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FIRST GHOST IN A STARRING ROLE

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Clytemnestra's Ghost Is Standing On The Left. This Period Illustration May Look Tame—But An Audience Member Died Of Fright At The Play's Premiere
Clytemnestra’s Ghost Is On The Left. This Period Illustration May Look Tame—But Legend Says A Female Audience Member Died Of Fright At The Play’s Premiere.

Before 458 BC, Literary Ghosts Played Minor Parts

Elsewhere on this site, we’ve discussed ghosts who played “walk-on” roles in Homer’s epic Greek poems, the Illiad and The Odyssey. We also mentioned the one significant—though very brief—ghost story in the Old Testament.

It wasn’t until about four centuries after Homer that Aeschylus, the ancient Greek playwright known as “the father of tragedy,” gave us one of the first fictional works in which a ghost took a central dramatic role. The work is called The Eumenides, and it is the final play in a trilogy collectively known as the Oresteia, all of which deal with the murder and its aftermath of King Agamemnon by his wife, Clytemnestra, in the wake of the Trojan War. [Read more…] about FIRST GHOST IN A STARRING ROLE

HOW OUIJA BOARDS GOT NAMED

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A Modern Commercial Ouija Ouija Board Intended As Entertainment. Photo: Visitor7
A Modern Commercial Pre-1966 William Fuld Ouija Board Intended As Entertainment. Photo: Visitor7

The Story Of The ‘Mystifying Oracle’ That Named Itself

The story of how the Ouija board was given the name Ouija (wee-ja) board actually is more amusing than it is mysterious. Many people assume that Ouija is a combination of the French (oui) and German (ja) words for “yes.” But it is not.

According to Ouija historian Robert Murch, the board suggested its own name one day in the early 1890s while it was being used by Elijah Bond, one of the original investors in the company that manufactured it, and members of Bond’s family. When the group asked the board what they should call it, it spelled out, “Ouija.” When they asked what Ouija meant, the board reportedly told them, “Good Luck.” [Read more…] about HOW OUIJA BOARDS GOT NAMED

MY OWN PERSONAL GHOST STORY

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An Indigenous Village In The Amazon Region. Photo: Gleilson Miranda / Governo do Acre
Dwellings At An Isolated Indigenous Village In The Amazon Forest, Similar To The One That Burned. Photo: Gleilson Miranda/Governo do Acre

I Didn’t See Her. I Saw Proof Of The Fear She Caused.

In the Peruvian rain forest, while working as a travel journalist the late 1980s, I saw vivid, concrete evidence of the power with which the ghostly had gripped the hearts and imaginations of a community whose members still lived by the rhythms of their most distant ancestors. I was ascending the Amazon River by paddlewheel boat from Leticia, Colombia to Iquitos, Peru in the company of a small group of other American writers, all of us traveling at the invitation of a Peruvian adventure-tour operator. From time to time the boat would pull to the riverbank and we would disembark either to search for wildlife or to visit villages on or near the edges of the river. Some of these villages belonged to native groups that only a few decades previously had experienced their first contact with Europeanized Peruvians.

One afternoon, as our boat churned toward the landing for an Indian village set farther back in the jungle, our Peruvian guides pointed out an unusual and disturbing sight: Wispy columns of gray smoke were rising from the forest canopy directly above the place where they knew the village to be—much more smoke than a few cooking fires ever would produce. Also strange was that, even after the crew had dropped the aluminum ramp down which we all trooped to shore, not a soul came to greet us. The forest before us was dead quiet. [Read more…] about MY OWN PERSONAL GHOST STORY

THE HISTORY OF THE OUIJA BOARD

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A Photo Of One Of The Original Ouija Boards From The Late 1800s. Photographer Unknown.
A Photo Of One Of The Original Ouija Boards From The Late 1800s. Note That Ouija Board Elements—Letters, Numbers, And Words—Have Changed Little Since The Beginning. Photographer: Unknown.

Ouija Boards: A Mystical, Mostly American, Invention

Most of what we know about the history of the Ouija board comes to us through the work of a spirit-board enthusiast and collector named Robert Murch, who has researched the topic since 1992.

Murch, probably the world’s foremost authority on Ouija boards, tells us that far from being an enchanted and somewhat sinister relic from the distant—perhaps pre-Christian—past as many people think, the Ouija board was created as a game in the last decade of 19th century America. As you can see from the photo (above), the first commercial talking boards were made of wood; the original purchase price was $1.50. [Read more…] about THE HISTORY OF THE OUIJA BOARD

REVENANTS, VAMPIRES, & ZOMBIES

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Female Vampire Depicted By Philip Burne-Jones (1896)
Female Vampire Depicted By Philip Burne-Jones (1896)

The Walking Dead: Ghosts You Can Touch And Feel

Acording to European folklore, not all ghosts are vaporous, intangible spirits. Some of the dead return to haunt the living in the same bodies that carried them through life.

