In countless stories about the paranormal and supernatural, THE Ouija board has served as a plot device to advance the narrative.
The Ouija board has been a mainstay in everything from scary tales told around a campfire to Hollywood horror films, since it is widely believed in folklore to be able to communicate with spirits from other worlds or the dead.
Nevertheless, over the years, it has also been asserted in more authoritative publications that the US Navy has been using “Ouija boards” on its aircraft carriers for decades.
The “Ouija board,” as used by the US Navy on its aircraft carriers, is not what one typically imagines when the topic of such a device comes up; in this case, it is not a board with the letters A-Z, the numbers 1-10, the words “yes” and “no,” and a piece that can be moved around written on it.
Within this particular context, a Ouija board is referred to as a real-time ship map that displays the locations of all aircraft parked on the carrier’s flight deck and hangar.
Lieutenant Commander Ray Spradlin of the US Navy states that “the Ouija board is one of the most critical tools we have in coordinating flight operations,” as quoted in the Smithsonian’s Air and Space Magazine in March 2008.
According to the article, this Ouija board is a 1/16th of an inch to one foot scale model of a carrier’s flight deck and hangar, the size of a large coffee table, with tiny aircraft templates made to this scale.
Employees who handle aircraft essentially use this Ouija board to keep an eye on everyone who moves an aircraft, from the people who tie and chain the aircraft to the deck to the lift operators who move multi-million dollar hardware between the flight deck and hangar.
Indeed, there are two varieties of Ouija boards, and one of them essentially protects people from being killed or seriously injured by fixed-wing or helicopter aircraft.
