Helen Peters Nosworthy's gravestone is pictured at Fairmount Cemetery in Denver.
You never know who's lurking in a cemetery.
Denver's Fairmount Cemetery serves as the final resting ground for at least one colorful character -- the woman who named the Ouija board.
Helen Peters Nosworthy, born in 1851 in Baltimore, died in Denver in 1940, and is likely an unfamiliar name; she was buried with her husband in an unmarked plot with their close friends for more than seven decades. It wasn't until 2013 that her fraught history with what were first known as talking boards was discovered, thanks to Robert Murch, a lifelong Ouija board afficionado.
"She was a socialite, a member of flower clubs and big into the arts," said Murch, a Denver resident and chairman of the board for the Talking Board Historical Society. "You can find her at events with Molly Brown. She became a staple of women's life."
In 2018, the Talking Board Historical Society, with the permission of Nosworthy's family, presented a memorial engraved with her name, her husband's name and the names of her friends during a ceremony attended by Denver Mayor Michael Hancock, Nosworthy's descendants and others. Under her name on the large gray stone reads: "The woman who named the Ouija board." And fittingly engraved on the memorial's base: an image of a Ouija board with two hands touching a planchette, the tool people place their fingers on that moves around the board spelling out words.
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It was around 1850 when talking boards, also known as witch boards, surged in popularity, thanks to the Civil War.
"Every generation takes it and makes it their own and adds to its history," Murch said. "Back then it was like I'm surrounded by death, so why not talk to the dead? People were coming off the Civil War where more people died than anytime since. The board is something that can answer a question when nothing else can. Even if it gives an answer you can't prove it's better than not knowing."
People have complicated feelings about Ouija boards. Some believe them to be a portal for demonic forces. Others use them as a tool to connect with loved ones. For Nosworthy, the novelty item was at first auspicious, but it eventually upended her life, though did score her a place in history. The board is the reason her body isn't buried alongside her family in Baltimore. It's also why her affiliation with the invention was largely erased until Murch went sleuthing.
He first discerned Nosworthy's identity through a series of letters in the Baltimore Sun by the founders of the Ouija board, who decided to publicly complain about each other's business practices. In the letters Charles Kennard, who said he invented the board, and his friend and business partner, Elijah Bond, who patented the board and also was married to Nosworthy's sister, described a medium who helped name the board.
"Who was she?" Murch said. "I tracked down her living grandson. I did this with all the founders of the Ouija board. Helen was removed from history on purpose and it was not because she was a woman."
Nosworthy became a stockholder in the Kennard Novelty Co., the first U.S. company to manufacture Ouija boards, an uncommon move for a woman in those days, but Nosworthy wasn't your average lady, Murch says. She was 40 and what society deemed a spinster, due to her lack of marriage. That eventually changed when she met "the love of her life," Murch says, a younger man who was a Shakespearean actor.
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"Highly educated, loved to read, loved the arts," Murch said. "What you think of as a Victorian-age, very literate and strong woman."
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The company needed a name for its new board in order to market it properly, so one night the founders, along with Nosworthy, held a seance asking the board what it wished to be called. Nosworthy managed to eke out a name, with the planchette spelling o-u-i-j-a. Asked what it meant, the board replied: "Good luck."
Nosworthy's success with the board led her to become what Bond called a "strong medium." Claiming to be a medium wasn't unheard of at that time, as the spiritualist movement, which began in the U.S. around the time of Nosworthy's birth, only grew in popularity after the Civil War, when mediums helped families contact their dead relatives.
With a name for the board secured, it was time to file for a trademark. But Bond's request for a patent was rejected because ghosts couldn't be proved. The company would have to call the board a toy or item for amusement, unless the businessmen could go to Washington, D.C., and demonstrate that it worked. After her success naming the board, Nosworthy went with them to D.C. The journey was a success, if spooking government employees can be considered a win.
"Clerk by clerk they demonstrate and clerk by clerk they are scared and visibly shaken, but they don't want to put their name on it," Murch said.
"Eventually the chief clerk of the patent office is annoyed, comes in and says you don't know me and I don't know you, but if that contraption can spell my name you've got a patent. And letter by letter it spelled out his name with Helen at the head of the board."
Patent granted.
And that's when things took a sour turn. Kennard and Bond eventually quarreled about business practices, which led to their public exchange of words, and Nosworthy left altogether when the board instigated family drama.
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As a little girl her family had land in Virginia that saw some Civil War battles. She and her siblings would go onto the fields, take buttons off the uniforms of dead soldiers and add them to a big jar of silver and brass buttons. Years later when the jar went missing the family asked Nosworthy to use the Ouija board to learn who stole them.
"It tells them it's a family member," Murch said. "She doesn't believe it's true. She says it's lying. Half the family believes it, half does not. It starts a huge feud, which causes her to leave in 1891 and never return to Baltimore. She moved to Denver and lives two houses away from the Molly Brown house. She told her grandson don't play with the board. It lies and that lie destroyed her family. She was telling people don't play this game."
While she and the company were still on friendly terms, it couldn't have her be associated with the board if she was warning people away from it. Thus the erasure of her history. By 1893 nobody remembered her involvement.
"In her mind the board broke her family," Murch said. "She believed it could work too well. She wanted to make sure any influence she had was don't do it. Back then the belief was different. We have more science behind it. Science believes it's small movements in our hands that makes it (the planchette) fluid. Some believe it's telepathy and some believe it's spirits who part the veil. She didn't go around telling people don't do it, but if it came up she was adamant, like no, get rid of it, it will only hurt you."
Though she abandoned the board, Nosworthy didn't forsake the occult completely, Murch says.
"It's (the Ouija board) able to be a chameleon in every decade. It takes on whatever we experience -- spooky or paranormal," Murch said. "Today most use them at a slumber party. Ouija today is most people's first on purpose experience with the paranormal. It's the first time they actively reach out and say is anyone there? It leaves a huge mark on you."