[View Online]( How an entrepreneur merged spiritualism and capitalism to create a multimillion-dollar brand. by Zachary Crockett.
[The Hustle]( Issue #230
[The Hustle, Sunday, October 30, 2022](
Sunday, October 30, 2022 The strange business of the Ouija board How an entrepreneur merged spiritualism and capitalism to create a multimillion-dollar brand. BY [Juliet Bennett Rylah]( On a recent weekend in Salem, Massachusetts, I wandered into the [Salem Witch Board Museum](. The site of Americaâs infamous [witch trials]( in 1692, Salem is now a commercialized ode to occultism: It is home to dozens of witchcraft shops, ghost tours, and âhauntedâ abodes. Inside the museum, the history of a fascinating business is on display. The walls and glass cases of the small gallery are lined with âtalking boardsâ or âwitch boardsâ â devices that supposedly allow people to communicate with spirits. A selection of talking boards at the Salem Witch Board Museum in Salem, Massachusetts (Juliet Bennett-Rylah) They work like so: - The board is labeled with the alphabet, numbers (0-9), and the words âyes,â âno,â and some variation of âgoodbye.â
- A player asks the board a question.
- An indicator mysteriously moves across the board, spelling out an answer. You might know these devices as Ouija boards. But Ouija is a brand, like Kleenex or Tupperware. And at one point in time, it was a multimillion-dollar business. âThink of Coke and Pepsi. Coke is probably number one, Pepsi is number two. There is no number two for the Ouija board,â the museumâs owner, John Kozik, told The Hustle. When Kozik points out other brands in the collection, guests often assume they wonât work as well because theyâre not âofficial,â as though ghosts harbor a brand-name preference. This is the story of how, thanks to the combined forces of spiritualism and capitalism, Ouija became the go-to for communing with the dead. How spiritualism became a business model [Spiritualism]( â the belief that the living can communicate with the dead â was already popular in Europe when it ignited across the US in the mid-19th century. Americaâs obsession with spiritualism can largely be traced to the [Fox sisters]( of Hydesville, New York, who interpreted messages from spirits that rapped on furniture and walls. But for aspiring mediums without knocking spirits at their behest, there were other communication devices, like the talking board. Two women using an early talking board in the 1890s (Talking Board Historical Society) At first, talking boards were something people made themselves. An [1886]( article described how easy the ânew scheme for mysterious communicationâ was to construct: You just needed a board marked with letters and numbers, and a planchette (French for âlittle plankâ) to point to them. Users would place their fingers on the planchette, and spirits would channel through them to point it to the desired letter. Among these early talking board enthusiasts was Charles Kennard, a fertilizer entrepreneur in Chestertown, Maryland. He didnât seek answers from the great beyond so much as profit. âHe was one of those guys whoâs always into seven to ten businesses, always looking for some cool opportunity,â Robert Murch, the president of [The Talking Board Historical Society]( (and one of the nationâs foremost experts on Ouija boards) told The Hustle. Kennard partnered with an undertaker and woodworker named E.C. Reiche to make and sell a [dozen or so boards](. Kennard suggested they go into business together, but Reiche failed to see a profit in something people could make themselves. Kennard saw potential and kept at it. After his fertilizer business dried up due to competition and drought in 1889, he moved to Baltimore to start anew. There, he met patent attorney Elijah Bond. Call me Ouija Bond was into Kennardâs business idea â and it didnât hurt that Bondâs sister-in-law, Helen Peters, was a medium (someone who claims they can communicate with the dead). In letters Murch uncovered, Kennard wrote of a seance Peters held in April 1890, during which he [claimed]( they asked the board what it wanted to be called. It spelled âO-U-I-J-A,â then told the group it meant âgood luck.â Early pioneers of the Ouija board: Charles Kennard (top left), E.C. Reiche (top right), Elijah Bond (bottom left), and Helen Peters (bottom right) (Talking Board Historical Society) Ouija wasnât a word in any language. Murch [speculates]( it may have been a misspelling of Ouida, the sobriquet of Maria Louise Ramé, a writer Peters admired, but, whatever the case, it stuck. Kennard incorporated The Kennard Novelty Company on Oct. 30, 1890, [with]( investors Col. Washington Bowie, John F. Green, Harry Welles Rusk, and William H.A. Maupin. Their mission? Selling as many Ouija boards as possible. âProven at the patent officeâ Bondâs role was to trademark the word â[Ouija](â and patent the board. Per Murchâs research, the patent office had rejected similar devices because their creators couldnât prove they were summoning ghosts. So, Bond [brought Peters]( along. The pair were shuffled from clerk to clerk until they reached the officeâs chief. âThe [chief clerk] walks in and says, âLook, I donât know you and you donât know me. But if that contraption can spell my name, youâve got your patent,ââ Murch said. With Peters and Bond at the board, it revealed his name, letter by letter. The supposedly shaken clerk gave Bond [his patent]( â and it gave Kennard a new tag line for the Ouija board in advertisements: â[proven at the patent office](.â The original patent for the Ouija board, filed in 1891 (Google Patents) By 1892, Ouija was so popular that the Kennard Novelty Company built additional factories in NYC, London, and Chicago, and a second in Baltimore. The boards sold for $1 ([~$33 today]() â a bargain for metaphysical messages. The companyâs leadership, however, had less staying power. - Reiche, the undertaker, surfaced and [asked]( for his cut of the profits, which Murch speculates left âa bad tasteâ in peopleâs mouths about Kennard.
