Lore 300: Board Stiff

The future is impossible to predict.

“That's what rational people will tell you, confident in their belief that there's just no way to be absolutely certain about what's to come.”

And in a lot of ways, they're right. Take me, for example, nearly 11 years ago, I started this podcast with a handful of topics that I wanted to write about. And I distinctly remember thinking maybe five episodes in that I could manage to find 20 subjects to cover. I simply could not envision a way to do this week after week for over a decade, and yet here we are. In fact, if we don't count lore legends, today's episode is the 300th brand new episode of lore. Yeah, I'm pretty dang proud of, but I certainly couldn't have predicted this outcome, no matter how much I would have wanted to.

The fact is, we live in a world of instant access where spoiled, miraculous devices in our pockets or on our laps that can locate just about any piece of knowledge. Free public libraries that open up a world of experiences just by walking in and opening up a book, and yet despite that connection to everything we could possibly know,

“the future is a complete and total blank slate, which, of course, means that people have always been trying to find new ways to cheat that system.”

Divination through an oracle interpretation of dreams and scrying mirrors, we humans have been very creative in our search for answers. But if history is any indication, there's one tool that has been more popular and more fear-inducing than all the others combined. And you might just have one, in your own home. I'm Aaron Manky, and this is lore. In December of 1918, a chilling letter landed on the desk of a businessman named Mr. William Fold,

penned by a Mrs. Bolton from Kalamazoo, Michigan, it read, "Night and day, the voice of that devil talk to me. I nearly died. No one knew what was the matter, and I would not believe the awful things or do the wicked things I was told to do, and if did would be rewarded beyond measure." Almost two years later, on October 15th of 1920, another letter arrived. This one from Ms. Helen Maria Peterson from Killborn, Michigan.

It tells me many lies, she wrote,

"And I am a woman who hates to be deceived. This is the second of your product I have, the first one I destroyed.

It told me many lies and the second one isn't much better." And these mysterious letters were far from the only missives to land on Mr. Fold's desk, draws of them fill the mailbox, some like those of Ms. Peterson and Mrs. Bolton, crying of evil while others, like one from a cast white from New Orleans, congratulating Mr. Fold on his product containing an "a very good spirit." What on earth was Mr. Fold selling, you might ask?

“Well, that of course would be the Ouija board. As you may remember, from our Ouija centric episode number 260,”

the Talking Board or Spirit Board started as a type of spiritualist folk art. But in the true American way, where spiritualists saw signs from the beyond, capitalists saw dollar signs. And in 1891, the Ouija board was officially granted a patent becoming a mass-produced parlor game. It was manufactured by the Kenard Novelty Company, named for Charles Kenard, one of the same guys who had patented the board to begin with. But in 1892, Charles was ousted from his own company, and a humble Kenard company varnisher managed to rise to power in the founder's stead.

That varnisher's name was William Fold, and little did William know, but he would go down in history by another name entirely, the father of the Ouija board, and the tale of his rise and very literal fall may be just as weird and mysterious as the Ouija board itself.

But first, a bit of background. William Fold was in his early 20s when he started running the ship over at the Ouija factory.

As one of a whopping 10 children born to a German Jewish immigrant father and American mother, family was a big deal to William. I mean, with that many siblings, how could it not be, right? Which perhaps is why when William took over the Ouija board factory, he brought his brother Isaac along for the ride. He probably thought that it would be nice to turn the business into a family affair, but he couldn't have been more wrong.

And with that, it was on, the great Ouija family feud began.

“The next two decades the fold brothers battled it out in court. Allegedly when one brother was in the family home and the other came calling, the first would scurry out the back door to avoid contact, you know, true mature adult behavior.”

At one point, Isaac even had the tiny corpse of his own infant daughter disinterred from the family plot and moved across town out of mere spite, but it all came to a head when Isaac debuted a brand new product of his own. It was called the Orial, and well, brand new might be a stretch because the Orial you see was a talking board, and it happened to be made from stencils that he had secretly stashed away from his days at the Ouija board factory.

You could even see the spot where he had cut out the word Ouija and replaced it with Orial, subtle, I know.

“But despite the bicarane, the subterfuge, and the dramatic stealing of secret stencils, the Orial would ultimately go the way of the ghosts that it claimed to conjure. In the end, a judge ruled in William's favor granting him soul production rights.”

It seems the so-called father of the Ouija board had come out on top, and he was about to go bigger and bolder than ever. In 1919, he informed a Baltimore newspaper that the spirits had come to him with a message. The Ouija board told me to prepare for big business, he said, and on that advice, I called in architects and builders, and planned a factory that will give us many times the capacity we have now.

