SPOOFING THE TURKS

Evening Star, Issue 17328, 16 April 1920, Page 3

SPOOFING THE TURKS

WITCHCRAFT AT END-OR, How two British officers wiled away the time during their months of captivity among the Trrrks and finally won their way to. freedom by means of spoof spiritualism and feigned madness is told in 'The Road to Tvud-or,' by Lieutenant E. H. Jones. By imitating the trances of the medium the author gradually impressed the Turkish officials witii his power of communication with the unseen world He oegan by playing at seances, and then, as the interest of the Turks grew in the manifestations of the occult. Lieutenant Jones, in collusion with his friend, Lieutenant Hill, decided to nse Turkish credulity to assist them to escape. My plan was to make the Tnrkish authorities at Yozgad my unconsoions accomplices. I intended to" implicate the highest. Turkish authority in the place ill my escape, to obtain clear and convincing proof that- he was implicated, and to lea.ve that proof in the hands of my fellow-prisoners before I disappeared. THE - SPOOK " AND THE TREASURE. The commandant at Yozgad was gulled into believing that certain treasure was buried v.-here be might eventually find it—with the aid of his So thev were removed from the camp into other quarters more convenient for hunting the treasure after which the commandant's heart yearned. Incidentally they considerably improved the camp through the messages obtained at the seances from a "spook" :n which the commandant believed implicitly ami obeyed its instructions. The "spook" in reality was Lientenant Hill. He learned a method of canfrolhng the glass and numbered dial used'

as means of rommurrication at the tings " without detection, and could thus impose any "message" lie wired upon the sitters. FEIGNED iIABNESS. But although: they paved the way to freedom by tbeir " psychic powers," *thev did not secure it without a test and desperate subterfuge. They feigned violent madness. Hill became " The MelanchoKc " and Jones figured as " The Furious." There was much examining and testing, but the malingerers survived every test, and were finally sent to England as incurable madmen. But although the two " psychics'" %ir reason, as the Turks believed, faith in their spiritualistic spoofing remained firm, foT the author received letters in England from Turkish officials who had become true believers. Lieutenant Hill's final veTdict is that "in the face of the moat elaborate and persistent efforts to detect fraud, it i.« possible to convert intelligent, scientific, and otherwise highly educated men to spiritualism by means of the arts and methods employed br ' Mediums' in general."