Crimes People Blamed On Ouija Boards

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It seems a harmless thing: a board with numbers and letters, the words "yes" and "no," and a small pointer. Hasbro sells it as a party game, directing at least two people to put their hands on the pointer and watch as it moves to spell out answers to their questions. Yet, in the years since they were first created, Ouija boards have existed in a dark context.

According to Smithsonian, Ouija boards were used in the Victorian Era and grew out of the spiritualist movement of the 19th century. In an effort to speed up purported communication with the dead, so-called "talking boards" were used by spiritualist camps in Ohio in the 1880s. A group of entrepreneurs formed the Kennard Novelty Company to manufacture the boards under the Ouija name in 1890. None of them practiced spiritualism, but cash trumped communication with the afterlife. An eerie demonstration for the patent office won their approval, and the Ouija became an instant moneymaker.

Just how it works or what it means is another story. Psychologists suspect groups of people using it fall into an unconscious movement known as the ideomotor effect. Mainstream Christian denominations (per Bill Ellis' "Raising the Devil") worry that the game is a channel for demonic influences, a perception that became more widespread among the public in the wake of "The Exorcist" in 1973. Either way, a slew of criminals over the years have pinned their guilt on becoming possessed by Ouija boards. 

When Frenchwoman Clothilde Marchand answered the door of her Buffalo, New York home on March 7, 1930, she probably didn't expect any danger. But she was greeted by a blow to the head from a hammer wielded by Nancy Bowen, a Seneca healer from the Cattaraugus Reservation. According to Elizabeth Reis' "Spellbound: Women and Witchcraft in America," Bowen had tried to kill Marchand with spells but, when they failed, had to resort to violence and chloroform. Her reasoning behind the? Marchand, she alleged, was a witch responsible for killing Bowen's husband.

That, at least, was what a Ouija board had told her (via WGRZ). Controlling the Ouija had been Bowen's friend, fellow Seneca healer Lila Jimerson. And, after the two women were arrested for the murder, a curious fact came to light: Jimerson had carried on a long-term affair with Marchand's husband Henri.

Henri Marchand initially tried to claim that Jimerson's passion for him was unrequited, but he eventually confessed to serial adultery on the witness stand (with his wife's approval, he insisted). Jimerson claimed that Henri had told her he was tired of his wife, implicating him as the party behind the crime. The case was heavily sensationalized, often along racial lines. After a mistrial, Jimerson was acquitted and was released after pleading guilty to manslaughter.

Gary Gilmore never claimed to touch a Ouija board himself. But his mother blamed his violence, and other misfortunes in her family, on her experience with one as a child. According to her younger son Mikal (via Psychology Today), Bessie Gilmore was convinced that a demonic spirit attached itself to the family ever since she had played around with a Ouija. She held it — and herself — responsible for the death of one sister and the paralysis of another. Her mother-in-law was a reported medium, and after a late-night séance, Bessie claimed to see an inhuman figure, who first loomed over her, and then her young son Gary.

Afterward, Gary began to have nightmares about being beheaded. Bessie's conclusion was that it was the ghost she conjured as a girl and that it claimed her son's soul and drove him to become a murderer. What Gary thought of his mother's theory, Mikal didn't say. Per Britannica, he was frequently beaten by his father and often clashed with prison authorities after his multiple arrests. In 1976, he killed two people after robbing a gas station and became the first American in nearly a decade to face the death penalty. Gilmore rejected all efforts to commute his sentence, including his mother's. In the end, Gilmore chose to be executed by firing squad. His final words "Let's do it," would go on to be the murderous origin of Nike's "Just do it" slogan. 

For believers, all sorts of things can come through a Ouija board: dead writers, demonic creatures, unspecified spirits — maybe even Jesus Christ himself, or a message about him. That's what Vance Davis and five other army intelligence officers thought they were channeling in 1990. Davis told the Associated Press that he and his friends decided to dabble in paranormal experiences at their West German base, but that they had no luck until they tried the Ouija board. Through it, they received messages that they claimed predicted the Gulf War. In late May, the Ouija told Davis and pals to get out of the army and get themselves ready, for Jesus was soon to return and the Rapture was nigh.

Davis said that the spirits speaking through the Ouija wanted him and his friends to become teachers to help lead others through tumultuous times due within five years of the message. With no legal way to get out of active duty, the officers asked the Ouija what to do. "Leave," it told them, "just leave." Despite clean service records, the men went AWOL, making their way toward a psychic friend in Gulf Breeze, Florida.

When caught, the officers were investigated for espionage, but ultimately demoted and given honorable discharges. The six went their separate ways, but as of 1992, Davis said they were still working to prepare mankind for the coming breakdown of order. The five-year timeframe has proven a bit longer than predicted.

In February 2001, Carol Sue Elvaker killed her son-in-law in Minco, Oklahoma (via Tulsa's News on 6). Elvaker stabbed Brian Roach, 34, to death in his sleep. When her daughter Tammy took and hid the knife from her and convinced her mother to leave the house, Elvaker drove herself, Tammy, and Tammy's two children into a road sign on Interstate 44 in an attempt to kill them all. When they all survived with minor injuries, Elvaker tried to push her 15-year-old granddaughter into traffic, then fled the scene on two broken ankles. Police found her hiding naked in the woods.

Elvaker's family said she had no history of violence or mental illness before the murder. But authorities investigating found that she had become consumed with a Ouija board, and had subsequently pulled in her daughter and granddaughters. They were all playing with the Ouija the night before the murders. Elvaker became convinced that it was telling her that Roach, a former Minco mayor and councilman, was evil and needed to die. Elvaker also believed that her youngest granddaughter, 10, was evil and was suspected of trying to kill her too. Tammy was ultimately arrested as an accessory to murder, having hid the weapon, furnished a getaway vehicle, and ignored Roach's pleas for help. Had he received it before bleeding to death, he might have survived the attack.

A Ouija board wasn't blamed for one crime in Leadgate, England during the early months of 2015 — it was blamed for several, by multiple members of the same family. According to the Northern Echo, the trouble started when Paul Carroll claimed that malign spirits first channeled through a Ouija board sitting on Christmas Eve compelled him to drown the family's Bedlington terrier, which he then dismembered.

Even after a horrific incident like that, Paul's family continued to use and put stock in the Ouija. His wife, Margaret, and his stepdaughter, Katrina Livingstone, sat with it on January 30, 2015. A neighbor later claimed that Katrina had told her that they received a warning they were going to die. In what appeared to be arson to counter whatever threat they faced, the Carroll house went up in flames on the first of February. Whether or not the fire countered any supernatural threat, it posed a serious risk to the neighborhood. Residents were evacuated in case the fire spread and set off explosions from gas bottles. Margaret and Katrina were found in their garden and taken to the hospital in critical condition.