Episode Transcript
[00:00:05] You're listening to The Love Vox with psychotherapist Amynah Dharani.
[00:00:18] Amynah Dharani: Welcome, welcome. Welcome to the inaugural episode of The Love Vox. I'm your host, Amynah Dharani, and I am so excited to be here. This is the podcast for people who are passionate about the human condition, by people who are equally passionate voices in their field. By training. I am a psychotherapist, but more so, I am the forever student, the mind geek, the archaeologist, digging away for the stories of our lives. In this very first episode, I am kicking off with a guest who is an expert on talking boards, also known as Ouija boards.
You may ask, what do Ouija boards have to do with the human condition?
For over 100 years, the Ouija board has provided its users a portal to learn about themselves and the unknown. A conduit, a medium if you wish to connect to parts inaccessible.
But let me back up a bit. As a young child, my grandmother was a big influence in my life, a larger-than-life figure.
I was the only grandchild for the first five years and had a lot of her attention.
She was a great storyteller.
I do feel that my grandmother's darker stories planted an interest in me to explore the hidden sides of our human behavior, of things off the beaten path and things that just couldn't be explained.
It was a combination of both fear and curiosity that motivated me, together with a passion for finding the story.
And then along came a movie called the Exorcist.
The Exorcist is one of my top ten movies, right up there with Star wars and Raiders of the lost art.
It's a movie that has stayed in my psyche since I first saw it at age eleven.
I know what you're thinking. What were her parents thinking? And that's for another time.
As a child, I was curious.
I wanted to know what happened to that young girl in the movie, Regan McNeil, played by Linda Blair.
I was about the same age as that girl. That could have been me.
Who or what did she tamper with? Playing with the Ouija board that stayed with me for decades.
Over the years, I read the book the exorcist by William Peter Blatty, which is truly wonderful storytelling, and I became intrigued.
It wasn't until last year, the 50th anniversary of the movie the Exorcist, that I got in touch with our guest to learn more about this mysterious object, the Ouija board.
So let's go meet him.
[00:03:12] Amynah Dharani: So, friends, I have here with me John Kozick, a fascinating person.
He is the owner and operator of the Salem Witchboard Museum. He's also one of the founding members of the Talking Board Historical Society. John, welcome. I'm so glad that you're here.
[00:03:32] John Kozik: Thank you so much for having me. This is great. I'm looking forward to this.
[00:03:35] Amynah Dharani: Yeah.
[00:03:36] Amynah Dharani: So, John, can you share with us, how did you get interested in the Ouija board?
[00:03:41] John Kozik: Sure. My fascination started really after I inherited my grandmother's Ouija board. As a kid, I would see her use it by herself, fly on the thing, yell out letters and numbers quicker than anyone in the room could write down what she was saying. Those memories are when I was probably six, seven years old, spying through a window or from a top stair down to her. But I inherited her board in the late nineties, and hers looks very much like your typical, I think, what most people think of a Ouija board. It's got the couples in the corner. And when I went online to learn more about it, I was just fascinated. I thought all Ouija boards kind of looked the same way. And I really had no idea there was hundreds, if not thousands, of different designs. And so that really sent me down the rabbit hole to start collecting them, buying every single one that I could find.
About six years into collecting, I actually met my friend Robert Murch, my friend Calvin, and a few other collectors. And that's when we formed the talking board historical Society. So we're a registered nonprofit who research, preserve and celebrate the history of these boards. And, yeah, about five years ago, I opened the museum in salem. About a month ago, I opened a second location down in Baltimore. And I left my job of 22 years just so I could really talk about the Ouija board and just how much of a positive it is to me in my life.
[00:05:02] Amynah Dharani: And you've never once been scared around this?
[00:05:07] John Kozik: Well, I suppose I did grow up a little bit afraid of them. Even though my grandmother used it by herself and everything later in her life, she actually believed that the Ouija had lied to her I and was evil. So she actually put it in a black trash bag and hid it under the couch and not really knowing exactly what that meant. I'd play in hide and seek with my sister. I'd be under the couch, and she would point that out to me, that I was next to the Ouija board. So I grew up somewhat afraid of it in that way. And I grew up in the seventies and 1980s, so the satanic panic was around. And so certainly kids my age that had them at sleepover parties telling you stories of different things that had happened. So I guess I grew up afraid, but I guess more fascinated than afraid.
