The Ouija Board Breakout: A Prison Escape that's Beyond (Ep 216)

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very smooth hi hello hi you made me I was like wait are we not starting hello hi hi um you know what that reminds me of well we have some business to talk about but first I need to bring this up to everyone because Corinne you and I have had a very busy couple of weeks and the other day I called you on a walk and you go hello and then I start laughing and you start laughing and we just laughed for like four minutes straight and didn't say

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anything I was in the middle of a laughing attack and so when I answered I was trying really hard to be serious because I was like Sabrina's calling me it's probably a business question let me like be super serious I was like hello but I also feel like that's just where our mental state is and we were um we just alluded to laugh yeah and it we know what we talked about I think we mostly laughed I think we totally just left that's like one thing and then we're like okay talk to you later I probably had a purpose to call you but then you know the universe was like hey you need to laugh a bit with your friend so if you guys like laughing you refuse that no I'm just kidding this is two rules one ghost

Live show announcements

uh business hi we are we have two live shows that is the biggest news also that's Sabrina oh shoot I always forget to introduce ourselves uh that's okay but yes we have two we

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have two live shows come we'll have more of a script well that's what we're doing maybe we'll see but yes April 14th we're gonna be in Portland Maine at Aura at 8pm it's a Friday and then we're gonna be in New Brunswick New Jersey kind of near my old neighborhood um Korean maybe I'll take you to my haunted house yes uh that is amazing for that April 26th at 7 pm at scream shout what's it called Stress Factory at Stress Factory scream and chill and let it all out okay um yes so come join us yeah please come join us the link is in our bio right here or the show notes I guess it's also all over our social media and if you go to two girls oneghost.com you will be able to find a tab all regarding live shows and you'll

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get the tickets there but to entice you even more if you were like maybe I'll go maybe I won't maybe I'll drive to 45 minutes maybe I won't we are starting a new two girls one ghost tradition there and we're not gonna tell you what it is you'll just have to come find out you'll have to find out join us I like your uh luring people in you're kind of like the guy in the middle baits in the van with candy do you want some candy chicken uh I'm gonna one day I'm gonna walk out on the stage with a trench coat and just like pretend flash everyone it's just gonna be I don't know what it will be but kazoos kazoos my my loon call remember that one episode yeah like you're like I don't know what a loon sounds like and you're like I will show you the other piece of news is campfire

Patreon updates and schemes

stories we are back on patreon campfire stories is going to be every Tuesday I

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think this episode comes out right after we just had our first one mm-hmm I'm sure it went well I'm sure we heard so many stories Korean you and I were hilarious as always we got scared we couldn't go to sleep you know same old but we've just been missing campfire Series so much we know that everyone else has and I just want to say I know that you know obviously having it on our patreon is it puts a barrier in terms of having a monetary amount assigned to entry but we really wanted to make it as accessible as we could so we did choose for it to be accessible for every tier yeah so just three dollars a month and you can go to four campfire stories a month and then re-listen to all the replays at any time so please still love us and it will be a really good time and we're also creating so much more content

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on our feed for everyone to enjoy we're doing a lot of crossovers in addition to our regular episodes we have some other things that we're working on uh for scheming we're scheming we're scheming we're losing sleep and we're giggling on our phone calls and that is because we're we're planning something lots of

Personal updates and food

things not hopefully we are playing we're actively yeah yeah so we're always in constantly thinking about you and our listeners well you are our listeners I don't know maybe you're not maybe you're just someone who happened upon us um two girls one ghost for the first time and they're like Ugh what is this this is not what I thought it was going to be oh look at this sweatshirt oh why where did you get that Goodwill [Laughter] I love that cheeseburger UFO abducting a human who did that I don't know definitely made that one of a kind I feel very

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unique it's amazing it's so good wow yeah nice nice beautiful perfect it's perfectly you thank you hamburger not except for the hamburger except for the cheeseburger yeah it should be uh lettuce wrap you get protein style everyone makes fun how do you order okay my in and out order just a piece of lettuce with like mustard on it basically uh it is a so I used to order it like this which is so funny a grilled cheese protein style no cheese add pickles so basically lettuce tomato onions spread and pickles it's basically a salad wrapped up as a sandwich I mean I mean it's delicious it is that just sounds good and then I get animal style fries the bread oh God I miss in and out I'm getting it next time I'm in town all right do they have them in the airport no I don't think so that would be a great idea I don't know why they don't should we start our own franchise ah