- Kennard and Maupin cashed out in 1892, while Bond, who turned out to be terrible at business, departed after a disastrous attempt to oversee the UK factory. Sans Kennard, Col. Washington Bowie [renamed]( the company the Ouija Novelty Company, and enlisted [William Fuld](, his friend and a varnisher at the company, to manufacture the boards with his brother, Isaac. The brothers did so until [1901](, when Ouija, for reasons unknown, signed an exclusive agreement with William Fuld. Big business In 1918, Fuld built a three-story factory in Baltimore for $100k ([$1.9m](), purportedly because the Ouija board [told him]( to âprepare for big business.â Soon, the Ouija board was everywhere: - It was a popular dating game among couples, as depicted in Norman Rockwellâs [cover]( for a 1920 edition of The Saturday Evening Post.
- Songs, like â[Weegee Weegee Tell Me Do](,â â[Ouija Mine](,â and â[Ouija Board](â told of its powers. Bachelorette parties [used it]( to predict guestsâ romantic fates. Left: The Ouija board graced the cover of the Saturday Evening Post in 1920; Right: A 1920s ad offering the Ouija for $1; Bottom: Ouija boards packed in a storefront window (Talking Board Historical Society) With this newfound success, many competitors popped up. Other manufacturers â including Kennard, Bond, and Fuldâs ousted brother â tried to cash in on the trend. But Fuld vanquished them all with lawsuits and pricing tactics (he undercut cheaper boards by manufacturing a discount âMystifying Oracleâ board). Unfortunately, Fuldâs factory also killed him. In 1927, he [fell]( off the roof while supervising a flagpole installation and a broken rib punctured his heart. On his deathbed, he asked his children to never sell the Ouija board. They honored his wish until there were no heirs who wanted to run the business. Then, in [1966](, the Fuld family sold Ouija to Parker Brothers. The Ouija goes corporate Parker Brothers founder George Parker made his first game, Banking, in [1883]( at age 16. It involved borrowing money from a central bank to see if you could make more. By 1966, Parker Brothers was a flourishing company headquartered, like Kozikâs museum, in Salem â with games including Risk, Sorry, and Clue. According to[a 1986 interview]( with then-president Robert B.M. Barton, Parker Brothers paid a staggering ~$975k ($8.9m) for Ouija. It was the [most expensive acquisition]( the company had ever made â itâd [paid]( just $500 ($10.8k) for Monopoly in 1935 â but it paid off. âI think I made the money back in two years,â Barton said at the time. Consumers snapping up Ouija boards in the 1960s (Talking Board Historical Society) Randolph Parker Barton, George Parkerâs [grandson]( and the companyâs then-VP, said that when it acquired the patents, Ouija was selling ~400k boards per year, but had so many back orders, Parker Brothers [wasnât sure]( it could keep up. In 1967 alone, Parker Brothers sold [2m]( boards, outselling every single one of its other [134]( games â even Monopoly. Though the Ouija board was a smash success, Parker Brothers lacked the finances to keep pace with the booming games business. In late â67, the company was [sold]( to General Mills. General Mills had already purchased Play-Doh maker Rainbow Crafts, Inc. and Easy-Bake oven maker Kenner, which merged with Parker Brothers after the acquisition. Tonka acquired Kenner Parker in 1987 in a deal worth $627m ([$1.6B today](), then sold to Hasbro for $516m ([$1.1B]() in 1991. Hasbro retains the Ouija patent and trademark to this day, and occasionally licenses it to other companies: - Winning Moves makes a [classic version]( that harkens back to the â80s and â90s
