BT-2026.001
Ouija board
Type entry
- Claim
- 4 of 5
Animals and crops destroyed, or lasting harm to the body, livelihood or estate. - Evidence
- 2 of 5
One retelling, publication or sale listing. - Production
- manufactured continuously since 1891, under several owners.
These three figures are kept separate and are never combined into a single score. How grave the claim is, what it rests on, and whether the object can be traced are different questions. How the register reads them.
Asserted
Accounts attributed to a source. The register does not adopt them.
That it unsettles the minds of those who keep it. The board is said to open a channel to the dead or to something else, to answer questions through the planchette, and to admit an entity into the household if the session is not properly closed. Users are said to suffer disturbance of mind and behaviour afterwards. A body of rules travels with the object: never use it alone, always say goodbye, never burn it.
- I3
communicates in words
- C6
unease
- C22
mental disturbance
- T8
begins on an act
- T18
ends on a rite
- E5
a non-human entity attributed to it
index v0.8: Non-human entity attributed
- E9
able to leave the object
- E11
serves as a channel for contact
- X4
bound to an accompanying instruction
index v0.8: Bound to an accompanying text or instruction
- H1
made by or for a named person
reported by: since the late nineteenth century
Recorded
Established by the register, or received with the object.
File
- Register number
- BT-2026.001
- Entry type
- Type entry: a series or model, not one object
- Opened
- 2026-09-16
- Coded against
- Claim Index v0.8
Object
- Type
- mass-produced talking board
- Materials
- board, printed paper or wood, plastic or wood planchette
- Date
- patented 1891
- Origin
- United States
On what grounds
Published retellings and pastoral accounts. Reported since the late nineteenth century. Evidence is capped at 3 by commercial interest; the entry stands at 2 on its sources alone.
Counter-indications
What weighs against the claim. These are never subtracted from a figure; the lowest applicable ceiling is applied instead.
- CI6
the motif recurs across unrelated objects
- CI7
an ordinary explanation has been offered
- CI23
those reporting the claims have a commercial interest in them
Mass production is not treated as a counter-indication here. It is the premise of a type entry.
Register findings
- MT7
price records on file
- MT8
replicas and competing versions marketed
- MT26
exhibited publicly
- MT28
has appeared in film and broadcast
Note. Clinical case literature, if it exists, would be a record made by a professional in the course of duty and would raise this entry's evidence score. The register is seeking it.