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is that is I don't know random ones through outside of California too well I think they started to Branch out but they yeah I don't know I don't know what do I know oh can I

Food dislikes and past lives

tell you something that I ate the other day that I think you would really like yes and it's vegetarian oh I had Jackfruit tenders for the first time ever you know with chickpea batter so it was all it was like gluten-free it was basically vegan it well except for the aioli but it basically so good I aim of them now don't love jackfruit yeah oh wow can we can we still be friends here oh no I thought is this the one time I really really like something that is in your category of Sabrina will eat

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but it's on your do not eat list okay yeah that's fine because I've given it more for me I've given it so many chances and I just because I so a lot of Mexican restaurants will do Jackfruit or Cactus and those are two things that I just can't get behind I need me some tofu or seitan oh seitan has been my um it's so good I feel that way about buckwheat Brian really likes buckwheat pancakes and uh it's not good it's not it's the one food I don't like I will try almost anything I enjoy most things there's probably like maybe out of everything in the world there's probably like five things that I won't and don't like and it is now from what I can remember lamb and buckwheat so I have two okay Lance yucky I've told you this lamb taste to me like

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I would imagine human beings to taste like and so I can't get past it I don't know why I visualize that or if I wasn't cannibal I was just gonna say what if in the past you in a past life you ate humans I think we've theorized about this before because it wasn't it wasn't like I was like this tastes different I wonder if humans taste like this it was kind of like a oh this kind of reminds me of human

Past life regression discussion

this makes me want to do our past life regression even more because I need the answers what I mean I think the fact that I was repulsed by it either means that my soul is supposed to redeem myself in this life for cannibalizing in the last or I was forced into it which is why I'm I'm so grossed out by it I was just gonna say what if it's a it was a survival situation because you also are such a survivalist in this life so I am and I

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love learning about the shipwrecks and all of those incidents over centuries where people have had to pluck straws and or just straight up murder the little servant boy on the boat and eat them those things those ones are fascinating uh yeah I definitely think that's something connected to a past life yeah we'll see we'll do it it's if anyone has any recommendations yeah who to go to because I feel like we talk about doing past life regression all the time and we always want to do it and there's been times Sabrina where you and I have been together and we're like oh let's go but it's so hard for things like this to actually know someone who's yeah reputable right there's a lot of people out there that prey on people like us who are in intrigued by this sort of stuff and are like I mean not even people like us but just like anyone who's like who's interested to go get my tea leaves red you know like it's a fun silly little thing but for us it's supposed to be

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serious we don't want to just be entertained we want the truth yeah and also potentially someone who could do it over Zoom because we might not we're not always with each other um nor do we have the ability to always do things in person you know after Arielle Willow was so spot on about certain things I was just like really I think a lot of people could do stuff over Zoom I think if you're tapped in it doesn't necessarily well it depends on people's power I was gonna say I don't think you need to like touch them and be there with them but yeah that could not be true at all who what do I know and it's also I don't regression is like a hypnosis of sort so it depends on your own mental capacity yeah via via VIA Zoom um um

Transitioning to the story

I texted you like the most proper text this morning I took a step back and I

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yeah you use it by myself I said what I had to correct me like there's a period at the end of the sentence Sabrina must be mad at me um okay I have a very long episode and thrilling uh story to tell you so I

World War One background

think we should get into it okay okay I don't even know where to begin I guess I should start with they're a trigger warning because there are themes of suicide and this story um and then less of a trigger warning and more of a disclaimer this is another episode of uh Sabrina loves history so perfect there is a lot of history in this episode and includes quite a vast recount of world history we're pretty much a paranormal History Podcast that's true I mean it's important to understand the history to understand the Paranormal