[00:05:53] Amynah Dharani: So let's go back to when the Ouija board was actually founded. 19th century. What's happening in America at this time? Late 19th century. Right.
[00:06:04] John Kozik: Yeah. The Ouija itself is really the first mass produced talking board, and that's 1890. But really, the history starts roughly 30 years before that, just post civil war. During the civil war, here in America, everyone was affected by death, and so everyone was trying their way to be able to communicate with the dead. And so everything from seances and pendulum and tarot, they're trying all different ways. And some people are claiming that they communicate with spirits, that they. They hear knocking responses back to them. And so yes and no questions, waiting for a knock or two, or trying to count the knocks, or very long way to have a conversation. They basically introduce an Alphabet board where they could point to the Alphabet and wait for the knock. Also in that same timeframe is the automatic writing planchette, which has a. Looks just like a Ouija planchette today, but had a pencil in the front and wheels in the back. And it worked by a medium, channeling a spirit to themselves, writing or drawing on a piece of paper, whatever came through. And that device really crossed paths with the Alphabet board during that time. And that's how we get a talking board. Yeah. So there's really no inventor of them, but they're all homemade up until 1890. And that's when a businessman, Charles Kennard, produces the first board. He just calls it a witch board originally. And a few months after that, a woman named Helen Peters, who's known as a strong medium, she asked the board what it wanted to be called, and then it spelt back Ouija.
[00:07:41] Amynah Dharani: Now, Charles Kennard, if I'm not mistaken, he owned a toy company. Right.
[00:07:47] John Kozik: So prior to this, Kennard owned a fertilizer business. And really, this was his first entry into making anything with wood at that time. So Kennard, no, but a few owners later, William fold, he starts with the Ouija and then goes into other toys, dollhouses, croquet sets, ok, things like that.
So it has a close association with toys. It's patented as a toy. Most of the original manufacturers were making boards, then toys. The big change probably comes with Parker brothers buying the Ouija brand later in 1966, where they were known as a toy company.
[00:08:28] Amynah Dharani: So really, this founding or the production of the Ouija board, really is a story of a group of entrepreneurs creating this item. This board game, almost is what I understand it. Our listeners can go online to the United States patent office and see the patent for this.
[00:08:48] Amynah Dharani: Correct?
[00:08:49] John Kozik: Correct. Absolutely. It is patented. It probably shouldn't have been patented since it was homemade for so many years. Now, these guys, I don't know if I would consider them spiritualists at that time, but certainly capitalists, entrepreneurs, and they believe in the product. Enough. Helen is there at the seance with them. She's the sister in law to Elijah Bond, who had actually patented the board. And so they believe in the product enough to put their money behind it. What's interesting is the early instructions on the board really leave it kind of vague to decide how it works. They really know that spiritualists are a small part of the population, and because they want to sell as many of these boards as possible, you know, they just say that you put your hand on the planchette, you ask a question, and it moves, and it's really leaving it up to you to decide as to how it's moving. Is it a spirit, a ghost, your subconscious? Or is it actually just a mystery? So they're pretty smart in that way.
[00:09:49] Amynah Dharani: That's fascinating. And for me, what's really mind blowing for me is that it was purchased by Parker Brothers. So this very spiritualistic type of fortune telling item is now being purchased by a major company. And correct me if I'm wrong, was it not more successful than monopoly at.
[00:10:10] John Kozik: One point it was. So they bought it in 66, paid a million dollars for it. That was the most ever paid for a game at that point. And then, yes, the following year, it outsold monopoly, 2 million boards. So it did pretty well for them. And it was a fairly new president to Parker Brothers. So that was kind of a crowning achievement to him to get this game and then outsell monopoly with it.
[00:10:34] Amynah Dharani: Wow. And at that time, it didn't have this kind of dark, sinister connotation. Am I correct?