And I know what you're thinking, consulting a Ouija board certainly seems like an iffy way to conduct big business.

“And William Fold would agree with you, actually. That whole thing about the spirits telling him to build a new factory, yeah, that was just a big old publicity stunt.”

Heck, he didn't even buy into all that spiritualism stuff to begin with. Earlier in his career, when a reporter asked him if he believed in Ouija's powers, he said, and I quote, "I should say not, I'm no spiritualist, I'm a Presbyterian." Apparently when people wrote him letters asking for spiritual advice, he directed them not to the board he manufactured, but to the Bible. But as it turns out, insulting the Ouija board might not have been a great idea, because you see on February 24th of 1927, William Fold was up on a rooftop facilitating the installation of a flagpole when he lost his footing.

He toppled backwards, plummeting three stories to his death on the unforgiving ground below. And he might have survived, but while attempting to move him to the hospital, one of his ribs pierced him through the heart. Oh, and what roof did he fall off of you might ask? Why none other than his brand new state of the arts Baltimore Ouija board factory? Of course. Up until 1895, Sarah Griffin seemed to be a typical Connecticut woman. She was a devout parishioner of the Methodist Church, a dedicated community member and a loyal wife, but then in her mid-50s, she bought her first Ouija board.

Suddenly, Sarah changed. She left the church and turned to occultism. Within a few years, she had become the leader of an entire spiritualist community. And then finally, on May 16th of 1900, Sarah's husband awoke in the night to the sound of his wife, moaning and pain. Now, look, I know this sounds like the start of a 1980s satanic panic PSA, but I promise I'm only reporting the facts here, which aren't pretty. Because when Sarah's husband ran to her, she told him the devastating truth. After he had gone to sleep, she had gotten into bed, turned out the light, and swallowed a lethal dose of strict 9. Why? Well, that would be because the spirits told her to.

They came to night and told me I should not delay. She told her husband, according to the Boston Globe, "This night they wanted me. I have done it, and will soon be with them." Ouija glad I am that I have been called. They kept calling and calling saying, "To night, to night." They were relentless and said it was decreed that I should leave at once, so I merely obeyed the summons. And tragically, Sarah died that very night. It seems speaking to the spirits had no longer been enough for her. No, she became determined to join them.

And I'm sorry to say she wouldn't be the last person to lose their life because of Ouija board. Take the case of May Murdoch, a Californian wife and mother. On March 17th of 1923, she stepped out onto her front porch, lifted a gun, and shot her husband to death.

According to May, she had been messy with the Ouija board one afternoon when she asked harmlessly enough what her husband was thinking about. The board's reply, "To help with you. I'm going to kill you. You are too old."

“And alarmed, she pressed further, and the board delivered, it said her husband intended to hack her up with an axe, bury her, and cover her body with lime.”

Deeply freaked out by this, she hid all of the axes on their property. But rather than making her safe, the board's warning merely changed.

Now, the Ouija insisted, her husband would just have to kill her with a hammer. So you see, she told the jury, "What other choice did she have?" But to shoot him. As you might imagine, the court did not consider the spirits made me do it as a legal defense. She was sentenced to a decade in San Quentin.

“At least it should have been a decade. She was released on parole in October of 1925 after only two years in prison.”

Then there's the death of 50-year-old Clotil Martian in March of 1930. She was the wife of a renowned sculptor named Henri Martian. And given the hammer wounds and the chloriform soaked paper stuffed out her throat,

it was pretty clear that Clotil did not die of natural causes.

The authorities quickly zeroed in on two suspects, 35-year-old Lila Gemerson and 68-year-old Nancy Bowen, and strapping because what the police uncovered sounds more like a soap opera than real life. It turns out that a year prior, Nancy's husband had gone out into the backyard to look for ghosts as one does, and mysteriously died. And so out of the seemingly goodness of her heart, Nancy's young neighbor Lila invited the widow to move in with her, the two made an easy pair of rumies.

“That is until Lila approached Nancy with an idea. Why not use a Ouija board to contact Nancy's deceased husband?”

But there was a catch. Nancy you see was illiterate, and so Lila graciously offered to translate to the older woman what the board was saying. What a sweetheart, right?

Now as soon as the two started working with the board, Lila informed Nancy that her husband was tragically not resting in peace over in the spirit world. In fact, Ouija had some bad news. The man had been murdered. But hey, how handy, right? So the ghost knew exactly who had done it. Her name? Clotil. And not only did the ghost provide her name and physical description, but conveniently offered up her home address, 576 Riley Street in Buffalo, New York. The Ouija board proceeded to demand via Lila's translations, of course, that Nancy should pay Clotil a little visit and kill her.