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because without knowing why or who or what occurred you don't really understand the ghost right we need context we love context so this story takes place during World War One and for people who do not know World War one took place from 1914 to 1918. it was one of the deadliest Global conflicts in history and was fought between two coalitions one side was France UK Russia Italy Japan and the US and the other side was Germany Austria Hungary and what was the Ottoman Empire the Turkish an estimated 9 million soldiers were killed in combat and many soldiers on both sides were taken as prisoners of War held in terrible conditions interrogated for information and left to wonder what their fate would be this is where our Story begins in an ottoman prison camp in yadgad it was 1916 conditions were poor life was Bleak

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and the prisoners sought ways to pass the time

The Ouija board escape plan

so a man by the name of Elias Henry Jones had an idea one that was given to him by an aunt who had written a postcard Jones constructed a Ouija board and together with other prisoners decided to communicate with the other side Define connection beyond their confined walls and seek contact with the outside world night after night Jones and his fellow inmates gathered around the board they asked the spirit realm if anyone was with them occasionally the planchette which was constructed of an upside down glass would move spelling out gibberish slowly the man grew bored their Faith and Hope for outside communication dwindling so as each night passed more and more prisoners opted out of these seances until they were just two men remaining Jones I just want to know what the

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guards thought of all of this well you will find shaking in their boots that is coming soon I'd be like fine you're released from prison I don't want any of this around me be gone be gone well so this night it's finally just two minutes Jones and this other man and it was this night that they finally made contact with the other side the planned yet moved spelling out s a l l y Sally this one name this one evening this one connection began what became the greatest prison escape in history this is the story of the confidence Men Elias Henry Jones and Cedric Waters Hill two men who escaped the brutal conditions of an ottoman prisoner of war camp with the use of a Ouija board it involves magic Conjuring Spirits

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Ouija boards treasure telepathy two men having themselves tried convicted sentenced to solitary confinement and 500 pounds of butter 500 pounds of butter yes you'll find out

Researching the escape story

that's my teaser for you um that's why everyone has to stay here some ideas but I don't think I'm right you're probably not keep going so the question is were Jones and Hill incredibly powerful mediums or were they incredibly smart master manipulators the answer shall be revealed so stay until the end actually I'll find you'll you'll learn more in the middle because it's important to the story so before we find out what happens to Jones Hill Sally and the Ouija board I want to go into some background and I really need to give a shout out I don't even know how I stumbled upon this I really think I was researching for our in paranormal

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news which we do on patreon and this somehow came up and I was blown away because there's nothing on the internet about it except for this one book and I ended up listening to it it's from it's written by Margaret Fox and it's called the confidence Men so I found most of my information from this book and I really highly recommend it it's 10-ish hours or so um and this episode has been condensed to 13 pages so as you can assume there's a very uh there's a lot of information that's not going to be in this episode um the book actually has transcribed conversations that they had with the spirits on the other side because oh someone wrote like you know was the The Scribe basically so people were

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writing down what conversations they were having so cool yeah

Writing versus talking

um it actually read like fiction a lot of times and Margaret did you have to look it up to make sure it was non-fiction full-time multiple times print I it is this story is so I mean as you can tell from like the 500 pounds of butter and all of those little like things it is just yeah it's so elaborate it just goes in directions that I'm I don't even understand they're I can't even imagine putting myself into their shoes and creating what they created it's that wild yeah I'm looking forward to hearing this especially the butter part because my mind just my mind is churning no pun intended I die wow Corinne that was quick I'm

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proud of you thanks thanks sometimes I was gonna say it anyway and then I was like wait a second that's the pun sometimes I listen back to episodes and I get so disappointed that I didn't think of certain puns or jokes because my brain sometimes moves so much slower and I have I need time I'm like I'm I'm uh okay one okay this is a little tangent and I know we don't have time for them today but to get through um there was one time I was on set and we had a uh I was talking to someone and my brain just totally short circuited and this guy was like I thought you were a writer and I was like yeah I'm not a I'm a writer not a talker like they're two very different things they really are oh my gosh I feel the same way because the way that I like any email even text just the way that I communicate on paper or like having a beat to actually put my

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thoughts down it's so different than my spoken word people actually um people in the book that I was reading were saying that Phoebe Bridgers they were mentioning that Phoebe Bridgers is a bit of the same way because her lyrics to her songs will be so poetic and so haunting and then an interviewer will be like how did you like how did you think of these lyrics and she'd be like I know man like it's wild right you know super sad like okay I get you I feel the same I get you too I think sometimes you just need to sit in solitude with your thoughts and that's how wonderful writing takes place speaking on the other hand it's just it's a lot more challenging so a lot of you are asking a lot of me world okay so yes the book is called the confidence