[00:10:40] John Kozik: Not mainstream media. I always tell people that the dark stuff is there from the beginning, but really, most people viewed it the way you see the Norman Rockwell Saturday Evening Post drawing where a couple's using it. It was pretty popular throughout the whole time, the 1920s, having songs written about it, lots of other magazine covers. So it's really mainstream media is not portraying it as evil. And at that point, even though it had been in horror movies from the beginning, it's not. It's more of a. A campy, kitschy kind of thing that's in the house.
[00:11:15] Amynah Dharani: Like a parlor game.
[00:11:16] John Kozik: Exactly. Not necessarily something evil. It might tell you bad news, like in 13 ghosts, it tells you someone wants to kill you. But it doesn't. It's not saying that it's causing. The board's not causing that.
[00:11:28] Amynah Dharani: Now, that changed right. In the seventies, early seventies, the quite famous book and movie, the Exorcist comes out.
And I mean, that's how I got introduced to the Ouija board. I mean, I've read the book. The book is a fabulous, fabulous piece of fiction. The movie is phenomenal. It has such a cult following. But that, for me, was my introduction to the board. In terms of the mood it set.
[00:11:59] John Kozik: Oh, absolutely. I think what's interesting about the exorcist, and that's kind of where I let people think that. That's where I think things really changed in movies. Certainly that has the darkest of all of them, where you become possessed after using the Ouija board. Superstitions like don't use the board alone are always saying goodbye, get spawned after that movie. So those are things that people believe today. But really, what I think is most brilliant about it is a lot of people who have seen the movie don't remember the scene.
The Ouija board is a very small scene in the film, less than two minutes. And so it really plants a seed subliminally in your brain that Ouija boards are bad, that they don't use them alone, that kind of thing. Some people saw the movie and sales did go up 15% after that. But I think most people don't remember the Ouija being in there. And so it's really just planting it in their head.
[00:12:53] Amynah Dharani: Yeah. For me, the most fascinating, one of the most fascinating things that I saw in your museum, and I encourage all listeners to. To visit you, is the script of the exorcist. The signed script that gave me goosebumps, the page that you showed me with Captain Howdy. That truly just. It's such an iconic moment in the movie. And to actually then have it in the script signed by William Friedkin, as well as William, Peter Blatty and Linda Blair. So, quite a fascinating piece of art that you have. There.
[00:13:28] John Kozik: It is. I'm very fortunate to have it. It's on loan from my best friend, Robert Murch. He's the president of the talking board Historical Society. And he's really a guy who's a mentor to me. He's been interested in Ouija boards since the early nineties. And it's a lot of his research that really, I'm regurgitating out after Roland Doe, the person who the exorcist is based on, after he passed away, they actually had an exorcism in his house, St. Louis. And yeah, freakin Blatty. My friend Murch was there. Chip coffee was a medium. Who was there. And that's how he was able to meet them. He'd already had conversations with Blatty beforehand, but that's when Blatty gave him the copy of the script and explained that even though that the movie was based on a true story, the Ouija board wasn't part of that original story. And so when Murch asked him, well, then, why did you put it in there? His answer was, I was looking for cost of possession. I thought the Ouija board was a good way to explain how the kid was able to get into mischief talking to Captain Howdy in the basement. The mother had no idea. And like I said earlier, it outsold monopoly. So in 67, a few years early. So almost every house in America had a Ouija board in it at that time. And so really, what's scarier than something in your house? So that's how I got added to the script to begin with. But, yeah, very fortunate to have it there and to be able to show people. I have this amazing picture I just added recently to the museum. It's blatty laying on a bed with a Ouija board by his head, and he's got really cool mustache going on and stuff. And yeah, it's nice to be able to point, get a face to the actual name again.
[00:15:09] Amynah Dharani: I'd highly recommend our listeners to visit with you and see your museum. I'm curious about what people, the stories people come and tell you about their experiences. You must hear the quite some interesting tales from visitors.
