Are you interested in angels, demons, ghosts, spirits, and monsters? Are you curious about their origins, influence, and how to protect against the unknown? If so, then welcome to Southern Demonology, the podcast that explores all of this and more. Have you ever had those moments in your childhood that you know happened, but still feel like a dream? It doesn't even need to be childhood necessarily.
I've shared this before, but there was a chunk of time in college where I was friends with the girl who drove an older VW Beetle and even picked me up from the airport in Richmond, Virginia one time. But I don't remember hardly anything about our interactions except for a few vivid memories, and I know she exists because of the fact that we are to this day Facebook friends. Well, what I'm about to tell you is one of these, for lack of a better word, misty memories from when I was a kid.
My mom had a friend who happened to live way back in the woods, or at least she had a very long driveway that extended back into the woods, and that happened to be right next to where my uncle happened to live at the time. And we would go over there to their house, and I would play with their son, who is right around my age. We got along fine from what I can remember, but on one of these visits to their house was the only time that I have ever messed with the subject of today's episode, and that, my friends, would be Ouija boards.
Hello all, and welcome back to Southern Demonology, specifically season 4, episode 8. As always, I am your friendly academic ancient demonologist, JJ. Fortunately, I remember nothing out of the ordinary happening after we messed around with this board. I do remember being scared for the rest of the night and thinking something was going to jump out of me in the shadows, and we were both heavily on edge from that point onward. However, I never had the chance to play around with one since then, and I absolutely know better than to do so now.
I've spoken about Ouija boards in passing in previous episodes, and I have definitely covered them in more than a few guest appearances that I have had on other podcasts and YouTube videos. However, after talking with my good friend Chris one day from the Wandering Road podcast, the conversation happened to come up on our Discord server in tandem to that. I realized that I've never really done a comprehensive episode that spoke about them in a cogent way in general.
So today I will be correcting that oversight by talking a little bit of their history, the etymology of the word, some of the dangers that they absolutely pose, looking at an interesting Japanese equivalent to the spirit board, and then wrapping everything up by examining a legend that surrounds these devices. The idea that the dead could speak to the living is an ancient one and can be found in numerous cultures. There are proscriptions against necromancy or obulf in the Hebrew Bible. The word fakadi exists within classical Ethiopic, which also means necromancer.
Literally, the word translates to one who actively finds. You even find in ancient China the idea of Fuji, which means planchette writing, which is a form of automatic writing. However, Ouija boards, or at least as we know them, are a relatively recent invention that spread out of the spiritualist movement that rose to fame in the 1800s.
Modern Ouija boards, of course, consist of a flat surface and which usually has a minimum of a yes, no, a hello, goodbye, numbers, and letters that a group of people can put their hands on a planchette, which is shaped like either a heart or a shield, which then, at the direction of whatever entity or entities is being communicated with, will spell out answers to questions one letter or number at a time. Most of us know Ouija Boards now as its board game incarnation that is now owned by Hasbro, but was inherited from Parker Brothers.
And funny enough, when this board game was first published, it stated that the answers that were received came not from a ghost or a spirit, but rather from the unconscious self. And whether you refer to that as the superego or the id or something else, who knows? Now, depending upon the source, a lot of people will say we either do not know the origin of the word Ouija or that it's a combination of the words yes in both French and German. Well, I hate to break the bad news to you. The former is definitely not true, and the latter is a folk etymology.
If you're not familiar with that term, it's a commonly held belief of where a word originated. For example, in the Psalm As I Walk Through the Valley of the Shadow of Death, that phrase, shadow of death, is actually in Hebrew one word, Salimowath, which means as it's translated now, death shadows. However, that's actually not what it means. That is a folk etymology, mainly because it sounds more poetic and of course infinitely more cool. When I first ran across this word in my biblical Hebrew classes in college, I absolutely latched on to it. Because what sounds edgier than death shadows?
However, in actuality, it really should have meant extremely dark shadows. That certainly doesn't sound nearly as poetic. Ouija actually comes from when a medium by the name of Helen Peters Nosworthy asked the board to name itself in which it gave the word Ouija. And when asked what that word meant, the answer that came forth was good luck. And I want you to remember that because I think it's rather important going forward. Now, there are procedures that one should follow when starting and ending a Ouija board session.
