Jap Herron, A Novel Written from the Ouija Board

Varla Ventura, Coast to Coast favorite, Weird News blogger on Huffington Post, and author of The Book of the Bizarre and Beyond Bizarre, introduces Weiser Books’ new Collection of forgotten occult classics. Paranormal Parlor is an eerie assemblage of affordable digital editions, curated with Varla’s sixth sense for tales of the weird and unusual.

Not just a “novel written by the Ouija” Jap Herron was purported to be one of three lost novels of Mark Twain, delivered by his mortal scribe, Mrs. Emily Grant Hutchings. According to the author's introduction, over several months Samuel L. Clemens' (Mark Twain's) ghost delivered message specifically for Hutchings to edit into a story, all via a medium's Ouija board. Hutchings and her husband painstakingly took down every letter the planchette directed them to. However, Jap Herron was never widely published, having been pulled from distribution thanks to a lawsuit brought against Hutchings and her publisher by Twain's daughter. Hutchings, a fairly accomplished journalist, was skewered for her desperate attempts to gain fame. Surprisingly true to the voice of Twain, Hutchings was either a gifted charlatan or a truthful telepathic. You read it and decide!