From the Middle Ages forward, these material or “solid” ghosts were called “revenants,” a word derived from the Latin word for “returning.” Prior to medieval times, the Vikings talked of animated corpses they called draugar (singular: (draugr or draug) which sometimes guarded buried treasures and/or possessed magical powers. [Read more…] about REVENANTS, VAMPIRES, & ZOMBIES

ARE OUIJA BOARDS EVIL?

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Wholesome Entertainment? Norman Rockwell's May 1, 1920 Cover Illustration For The Saturday Evening Post.
Ouija Board: Satan’s Toy Or Healthy Family Fun? Norman Rockwell’s May 1, 1920 Cover Illustration For The Saturday Evening Post.

Is It Dangerous To Play With A Ouija Board?

As strange as it may seem, playing with a Ouija board did not used to be a controversial activity. For most of its existence, from the time of it’s invention by leisure-time entrepreneurs in the late 1800s until the early 1970s, “spirit” boards or “talking” boards were seen as an interesting, safe, and pleasurable pastime for friends and families, including the kids. The Norman Rockwell illustration (above) of a wholesome, early 1920s middle-class couple having fun with a Ouija board pretty much sums up the attitude that prevailed through most of the Twentieth Century.

Certainly, plenty of people who used a Ouija board really believed they were communicating with spirits. But almost nobody thought they were evil or harmful spirits; rather, people believed or imagined that they were contacting the ghosts of departed loved ones, or other disembodied but benign entities who wanted to pass a message from the other side.

So, what happened to turn it all around? [Read more…] about ARE OUIJA BOARDS EVIL?

CLASSIC MOVIE GHOSTS TAKE THREE

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Holding Hands With A Ghost

Aauthor Shirley Jackson is probably best known for her eerie and unsettling short story, The Lottery, which is still read in many high school English classes. Not only is The Lottery a tale about irrational fear and deadly superstition, but it’s often interpreted as a protest against the Communist “witch hunts” of the 1950s as well as the evils of unthinking social conformity.

But Jackson also wrote The Haunting of Hill House, one of the finest literary ghost stories of the Twentieth Century. Jackson’s 1959 novel was adapted into a 1963 movie of the same name—and the movie itself, along with being faithful to the book, is quite fine. In fact, it’s considered one of the scariest movies of the Twentieth Century. [Read more…] about CLASSIC MOVIE GHOSTS TAKE THREE

OUIJA BOARD

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An English Ouija Board
An Early English Ouija Board

Ouija Boards—What Are They Really?

Almost all of us have seen, if not used, a Ouija (pronounced wee-ja) board. Game and toy company Hasbro, Inc., currently owns the trade mark, but around nine other companies produce similar products, calling them “spirit” or “talking” boards. Regardless of the names the manufacturers use, the public generically refers to all of them as Ouija boards.

In its contemporary form the Ouija board is a game board illustrated with letters, numbers, and the words “No,” “Yes,” and “Good bye.” The Ouija set includes a small, plastic table called a planchette designed to slide easily across the board on a trio of felt feet. The planchette usually contains a round window from the center of which protrudes a brass pin that serves as a pointer. [Read more…] about OUIJA BOARD

THE FIRST HAUNTED HOUSE

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Athenodorus Regrets Renting A Haunted House. By Henry Justice Ford
Athenodorus Regrets Renting A Haunted House. By Henry Justice Ford

A Haunting In Ancient Athens

This old, old tale of a ghost who haunts a house starts out like so many contemporary horror films that feature haunted houses: 1) Man finds an attractive home for rent at a ridiculously cheap price. 2) Man is warned that the place is no real bargain because it’s haunted by a malevolent spirit. 3) Man scoffs at the ghost stories and rents the house anyway. 4) Scary things begin to happen. 5) The scary things get scarier and scarier and soon the man is doing an imitation of the Cowardly Lion in The Wizard of Oz: “I do believe in spooks. I do, I do, I do. . . . ”

The distinction enjoyed by the story of the ancient Greek philosopher, Athenodorus, and the haunted villa he rented in Athens is that it’s the first Western haunted house story ever to be written. The author was Pliny the Younger, and the text was in the form of a letter that Pliny wrote to a friend around two thousand years ago. [Read more…] about THE FIRST HAUNTED HOUSE

HAUNTED HOUSES

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A Victorian-Style House, Allegedly Haunted. Photo: Sean MacEntee
A Victorian-Style House, Allegedly Haunted. Photo: Sean MacEntee

How Does A House Become Haunted?

People have talked about haunted houses for at least two thousand years. The oldest written story or account of a haunted house was penned by a Roman named Pliny the Younger, who wrote a letter describing a haunted villa in Athens. According to Pliny, in addition to a phantom who frightened passers-by, the deserted house was infamous for the crashing noises and the sounds of rattling chains that emanated from it at night.

Haunted houses are dwellings said to be inhabited by one or more ghosts who have some sort of attachment to the place that makes them unwilling or unable to leave it. In many accounts the living person who became the haunting spirit was murdered in the house; in others, the ghost him- or herself is that of a murderer. Ghosts are also said to haunt a dwelling because of a strong connection to someone or something inside it—a precious object, or a relative or other person who lives there or used to live there, and whom the ghost hopes will return one day. [Read more…] about HAUNTED HOUSES