
[SPEAKER_02]: But she said that she was contacted by a 17th century spirit of an English woman named patient with twerth.
1:03:59
[SPEAKER_02]: patient's worth was allegedly a disembodied spirit, spirit contacted by Karen, this purported relationship produced several novels, poetry and prose, which Pearl Kieran claimed were delivered through channeling the spirit patient worth.
1:04:15
[SPEAKER_02]: In 1912, she began using a Weegeboard with the friend Emily Grant Hutchins.
1:04:21
[SPEAKER_02]: leading to the alleged communication with the spirit.
1:04:24
[SPEAKER_02]: By 1913, she began delivering complex messages and vivid stories through current, who claimed to see detailed visions and received messages from patients.
1:04:34
[SPEAKER_02]: Patients claimed who have lived in England, possibly door-sitsure from 1649 to 1964, and described a voyage to America where she was supposedly killed by native Americans.
1:04:47
[SPEAKER_02]: Over time, Keren moved from using the Ouija board to receiving spontaneous dictations from patients, producing poems and novels and stories, many of which were critically acclaimed, notably the sorry tale was hailed as a literary classic by contemporary critics, so she's kind of benefiting from this the spirit, which is kind of like the controversy behind AI right now.
1:05:20
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, what else do I got here?
1:05:22
[SPEAKER_02]: The writings gained attentions during the arrival of spiritualism, those skeptics questioned their authenticity, especially since patients wrote convincingly about areas that she had lived in because she was already dead.
1:05:34
[SPEAKER_02]: The quality of the literature impressed many of patients being listed among the top poets of 18 or of 1918.
1:05:41
[SPEAKER_02]: So patients worth a ghost was listed among the top poets of 1918.
1:05:48
[SPEAKER_01]: I told you that would take a hell of a long time to write down their poems, especially by Ouija board.
1:05:53
[SPEAKER_02]: No wonder she went to like direct contact because just going, yeah, that's up.
1:06:00
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
1:06:02
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, what else have we got here, not long after seeing current success, Emily Grant, the other woman that was using the initial Ouija board when the contact was made.
1:06:15
[SPEAKER_02]: So, began to start tapping into the spirit world to write books.
1:06:22
[SPEAKER_02]: She claimed that she was talking to Mark Twain, and wrote a complete book called Japp Heron, that she said was pinned by Samuel Climins, also known as Mark Twain from Beyond the Grave.
1:06:45
[SPEAKER_02]: take that for what it's worth.
1:06:47
[SPEAKER_02]: So where do they use it for literary terms and how do you claim you contacted one of the greatest writers in the in American history like you got some big shoes to fill if you're saying that you're talking to like Mark Twain is writing this novel.
1:07:09
[SPEAKER_02]: We're so here in hells decades later, Pulitzer Prize winning poet James Mariel Sir Path both women in 1983 his Ouija inspired epic poem The Changing Light Sandover won the National Books Critics Circle Award where he and another weird parallel of like AI kind of
1:07:31
[SPEAKER_02]: Ouija board crossover didn't say that a spirit from the Ouija board completely wrote the poems poems for him, but it just helped expand and magnify his thoughts, which people who use AI go that route a lot, like just kind of help you out.
1:07:49
[SPEAKER_02]: There are some other notable cases here,
1:07:53
[SPEAKER_02]: Let me find Rose Mary Brown is a spiritualist where she didn't necessarily use a Ouija board, but I thought this was interesting because she claimed to have contacted spirits of great composers like Bach and Beethoven and even wrote and composed music
1:08:23
[SPEAKER_02]: which I thought was pretty freaking weird.
1:08:25
[SPEAKER_01]: It's also weird that, like what at one point was, I mean, it was considered a game, but it was also considered like a tool to communicate with loved ones and then it turns into helping make money.
1:08:45
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, which is very American of us to do.
1:08:48
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
1:08:48
[SPEAKER_01]: And you know, you want to talk about poison in the well.