- Bioworld Merch, which manufactures licensed apparel and accessories, sells [blankets]( Spirit Halloween [sells]( Ouija-themed merchandise, including party decor, mugs, and candles The Ouija brand is in full capitalism mode at the Spirit store â itâs on everything from socks to blankets (Spirit Halloween) Hasbro also produced two horror films, Ouija (2014) and Ouija 2: Origin of Evil (2016), both commercially successful. The first film took in a global box office of $103.6m against a budget of $5m-$8m, despite its mostly negative reviews. Which raises the question: How did Ouija go from a spiritual tool to a flirty dating game to something scary? Blame The Exorcist In 1973âs The Exorcist, 12-year-old Regan tells her mother she uses a Ouija board to talk to a spirit called Captain Howdy shortly before sheâs possessed by a demon. Interestingly, Ouija sales went up [15%]( that year. Sinister Ouija stories werenât unheard of before The Exorcist, in both real life and pop culture. In the 1960 film 13 Ghosts, a levitating planchette [warns]( of impending doom. In 1930, a New York woman [convinced]( a friend to murder her romantic rival, claiming a spirit had ordered the deed. The Exorcistâs greatest contribution to what Murch and Kozik call âOuijastitionsâ is perhaps the idea that something bad could reach out if you used the board alone. The Ouija Board made a prominent appearance in the 1973 film, The Exorcist (Warner Bros. Pictures) Itâs repeated in Dennis Tenneyâs Witchboard (1986), in which Whitesnake video vixen Tawny Kitaen is ensnared by a malevolent spirit after playing alone; both Ouija films; and countless other media â over time cultivating a deep fear and demonic connotations. And in 2008, when Hasbro released a pink Ouija marketed to young girls and sold exclusively at Toys R Us, some called for a [boycott]( on Toys R Us. Hasbro made a pink [Monopoly]( as well. Kozik, who has the pink Ouija in his museum, asks whatâs more evil: chatting with ghosts, or bankrupting all your friends. Kozikâs museum also contains numerous boards mailed in by people hoping to rid themselves of a cursed artifact. One, Kozik told The Hustle, came packed in five pounds of salt. But⦠does it work? Ah, yes. The eternal question. Remember the Fox sisters, who sparked the spiritualism movement in the US back in the mid-1800s? In 1888, one of them admitted â then recanted â that it had all been a hoax, but the spiritualism movement persisted without her. To this day, there are many who believe that the Ouija board allows us to pierce the veil and seek advice from what lies beyond, or those who are so afraid of summoning a demon that they refuse to be near one. The Ouija board remains mysterious to this day (Getty Images) A more scientific explanation is the [ideomotor effect](, small movements we make without intending to or realizing weâre making them. It could explain how Peters conjured a name similar to a writer she loved, or how Bond spelled out the name of a patent employee he â a patent attorney â perhaps already knew. Weâll let you decide. But one thingâs for sure: It turned into a pretty damn good business. Share & discuss this story on: [Facebook]( [Twitter]( [Reddit]( [Website]( [Pocket]( Free Resource
How consumer spending habits are changing In uncertain times like these, just the rumblings of a potential recession can strongly curb consumer spending. Because inflation screws us all. And no matter what you sell, itâs important to meet people where they are. So HubSpot surveyed hundreds to learn about their current priorities and purchasing habits. Read all about [consumer spending trends]( on the blog. We asked 240+ consumers: - Is a potential US recession changing your spending habits?
- If a recession is declared, how will your home budget shift?
- During trying times, what did you spend on the most? On the bright side, experts at IMF said a new recession would likely be short and shallow. Learn why below. [Recession spending insights â]( How did you like todayâs story? Today's email was brought to you by Juliet Bennett Rylah and Zachary Crockett. Was this email forwarded to you? Sign up [here](.
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