Stuff You Should Know - SYSK Selects: How Ouija Boards Work

Episode Date: September 7, 2019

Although most people who've used Ouija boards don't think they're communicating with the beyond, there is something mysterious about how it works. Learn the ins and outs of the popular parlor game that sprang directly from the 19th-century spiritualism movement in this classic episode. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called, David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s.

We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass

and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, ya everybody, about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say. Bye, bye, bye.

Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Hello friends, I hope you're having a creepy Saturday afternoon or morning or night. I would recommend saving this stuff you should know select episode until tonight when you can break out your Ouija board

and learn about Ouija as you play Ouija and realize that Ouija is just bunk and completely made up. From October, 2013, how Ouija boards work, right here, right now. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeart Radio's How Stuff Works. Hey and welcome to the podcast, I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chubb Bryant.

Jerry's kinda here. And this is Stuff You Should Know. Yeah, this is the last podcast, these two today, that we're recording in the infamous murder room. Oh yeah, it's right. Yeah, well it's so long murder room. Yeah, we're moving offices and what better thing to do than to have a seance which we're gonna conduct

after this episode records. You didn't tell me about this first. Yeah, we're having a seance buddy. I don't know about that. We're gonna get down to brass tacks and answer all the unknown questions. Well you know what, I'll tell you what, I will have a seance with you using a Ouija board

because now I know how they work. And I'm not quite as scared of them as I used to be, say after I saw the Exorcist. Yeah, do you say Ouija? Or Ouija. I say Ouija. Yeah, kinda do too, although I think it's probably Ouija. Right, not to be confused with a crime scene photographer,

Ouija, we're talking about the Ouija board. Although yeah, I think some people say Ouija. Yeah, I just think it's interesting, I said Ouija since I was a kid. Yeah, me too. But I also say Reese's Cup instead of Reese's Cup. Yumi does too, Yumi and her sister do. Yeah, I'm like, no, it's Reese's.

They're like, no, it's Reese's. Yeah, well I don't even say Reese's, I just say a Reese's Cup. I think they do too. People in their quirks. Yeah, foibles. I say foibles. Yeah, you should hear him sing

that potato potato song everybody. Yeah, which apparently I got snookered on that by the way. That's an old bit. So I was snookered by an urban legend. What? The whole potato potato song where I said, yeah, a friend of mine's friend auditioned with this piece and sang it wrong.

You thought it was for real? Well yeah, of course I did. I'd never heard that before. That's very funny. Yeah, had you heard that? No, because you would have stopped me. I know, I have heard it before, but it wasn't too long ago.

Was it from my mouth? Maybe. But I didn't think that it actually happened, I think. Okay. Anyway, Ouija. Suckers born every day. Ouija board. Yes.

And I mentioned Exorcist already. You saw that, right? Oh, of course. A bunch of times. Enough. Here's a trivia question for you. What is the name of the spirit Regan communicates with?

I didn't even have to look this up. Through her Ouija board. Geez, I don't remember. Captain Howdy. Shut up. Do you remember now? Now. Captain Howdy was who she's talking with,

who is the devil. I guess that was one of his aliases. I wonder if he has like a devil passport that says Captain Howdy on it. Devil, Satan, Lucifer. Captain Howdy. Captain Howdy. I didn't know that.

Yeah, it's true. That makes it a little less frightening. So what was that? The early 70s, the Exorcist came out, right? I think so. Okay. And the Ouija board, the one she was playing with,

I believe was a Parker Brothers Ouija board. Was it? Now Hasbro. Yeah. And that was this mass manufactured, mass marketed toy game, but it was actually based on like a real phenomenon that we've talked about here on this show before.

The spiritual is a movement of the 19th century. The Ouija board first made its appearance around then. Supposedly they claim provenance for this way further back than that, but there's no real evidence that the Ouija board itself is any older than the mid 19th century. Yeah.

And that it's American in origin. Yeah, the actual Ouija brand board is what you're talking about, right? Right, or talking boards in general, which is another name for like a Ouija board is a talking board, but not all talking boards are Ouija boards. That's right.

