The Mysterious Planchette | Gallery

Though planchettes were born in France in the early 1850s, their manufacture there never seems to have transcended a cottage industry. Such was originally the case in London, where Spiritualism took root with the medium Mrs. Maria Hayden's much sensationalized trip in 1852. Within a few years, word of the devices spread over the English Channel, and British subjects like artificial limb maker Thomas Welton were manufacturing planchettes on a small scale. In 1867, the periodical "Once a Week" published an illustrated account of a planchette in use, and within a year, the First Great Craze had begun on both sides of the Atlantic. London toymakers like Jaques & Son and George C. Bussey & Co, ever-eager to produce the games everyone was playing, scrambled to manufacture the boards to satisfy the insatiable demand. Unlike their heart-shaped American cousins, British planchettes are almost universally round-nosed and flat-backed, just as originally depicted in the "Once a Week" article, though there are exceptions.