History
Ouija Boards have been around for about one-hundred years now, and people are still trying to decide if they are just a toy or not. Ouija boards were first invented in 1891 by two men named Elijah Bond and Charles Kennard. People got bored of the way they were communicating with spirits, and everyone stopped buying Planchettes. Which are heart shaped pieces of wood with two wheels. On the tip of the heart is a hole, where you stick a pencil. You and the medium put your fingers on it and chant, ask questions or just sit there in silence until it begins to write. This was slow and boring. People wanted a more exciting and fun way to communicate with spirits and read minds. The two men came up with many ideas and finally came up with one, and it worked! Their idea was to put the Planchette with out wheels and a pencil, on a board with numbers, letters, yes, no and goodbye on it, so you wouldn't have to wait for the spirit to messily scribble out your answers. All you needed to do was ask your questions and it would quickly (or slowly, depending on the spirit or their mood,) spell out the answer! Anyway, William Fuld, an employee of Charles Kennard, took over the idea in 1901. He quickly took it under his own company name and patented the word "Ouija" , then Fuld started selling them. He thought the word was Ancient Egypt for "good luck" but he was wrong. It actually means, "yes, yes." William Fuld attempted to sue every company that tried to use the name "Ouija", the design, the game or who ever tried to have the same concept, all the way up to his death in 1927. The Fuld business was eventually sold off to Hasbro who now have a couple designs of the board, such as: The pink Ouija Board, the glow in the dark Ouija board and many more based of the original design by Bond and Kennard.