So you're saying there's no evidence that they existed before, like in the 1800s before that? Before that? No, people did use divination. There is a pretty good source, a fourth century BC Greek scholar who wrote a history,

who talks about a pair of men who were killed for using divination, but they used a pendulum and a disc with the alphabet around it to spell out a message. So there were divinations. People did use like an alphabet dial. I don't know if they use a planchette, but the Ouija board itself,

despite being marketed for many years as something from Egyptian antiquity, is probably something that was created no earlier in the mid 19th century in the States. All right. Well, 1891 is an attorney named Elijah Bond patented what was called the Ouija Egyptian luck board. And it's important to point out when these things

are marketed, when you read the fine print, they never claim to be able to talk with the spirits. It's like just sort of, it's a game. Right. It's a game now. And it was once it became mass marketed. They, they stopped, they didn't claim anything like that.

It was like the 1920s. Yeah, but in 1891, it was part of this larger offshoot of spiritualism. Yeah. And we talked a bit about Egyptology and it sort of all ties in, seances were big. Yeah, remember they cracked the hieroglyphic code from the Rosetta stone just a couple of decades before.

So Egypt was like this weird place with all sorts of strange cults and rituals. Yeah. And it's just, it's strange to me that something like the occult, even on a minor level, sort of took hold on the United States at one point. And I don't know how, if it was accepted by the masses, but like, you know, regular people and noteworthy people

would hold seances and try to communicate with their dead relatives, usually through a medium who was usually female. You're right. You know, there weren't a lot of dudes doing it. No, there were a lot of dudes who were involved in it, but the mediums were typically female. And a lot of them used things

that were like the Ouija board, talking boards. Yeah, like they, you mentioned the dial plate, which was a spinning wheel with letters and numbers and the alphabet board, which was sort of like a Ouija board, but you just pointed to different letters and waited for a response from the great beyond. Some had a little pencil

that would like actually write things out. Right, that used a planchette, which is French for a little plank, which is a little board or something, maybe like a circular disc on three legs. And then one of the legs for a writing planchette was basically a hole with a pencil going through it, so that when the planchette moved using the medium's hands,

but the spirit was really in control, the pencil would write something, hopefully. So back to the Ouija board, the official game version. Over about 70 years, it changed ownership a few times, eventually landing at Parker Brothers, which is now Hasbro, like you pointed out. Right, Elijah Bond, the guy who,

he didn't come up with the first Ouija board, but he was the first one to make an improvement on an existing patent. And the Ouija board, as we understand it, that was his, how we see it now. And he actually went off after he sold the rights to it to a guy named Charles Canard. Elijah Bond went off and created a rival version

that had a huge swastika on it. Didn't perform so well. No, it did at first, cause we're talking 1907, so we didn't have that association, it was still like a mystical symbol. But it was made by the swastika novelty company in West Virginia that he founded to produce this rival board. And it's considered his other Ouija board.

That's pretty funny. Isn't that weird? Yeah, my friend Jesse Char, the other day, tweeted something funny about design. I think it was something like 15% of design is trying to make something not look like a swastika or a penis, although that was pretty good. Did she make that up or have you heard that?

I've not heard of that. All right, so I'm giving credit to Jesse Char. So Chuck, the point is the Ouija board took this thing that was being used by mediums as part of a very serious spiritualism movement and said, hey, you don't need this crazy old lady to contact your dead uncle. Right.

Now you can buy one and do it in your own home. Over cocktails. Exactly. And a lot of people took it like that from the get go. I think some people probably purchased Ouija boards seriously, but I think from the outset, it was a part of a party. It was a conversation starter.

Yeah, yeah. Something that you just did socially too for fun. For sure. I think that there was always a large segment of the Ouija board buying population that just took it as entertainment. Yeah, exactly, which is probably how you should take it. Right.

From Canard, he had an employee named William Fould, F-U-L-D, who basically took it over to the point where he even stamped his name Inventor on the back of it, even though he wasn't. And he's credited as being the father of the Ouija board because he's the one that really ran with it in a marketing sense and brought it to the masses and would do all the press for it.

He claimed that the French and German words for yes, we and ya, is where the name comes from, even though that's not true. Well, even before that, Charles Canard said that he came up with the name by asking the board itself what it was called and it spelled out O-U-I-J-A. And he asked it what it meant and the board told him it was Egyptian for good luck.

So that was the story. And then, yeah, I guess Fould was like, it means yes and yes. Yes and yes. Pretty much in French and German. That's pretty good. So like we said, Fould sold it to Parker Brothers who turned into Hasbro and now when you buy a Ouija brand,

Ouija board, it's from Hasbro. Yeah, and the article here makes a point to call out Catholics for basically saying that it could be an evil thing and not to use it. But as a little Baptist boy, we were very much told not to use a Ouija board. I remember specifically my uncle like burning his Ouija board.

