James Merrill was born in 1926, and when history talks about well-to-do poets born with silver spoons in their mouths, he was up there as the son of the co-founder of Merrill Lynch. Merrill was given a Ouija board as a birthday present in 1953, and when he sat down and tried it with fellow writer David Jackson, magic happened.
According to Yale Alumni Magazine, Merrill and Jackson spent decades collaborating via Ouija. They made their own board, chatted with deceased friends, and came across a spirit guide named Ephraim. Ephraim had lived in the court of Rome's emperor Tiberius, and in 1976 Merrill published a long poem based on their conversations.
After The Book of Ephraim, Merrill started channeling new spirits who warned of the end of the world and nuclear annihilation. The same spirits started telling him all about true spirituality, the creation and the fall, and even started describing some weird, weird creatures like "a hornless unicorn."
"That's just a horse!" cynics would cry, but no one gets to be an award-winning poet with that sort of attitude. The messages were turned into a massive, 560-page poem, published as The Changing Light at Sandover. It all sounds pretty weird, but critics loved it. The tome was awarded the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1983, says the New York Times, and Merrill himself could also claim a Pulitzer Prize and two National Book Awards. Hopefully, he at least thanked the spirits.
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