#magic week

How the Ouija Board Got Its Name

These days, the word “Ouija” conjures up shades of mysticism, Satanic panics, and teenage bedrooms. The origin of the term is supposedly lost in the sands of time, or created out of a compound of the German and French terms for “yes.” But ask Ouija board collector and historian Robert Murch for the real story of the board’s name, and he’ll tell you a different tale — one that connects the board to two intriguing women.

As one of the world’s most active Ouija board collectors and historians, Murch has been researching the history of the object since the early 1990s. Its origins are cloudy, he explains, rife with he-said-she-said squabbles and family feuds. But at least one part of the story seems clear. Two years ago, Murch discovered a 1919 article in the Baltimore American in which one of the board’s originators, Baltimore businessman Charles Kennard, states how the Ouija got its name.

The American Museum of Magic - Marshall, Michigan

It's the largest magic museum in the United States with more than half a million pieces of memorabilia...

Presto Change-o! Founded in 1978, the American Museum of Magic has been around for more than three decades, but that's only a blip in the history of the building in which it resides, an old Victorian structure in Calhoun County, Michigan.

What makes the collection most impressive is that it was almost entirely assembled by one man, the late Robert Lund. A Detroit-based writer, Lund was obsessed with magic, but learned early on that he didn't have what it takes. Instead of embarrassing himself as a failed magician, Lund decided he would become the foremost student of magic history and collect everything related to the art that he could get his hands on.

The separate research center for aspiring magicians and historians of magic includes more than one million archived pieces, including a 50,000-volume library.