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Men it's an incredible story of pure engine Ingenuity and the strength of spirit both living and dead I was proud of that one um [Laughter]

Background of Elias Jones

okay so I'm gonna start telling you a little bit about Elias Henry Jones and then um I will get into CW Hill who's the other uh very important part of the story so Elias Henry Jones known as Harry or Hal and I'll mostly refer to him as Jones or Elias in this story was born in Wales on September 21st 1883. uh his father was a knight and was incredibly smart and became one of the most renowned moral philosophers so Jones followed closely in his Father's Footsteps and received a really good education he spent most of his life in Wales and they moved to Scotland with his family in 1891 and later moved to Glasgow he was fluent and Welsh and many other

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languages he graduated from the University of Glasgow where he had studied psychology greek latin mathematics and history and then he then went on to get a masters and worked as a magistrate in early 1900s his brother and sister both died and Jones was alone dealing with these tragedies in the jungles of Burma and very sadly became addicted to Opium but in 1908 he recovered and weaned himself off of the Opium and in 1913 at 29 years old he married his longtime friend mayor even mayor Evans who let me tell you that these love letters that are in the book and accessible are just swoony I'll read one example but they had known each other since the age of 13 and um one example this is a letter that Jones wrote to mayor I have loved you since we were boy and

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girl together I love you even more with every day that passes this is like just regularly giving someone your vows right basically this is so beautiful we don't do this stuff anymore I know we should return love you do you need me to pick up yogurt at the grocery store like I'm gonna return to writing a bunch of Love Letters to Me to you actually I bought a card that I found because it reminded me of you and I have to write it and send it to you well now I just wrote a surprise um but I don't know what the card is that's true perfect I love that Jones and mayor had their first child in 1914 and that was the time when the world was thrown into the midst of World War One Britain was in war against the Ottoman Empire and so Jones enlisted as a gunner in 1916. he became a member of the Force's sixth division in charge of capturing Baghdad

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at the time when he joined the military mayor was pregnant with her second with their second child and decided to sail back to Britain with their other child that they had and Jones is in the sixth division Sir Charles Townsend was the General and you know things were going well for them for quite a while until it wasn't they were facing terrible conditions 100 plus degree weather low food rations and bugs apparently there were bugs that crawled the bugs that bit and stung those that flew into Mao's those that invaded their Foods there were mosquitoes scorpions bed bugs lice just so many oh

Life in the trenches

yes okay another thing to know about Jones is he was a little bit of a jokester and loved Jinx and playing pranks and making a good old making fun out of situations that necessarily weren't very fun so he would pull pranks often and that's

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something important to note as we go on in the story um that's healthy you know sometimes you need a little bit of a Class Clown to bring everybody yeah together a little camaraderie exactly some shared negative experiences yes some glimmer of hope by November 28 1916 the sixth division the sixth division had seen 50 of their forces killed and they were ordered to retreat and this is when they realized that Siege was inevitable they were now surrounded by 25 000 ottoman troops and they were running out of food and basically the Ottomans were like let's just starve them out let's just surround them shoot at them and they'll starve eventually um the British troops were now eating the animals in the trenches horses mules 150 to 200 British men were dying daily the rain was like the weather was wild

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it was either really hot or it was raining the bugs were rampant the dead were piling up there was no relief coming well relief was coming but they were being attacked with as they were coming so it was just so far the men started starving and this story is so fluff but I just need to tell it because it it brought so much joy to me and it's just a little tidbit that I think will bring joy to this whole story um so during this time before they had been surrounded by the 25 000 troops there were a group of Gunners who bought a hen and they had bought it with the intention of eating it for dinner but then they decided to keep her as a pet and they gave her a name Mrs Milligan so this is laying a laying hen because I'm not sure

