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conceived of the faith he called Caodaism (roughly, “religion of the high palace”). It was a mélange of Eastern traditions—from Taoism to Buddhism to Hinduism—combined with the ideas of Allan Kardec and other French Spiritists, including poet and novelist Victor Hugo, himself a habitué of séances. To communicate with the otherworld, Caodaism relied upon American Spiritualism’s most popular innovation: the Ouija board. Ouija proved surprisingly adaptable to the Latinized version of the Vietnamese language that had begun under the influence of Catholic missionaries. So closely was Ouija associated with Caodaism that novelist Graham Greene in The Quiet American lampooned the Vietnamese faith as “prophecy by planchette,” using the French name for the little platform that slides around the board.

Caodaism had a defiant politics. It was militantly anticommunist and maintained a private army that sided with American forces against the Vietcong as late as 1975. After the war, the religion fled underground. Newly emergent in the twenty-first century, Caodaism claims up to eight million followers worldwide and ranks as Vietnam’s third-largest faith, after Buddhism and Catholicism. Though unknown to most Americans—whose primary association with Vietnam is war and loss—Caodaism is by far the largest organized religion to emerge from the Spiritualist age. And its origins can be traced back to the ghostly rappings heard one winter night at a cottage in the Burned-Over District. The “cradle of Modern Spiritualism,” as Madame Blavatsky once called America, had sent its children on a long journey. And they would find still stranger games to play along the way.

* Maynard’s account, and particularly her record of Lincoln’s remarks, also shows Spiritualism’s continued emphasis on the Christian underpinnings of mediumship.

CHAPTER THREE

DON’T TRY THIS AT HOME

Ouija and the Selling of Spiritualism

… these creepy things; there may be great truths in them, but they have nearly destroyed us.

—SWAMI VIVEKANANDA, COMPLETE WORKS

More than a century after the dawn of the Spiritualist era, three teenage girls, who’d probably never heard the word Spiritualism uttered in their 1960s suburban homes, huddled over an object nearly every teenager recognized: the Ouija board. Giggling nervously, they asked about their futures: “Will we all get married?” They rested their fingers with no more than the weight of a whisker on the molded plastic pointer, or planchette, waiting for the little tripod to slide across the board’s lettered surface. And it did, first in a slight jerk and then smoothly, as though guided by some unseen force. As the board’s eerie faces of the sun and moon grinned back at the girls, the pointer slid over the word: YES. “Will there be divorce?” they asked. The pointer moved again: YES: THREE. It was not until years later that the anxious girls, grown into middle-age women, could look back and laugh: All had married, but only one had divorced—thrice.

By the time youth culture had become big business, when the Beach Boys sang about T-Birds and having “Fun, Fun, Fun” at hamburger stands—developments that would have been as unrecognizable to the Fox sisters as life on Mars—Ouija reigned supreme as the nation’s most intriguing novelty. The game board’s mysterious movements and beguiling communications made it a staple of slumber parties and toy-cluttered basements. By the late 1960s, its sales rivaled those of the best-selling board game in the world, Monopoly.

Though patented and sold as entertainment, Ouija was no ordinary fad. It was, in fact, a homemade device concocted by nineteenth-century American Spiritualists who, from the earliest days of their movement, yearned to make talking with the dead as natural as dinnertime conversation. Whether the object of fear or fascination, Ouija proved the most enduring symbol of their success.

Spiritual Telegraphs

Among nineteenth-century believers, Spiritualism was a practice of deep intimacy. Acolytes squeezed hands around séance tables, felt the quickened breath of those