For example, it's very important to either say goodbye or to point the planchette to the word goodbye in order to close whatever connection has been opened. That's not the only thing, but that's at least a beginning. However, I am not going to go through the list of procedures because I am not advocating for the use of Ouija boards. In fact, I urge you to never touch one of the darned things for a very simple reason. You know, scientists explain the phenomenon of Ouija boards through the idea of the idea motor effect, where unconscious movements can help to provide answers.
And in fact, that sounds a great deal like the unconscious self that the original game wanted to invoke. I honestly don't know if Ouija boards can do anything. I've had only one personal experience in which nothing strange happened, but I have heard too many odd tales from people that I trust, a phenomenal amount, including Father Birdsong and its son Deacon Josh, and I am of the opinion that I just don't want to risk it. Even Art Bell, when he was on the radio, would often allude to a horrible Ouija board incident in which he was involved and swore off their use.
In fact, he would often claim that he had an ancient board sent to him that was all black by a witch, which in turn he quickly got rid of. This practice of Kakutisan, which in Japanese means nodding back and forth, as in to nod your head back and forth, erupted out of the Meiji period and was a form of divination. And the word kakutisan refers not to just any spirit that you could contact, like it is in the West, but rather a specific type of animal spirit that could be either a kitsune or a fox.
If you've ever seen anime, I'm sure you have seen nine-tailed foxes featured prominently, because they are a very important symbol. Or it could be another famous animal that's often used in anime, a tanuki, which looks very much like a raccoon. However, what Kakutisan shares in common with the Ouija board is that if you do not close out the session by bidding Kakutisan goodbye, then the participants put themselves in severe danger. I don't know about you, but that's a pretty wide range of possible negative effects that I would prefer never to find out which one it happened to be.
And this range of possibilities is not new with either Yokai or visiting power spots or psychically or spiritually charged locations. Literally, it's power spots, but in katakana. For example, Tengu or winged monsters, which are typically depicted with red faces and long noses, can either be friendly to people, tricksters who love to play games with their victims, or outright torture them until they die horrible, horrible deaths.
One of my absolute favorite short horror films that involve Tango is in fact one that shows a young woman who is walking out in the countryside and encounters an older gentleman. They exchange pleasantries and she continues onward her journey, where she promptly meets him again and again. And at the end, you see both the old man and his mirror, who is a Tengu, laughing all about it. And this represents the absolute best case, which can still be terrifying, and I won't go into the more diabolical cases, shall we say. Now, back to my prescription.
I urge you not to mess with these things at all, and it's for a very simple reason. By doing so, you are opening up a door to the other side, and you never know what you will encounter. Perhaps it will be a random spirit passing by, but there is also the chance of something much more dark and wicked that finds its way to you. I think back to my interview with the demon folklorist that happened in season two, who aptly said that not every door will lead to a demon. And I think that's very much true.
I ran across a TikTok the other day that repurposed the scene of Bobby from King of the Hill, who held up a sign to a group of kids outside a classroom, but in this meme, the poster had superimposed words that read, Not everything's a demon. That's very true. However, a door could lend itself as a passageway to the infernal. Think back to the original events that were the basis for the book and movie The Exorcist.
An aunt came over to a family's home, and she and her son played around with the Ouija board, and that was the catalyst for the demonic possession that took a hold of the boy, and that led to an exorcism that only succeeded due to the direct intervention of the angel Michael, who appeared as a vision to priests who were praying in the school chapel. And that story posed the ultimate worst case. As unlike most cases of possession, the demon supposedly involved was none other than the devil himself. Ouija boards are dangerous. End of story. Maybe nothing could happen to you like it did to me.
Good. Count yourself lucky. I actually had a new member join our Discord server the other week and asked what would happen if I never happened to close out the Ouija board session. And as this happened a year and a half ago and nothing untoward seemed to have occurred, maybe they got lucky and nothing was there. However, there are examples out there of people having the most horrible of experiences and paying extremely steep prices for it. Now, there are those who think that it's okay to open doors if you know how to close them.