Yeah. Did he go out and buy it just so he could burn it? No. I think he had one. It's Friday, we got a party going in my house. Yeah, it's pretty funny to look back when I was a kid. I was like, yes, get rid of that evil thing. Were you there when he burned it?

No, I wasn't there, but I heard about it and I was just like, good for him. That's cool. Throw in candy land while you're at it because that game stinks. What was it, the shoots and ladders? I never played that. I was big into Sorry, remember that one?

Yeah, that one made you like hate the other people you played with though, right? Couldn't you like get ahead by screwing over your fellow players? That's, I think that's why it was called Sorry. Yeah, I think like if you landed on someone, you send them back to the beginning. And had to go, sorry.

Yeah, yeah. Maybe I just play with Jerk, who knows? Maybe so. So Chuck, the Ouija board from the original bond creation to the one you get today from Parker Brothers, the design of it has changed very little. Yeah, I guess we should describe it. I mean, I assume most people have seen one,

although, you know, I've never used one, have you? Oh yeah, when I was younger, I had them. Yeah. I'd totally be into trying it out. It's neat. For fun, you know. It's very neat because I mean, the thing is just moving around the board by itself.

All right, so we will describe the board if you have not seen it. It has the alphabet and two different arcs. It has numbers below the alphabets. It has a yes in one corner with, I think, a moon. Yeah. And a no in one corner with a sun. Right.

And therein lie the answers, my friend. Oh, don't forget the most important part, basically, what amounts to the off button? It's goodbye written at the bottom below the numbers. Oh, right. Yeah, it's sort of like a satanic magic eight ball. Kind of, except this really works. And it's not satanic.

Right. So the way that you use this talking board, which again, if you're interested in this and you want to see some pretty cool old Ouija boards and the swastika board as well, and another one called the Sphinx board, which I think is the coolest one. It's from like the 40s.

Oh, yeah. There's this awesome online museum called the Museum of Talking Boards. And they have histories of all this, the history of the Ouija board, the history of talking boards, just some really great articles and images on there. So go check that out,

because it's a pretty cool website. But when you're using this, Well, the instructions have stayed the same too, not only the design, but the gameplay itself is just about the same as it was way back in the 19th century. Right. And when you use this,

they say you want to have two or more people with their fingers lightly resting, just your fingertips lightly resting on the planchette. And we should say the planchette, like the other planchette that used a pencil to write, it's just a little plastic heart shape board, I guess, with three small legs and then a circular plastic covered disc in the middle,

clear plastic disc that you look through. And the disc shows you the letter, number or word that the spirit is communicating. That's right. When you look down through the planchette, that's the letter, word and question. That's right. So you sit there, you ask a question aloud,

everyone concentrates, no joking around going on. No, even fold himself said you want to make sure that the people who are at the table are taking this seriously or else it's not going to work. Right. Well, even though it was advertised for mirth making, you got to cut the mirth down when you're actually operating the board.

Yeah, the guy who has the lampshade on his head, he's got to get out of that room. So then you ask the question and then everyone watches and the planchette as if by magic or Satan's dark powers moves along and either answers yes or no questions or spells things out. You want somebody to jot down the letters or numbers

as they are read out. And in the article it says ideally they spell out words and it says the players can understand. Right. If it spelled out a nonsense word like Ouija, you would probably just say it's malfunctioning. Or you would say what does that mean? And then it would spell out it's Egyptian for good luck.

Yeah, or German and French for yes. I wonder if Ouija boards always answer the same when you ask them what Ouija means. I don't know. We should test it out. I started saying it differently all of a sudden. Now instead of Ouija? I've just said Ouija a couple of times.

Interesting. How do you pronounce the thing that you clean your windshield with? Is that a squeeja or a squeegee? Yeah, but that's S-Q-U-E-G-E. E. There's three E's. No, I'm just kidding.

Epilogue On the podcast, HeiDude, the 90s, called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slipdresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s.

We lived it and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and non-stop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting Frosted Tips?

Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling

of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s, called on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart Podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass.

The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough or you're at the end of the road. Ah, okay, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place

because I'm here to help. This, I promise you. Oh, God. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so will my husband, Michael.

