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Elijah Bond's Ouija Board Grave
The man who first patented the Ouija Board rests in peace beneath a headstone that playfully reflects that achievementThe concept of a Ouija Board is fairly simple - ask questions into particularly haunted air, then wait to see which letters on a board your involuntary motions end up pointing to for the answer. The creepy notion of not being fully aware of where your own hands are going to point, nor why, has fascinated paranormal enthusiasts and psychologists alike for years, and it's all thanks to one man: Elijah Bond.
Bond patented and trademarked the world's first commercially sold Ouija Board, which he trademarked as the Nirvana Board, and immediately captured people's imaginations with his claims that it could help one speak to people from beyond the grave. One can only imagine how well the one on his own gravestone works, since it's obviously already very close to the deceased.
However, such was not always the case. In one of the last century's most intriguing (and perhaps intentional) ironies, the man responsible for bridging the communication gap between the living and the dead was buried in an unmarked grave, making him nearly impossible to find years later.
It wasn't until 2007 that Robert Murch, a noted paranormal enthusiast and Ouija Board collector and historian, set out to find the grave, and Elijah Bond finally got the respect he deserved for his invention. Murch claims it took him fifteen years to locate the precise grave in the Green Mount Cemetery in Baltimore, Maryland – and several of those spent working closely with the cemetery owners themselves to accurately identify the grave.
Volunteers and donation funds were pulled together to create Bond's truly memorable headstone, which bears the traditional name, birth and death dates on one side, and a replication of a Ouija Board carved into the other. The grave is now a popular destination for nostalgia fans and people interested in the supernatural, meaning that after years of resting in obscurity, Elijah Bond himself is finally being communicated with, one way or another.
Read more about Elijah Bond's Ouija Board Grave on Atlas Obscura...
Category: Memento Mori, Catacombs, Crypts, & Cemeteries, Inspired Inventions, Commercial Curiosities, Purveyors of Curiosities
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Edited by: easily_amused, Mark_Casey, Rachel
