IS THERE ANYBODY THERE? NOT AFTER THE GREAT OUIJA ESCAPE
The remarkable story of how two PoWs enlisted the spirit world to con their way to freedom
CHUNKS of plaster were shaken from the ceiling of the derelict house as Cedric Hill and Harry Jones hurled themselves down the long, hard staircase again and again – shrieking and groaning at the top of their voices, like men possessed. The Ottoman soldier charged with keeping them imprisoned in the building, deep in the Turkish mountains, was so panicked at the sight that he ran from the house straight into a ten foot high brick wall before trying to climb over it.The jailor, known to Cedric and Harry as “The Pimple”, was convinced that the terrible, demonic force that had taken over his two prisoners wanted to kill him too.
Upstairs, the men continued to throw each other down the stairs, all the while attempting not to laugh at the sheer audacity of the scam they were perpetrating – a plot which would ultimately lead to freedom.
“It’s definitely a tale of greed,” says author Margalit Fox. “But there are so many other elements. It’s a perfect storm of war, trauma, a revival of spiritualism and a reluctance to instantly dismiss the idea of communicating with the dead.”
Fox has just published a true account of one of the most daring and implausible examples of wartime cunning by British soldiers. She reveals how, in 1918, in the remote, mountainous town of Yozgat in Anatolia, now Turkey, First World War prisoner Harry Jones, from Wales, and his Australian comrade Cedric Hill concocted a scheme to secure their escape from a PoW camp using a homemade Ouija board.
Captured during a doomed advance on Baghdad, Jones and Hill were among hundreds of Allied soldiers forced into arduous marches, over hundreds of miles, to reach detention camps where they were expected to see out the war imprisoned in ruined houses that had been home to Armenians prior to the 1915 genocide.
“Using Ouija boards and playing at spiritualism was very popular in Victorian times,” says Fox. “It was just a parlour game to most people but there were many who took it seriously. The number dying in the First World War contributed to a revival, chiefly on behalf of grieving family members who wanted to reach out to dead loved ones.”
ALETTER from Jones’ aunt recommended he make an Ouija board to amuse himself during the long, dreary days of captivity. Having taken her advice, Jones was astonished to discover how easy it was to persuade his fellow PoWs that he could really communicate with the spirit world. Then it occurred to him that he might be able to persuade his Turkish captors that he was channelling messages from beyond.
He persuaded The Pimple, a five foot-nothing translator whose real name was Moise Eskenazi, and the camp commandant Kiazim Bey, that he could lead them to a spot where treasure had been buried by an Armenian who died during the genocide.
Dubbing the spirit he conjured up during nightly group séances “Sally”, he shared the truth of his plan with Cedric Hill, an Australian pilot with the
Royal Flying Corps.
The Pimple, who would regularly pilfer from the PoWs’ parcels from home, was soon intrigued by the Ouija board sessions and eventually came to the men with questions about his love life which he wanted answered by the spirit.
Realising they had gained his confidence, Jones and Hill spent the next few months persuading both Eskenazi and his commanding officer Bey that their skills as mediums
‘The men threw each other down the stairs, trying not to laugh at the audacity of the scam’
were real. “It was already well known in medical circles that it’s possible to believe that the glass is moving without feeling that you’re in control of your hand and arm,” says Fox. “Even back in the mid 1800s, the concept of the ideomotor was established. This is the theory that a thought or a mental action can provoke a physical movement which seems automatic or reflexive but is, in reality, being controlled by the user – it’s just that it’s subconscious and they genuinely believe they’re not moving anything.
“In reality they are, but it’s so subtle they don’t consciously notice.” To further con