In October of 2006, over 500 students at an all-girls Catholic school outside Mexico City fell victim to a strange and sudden illness. The girls complained of headaches, and spontaneously lost the ability to walk- collapsing without warning for no known reason. Medical examinations did not reveal anything unusual- indeed, the origin of this mysterious illness could only be connected to one source- a young girl named Maria, who had been expelled for using a Ouija board.
Before leaving, Maria was said to have cursed the school- and indeed, within a day, those who had participated with her in the Ouija session succumbed to the unidentified ailment. Within weeks, 512 students were affected. Psychologists investigating the case concluded the illness was caused by mass hysteria- a perfectly plausible explanation.
However, you don’t need to look far or long to find other chilling encounters with the infamous Ouija board. From gruesome murders to demonic possessions, the mass-produced talking board has been given credit for some truly horrifying paranormal events.
But with over 10 million Ouija Boards in existence, unless the manufacturers have full time demons on staff, it seems unlikely that the boards themselves have any inherent evil properties. Popular movies and urban legends are quick to spread these more intense tales of terror, although the vast majority are quickly unveiled as exaggerations, hoaxes, or outright fabrications. And yet thousands of victims- like those at the Mexican school- have fallen ill with very real physical symptoms resulting from their use of the Ouija board. How might these cases be explained?
In 1890, American businessmen Elijah Bond and Charles Kennard patented a curious parlor game, which they named the Ouija Board. The now all-too-familiar novelty was sold as a light entertainment, and the manufacturers enjoyed a steady popularity as the game proved to be a hit at cocktail parties across the United States.
While it was originally marketed as a flirtatious game, during World War I the board found a new common use- contacting the dead- popularizing the notion of using the Ouija to speak with those who had passed. Ever since, sales have consistently peaked during times of war.
The board also became implicated in more sinister plots. In 1933, 15-year-old Mattie Turley shot and killed her father, claiming a spirit commanded her to commit the act via the Ouija. In February 1954, the CIA produced a 27-page document titled A History of Ouija and Intelligence Applications– and while it appears their findings did not lead to any actionable tactics, the mere fact that they were investigating the board speaks volumes to its reputation.
In 1973, the Ouija Board made a big splash on the silver screen- playing a pivotal role in the hit film, The Exorcist. The film centers on a possessed young woman, who first makes contact with a demonic inhabitant through the board. The writer of the film was inspired by a real life account of Ouija-related possession, which occurred in 1949 near Washington DC. The impact this movie had on mass consciousness opened the floodgates for similar tales of demonic presence caused by the Ouija.
Many believe that these magical properties were thrust upon the parlor game, which was patented and manufactured by shrewd businessmen just trying to make a buck. The truth is, of course, much more complex, as the Ouija is based on a centuries-old tradition- an esoteric tool hidden in plain site in the comforting guise of a board game.
For nearly a thousand years, variations of the Ouija board have been used to communicate with entities outside of our known physical reality. Around 1100 AD, the Chinese practice known as “Fuji” was comprised of the same fundamental elements as the Ouija: a board with characters printed on it was used to reveal information from the spirit realm using a simple pointer. Chinese culture has a long-standing interest in divination techniques, and Fuji became widely used for this purpose- although practitioners needed to be specifically trained and supervised.
However, the businessmen who originally patented the Ouija board were likely taking their inspiration from a source closer to home. On March 28, 1886, the New York Daily Tribune ran an article on occult practitioners in Ohio, featuring an image of a board identical to the Ouija- 4 years before it was manufactured. In fact boards featuring the familiar alphabet layout and distinctive planchette were being used all over America as early as 1850.
These boards grew out of the Spiritualist movement, comprised of dedicated groups across the United States experimenting in earnest with different methods of contacting the spirit realm. The Spiritualists were versed in a variety of esoteric practices- and for them the board itself was merely a tool, requiring a skilled user with deep occult knowledge.
Maria and her classmates in the afflicted Mexican school were certainly not well versed in the esoteric- and yet somehow the mass-produced Ouija Board directly caused the illness of over 500 young girls. Uncannily similar cases have been reported over the years- including quite a few in the past decade.