Nancy even started receiving letters from a so-called medium name Mrs. Dooley, who similarly claimed to be in touch with her husband's ghost, also encouraging her to commit the crime. The spirits had clearly spoken, and so on March 6th of 1930, Nancy mowsied on over to Riley Street, and she murdered the sculptor's wife. Oh, and speaking of that sculptor, Henri Marchant, husband of the murdered woman, it turns out he'd been having an affair with one of his models the entire time, and I bet you can guess her name. That's right, Lila Jimerson, who had orchestrated the entire thing.

A similar case arose just three and a half years later in Arizona. There, a 15-year-old girl named Maddie Turley shot her father to death with a shotgun outside the family home. Only later did it come out that Maddie's mother, Dorothea, had manipulated the daughter into committing the crime, with a little help from her Ouija board, of course. Dorothea, by the way, was a former beauty queen, and this is neither here nor there, but just fun fact. She was once named the American Venus, due to her measurements almost exactly matching those of the famous Venus, the Milo.

Anyway, Dorothea was bored with her husband Ernest, and apparently wanted to marry a hot cowboy instead. Ernest refused to grant her a divorce, so Dorothea resorted to Plan B, the Labyrinth Ghost Fueled Murder. As teenage Maddie later recalled, he was dark in the room, and there were only the shadows from a flickering lamp. Mother asked the Ouija board, shall we kill father, and the pointer moved to yes. But that's not all. The board also insisted that Maddie had to be the one to do it. And understandably Maddie wasn't too stoked on this plan, but her mother told her that disobeying the Ouija's command would lead to terrible suffering, one thing led to another, and well you know how this story ends. And speaking of endings, for a Kansas City woman named Nelly heard, her ending arrived on April 3rd of 1935 at the hands of her husband Herbert, and look, we're not usually fans of wife murder here, but let's just say that Herbert had his reasons.

And by reasons, I mean, after Ouija board erroneously told Nelly that Herbert was cheating on her, she tied him to a bed, installed bars on the windows, and spent two weeks torturing him with a dagger, a red hat poker, rifle beatings, and more.

He shot Nelly four times, and then fled barefoot's bloody, and in his pajamas, to wave down the police. It's also worth noting one glaring similarity between all these Ouija board deaths. While domestic violence is usually perpetrated by men, these crimes were all committed by women, women who unable to seize the power they wanted independently, weaponized the board in order to grab it, and manipulated the innocent people around them to get what they wanted. Which, in at least one case, was a hot cowboy. Then again, according to our next story, some of the women who wield the Ouija board for nefarious purposes aren't operating from a place of evil at all, but one of twisted, pervading hope. And sometimes, even love.

“The two sweet hearts face one another, flushed and focused. The young woman's gaze has cast upward toward the heavens, as the man stares fixedly at her collarbone.”

Her knees touch flirtatiously beneath the table, but it's their hands that made this Norman Rockwell painting go down in history, hands that are resting firmly on a planchette. On May 1st of 1920, Rockwell's illustration of a couple using a Ouija board grace the cover of the Saturday evening post. It was trendy, perfect for the hot new decade, and it was true. Ouija boards were certainly making headlines in the early months of 1920, but not for the wholesome flirtatious reasons that Rockwell's illustration might suggest.

A little dirt road village with a meager population of 1500, and on the evening of March 3rd of 1920, 12 of those 1500 people, 7 adults and 5 children, would be discovered in a state of frothing insanity within a house soon dubbed the House of Mystery, and its entities said to have been induced by Ouija board.

A tragedy, as so many of our stories do. Jenny Moro was the young woman's name, and that's all she'll ever be, young.

“Because on the day after Christmas in 1919, at only 20 years old, Jenny was hit by a car and killed.”

As a parent myself, it's horrifying to imagine the sorrow her mother Maria must have experienced, and as if losing her daughter weren't enough, the accident was a hidden run, with a driver still at large. And not only that, but Maria's husband, Jenny's father, had died of heart failure just a few months prior. In shorts, Maria was living a nightmare, and all that grief, while it proved to be more than her hearts and mind could bear. With her beloved family gone, Maria had only one place left to turn. That is the Ouija board.

“Maria began inviting extended family, friends, and neighbors over to her house every night for sessions with the spirits, but these weren't sentimental chit chats.”

Oh no, Maria wanted justice, specifically she wanted to track down the driver who had killed her daughter.

At first, the interactions with the board were practical.