Um, hey, that's me. Yep, we know that, Michael. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life, step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Just stop now.

If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen. So we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts. Yeah. Evidently, it can take up to five minutes

for the planchette to start moving, which I don't know if I would have the patience for that. I know. I might start moving it on my own. Oh, yeah. You know. Well, then you'd be the life of the party. Especially if you said like, I'm being contacted by the spirits.

Right. If after five minutes, you don't get any movement from the planchette, you want to either ask the question again or ask another question. Sure. And there's some tips for using your Ouija board to maximum capacity. One of them is concentration.

Again, the dude with the lampshade needs to go sit in the living room, watch TV or something while everybody else is doing this. You want to turn down the lights, maybe burn some candles, burn some incense. Yeah, turn off that smartphone and the TV maybe. Yeah. And you really want to concentrate.

And when you ask questions, you want to ask them slowly, clearly, simple questions. Yeah. And you want to ask them one at a time and wait for the answer, the response before you ask the next question. Yeah. And they also recommend that you avoid scary questions

because that could lead you down a dark path, my friend, and always above all else in the game by saying goodbye. Because if you leave that portal open to the great beyond, the bad people might come in through that portal and find you and kill you. Ask Reagan from the exorcist. That's right. Things can go pretty badly.

So you want to end each session with the planchette over goodbye. Yeah. And then breathe a sigh of relief. Exactly. And apparently, if this doesn't work the first time you do it, you shouldn't be frustrated. In fact, the Museum of Talking Boards has a regimen that they prescribe.

30 minutes of practice every day for two weeks. And apparently, you'll open your chakras or something. Really? And all of a sudden, you will be speaking through the Ouija board. Or the spirits will be speaking through you through the Ouija board. Is that before or after the opium regimen that they advise?

I think the Museum of Talking Boards is more historical. They're more interested in the history and background of the whole thing. So let's talk about this for a minute. People sit down. They put their fingertips on this thing. The planchette moves. I mean, it moves like we're not making this up.

If you've never messed with a Ouija board before, give it a shot with another friend. And the chances are, the thing's going to just start moving by itself. It's eerie, especially when you're younger. Now, see, I've never done it. Explain this to me. What do you mean moves by itself?

I will show you. So I get it. But the thing, this planchette is very light plastic. The feet might even have felt on them or something like that. It's designed to move very easily. Not tiny little casters or anything. No, I think original planchettes had casters. But basically, you're being pulled around the table.

So you actually want to be in a comfortable position. Because your fingertips are just sitting on this thing. And then when you ask a question after a while, it'll move. I've never seen one move fast. But it just moves kind of slow. But I mean, there's no question about you're not thinking, is it moving? It's moving over to a letter.

And then it's moving over to another letter. And then it's spelling something out. Yeah, but you are moving it. No, you're not. In your head, here's the thing. Like, let's get to the science of this. You are, in fact, moving it. But you are not conscious of moving it,

which is the awesome part of it. It's this thing called ideomotion. Yeah. I heard someone pronounce it ideo. And I didn't know if they were just being fancy or not. It can go either way. Ideo, ideomotion. But it is an actual involuntary motion.

It's one of the types of involuntary motion of which human beings are capable, thanks to our muscles and neurons. Yeah, it was coined by a dude named William Carpenter in 1882 to explain dousing rods, which is the same kind of thing, basically. Yeah, dousing rods, pendulums. Ideomotion is where thought precedes movement.

And the other part of it is that we're unaware of that movement. Yeah, it's movement without owning that, basically. So when you apply that to Ouija board, you have what's called the ideomotor effect, where your thought is placed in the form of a question to the Ouija board. And then the movement, the unconscious movement,

you're not aware that you're moving, moves to answer that question. So if you're thinking, yes, am I speaking with great-uncle Charlie? And you really want to. And you're thinking, yeah, man, I hope he's there. So you're unconscious or subconscious, which is it? I would guess unconscious.

I think it's unfashionable to use subconscious. It's very Freudian. It would move it to the yes, but you wouldn't realize you would think it was just moving. And that's where the Ouija board fun comes from, Chuck. Like, you don't realize you're moving it. Like, you have no sensation of movement. And like you said, this idea of motion is a,

we've understood it for a while, since the early 1800s and even fold himself in one of his patents said, and I think 1920, explained that it was moved by unconscious muscular movement of the players. Yeah. And back in the 1800s, this guy named Anton Chavrell. Chavrell, Chavrell.