The story of Mrs. Milligan

I mean if you if you get the then you get a lot of meals because you have the

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eggs I'm gonna guess that she wasn't because she was a hen of a certain age yeah maybe she was a little older she was a Mrs so Mrs Milligan was a hen and was like a pet of the of the uh trenches and a pet of the trenches and even though these men were starting to starve the rations were being cut down from a half to a quarter to even less and less and less like to the point where they were only given one cup of tea and like a piece of chocolate and one meal a day so it was just you know they were eating the animals in the trenches but they wouldn't eat Mrs Milligan so how do they protect Mrs Milliken well I'm sure there was someone there that was like ready to eat her yes so the Gunners who had kept her released her and were like run Mrs Milligan run

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but Ron forest run but Mrs Milligan Smith but what I love is that Mrs Milgen came back like she was like I love my boys I'm coming back and then now the Ottomans start dropping bombs so food was even more scarce people are dying left and right and still they would not eat Mrs Milligan until they were down to emergency rations and 15 to 20 men were dying daily from starvation finally and tragically the soldiers ate Mrs Milligan and found her tough trusted them you ran back to them and they ate her they ate her devastating for Mrs Milligan

Surrender and imprisonment

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finally on April 29 1916 they surrendered and raised the White Flag it was after five months and 33 000 British casualties so now they all became prisoners of War Jones and many of his military brothers were marched continuously for 62 days they marched nearly 2 000 miles on foot across present-day Iraq Syria and turkey and finally made it to Yo's God in June on June 30th Yo's God means 100 Springs and today that camp is referred to as the Alcatraz of the time I mean think about how many miles they Traverse they're basically in the middle of nowhere up on a hill it was so far from civilization there were no modes of transportation anywhere nearby and these men were watched closely by captors and before the prisoners of war came to yosgad there was a lot of tragedy and traumatic history that happened here which comes to play later in the story so at the

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very beginning of the war at the outbreak Yo's God had been home to a large Armenian population and the Ottomans had murdered almost all of them like it was a pretty brutal thing yeah there's just a lot of dark tragedy that had happened there and this is where Jones and a hundred other British officers were to be held for the rest of the war among those British officers was another man named Cedric Waters Hill or C.W Hill

Background of Cedric Hill

and now a little bit of background on him Cedric Waters Hill was born on April 3 1891 on a cattle farm in Queensland Australia he became incredibly intrigued by airplanes and in his spare time built a glider casual like making us all feel really uh I know yeah wow here I am trying to pick up crochet and I've done it twice in the past six months and he's building a freaking plane basically

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uh in his spare time meanwhile you and I are like going loony looney bin Tunes just trying to keep up our normal day lives um oh man and and some of us here are medicated too so heavily I mean my my coffee table is lined with RX pill bottles while in Australia Hill became enthralled by Magic and even studied it he was very like in he just loved the idea that it involved both mechanical and psychological engineering which are two things that he was really fascinated by I mean he built planes and then he I guess was really entranced by psychology and human mind and how you can uh how how your um surroundings very much can change or manipulate your psyche

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so Hill started studying the art of conjuring until the War Began and in 1914 when he was 23 years old he decided to join the war by enlisting in the London Air corps because Australia didn't have a Air corps he was tasked with flying b82cs if anyone knows plain stuff and he was carrying bombs so throughout the spring of 1916 Hill was assigned to drop bombs and photograph certain areas for military to basically map out for attack

Psychological warfare at Yozgat

unfortunately on one Endeavor he was met by an entire ottoman Army so for 15 minutes straight they shot at him from the ground striking his plane and the damage to his plane forced him to make an emergency landing he landed in the sand in an Arab in an Arab Village and was immediately fired upon he hid behind the plane and apparently he had like he decided to blow up the plane because he wanted to

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keep the engineering of their types of plane the secret um he dug a hole he was trying to hide I also think that that's protocol sometimes like I think oftentimes you're required to destroy yeah your situation right yes I mean he's alone in the middle of the desert basically he was surrounded there was no way out for him so he was trying to exchange fire until he ran out of ammunition and uh nothing like he did not raise the White Flag the other side did because I think they understood that they could take him in as a prisoner of war maybe get information out of him this one particular scene is reminding me so much of top gun Maverick if he watched that movie yeah but I'm sure it happens plenty in war definitely and so okay this is another interesting thing because Hill was like very fascinated with uh Conjuring and psychological warfare almost he talked his way out of being killed