1:08:51
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, there you go.
1:08:52
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
1:08:53
[SPEAKER_02]: I can see, you know, got a bad context.
1:08:56
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, there's another woman by the name of Dorothy Jane Roberts, who's an American author and poet who claimed to be psychic in a spirit, medium channeling a personality who called himself Seth.
1:09:07
[SPEAKER_02]: Her publication, the Seth Text, also known as the Seth material, established her as one of the pre-iminent figures in the world of paranormal phenomena.
1:09:16
[SPEAKER_02]: She started out contacting Seth via a Ouija board, but then also kind of moved to just direct contact.
1:09:28
[SPEAKER_02]: Let me see what else I got here to kind of clear this up a little bit and a more recent Like a more recent time that we can kind of get behind I'll finish it off with this is the band the Mars Volta Which is still I'm pretty sure they're still around a day Kind of we're making their rounds when we were big in the music 2007 and stuff Road and album called the Bedlim in Goliath
1:09:57
[SPEAKER_02]: where they said the concept of material for the album was given to them via a wage board.
1:10:07
[SPEAKER_02]: The two, the frontman, one of his other bandmates were in Jerusalem, I'd like this antique shop where they found this old Weijibord, which they bought.
1:10:17
[SPEAKER_02]: And they immediately started calling it the Suitsayer, which I figured is a weird, weird name.
1:10:22
[SPEAKER_01]: It is weird.
1:10:24
[SPEAKER_02]: They started contacting this spirit, and the spirit they called Goliath.
1:10:30
[SPEAKER_02]: And Goliath put out this tale like this love triangle of these three people who ended up in murder and all of it came supposedly from the Ouija board.
1:10:43
[SPEAKER_02]: but they also talk about like how it was the hardest record they have ever had to make because the studio flooded and then a bunch of their recordings got deleted and like their sound producer who is like their main guy for the rest of their albums before that just kind of had a mental break and took off so they had to refine somebody else and it was just sound like some bad juju.
1:11:08
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, bizarre.
1:11:09
[SPEAKER_02]: So people don't know if this is a marketing employee by them, or if this is legit, but to this day, they have still steadfast that the inspiration for this album came to them from the Ouija board.
1:11:23
[SPEAKER_02]: They found it an antique store in Jerusalem.
1:11:26
[SPEAKER_02]: That's wild.
1:11:28
[SPEAKER_02]: So I figured I just kind of touched on that.
1:11:29
[SPEAKER_02]: There's not like there are some dark spots there, but it kind of gave you a history of like,
1:11:35
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't know, spiritualism and spirit writing in the Ouija board and stuff.
1:11:41
[SPEAKER_02]: Next week, I'm going to delve into some darker stuff like cases of murders and things that the Ouija board has kind of
1:11:56
[SPEAKER_02]: instigated and people have instigated via the wigie board kind of like um... the golf breeze six rather wigie board told a hey you got to go kill the antichrist if you want to see the world so kind of cases like that so be sure to tune in next week to peep that and then we'll see where it goes from there because it gets weird hell yeah
1:12:20
[SPEAKER_02]: So, we'd love to get your, uh, everybody's kind of thoughts on Ouija board and spirit contact and spirit writing and just communication with not even the dead, but communication with other realms as a whole.
1:12:35
[SPEAKER_02]: How do we feel about the holocaust?
1:12:36
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, we feel about it.
1:12:39
[SPEAKER_02]: So, leave us some messages in the chat, in the comments, in the emails.
1:12:44
[SPEAKER_02]: Let's talk about it.
1:12:47
[SPEAKER_02]: Thanks for hanging out with us this Monday.
1:12:48
[SPEAKER_02]: Hopefully this got your wheels to turn in Turn in and burn in and then till we meet again remember check us out our social media stay safe stay weird and If you're in the contact with the dead just don't tell me You don't have to monetize that you don't have to make a we can't about it try to get rich I mean you could but that's whatever