He basically proved this using a pendulum on a string. Yeah, and it's, you've probably long heard about the old wives tale. If you want to find out what your baby's gender, you hold like a ring on a string over the belly and wait for it to move. And if it moves back and forth, it's a boy. If it's circular, it's a girl.

And it's the same basic thing as the Chavrell pendulum. Basically, it's just idea of motion in effect. You are unconsciously swinging the string. Yeah. Whichever way you probably desire. Exactly. That's what makes it so fascinating is what you're really seeing is the unconscious

telegraphing supposedly of the mother's wishes of what gender she would like. Because she's in fact controlling it, but her muscles are moving so minutely that she's not aware of the movement. But since the pendulum is on the string, it really kind of really telegraphs these very, very tiny movements.

And then inertia takes over and it really starts going. So it just seems amazing because the hand's not moving. But the ring is going crazy. It's going crazy. Yeah, yeah. This is the same. Have you ever heard of facilitated communication? It's pretty controversial.

You've probably seen on the news, it's when basically a caregiver will guide the fingers of someone who's severely disabled over a typewriter, a typing machine over a keyboard to a computer to supposedly get answers or communicate. And it's very controversial. It started out in 1977 in Australia. This lady named Rosemary Crossley.

But the American Psychology Association basically says it's not scientifically valid. These are people that are just... What, facilitated communication? Yeah, the caregiver is really guiding this conversation and it's really not coming from the person that's disabled. Right. The thing is, is what makes this so tragic and sad

is that the caregiver isn't aware that they're actually making these movements. Again, all of this is unconscious. You can't tell you're making this movement. And so since the profoundly handicapped person is moving their hand, the caregiver thinks that it's them. It's the handicapped person. It's not like they're trying to snow somebody.

Exactly. And they may even really, really want this person to communicate and say these things. Yeah. They're still studying it. Syracuse University actually has, since 1992, it was the FC Institute. Now it's the Institute on Communication and Inclusion.

Are still studying it. And the controversy, as usual, is between the skeptics and the believers. Yeah. Well, that's the thing. If you want to see who believes in the idea motor effect, just type that into Google. It's all skeptics, dictionary, skeptics, skeptics.

Like every entry is skeptic. But if you type in ideomotion, you get peer-reviewed scientific literature on that. It's just the ideomotor effect is basically taking the proven ideomotion and applying it to debunk things like Ouija boards. Right. They did a study at the University of British Columbia

just last year in 2012. And basically, they said it's strongest when there are multiple people on the plan shed. And they tested this by blindfolding people, saying you got someone else on the board with you. And when, in fact, there was no one else on the board, the person would still say it was the other person moving it. Right.

And they would say, there was no other person. Right. And then they'd say, well, then it was the spirits moving it, I guess. Right. That's funny that no one says it's the spirits moving it. It's always the other person who's moving it. Right.

That's a pretty common trait of any Ouija board game that you're sitting there going like, you're moving it. No, you're moving it. No, I'm really not moving it. That's how it goes. And then with two people working in tandem, you have two sets of muscles moving unconsciously, but making a movement.

You have one person relinquishing responsibility, because they think it's the other person, which they think frees the muscles to move even more strongly, because you're saying, it's not me, it's the other person. And if they both have a common goal, then the planchette will move even more briskly, I guess. So if both girls are like, it's going to move to B-R-A-D,

then that planchette's going to move to those letters in that order. But they're both going to be like, I'm not moving it. Well, hold on. Before we get into any real life stories, do you want to do a message break? Yes. OK.

Stuff you should know. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back

into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and non-stop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64?

Do you remember getting Frosted Tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper, because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing.

Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it, and popping it back in, as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass.

The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough, or you're at the end of the road. Ah, OK, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place, because I'm here to help.

This, I promise you. Oh, god. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS, because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so will my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me.

Yep, we know that, Michael. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life step by step. Not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody,

about my new podcast, and make sure to listen, so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. And we're back. So should we talk about a couple of these stories? Ouija, are they real? Are they not stories?

Sure. The Herds of Kansas City, 1935. This is pretty crazy. Herbert Herd killed his wife, Nellie, shot her in the back four times. And you would think, what a jerk. But what happened was, they were elderly, they were in their 70s.