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um even though he was interrogated he um he didn't give up any real information and um knew what it's interesting so Hill and Jones were both very psychologically manipulative men and knew what they were doing and enjoyed doing it despite the risks so when Hill was interrogated he just made up lies and the officers believed him I mean what what would they know they don't right right any different right yeah that's why they're asking they don't know the answer yes wow Smart Cookie and then he talked his way out of being killed and uh became a prisoner of war which is you know better than dying and he was sent to Yo's God where he found and met Elias Jones

Life in Yozgat prison

the living conditions in yosgad were pretty poor they were allotted basically each person had 42 square feet the rooms were Barren there were no sanitary

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Arrangements they were basically two long rooms with a hole in the floor that fell into a pit below the house and was never cleaned but I think that's the bathroom it wasn't a traditional prison so there are no like cells or anything it's just bedrooms with no furniture they were making mattresses out of old door hinges or out of all door frames and then putting them on uh like wood sticks basically oh for weeks they were contained to their houses not able to leave and so all they do was sit there sleep or smoke and they hardly ate because the Ottomans were also charging them for food and they would increase the prices with what money well I think they were given a they were allotted the same allowance that the ottoman soldiers were allotted but then they were charged way more for everything and when they complained they were told well maybe you should just eat less

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so life is not great here they decided to make their own fun and again not necessarily pertinent to the story but necessary to My Life um they invented a game called Posh think Riot meets a rugby scram so they were basically they would sit on their victim pinch smack or tickle them until they begged for mercy oh my God like they're prisoners of war and yet they're torturing themselves and calling it a game oh I would hate that game nope hell no I would scream for Mercy immediately yes I'm out yeah but I'm sure everyone watching enjoyed it laughing at that so there was a lot of laughter all about they even wrote and put on a holiday musical show called The Fair maiden of yosgad and it made fun of a lot of the uh

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The Men Who were guarding them so they were just they were pretty brave pretty Brazen yeah they were just kind of testing their luck a bit despite these you know creative ways to pass the time a lot of them did suffer what is called a psychological malady that is now known as barbed wire disease it's depression nightmares hopelessness crushing and we then in February a postcard arrived for

The Ouija board ruse

Jones and it opened so many doors a postcard from his aunt but suggested Jones and his comrades experiment with a Ouija board Jones had never used a Ouija board but his aunt provided him with all of the details so he made one and they used an inverted glass as the planchette and this is where the story that I shared in the very beginning comes in night after night there was no contact until finally when it was just Jones and another British military doctor O'Farrell

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finally made contact with Sally sassy Saucy Sally Who Was Not Afraid of telling the men how much she did not like them and that their dress was Unbecoming of men oh wow yes the men became enthralled and entranced and Jones was not expecting such a reaction when he himself had playfully moved the planchette to spell the name Sally that's right he had guided the glass himself and seeing the excitement he was like I can't take this away from my friends and so he continued with the charade ah it was all a ruse I would have believed it I would have believed it I know I had texted you I was like I could tell this entire story as if it was a really a full paranormal experience but it's really hard to do that because I would then have to retell the whole story with what actually happened and

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yeah I'm on page five well and also this is this is a really important part of paranormal stories right is that sometimes it's what we learn is real and sometimes it's not yes and so there's still a bit

Spiritualism in the war era

of you have to kind of balance the like belief and the investigative parts of you right which is the same reason why we always say like we're big fans of people trying to debunk things if you can't debunk it or if what you suggest is just really just as implausible as that person and like a skeptic's belief of the Paranormal then we don't accept it right like you're just forcing something into place but sometimes lore and myths and Legend develop because someone did something along the way right and a ghost story was born and this is also the time of spiritualism so like the fox sisters

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Houdini is they're all operating around this time and uh it's also very Houdini I know he's basically the reason we now do long episodes remember because yeah you said that I couldn't do like prefer and then like a month later we're like guess what we're changing our format so that we can talk forever despite not knowing how to talk at least we have the ability to write and then read what we wrote so there's yes even though half the time I don't even read what I wrote so yes this is during the time of spiritualism also it's World War one so many people are dying so many loved ones are desperately trying to find out what is happening to their family members who are in the military it was just a time of a lot of loss so there was a lot of Desire to believe in the spiritual realm I understand that and I feel like honestly where we are right now too I can I can