There are also people who think that they know more than they do and still participate in extremely risky paranormal activities and rituals for no good reason. Don't risk it, please. Don't go playing around with rituals like the Japanese game of hide and seek by yourself. And please don't play around with Ouija boards. We as humans demand to be entertained, and the dark holds fascination. The unknown draws us like moss to a flame. We seek adventure and new experiences, whether it's to spice up life or because of an unhealthy preoccupation.
And the realm of the paranormal is tempting for a whole host of reasons. But no matter what you think you understand, I guarantee you that is a pittance against what you and everyone else in the world does not. And this is my official plea to you to leave well enough alone. I want to wrap up this episode by going over one last item, and that is the supposed demon of the Ouija board, Zozo. No, not Zozo. I actually did an entire episode about Zozo with Brandon of Cookville Ghost Hunters, and I urge you to listen to that as there are some fantastic points that were brought up there.
I will have a link to that episode in the show notes, but I will run through at least a few of them now. There's no shortage of content about Zozo out there. There's more TikTok videos from wannabe paranormal creators who just love to ramble on about this idiotic topic. And of course, gather as many clicks as humanly possible in the meantime. Ah shoot. Did I just reveal my hand as to how I really feel about the great and mighty Zozo? Dang, no viral videos for me then. What a shame. Zozo is the supposed demon of the Ouija board.
According to the origin story, one will be having a session where suddenly the entity spells out Z-O Z O or begins to move the planchette back and forth rapidly between the two letters. In fact, if you ever go look up the rules to Ouija sessions, then one of the common ones is that if you ever encounter this phenomenon, then it's time to stop and close the session out. However, where did this idea of Zozo come from? Though people love to point to older sources and possible origins, the first recorded story about Zozo came from the ancient time of 2009 on an online true ghost stories forum.
Because we know that those are always the epitome of truth, right? And the story of Zozo, just like many other creepypasta stories, whether that be Slender Man or Black-eyed children exploded onto the scene. One of the ways that you can tell that this entity is complete bullshit is the fact that people actively attempt to tie the story of Zozo to much older sources. For example, there is a book published in 1861 where a young girl was supposedly possessed by three different demons, one of whom was named Zozo.
And conveniently, the people who try to establish a direct linkage between the two ignore the fact that the author of this book, which is the Dictiona and Farnal, did not believe the story that he was actually recording. He thought it was completely made up. But the worst is that these individuals try to claim an even more ancient source, which is Pazuzu, the protector demon from Akkadian mythology. And this is even at least within Hollywood thinking, is strengthened by the fact that the demon Pazuzu is featured in the movie The Exorcist, Dr.
Irving Finkel, who, if you have not listened to any of his lectures or presentations, I highly urge you to do that. The man is not only entertaining, but is such a font of knowledge on Akkadian and Sumerian texts and games. I think that you could ever listen to. So you can learn about him there. But if you want to know more, let me know, and I can dedicate an episode to that. But in short, O's do not devolve into U's in Semitic languages. Just because the two words happen to share a Z does not make them equal to one another. This is in fact another blatant folk etymology at play.
And for some unearthly reason, people have the misconception that the older something is, the more legitimate it must be. We've even seen this in the Pseudopigrapha, which is, of course, the collection of writings between the Hebrew Bible and the Christian New Testament. The writers attempted to make these texts more official by claiming that they were done by major religious figures. And that's where the name Pseudopigrapha comes from, in fact. It's Latin for false epitaph. In a similar manner, people are trying to say that oh, Zozo equals Pazuzu.
So therefore it's an ancient entity which means us harm, and therefore it must be legitimate. And that, to my dear listening friends, is completely inaccurate. In short, if a legend grew out of the internet, whether it be a story or a creepy pasta, then do not believe it for a bloody second. They can be fantastic, albeit usually extremely poorly written stories. Don't get me wrong. But that's all they are. And don't go opening doors into the unknown just because they are exciting.
While you will definitely not find Zozo, you could easily find the infernal, which, trust me, is a much more frightening proposition. And finally, remember that the board supposedly named itself Ouija, which means good luck. And that is the exact thing you need when messing around with these things. Find us online at Southern Demonology.com, which offers links to all of our social media and episodes. Southern Demonology is solely owned, produced, and edited by myself, and the intro and outro music are composed by me as well.
If you have a moment, please rate, like, and share this podcast, as it is the best way to help support my work. As always, I am JJ, and it has been a pleasure to speak to you today.