While the Roman scholar Pliny the Younger was one of the first to write about ghost huntingthe oldest organisation in the world associated with psychical research is The Ghost Club.Officially founded in Londonin 1862 it can be traced back to Cambridge University where, in 1855, fellows at Trinity College began to discuss Egyptian magic, second sight, ghosts and psychic phenomena.The Club’s goal was to expose fraudulent spirit mediums and investigate authentic psychic phenomena including ghosts and hauntings.
Charles Dickens was one of its early members; Dickens, claimed many paranormal experiences in his life, including encounters with ghosts, yet was opposed to the trappings of the Spiritualist movement, so applauded and supported the efforts of the Club in their exposure of phony mediums.The Ghost Club seems to have dissolved in the 1870s following Dickens’ death only to be revived on All Saints Day 1882 by A. A. Watts and the Reverend Stainton Moses, a famous contemporary medium.Its relaunch coincided with the launch of the Society for Psychical Research, a body devoted to scientific study, and for a while some members belonged to both.
For over 54 years membership was restricted to 82 members but during this period the Ghost Club attracted some of the most original and controversial minds in psychical research while serving as a place for those who were unable to pursue their activities elsewhere, included Sir William Crookes who attracted scandal after an investigation into medium Florence Cook.Other members have included the poet W.B.Yeats who joined in 1911 and Frederick Bligh Bond who joined in 1925 and became infamous with his obsessive investigations into spiritualism at Glastonbury.
Harry Price became a member in 1927; in the 1930s he was world famous for his psychic research and for his investigation into Borley Rectory.Psychologist Dr. Nandor Fodor joined in the same year. Between 1882 and 1926 the Ghost Club was exclusively male only and was set up like a brotherhood where members referred to each other as Brother Ghost.
With attendance dwindling in the 20th century and the change from seance room investigation to laboratory based research the Ghost Club was becoming out of touch with psychic research or parapsychology as it became known in the 1930s.On November 2nd 1936 after 485 meetings Price, Bligh Bond and a few of the remaining members wound the Club up.The Ghost Club records were almost destroyed because of their confidential nature but managed to find a home in the British Museum under the proviso that they would be closed until 1962.Yet within 18 months Price had relaunched the Ghost Club, this time as a society dining event where psychic researchers and mediums delivered after dinner talks.
Activities lapsed following Price's death in 1948 but the Club was again relaunched.In 1993 the Club underwent a period of internal disruption resulting in the abolition of the "invite only" clause in its membership policy, and 'ordinary' members having an active part in council meetings.At this time the Ghost Club also expanded its remit to include the study of UFOs, dowsing, cryptozoology, and similar subjects.
It has been reputed that the Club's archives contain the names of all members, both alive and dead, which are solemnly each November 2nd, the feast of All Souls, as all are still considered to be a member and that on more than one occasion deceased members were believed to have made their presence felt!
Over its history The Ghost Club has attracted many famous members including Charles Dickens, Siegfried Sassoon, Peter Cushing, Dennis Wheatley, Donald Campbell,Sir William Crookes, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, poet William Butler Yeats, Peter Sellers and Michael Bentine. Present members include the explorer and founder of Operations "Drake" and"Raleigh" Colonel John Blashford-Snell, OBE, and paranormal investigator Maurice Grosse, famous for his investigation of the Enfield Poltergeist.
Today the Ghost Club is a non-profit, social club and remains true to its roots by offering open-minded, curious individuals the opportunity to debate, explore and investigate unexplained phenomena with like-minded people and record the results for posterity.Regular meetings, usually once a month on a Saturday at 2pm, are held at The Victory Services Club, near Marble Arch, in central London and are free to all members; guests are welcome.
On March 31st, 1848, in the town of Arcadia, New York, two sisters, then twelve and fifteen, began communicating with the spirit of a peddlar who conversed through raps and knocks. Although people would later make claims of deception, it is possible that Kate and Margaret Fox effectively began the craze for spiritualism and mediumship that swept across America and Europe.
