9 Crimes People Claimed Ouija Board Forced Them To Commit

The Ouija board has been a part of American culture since the 1890s, first appearing in advertisements as a means of fielding questions about the past, present, and future. This talking board parlor game has a simple design: a flat surface with the letters of the alphabet, numbers 0-9, and the words "yes" and "no," is accompanied by a triangle-shaped piece called a "planchette," which is moved by - allegedly - otherworldly forces to answer the players's queries. 

The game has always been shrouded in mystery. It's not known exactly where it came from, which is strange for a 100-plus old game that is still sold in stores today. It's not, however, hard to see how the Ouija board emerged in a 19th Century America that was enraptured in spiritualism - this was a time where seances were a popular social outing, after all. Even the US Patent Office bought in, deeming the board "proven" to work.

The eeriness of the Ouija board has also lent itself to a dark history. The occult nature of the game has lead to people who blamed their crimes on Ouija boards. This is just another example of strangely bizarre and yet true crime stories. Ouija board crimes are gruesome and have an added other worldly element to them. This list explores those claiming a sinister possession by these talking boards: Ouija boards who told people to commit crimes, and frighteningly often, Ouija boards who told people to kill.

Gary Gilmore was convicted of double murder in the state of Utah in October 1976. His crimes - the shooting deaths of a gas station attendant and motel clerk that previous July - sentenced him to death. A career criminal who spent most of his adult life behind bars, Gilmore grew up with an alcoholic and abusive father, possibly cementing his criminal path from a young age. Gilmore's mother, however, had a different idea of what may have set her son's sinister streak into action.  

Bessie Gilmore believed she unleashed a demonic spirit when she played with a Ouija board when she was a child. This darkness, Bessie claimed, attached itself to her family causing great misfortune and death. Many years later, her mother-in-law, Fay Gilmore, conducted a séance in her and Gary's presence. Bessie would go on to say this reinvigorated the grim spirit from her past, which manifested itself physically, seeking out and latching on to Gary Gilmore. Bessie claimed after the incident her son was besieged by awful headaches and nightmares, signs she took as a possession from what she conjured as a young girl from that Ouija board - an unknown force condemning Gary to a life of crime.  

In February 2001, Carol Sue Elvaker, a 53-year-old Oklahoma woman, stabbed her son-in-law Brian Roach to death with a single blow to the chest. Roach became her target after Elvaker, her daughter, and two granddaughters played with the Ouija board and recieved a message from beyond. Elvaker felt she received a message from God that Brian Roach was evil and needed to be killed. 

After she stabbed Roach - who pleaded for his life but ultimately bleed out - she took her daughter and granddaughters on the road, intentionally wrecking her car on Interstate 44 outside of Tulsa in an attempt to kill them all. Her passengers only had minor injuries, and Elvaker herself only had two broken ankles. Driven by her message from beyond, she attempted to push her 15-year-old granddaughter into traffic. She failed at that as well, producing a not great 25 percent success rate in her Ouija murder plot servitude.   

In March 1930, Clothilde Marchand, wife of Buffalo, NY, sculptor Henri Marchand, answered a knock at her door. Her visitor, Nancy Bowen, a tribal healer from the local Cattaraugus Reservation, greeted Mrs. Marchand with a hammer to the skull, and when the blows didn't prove fatal she stuffed a chloroform soaked rag down her throat.

Marchand's violent end came thanks to an informative turn at the Ouija board Bowen had conducted with her friend Lila Jimerson. Bowen's husband had recently been killed and the two turned to the board to figure out the culprit. They were not disappointed. The Ouija board provided the words "They did it," as well an address - that of the Marchands.

But it wasn't mystic spirits telling Bowen to kill Mrs. Marchand - it was Jimerson. She had a motive for guiding the board's planchette to Mrs. Marchand: Jimerson was sleeping with her husband. Using the board to manipulate her friend to murder the obstacle to win the sculptor's heart, Jimerson's plot didn't quite produce her intended results. During the trial - after which Jimerson and Bowen would both go free - Henri Marchand would testify that he had "too many [lovers] to count," and would later go on to marry his dead wife's 18-year-old niece. It's too bad the board's clairvoyance omitted that information.   

In July 1987, Anthony Allan Hall and Daniel Paul Bowen, along with their girlfriends Bunny Dixon and Elizabeth Rebecca Towne, hijacked Ngoc Van Dang's car in Orlando, FL. Dixon and Towne pose as hitchhikers on the side of the road to lure Dang to pull over. Hall and Bowen hid out view, and emerged from the shadows with a gun. They ambushed Dang and put him in the trunk, gagging and robbing him of $120 cash. 