They played with the Ouija board one night, and Nellie claimed that she received a message saying her husband was stepping out on her. So. And gave like $1,500 to the other lady. $15,000 even. Wow. 1935, that's probably like their life savings.

Sure. And so what happened was Nellie tortured him, tied him to a bed post, whipped him with a knotted rope, burned him with a red hot poker, stabbed a knife into his shins, and forced a confession by holding a gun to his head. And eventually, she left the gun on the bedside table there. Herbert got a hold of it and killed her. Can't really blame Herbert.

And apparently, the courts did not. What else you got in the other ones? Yeah, it was called an Italian enclave in El Cerrito, California. The Italian community there apparently experienced a wave of mass hysteria that landed several people in an asylum because of Ouija board use.

The town went Ouija crazy? Yeah, one policeman tore off his clothes and ran into a bank. And there was just a lot of craziness that happened. It was just mass hysteria, I guess. And the town was like, you know what? No more Ouija boards. And finally, in 1913, a British author, Saxe Romer,

supposedly came up with his villain, Dr. Fu Manchu, when his Ouija board spelled out Chinaman. So his Ouija board was racist. Yeah. And he says that's where it came from. So here's the thing. If you ever want to test whether Ouija boards are the result of idea motion and the player is actually

moving it or not. Go to Goodwill and buy one for $3. And then do this very, very simple test. You blindfold the players. You turn the board 90 degrees so that anybody who's memorized the layout of a Ouija board can't cheat it. And then ask them some questions. And you're not going to get any kind of sensible answer.

And if you do, then you need to trade carefully because you've just unlocked the gate to the spirit world. Don't forget to tell it goodbye to seal off that gate. Always remember, put it on goodbye, folks. So you got anything else? I got nothing else. I feel like here in my 40s, after knowing now that they're not evil tools of Satan,

then I would like to try it out sometime on a Friday night with good friends. Yeah. We'll play little cards against humanity. We'll play some Ouija. And then risk. And risk to wind it all out with a big bang. Yeah.

Invite me over. OK. So if you want to learn more about Ouija, Ouija, that kind of thing, you can, again, go check out the Museum of Talking Boards. It's pretty sweet. And also, you should read this article on howstuffworks.com type O-U-I-J-A into the handy search bar.

And it will bring up this article. And since I said search bar in there somewhere, I think it's time for listener mail. I'm going to call this Crack Baby. Jeez. We got some good response on the old Crack episode, which is a good one, I thought. Yeah, I thought so, too.

We've been killing it lately. Hey, guys. I just finished listening to the story on Crack Cocaine. It reminded me of a story of a Crack Baby from many years ago. It's around 2001. I was doing volunteer work at the local children's hospital in the neonatal ICU holding babies. I came in one day, and one of the nurses

told me to go hold this one particular baby, which told me it was a Crack Baby that had been crying nonstop for three days, and hadn't slept. So I washed up, went to go hold this baby, held the baby in my arms, and just looked at the baby, and the baby was crying. Eyes closed, nonstop, just crying, crying, crying, crying. After several minutes, the baby's eyes opened a little bit,

and then closed again. Would keep crying, tears are flowing the whole time. After several minutes of that, her eyes would remain open longer and longer, but the baby was still crying, and the tears were still flowing. After several more minutes, the baby's eyes stayed open, looking at me, crying a little bit less.

The baby started crying less and less and less. Then after several minutes, was smiling, giggling, and cooing, and making all those nice, happy baby noises. After several more minutes of that, the baby's eyes started to close, and soon she was asleep, sleeping for the first time in three days. It was a wonderful experience that I will remember forever.

Jim from Austin, Texas. That's pretty neat. Pretty cool. Yeah. He cooed the Crack Baby to sleep. Soothed. He's a soothed sayer. He's a soothed cooer.

Where'd he go, Jim? Yeah. And now he brings a Christmas presents every year. That would be a great story. Do it, Jim. If you have something to tell us that you've done based on something we've talked about, I would say that Jim's story falls under that umbrella, wouldn't you?

Yeah. We want to hear about it. Basically, just let us have it on Twitter, at SYSK podcast, on facebook.com slash stuff you should know. Or you can send us an email to stuffpodcast.howstuffworks.com. Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio's How Stuff Works. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,

visit the iHeartRadio app. Apple podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows. On the podcast, hey dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slipdresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back

into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass

and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, ya everybody, about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say. Bye, bye, bye.

Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.