While there are references to similar items to a talking board being used by the early Egyptians, Greeks, Babylonians, and even the Witches of the Middle Ages, the talking board was designed for the purpose of making communicating easier to understand than the previous methods of table tapping, (…one tap for yes, two taps for no), "table turning" or "tipping".This is where a group of people, usually led by a medium, would sit around a suitable table on which their fingers rested and attempt to make contact with a spirit.If successful, the table would tip and knock on the floor, answering questions and even spelling out messages using a code of knocks for each letter of the alphabet - a cumbersome and discouraging process.
Spirit, witch, oracle, Cryptique,Ouija, and mystery boards are all guises of the talking board, although Ouija, possibly derived from the French and German words for yes, is a trademark now belonging to Hasbro Inc.The earliest known patent for a talking board was lodged by Adolphus Theodore Wagner, a professor of music and resident of Berlin of the Kingdom of Prussia in the patent offices in London, England. He filed his patent for a “PSYCHOGRAPH, OR APPARATUS FOR INDICATING PERSONS THOUGHTS BY THE AGENT OF NERVOUS ELECTRICITY” on January 23, 1854.
A similar device was documented in Allan Kardec’s novel Le Livre des Mediums, translated by Anna Blackwell as “The Medium’s Book.” Kardec, is considered by many to be the father of French spiritualism.The instrument alluded to consisted of a table with a moveable top, eighteen inches in diameter, which turned freely on an axle, like a wheel.Around its edge were the letters of the alphabet, numerals, and the words “yes” and “no” and in the centre a fixed needle. The medium placed his fingers on the table, which turned and stopped when the desired letter was brought up under the needle
the letters were written down allowing words and
phrases to be obtained, often with great rapidity.However, these dial-plate boards never became
popular in the way the simple planchette did possibly because they were
expensive.
It appears that of the planchette, (French for
‘little plank’), in the form we know it, could be an American addition to the
board. In the 1850s the planchettewas a small heart-shaped,wooden board, with a hole in its narrow end used
to hold a pencil and wheels on its underside so it could move easily over a
sheet of paper.One or more people placed
their fingers on the planchette, and as it moved it could spell out messages or draw pictures on the
paper as a form of "automatic writing”.
"Planchette writing" or fuji was known and recorded in historical documents of
the Song Dynasty, (between 960 and 1279), China dating from around 1100 BC.Similar methods of mediumistic spirit writing
have been widely practiced in Ancient India, Greece, Rome and medieval Europe.
In the 1880s, three Americans, Elijah J. Bond, E.C.
Reiche and Charles Kennard, invented the Ouija board. This was a simple board
emblazoned with the alphabet, numbers and the words "Yes" and
"No." Messages were spelt out by sliding the planchette (without the
pencil) over the board.By 1890, Kennard was marketing the first Ouija
boards.The first patent on the Ouija or talking board (No. 446,054) was granted to
Elijah Bond on February 10th 1891 and assigned to Charles Kennard and William
H. A. Maupin, both of Baltimore and two of the founders of the Kennard Novelty
Company. The trademark on the word Ouija (No. 18,919) was granted to
the Kennard Novelty Company on February 3rd, 1891.William Fuld,
often cited as the inventor and father of the Ouija board, took over from
Kennard in 1892, and marketed his "Ouija, the Mystifying Oracle"
until his death in 1927, after which his children took over the business. In 1966, they sold their patent to Parker
Brothers.There is a long and detailed
history of this family and business at; www.cryptique.com
Originally talking boards were made of real wood; the
ancients the believed that wood held certain magical qualities but as mass manufacturing
and assembly line production took over a variety of materials have been used. One common and inexpensive version is simply letters,
figures, and key words (such as "yes," "no" and
"goodbye") written on small pieces of cardboard or paper, and arranged
in a circle on a smooth table. An
upturned glass takes the place of the planchette.Participants sit around the table and gently
place a finger on the base of the glass. The glass moves between the symbols to
spell out messages.
Scientifically the talking board phenomenon has been
criticised by many as a hoax related to the ideomotor response and when
recreated in the laboratory showed that the subjects were moving the board
involuntarily.It has been suggested
these unconscious movements of the planchette are manipulated by precognition,
psychokinesis, telepathy or by spirits.
