Dark Craft Éire's boards are fully custom and slightly different to the original Ouija board design. As each board is hand crafted, no two boards are the same. All boards are made of a high-quality plywood material, which is engraved and inked before being coated with a number of layers of varnish to give a glass look and feel.
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Each board comes with a planchette - and an information pack with protective vials can be added on request, should you be a cautious believer!
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Get in touch through the Contact page to order your very own board.
Some history:
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Spirit or Taking Boards (or as they're better known, 'Ouija' boards - trademarked to Hasbro, formerly Parker Brothers) hold a great deal of fascinating mysticism, history, spiritualism and scientific argument. The first folk talking boards came to surface after the American Civil War in the mid-1800's, when widows and families of lost soldiers would find solace and comfort in trying to contact their dead loved ones with a similar concept to the modern talking board. In 1890, Parker Brothers patented and trademarked the now famous Ouija Board name and commercialized the first boards as a family fun board game. That's right - Ouija boards were initially an innocent, fun social board game similar to Scrabble, Snakes & Ladders, Mouse Trap, Cluedo, and Connect4, among others!
During and after World War I, given the huge amount of fatalities, talking boards resurfaced to offer aid and comfort to grieving families the world over. It was only after the blockbuster 1973 movie The Exorcist showed an Ouija board in use, linking the board to a disturbing and horrifying theme of the movie (alongside some smart albeit misleading movie marketing) most if not all of Christian churches denounced the use of talking boards, claiming it to be a tool of demonic nature and evil. Given the fame of The Exorcist and widespread domination of Christianity, the initially innocent invention of the talking board had it's name permanently tainted.
Talking boards are also a topic of interesting discussion in the field of psychology. While scientists dispute the authenticity of speaking to spirits through a board, they use the Ouija board as an example of a strange phenomenon called The Ideomoter Effect - this is when the conscious mind tricks the unconsciousness into believing something is real. In this case - encouraging the board users hands to move the planchette to spell out words and names, because the unconscious mind so desperately wants something physical to happen.
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Think of them what you will; an usual summoning device or fun psychological phenomenon - but it's certain that talking boards always make a nice wall hanging or table-top conversation starter!