Reasonable, even, they simply asked for the license plate number of the car that had run Jenny down, and low and behold, the board spat one out. Excited, they brought their discovery to the police, who ran the number only to find that there was no car on record with that license plate at all. Maria and her cohort had stumbled, unbeknownst to them, upon a turning point. Here was a chance to call it quits, to realize that perhaps Ouija boards didn't know what the heck they were talking about, and maybe, just maybe, they should pursue healthier avenues for getting closure around Jenny's death.

But no, after that, this spook squad only doubled down. Nights after night, they met, dusk after dusk, shadowed in low light, they placed their hands upon the planchette, and watched as it swept madly over the board. Now, at this point the group consisted of Maria, Jenny's sister Josephine, and Josephine's husband Charles, along with a couple of Jenny's cousins and some of the family's neighbors from their tightnits Italian-American community. At least, those were the living members of the crew, because the group was 100% convinced that Jenny and her dead father were joining this sessions as well.

And not just them, no to the group's terror, they soon came to believe something far darker had been unleashed by their use of the board, evil spirits, who must be appeased.

Which brings us to the faded events of that first week of March in 1920.

By this point, they were no longer meeting up simply in the evenings, know the sessions stretched on for days on end.

Speaking of appeasing those evil spirits, you might be wondering exactly what the spirits wanted them to do.

Well, the group began to burn money for one, meanwhile 15-year-old Adeline convinced that her clothes were possessed, stripped naked, and burned them. Next her 12-year-old sister's hair became possessed, so naturally it had to be cut off and burned as well.

“And you heard that right, a 12-year-old, because it turns out all this time the participating adults had been forcing their young children into the seances, a number of whom were under the age of five.”

Two her credits, one woman, a local lady named Ida Bena, tried to leave, but the rest of the group held her hostage and forced her to continue. Then, the board demanded they fetch Ida's daughter, and when members of this seance society arrived at the Bena house and found it locked, they began to beat down the door with a hammer. This would be the final straw. Ida's husband Tony called the authorities. Authorities who, when they saw what was going down inside the morrow household, realized they were in way over their heads and called in a Catholic priest.

The scene inside was wild. Adeline was nearly naked and everyone was dazed and exhausted from lack of food and sleep. In the words of one AP article they were found, and I quote, "in a state of trance and gibbering about dictates from the unseen." When the police began to arrest the adults in the room, they fought back, desperate to keep their seance going at all costs.

Ultimately, seven of them would be charged with insanity.

Suffice to say, the tale of the crazed Ouija maniacs of El Cerrito became an instant media sensation all across the country. So much so that the government decided to step in and put a stop to this Ouija madness once and for all. The city of Sacramento announced a special police task force whose job was specifically to break up Ouija board seances. A state senator named Will Arsharki produced a bill to ban Ouija boards in California completely, which he called and I quote, "as bad as a drug habit." Local pastors sternly warned against the board's dangers and the superintendent of one nearby mental hospital to clear the Ouija board as dangerous and hysteria producing.

But in department stores, well Ouija board sales went through the roof. Is it a game or is it a trap? That seems to have been the question since the Ouija boards first appeared. It's why we're still so fascinated by them and why so many people collect them or use them to this day.

“And the real life stories certainly don't help narrow down the answers, do they?”

Mass insanity, fraud, even murder. The Ouija board has been at the center of so many painful stories.

It makes you wonder if they always will be.

A few weeks after the El Cerrito arrests, the sensationalist news stories began to dry up and with them efforts to ban the boards. Will Sharkey's bill never came to pass, neither did any arrests by Sacramento's Saiyan's task force. Meanwhile, the Ouija maniacs were quietly released from state mental hospitals in mid-April. Their treatment appears to have been being separated from one another and getting so much needed rest. Grief does strange things to a person, especially when that grief stems from something as senseless as a hidden run driver.

A random, stupid accident without explanation. While Jenny's mother and her extended family and friends might seem extreme,

“I think we can all relate to their desperate need for answers.”

And if there was even the slightest chance the spirits might provide those answers, who among us wouldn't take those odds. After all, there's a reason Ouija boards sales tend to sore during times of trouble. In 1920, you see, when Jenny Moro died, the United States had just experienced a devastating world war, as well as an influenza pandemic that killed millions.

For some, the Ouija boards seemed like an impossible blessing, giving them a shot at finding closure, which makes these stories of Ouija death and madness all the more tragic. Instead of the healing the participant sought, they found only more horror. A horror that didn't end in the 1920s, by the way. Oh no, while the tale of the house of mystery may have ended there, Ouija Mania itself continued to seize the minds and souls of Ouija board users all across the world.

