How A Ouija Board And A Ghost Story Helped These Prisoners Of War Escape
Prison breaks have long captured people’s imaginations. Tales of daring escapes, meticulously crafted plans, and the bravery that comes with such a risky move are thrilling to hear about.
But no other narrative detailing the pursuit of freedom is quite like this one. Two men, who were prisoners of war, were able to use a Ouija board to help them escape.
In 1917, during the midst of World War I, two British officers named Harry Jones and Cedric Hill were being held captive at a prisoner-of-war (POW) camp located in a remote area of Turkey.
Jones was a lawyer and the son of a lord. After a five-month siege at Kut, he was captured and forced to trek over 2,000 miles to a POW camp in Yozgad.
That was where he met Hill, a mechanic from an Australian sheep farm. Hill had joined the Royal Flying Corps and was in Kantara, Egypt when he was shot down by Ottoman forces and sent to Yozgad.
While there, Jones wrote letters back and forth with his family members. The Ottoman government had relaxed the restrictions on letters.
Prisoners were finally able to fill both sides of a single piece of paper. However, they were not allowed to receive war news, and their mail was always inspected by Ottoman officials.
Through coded messages from his family, Jones learned that the British had seized Kut in February 1917 and that Baghdad fell the next month.
He used specific words to let his family know he was speaking in code, such as “Tighnabruaich, Argyllshire, Scotland England.”
Arkadiusz – stock.adobe.com – illustrative purposes only
Once, he even sent his father a postcard with nothing but an address that did not exist. It was a secret message telling him where he was being held and the conditions at the camp.
In May 1917, prisoners were prohibited from writing about “news obtained by officers in a spiritistic state” in their letters.
To Jones, this indicated that people in the region feared the spirit world. One day, he received a postcard from his aunt.
She suggested that he practice some form of spiritualism to pass the time. She even included instructions on how to make a Ouija board.
Soon enough, Jones and Hill were holding seances for the prisoners at the camp, which drew the attention of the guards.
Jones made up a ghost named Sally, discreetly guiding a makeshift planchette across the board himself. He also worked with Hill to leave ghostly clues around the camp to scare the guards.
The two officers proceeded to cast a sort of spell over their captors, exploiting their traditional beliefs regarding spirits.
Jones and Hill also faked insanity and staged a double suicide attempt so they would be admitted to the asylum at the Turkish hospital.
They had expected to be faking madness for six weeks under the close watch of psychiatric authorities, but they remained there for six months, driven to the brink of actual madness.
Eventually, they were able to escape. Their story is one of cunning, resilience, and desperation. It showcases the human drive for freedom and the lengths people will go to be liberated.
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