[00:15:23] John Kozik: I hear some pretty great stories. And just when I think I've kind of heard everything, somebody comes in and tells me something I haven't heard. I actually have friends who take vacation in October just to come sit in the museum, to hear people come in and tell stories. People, I think everyone, just about everyone, has a Ouija experience. So I'm fortunate that people come to the museum to feel comfortable enough to tell me their stories. And when it comes to rules or superstitions around the board, I'll hear new ones. Like, when you're done with the board, take the lens out of the planchette, don't store it with it. Put the board upside down in the box so that don't put the planchette back in the box. So things like that. And then, of course, people that'll tell me that they used the Ouija board and they wanted to get rid of it afterwards, they felt as though it brought them bad luck and they would try to burn it, come back to their house the next day, they'd find the Ouija board unburned in their house. People telling me that they used the Ouija board in their house, and it started raining on them while they used it. So you'll hear, really, a pretty wide array of stuff. And I don't, sadly, get to hear too many good stories around the Ouija board. It's mostly what you expect, kids playing around at a sleepover party. But I have had a few stories of people coming in. A woman in New Zealand who had lost her son many years ago, and she uses the Ouija board to communicate with him. And to me, it's a really nice reminder as to why the board even exists to begin with, you know, to really help people at probably one of the lowest points of their lives and finding that closure. And to me, I thought that was a really special story. It stands out because I don't hear those stories as much, but it's great because people come in and they'll tell me, Ouija board told me who I was going to marry, and no one believes me. And of all the stories that I find the most believable, because even though my grandmother used the Ouija board and it showed a strong connection to it, my mother didn't have a connection to it. But her and her girlfriend Linda used the Ouija board with my grandmother at age twelve. And the board accurately predicted both of their future husbands names.
[00:17:30] Amynah Dharani: Wow.
[00:17:31] John Kozik: Lawrence and Dennis. So, you know, I think it's great when someone tells me that story, because usually they're with their partner. The Ouija board told me I was going to marry him, and he doesn't believe me. I'm like, I definitely believe you.
[00:17:42] Amynah Dharani: I have to admit, I went off and ordered the Ouija board. Is it owned by Hasbro now?
[00:17:47] Amynah Dharani: Right.
[00:17:47] John Kozik: It is, yes. Yep.
[00:17:48] Amynah Dharani: Right. I ordered one from Amazon. If there ever is a more kind of mundane way to order something like a Ouija board. And of course it comes along, you know, cellophane wrap and everything didn't move for me, John. I was so disappointed. Maybe I'm a skeptic and it didn't move for me, but it did nothing for me.
I suppose that's part of the mystery, right? For those maybe who believe it and it moves for them.
[00:18:15] John Kozik: I think I've met so many different people who have different results. My friend Karen, it works very well for her. She never gets a negative message. All positive messages from the board and I've been at paranormal conventions with her where it wasn't working for people. She put her hand on theirs and it took off. She took her hand off and continued working for them. So she was able to kind of jumpstart their conversation. I had a person yesterday, the day before. It was going really slow, really painfully slow. But it was spelling things out. There's all different reasons, I believe, as to why it might work better or not as well for some people. Everything from the state of mind that you're in being either if you're angry or depressed, or the environment that you're in, or if you expect that either something bad is going to happen, or in my case, the board doesn't work very well for me. I'm so nervous about it not working for me that I'll influence it into not working for me. So I don't use the Ouija board.
[00:19:11] Amynah Dharani: That's interesting. Now tell me, what do you think continues to be the mystique behind the Ouija board? You have your positioning in Salem. What a wonderful place to have a museum, a witch board museum.
[00:19:23] Amynah Dharani: What is the mystique behind it?
[00:19:25] Amynah Dharani: Why do you think we want to know that? Unknown. And perhaps I'm even answering that question, because it is the unknown, right?
[00:19:33] John Kozik: It is. And I think most people have a Ouija experience and they're familiar with the board, but they're really not familiar as to where it came from. Some people might think it's just Parker brothers or Hasbro, and they think it's a gaming company, but they just want to find out, where did this come from? Is it thousands of years old? And so I think that's where it starts. Is people coming in, being like, I'm familiar with this, but I really know nothing about it. With the talking about historical society, Murch only uncovered Helen Peters story ten years ago. And Helen is the woman who named the board approved work, the patent office. And so even if you think you know the Ouija story, really, anything in the last ten years in print is not going to be correct. I think people, first of all, start coming in because they have an experience and they're just like, what's behind it?
[00:20:23] Amynah Dharani: One of the other items in your store, I put it down to american capitalism.