The plan was to use Dang's vehicle and cash to fund the group's trip to Virginia, where they would join a carnival. After getting to Daytona Beach, they removed Dang from the trunk, and Dixon carved an inverted cross into Dang's stomach with a butterfly knife. Bowen then shot him seven times, ultimately killing him. Later in court, however, the group said the murderous scheme didn't originate from them - it came from a spirit named "David."

Dixon claimed an unknown spirit of a 10-year-old boy called "David" devised the whole plan. He relayed this in a message she received on a Ouija board. Dixon then cast some sort of satanic spell on the group, which caused them to commit the heinous act. All four participants were caught and convicted, and Bowen getting the death penalty.

In December 2007, two idle Washington teens found themselves facing a question many face as a young adult: "What do I want to be when I grow up?" The pair - 16-year-old Joshua Tucker and 15-year-old Donald Schalchlin - were not completely absent of ambition for their lives - they knew they wanted to get into the business of serial murder. That evening, the boys consulted with their Ouija board, which reaffirmed their pursuits and even suggested their first victim with the planchette spelling out "Mom."

The boys took the Ouija's board's instruction as more of a suggestion and first went after Schalchlin's sister, Elizabeth, with Tucker fatally stabbing her in the throat. After hiding Elizabeth's body, the two waited for Donald's mother Lori to come home to act on the Ouija board's original advice. Once attacked, Lori managed to call 911, but it would be in vain, as Tucker - his knife now broken - bludgeoned her to death with a dumbbell before the police arrived. 

Six Army intelligence officers, all with top-secret security clearances, went AWOL from a US base in West Germany in July 1990. Five days later, the group was arrested thousands of miles away in Gulf Breeze, FL, after being pulled over for a broken tail light. What brought them to Gulf Breeze - a beach town known for UFO sightings - was a cryptic message from a Ouija board that was enough to get them to leave the Army - a crime if not properly discharged.

Vance Davis, a specialist and the most vocal member of the group, thought the Ouija board indicated the second coming of Jesus Christ was near, and along with it the rapture. The group had consulted with the board on a legal way to exit the Army to assist Christ. The spirit told them to just leave. Knowing this would be a significant military crime, the group asked the board for reassurance, and were told "Things would work out.'' 

Of course, things didn't work out. Jesus didn't show up and the group was given honorable discharges after first being reduced to the lowest rank possible as punishment. 

In November 1933, 15-year-old Mattie Turley committed the first murder to be blamed on the guidance of a Ouija board. While playing the parlor game with her mother Dorothea, the planchette spelled out instructions for Mattie to shoot her father, 48-year-old former U.S. Naval Officer Ernest Turley. With her mother's warning that "the board could not be denied," Mattie obeyed and shot her father twice in the back, killing him. 

Incidentally, Dorothea told her daughter she wanted to marry a handsome cowboy, but poor Ernest stood in the way. She certainly lucked out when an otherworldly spirit from their séance demanded his execution, putting her back on the market. Unfortunately for her, authorities saw through the ruse and Dorothea was convicted with intent to commit murder. She only served three years for her crime, but it's unknown whether her mystery cowboy hitched his horse and waited, or rode off into the sunset.

The Carroll family were keen believers in their Ouija board's macabre messages, and more than once acted on the game's directives to a criminal extent. The Leadgate, England family's first offense took place on Christmas Eve in 2014, when patriarch Paul received a message from the board indicating the family dog had become inhabited by an evil spirit. Rather than explain this common case of pet possession to a veterinarian, Paul thought it better to kill and dismember the animal, and was later charged with the animal's death.

But, of course, it did not end there. While Paul was awaiting sentencing, his wife Margaret and their daughter Katrina Livingstone took another go at the Ouija board. The pair received a message so sinister predicting their deaths that their only recourse was to take a cocktail of pills and burn down their home. The courts did not agree with the duo's preventative measures, however, and sentenced both to four years in prison for arson. 

On December 1995, 17-year-old Londoner Michael McCallum and 16-year-old Pierre Antoine lured two boys, Michael Earridge and Stephen Curran (both 15), back to McCallum's flat. Once inside McCallum's bedroom- which doubled as a satanic shrine - the four boys broke out the Ouija board to try and reach the Dark Lord himself. The group looked on in amazement as the planchette moved to spell four letters: K-I-L-L. 

Earridge made a break for it when it was clear this succinct message was being taken seriously, but Antoine stopped him at the door where McCallum stabbed him 11 times with a 12-inch combat knife. McCallum, believing he had just made a sacrifice to satan, later accepted a plea of manslaughter due to diminished mental capacity.