I've been posting stories here at THOIA since 2007, and aside from one text page entry from 2009 HERE, I believe this is actually the very first Ouija board related comic tale I've ever featured (someone please correct me if I'm wrong.) It's weird though, right? Ouija, or "spirit" boards have been popular since the late 1800's, so you'd think there'd be a bunch of related comic tales. Can anyone think of any others to recommend for future posts here? This also concludes our frightfully fun Fawcett precode series fest of B!TTs... from the July 1953 issue of Beware! Terror Tales #8, with art possibly by Sheldon Moldoff (again), and / or maybe Ed Moline. Now, does anyone know who created that sinsational witch cover?
Nerodart says
ReplyDeletehorror rule-vague predicions lead to paranoia to.....death
I'm afraid I've never read the EC comics version, but in the movie TALES FROM THE CRYPT, the story "Poetic Justice" has a Ouija board.
ReplyDeleteI guess it's entirely possible that there are few Ouija board stories from the fifties because creators didn't know just where the legalities stood. As we all know, the board itself is patented by Elijah Bond of the Kennard Novelty Co., and the name is a trademark invented by his sister-in-law. Of course, by the fifties all of that was owned by Parker Bros, a company with enough muscle to actually punish a publishing house for playing fast and loose with its IP. I'd love to think that this story represents an early form of product placement, but I really doubt it. Obviously horror comics were hardly in the public's favor by fifty-three and I can't see a board game company wanting to see its products advanced in one. More likely this flew under the Parker Brothers' radar completely, or hoped to.
ReplyDeleteI appreciate how much character development is present here. This was a fun story to read out loud.
I think the 6 gazillion ouija movies put out in the last couple decades have really skewed the thoughts of oija boards as being evil; at the beginning it was no more than a kids game or a party trick for adults. Here it's not exactly evil at all -- it's just accurately telling the future.
ReplyDeleteNot even Pancho -- whose place in these stories is to be the old guy in the Friday the 13th movies warning the kids of danger -- says nothing about the board being evil or satanic. It just ... tells the future, as the game was sold as.
Heck, Pancho just gets punched out, he doesn't even die and come back as a spirit. The fortune telling device could have been an 8-ball in this! That said, I'm surprised our "hero" didn't just ask more specific questions!
I wonder if the board or the spirit of the board (Pancho's Grandmother?) got mad at Tonas and decided to scare him to death.
ReplyDeleteHere's hoping Pancho found something worth a fortune so he could retire or go into the junk business himself.
Whoever the artist was he did a decent rendition of a horse's head on page two top left panel.
He's horrible to the character who might be about to make him rich, but at least he doesn't murder him. Which puts him ahead of countless horror comic villains in "get rich quick scheme" kind of story. So I wish he'd survived.
ReplyDeleteI like the way they don't bother to give the guy any redeeming qualities. He's just awful to everybody!
ReplyDeleteWell, you know, there's a famous Krazy Kat with a ouija board. I first saw it as a kid in Krazy Kat: The Art of George Herriman. Not a horror story, but still.
ReplyDeleteThere's a ouija board story in Boris Karloff Tales of Mystery #5.
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