We take a look at the board's invention, in particular two women behind it, Helen Peters and Ouida: a highly-educated, unconventional medium who later ended up denouncing Ouija, and the eccentric, dog-obsessed English writer whose name may have inspired the board's.
In 1886, homemade talking boards became a new "Ohio craze" that newspapers reported widely around the country. Five years later, a man named Charles Kennard started a company to create his own talking board, which he claims he invented (though the prototype may have been made by his neighbor, a coffin maker turned undertaker.)
But what most people don't know is that one woman's involvement in the Ouija board's creation had been totally written out of the history, until Ouija historian Robert Murch unearthed her story. We look at how a woman named Helen Peters was integral in ensuring the board got patented. She also was at the Ouija board session that the board's name came from, and wore a locket around her neck with another woman's name, Ouida, which is where the name "Ouija" may have emerged from.
Ouida was a real character--an extremely prolific, oddball author of somewhat scandalous 19th-century adventure novels--so we take a look at her life and wonder how we'd also never heard of her.
We'll pick up again next week to talk about what happened to Kennard's company, and what happened to Ouija as the 20th century dawned.
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