[00:20:27] Amynah Dharani: Was it the pink Barbie board you have.
[00:20:30] John Kozik: Yes, we have a pink ouija, which, surprisingly, it's not that old. It's from 2008. And Hasbro made it, and it caused quite an uproar. At that time, they were marketing them, this particular one, specifically to girls ages eight. And up.
[00:20:47] Amynah Dharani: I can see how that could be a problem.
[00:20:49] John Kozik: Oh, yeah. The pink carrying case. It came with a little suggestion cards that the girls asked the board who wanted me to sit with them at lunch or who had a crush on me. So it caused quite an uproar. And the following year, some christian groups got together. They called for a boycott of the toy store, but at that point, it had already sold out. It was that popular of a game.
[00:21:08] Amynah Dharani: Wow.
[00:21:09] John Kozik: Yeah.
[00:21:10] Amynah Dharani: Wow. What would you like people to take away about the board?
[00:21:14] John Kozik: Well, I like that people fear them. I like that people love them. I'm okay. If people are afraid of the Ouija board and they never want to touch one, I'm not looking to convince them otherwise. So I really, truly love everything about it. I always joke that I love the good, the bad and the bad. I'll take every part of it. But I think if I could ask for one thing is if you're afraid or even curious, whatever, come to the museum with an open mind and just start to hear the history. Even if you think you're going to disagree with people using them or anything like that, just come in just to learn the history of it. And I think you'll be pretty fascinated because the history can go in a lot of different directions. It can go from spiritualism to capitalism to pop culture to women being written out of history for a hundred years. There's really a lot of music and movies and television, all these different things, paranormal. And so regardless of what you think of it, I'm pretty sure if I'm at the museum, I'll be able to tell you something that you're going to be pretty interested in and be kind of surprised about when it came to the Ouija board.
[00:22:18] Amynah Dharani: I'll have to come and visit you again. John, thank you so much.
[00:22:22] John Kozik: My pleasure. I'm so glad to see you again.
[00:22:26] Amynah Dharani: Welcome back. So what did you make of the conversation with John? What are your thoughts and feelings about the Ouija board? Now sit with that for a moment.
Now I'll tell you what I did as part of my exploration of the Ouija board.
I went looking for the science, and I came across something called the idiomotor effect.
That's spelled ideomotor. The idiomotor effect or ideomotor actions are actions that are unconscious, involuntary movements that are acted out by a person because of their own expectations, suggestions or preconceptions.
More simply, if I have certain thoughts, feelings and beliefs in my subconscious, that is what I will get revealed via the Ouija board. By my own micro movements, I am actually acting out what is in my subconscious about a particular subject. So if I have certain, let's say, religious beliefs about certain topics, good and evil, so on, that can get revealed for me. That explains why the Ouija board did not move for me. My subconscious simply does not believe in its mystical abilities.
But my bigger journey, my journey of searching for the story behind the Ouija board and Captain Howdy, that was the demon in the exorcist revealed a lot to me about who I am.
I was looking for me, the parts of me hidden from my own consciousness.
Our personalities are shaped by our experiences and the people we come in contact with, especially in our early years.
A significant person in my life was my grandmother. And so the stories that she spun shaped a part of my way of being and my curiosity.
You'll remember John sharing that it was his grandmother's Ouija board and her activities with the Ouija board that also influenced him and his interests, and that he, in fact, had inherited his grandmother's Ouija board from a therapeutic perspective. And in my clinical practice, I investigate my clients early life experiences and how they have impacted my clients.
And of course, we can take two people and give them the exact same experience, and each person will be impacted differently.
So much can be learned if we approach ourselves with a curious, open stance and without judgment.
So, friends, travel down that memory road and explore the prominent people, artifacts and events that have impacted you. Get the help of a therapist to unpack any fears and hidden wishes that have been popping up periodically. And you might just learn something about yourself that you did not know.
If you'd like to learn more about my private practice, you can go to thelifeinterrupted.com. in the meantime, please connect with The Love Vox on Facebook and Instagram. And if you'd like to contribute to the show, please visit the show's website, thelovevox.com, where you can leave voicemails that can be featured on the show and you can also contribute to stories we are looking to feature.
Until next time, stay passionate, stay curious.
