Edmond C. Gruss, author of the book, "The Ouija Board, A Doorway to the Occult," who is Professor Emeritus at The Master's College, Santa Clarita, California. He is also author of "Cults and the Occult," "Apostles of Denial: An Examination and Expose of the History, Doctrines & Claims of the Jehovah's Witnesses," "The Jehovah's Witnesses and Prophetic Speculation," and several other books on the cults and the occult. Normal "Christian Answers Live!" radio show hosts Lee Meckley & Jim Toungate, Jr. also participate.
William Fuld of Baltimore is usually credited with the invention of the Ouija board. But if a patent establishes priority, Elijah Bond is the inventor since he first filed for a patent on May 28, 1890 (which was granted on Febuary 10, 1891). Bond even called his invention the "Ouija or Egyptian luck-board." In 1920 Colonel Washington Bowie, a former partner in the Kennard Novelty Company, testified that there were two other possible contenders for the invention of the Ouija board: E.C. Reichie & C.W. Kennard. According to Bowie, Reichie was a cabinetmaker living in Chestertown, Maryland, in 1890. Although not a spiritualist himself, he was acquainted with table-rapping & "noticed sympathetically that a large table was a heavy thing for a frail spirit to juggle about [so] ... he devised a little table - the Ouija board." C.W. Kennard stumbled on "spooks & commercial possibilities" in the kitchen of his Maryland home when he placed a saucer on the breadboard & watched it move, "as though of its own volition." He soon formed the Kennard Novelty Company, which produced "a little talk-table, first known as the Witch Board." |