In 2016, another group of schoolchildren in Peru encountered a frighteningly similar scenario- nearly 100 were hospitalized with a condition referred to as “contagious demonic possession.” A group of roughly 20 children at Elsa Perea Flores School in northern Peru were playing with a Ouija board in an attempt to make contact with spirits they believed were haunting the school. The middle-school students had become obsessed with rumors that the school was built above a mass-grave site once used by the Mafia.
Almost immediately after their Ouija session, the group of students began displaying a terrifying range of symptoms- including seizures, vomiting, fainting, and frothing at the mouth. Over the course of the next month, dozens of other students began exhibiting the same symptoms. Doctors were at a loss- administrators went as far as to hold Catholic masses in the school and they even enlisted the services of an exorcist. Several of the afflicted children mentioned seeing a “tall man in black” chasing or strangling them at the time of their fainting. Eventually, the sickness wore off- and once again, officials credited the bizarre outbreak to mass hysteria.
Two years earlier, 35 students in a Bolivian school were taken to the hospital with similar symptoms– once again after playing with a Ouija board.
In May of 2015, schools across the Caribbean banned a simple variation of Ouija, known as Charlie Charlie, after a spree of incidents across the various nations in the region. One student told the Antigua Observer: “Children started fainting and having seizures. Children were fainting while walking home, and some of them were trying to jump out (of) the bus.”
As shocking as these tales may be, with over 10 million Ouija boards in existence, the odds that the board itself is somehow responsible seems absurd- certainly the diagnosis of mass hysteria is correct. But what exactly is mass hysteria? In these cases, the more specific diagnosis would be mass psychogenic illness– a specific variation of mass hysteria which includes observed physical symptoms. Unfortunately, doctors and scientists don’t know much about mass psychogenic illness. In fact, its clinical definition relies more on a lack of other obvious factors.
According to a pamphlet published by American Family Physician, doctors should diagnose an outbreak of “mass psychogenic illness” by using the following, absurdly generic criteria:
“Physical exams and tests are normal.
Doctors can’t find anything wrong with the group’s classroom or office, like some kind of poison in the air.”
And
“Many people get sick.”
As for the underlying mechanisms of the illness, it is hard to find any researchers who are willing to pin down the specifics. Vague references to stress and anxiety abound, but little attention is paid to the larger issue of how the beliefs of a small group can cause very real physical responses like vomiting, fainting, paralysis, and frothing of the mouth
This mysterious illness may share some common cause with what is known as the placebo effect– a well-documented nuisance in the medical world in which patients who receive no treatment miraculously start feeling better- simply because they believed they were receiving treatment. While many have heard of the placebo effect in relation to drug trials- in which a control group is supplied with sugar pills, also known as placebos- this effect also occurs in non-clinical settings, and in one study- even during surgery.
In 2002, a group of 180 patients were assigned to one of three groups- two groups received different procedures for osteoarthritis of the knee, while the third received nothing but an incision. Remarkably, all three groups reported similar levels of pain relief in the two years following the surgery- with the placebo group actually reporting the second highest level of relief. Similar to mass psychogenic illness, medical researchers have more questions than answers when it comes to the placebo effect.
The cheap plastic of the Ouija’s planchette cutting across the board appears as effective as the surgeon’s incision in the placebo surgeries- creating physical effects based on nothing more than a belief. Demonic possessions were considered a legitimate medical explanation for any number of ailments until the late 19th century in the Western world- and many cultures across the globe continue to believe in such causes, and cures, for sickness. Indeed, each case of illness resulting from Ouija possession involves a group of people who were predisposed to belief in evil supernatural entities- in most cases, they were attempting to contact them directly.
Whether the demons themselves are real or imagined doesn’t seem to matter much in the face of a legitimate physical illness with no other known cause. In the end, thousands of cases with physical symptoms originating from the mass-produced Ouija Board cannot be sufficiently explained- and whether you attribute the underlying cause to stress or demons, these cases point to a fundamental mystery of the human mind- one which has eluded our understanding for centuries, and likely will continue to do so for many years to come.