Can the operator of a talking board communicate with
the dead? Emily Grant Hutchings claimed
that her 1917 novel Jap Herron: A Novel
Written from the Ouija Board was dictated by Mark Twain's spirit. While researching for his 1976 book The Ghost of Flight 401, the flight which crashed into the Everglades en route to Miami, author John G. Fuller used a talking
board.Sceptical of its effectiveness he
worked with a medium; they claim to have contacted Don Repo, the flight engineer, whom revealed facts that
neither Fuller nor the medium previously knew. In The Businessman: A Tale of Terror (1984), by Thomas Disch, there is a scene where a ghost attempts to
manipulate a Ouija board session to expose a murderer, unfortunately the ghost
is dyslexic and they are unable to
identify the killer.
Bill Wilson, the co-founder
ofAlcholics Anonymous, claimed that he received the twelve step method
directly from a spirit and wrote it down; he was also to have used talking
boards.In 1994, In London, convicted
murderer Stephen Young's lawyers lodged an appeal against his conviction after
learning that four of the jurors had conducted a talking board to
"contact" the murdered man, who named Young as his killer.
Some believe that talking boards open doorways to
the unknown, others that they are merely a game, some feel they are tools to
access occult knowledge; however the standard definition of the word 'occult'
is "hidden" with nothing evil or wicked implied.Whether the hidden knowledge gained from
using a talking board is part of your subconscious or comes from the spirit
world is open to your own interpretation.
A number of Christians including Bishops in
Micronesia have called for the boards to be banned as the boards allow people
to talk to demons and devils or can reveal information which should only be on
God's hands, and thus it is a tool of Satan.In 2001 Ouija boards were burned in Alamogordo, N.M by fundamentalist
groups alongside Harry Potter books as 'symbols of witchcraft'.In the murder trial of Joshua Tucker, his mother insisted that he had carried out the
murders while possessed by the devil who found him when he was using an Ouija
board.
Religious groups often cite cases of so-called
“spirit possession” that occur after use the talking board when malevolent
forces, masquerading as good spirits, possess children and impressionable
adults and cause emotional damage, even suicide. Authentic cases are nearly as common
as rocking horse poop.However it is
possible for people to become dependent on, or even obsessed with anything,
including talking boards.There are
accounts of people using talking boards and then discovering that “things begin
to happen” these include alleged voices and the movement of objects in their
home.Are these the result of psychokinetic
energy, spirits, or perceived as happening by a susceptible or expectant mind?
One of the most mysterious looking buildings in Los
Angeles is the famed Bradbury Building. Over
the years, a variety of Hollywood film makers have been drawn to it to shoot films
like DOA, Blade Runner and Seven.The legend says that George Wyman consulted
his dead brother via an Ouija Board about it before he built it for Louis
Bradbury in 1893. Wyman had little
architectural experience at the time and was unsure about taking on the
monumental task. His brother convinced
him, through the board, that the building would make him famous -- and it did.
Henry Ward (better known as Sax Rohmer), the author
of the "Fu Manchu" novels, and member of the Golden Dawn, claimed he started
his lucrative writing career on advice gained through an Ouija board. He asked how to best make a living as a writer
and the board spelled out "c-h-i-n-a-m-a-n". The novels that followed brought him fame and
fortune.
Is the talking board a harmless toy or a way to way
to communicate with the dead? You will have to judge that one for yourself.
Adolphus Theodore Wagner’s Psychograph
The patent for the Psychograph describes
the device:
“The apparatus consists of a combination of rods or
pieces of wood joined so as to permit of free action in all parts. From one of the legs of the instrument hangs a
tracer; on one or more of the other extremities is fixed a disc, upon which the
operator is to place his hand, and from this extremity or these extremities
depends another tracer. The other parts
of the apparatus consist of a glass slab or other non-conductor, and of an
alphabet and set of figures or numerals. Upon a person possessing nervous
electricity placing his hand upon one of the discs the instrument will
immediately work, and the tracer will spell upon the alphabet what is passing
in the operator’s mind.”
No
mention of communicating with spirits or of the occult occurs in his patent. Only
that the messages spelled out by the device are created in the mind of the
operator. This train of thought is
duplicated throughout talking board patents. While many spiritualists, etc., claim to use
talking boards to communicate with the other side, the inventors, or patentees,
make no such claims.
