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Ouija Boards Exorcism

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On a gloomy Tuesday night, a group of teenagers from George Mason University circled around an Ouija board to find out what their final grade from a psychology class, Mystery, Madness, and Murder would be. Soon after, the planchette moved, allowing them to communicate with evil spirits from another dimension. Unfortunately, this communication led them into learning not only their final grade, but also into being haunted by an evil spirit until the end of their lives. This, surprisingly, is a very common practice in the United States. Even the International Exorcists’ Association (AIE) states that the usage of Ouija boards increased the exorcism practices within the U.S. (cite). According to a recent poll on LiveScience, 65% of Americans believe …show more content…

According to Patricia Martinelli, in the late 19th century, an interest in spiritualism was strong both in the United States and Europe as people wondered what happened to those who had died (Martinelli, 2009). Considering that the average human life span in that era, its’ not a surprise that people tried to communicate with dead through several ways. Therefore, instead of being perceived as outside the social norms, talking to dead was pretty common in the 19th century, which encouraged people to search for new ways of contacting the dead. Furthermore, Ouija boards have their roots under this branch of Spiritualism, which is a movement that began in the United States in the late 1840s, and was led by mediums, who claimed to be intermediaries between the living and the dead (McCarthy, 2014). In the 1880s, some curiosity seekers used homemade “talking boards” to divine answers from spirits whom they assumed to be friendly (Martinelli, 2009). These types of talking boards became very popular, and in 1890, Elijah Bond, Charles Kennard and William H.A. Maupin filed the first patent for a game they called the Ouija board, which looked and operated much like the talking boards used among; the patent was granted in 1891 (McCarthy,

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