In 1979, for example, a riot broke out at a school after a Ouija board session got out of hand. One hundred students and teachers formed a mob that tore down a door, kicked walls, and screamed about witches, demons, and spirits.

because the riots took place at the decidedly science-minded Miami Aerospace Academy. And then there were the dozens of students in Colombia whose hysteria became so bad they were hospitalized. The victims, all indeed students at a Catholic school this time, were overcome by fainting spells, anxiety attacks, convulsions, and even temporary blindness all after playing with Ouija board. But not just any Ouija board, some news outlets reported that the students weren't using a physical board at all, but a Ouija board app on their phone.

Yes, an app, because that Colombian hysteria, it took place in the year, 20-23. [music] Thanks for joining me in this Sam's Room today. And during every other conjuring we've shared for 300 episodes and counting. It doesn't take a Ouija board to know that I am beyond lucky to spend my life telling new stories.

So, thanks for that. With that said, we know that we can't trust the planchette when it insists that demons and spirits are all around.

“But what about when the call is coming from inside the house?”

A.K.A. your own brain. I have one last story for you today that asks that very question. Stick around through this brief sponsor break to hear all about it. This episode was made possible by home serve.

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At first, her friend's face appeared normal.

But the longer the woman stared, the more the feature is appeared to warp and change. First, her friend's skin blackened. Then it became rough and reptilian. Next, both ears elongated to points while the nose protruded to a twisted snout. And lastly, well, lastly came the eyes.

For what had once been pretty brown eyes of an ordinary person stretched and bulged, turning a bright glowing yellow.

“Now, I'm not recapping a pulpy horror movie or even a bad acid trip.”

The woman who witnessed this terrifying transformation suffers from an extremely rare visual perception disorder. Called "Prosapo Metamorphopsia." It's a mouthful, I know, but luckily for me and my limited pronunciation skills, it's a fix or more clearly summed up by its more common name. That is, demon face syndrome.

Now, in the past century, there have been fewer than 100 reported cases of demon face syndrome. But for those unlucky few who have it, the symptoms are jarring to say the least. Basically, it impacts the way people register faces. For folks with this disorder, otherwise ordinary visitors appear distorted or even monstrous. While it varies from person to person,

faces might appear to droop, melt, shrink, or stretch. Eyes, noses, and mouths might appear blurry or vanish entirely. Just imagine you're on a dinner date, and suddenly your partner's mouth is gone, with only smooth skin in its place. Or their eyes pop out, replaced with vacant black holes.

Then again, sometimes features don't disappear, but instead multiply. Think a whole bunch of extra eyes popping out of nowhere like a spider. Eyes that might decide, for example, to float loose from the person's face. And speaking of spiders, human faces might also transform into animal faces, or become scaled with tree bark or vegetable skin.

None of this is static, mind you, those with demon face syndrome describe the effect as rearranging constantly like a kaleidoscopic Picasso painting. Some sufferers see these distortions on just one side of the face, while the other side stays perfectly normal. So basically a disorder that makes everyone look like two face from Batman.

And the thing is, scientists still aren't totally sure what causes it. Over the years, cases have been connected to brain damage, stroke, epilepsy, and brain tumors alike. In the latter case, once the brain tumors were removed, the symptoms tended to go away. But for others, it's a lifelong affliction. Oh, and you might be wondering what happens when someone with demon face syndrome looks in a mirror.

Well, for some, they see the very same transformation taking place on their own face. It may sound like living in a horror movie and for some, it is. One patient participating in a recent study told researchers that he disliked going to the store, none too eager to encounter the fellow shoppers who looked and I quotes like an army of demons.

For one woman who's had the disease since childhood, it took her until her teenage years

“to realize that not everyone saw each other's faces changing into dragons.”

And if you're hearing this and thinking, "Wait, they don't." Then you might just be a member of that ultra-rare population. Either that or you're a teensy bit possessed, in either case though, one thing I definitely don't recommend is seeking your medical advice from Ouija board. [MUSIC]

“This episode of lore was produced by me, Aaron Manky, with writing by Jenner Rose Nethercath,”

research by Cassandra de Alba and music by Chad Lawson. Oh, and a special thanks to John Cazic over at the Salem Witchboard Museum. He's an absolute expert on all things, spirit boards, and helped out a ton in chasing down these stories. If you're ever in Salem, Massachusetts, pop by his museum.

It is genuinely incredible.

“Just a reminder, I have a brand new history book coming out on August 4th called Exhumed,”

which explores the roots of the New England Vampire Panic through the lens of centuries of folklore, medical advancements, pseudoscience, and philosophy. It's available for pre-order right now, and if you pre-order the hardcover, my publisher has a cool web page set up where you can submit your receipts and get a free gorgeous tote bag. Head over to AaronManky.com/exhumed to lock in your copy today.

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