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see that there could be a big increase in that sort of activity again and those sort of beliefs again because we're all feeling like we need something right well we've always you and I have always been team spirits I know but now the pentacon is too yeah well they're team aliens so we're close we're close to bringing the whole world with us um so with that context in mind

Testing the medium

I'll continue the story uh each night this crowd around the Ouija board and these seances grew larger and there were some people who started to question Jones and they were like how can we be sure he's not moving the board in the planchette himself so they decided to put him to the test and this is where Jones's Ingenuity and smarts comes in because even though he was blindfolded

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he passed every single test he was blindfolded the board was moved in different directions it was even placed upside down at one point and Jones was blindfolded so he doesn't know but he had planned he basically knew that they had said like hey can we put you to through tests to make sure that this is real he had memorized where the letters were on the board just based on feeling and he had also put notches in the board in certain places in case they had moved it around that he would know where um certain letters were oh so he made his own little version of Braille exactly essentially yeah so yeah the spirit was able to communicate no matter what the tests were um and they started to call it the spook which is technically the spirit and and I think there were a lot of spirits that they

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spoke to but there's one that came through the most and it was referred to as the spook in Elias Jones's book and then also in the book The Confidence men so I'll refer to it as The Spook or the spirit and I'll clarify if it's a different type of spirit with a different name so as this was going on Jones had an incredible idea he realized that this belief in the spirit could be used to help him Escape in order to continue the ruse and enact his Grand Escape Jones had to play it smart so he started to make sure that the ghost only came when this man who was a doctor of pharaoh was present they mostly conjured the spirits of Saucy Sally and demure Dorothy who the men preferred Dorothy because she was um she didn't challenge them the way that Sally did wow she was more flat like she flattered

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them a lot more and then on one April day

The buried treasure plot

the Turkish translator of the Yo's God camp so this is someone who's a Captor uh Louise Eskenazi and his name is spelled m-o-i-s-e but it was pronounced Louise I think um based on what I heard in the book and the British nicknamed him the pimple so I will call him that moving forward and I'm just going to say horrible nickname it's most likely not an endearing name yeah so this man he approaches Jones and he's like you know very like discreet hush hush he says is it true Jones that you are a student of the spiritual and Jones is like oh my gosh this is

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exactly what I needed for my plan so he says yes he is a student of the spiritualism and the pimple revealed that he wanted to communicate with the other side apparently he had a lot of questions about a future lover and things continued when Jones decided to claim that he was receiving telepathic Communications that divulged vital War ongoings so he started posting bulletins in the camp saying that he received telepathic Communications of things that had happened in the war so it like further enforced this ability this belief that he had the ability to communicate with the other side and was very spiritually powerful oh my gosh here are all these men thinking that they're just engaging in a physical war and then this one prisoner of war is actually turning it into psychological yes Warfare with everyone that's in this

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Camp yeah he did what he needed to to survive and he truly this I mean this is the whole thing so many things had to happen in the exact correct way so many so many things depended on chance and luck and I mean it's just like I said sometimes just felt like a fictional story um he so and then again adding to the smarts these messages or these the news of what was going on in the war which is something he couldn't possibly have known because they weren't receiving any you know Communications from people in the war but they were able to communicate with family members and so he and his family developed a code a coded message so they would send letters that had news from the war but it was coded and so he had the cipher and he could decode it and then post the news of the war on bulletin oh

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I mean I have more questions which is like how how did he set that up because I'm assuming that they saw all outgoing messages well his outgoing messages had codes too so they had to crack the code there wasn't or was there a pre-existing code that his family no there was no there was not a pre-existing code I think he had sent a pretty cryptic message and so his family must would have read it and been like there's something else in this um there is man there is a larger portion I mean not that large but there is more detail about this in the book that perhaps goes into detail about it but there are specific examples about

Moon eclipse story

um what codes they used I feel like I ruined my chances now of if I were in this situation of you being able to seriously help me because I sent you that postcard where I had used

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webdings and now so I feel like if I ever really needed you to do something you would just be like oh it's just a silly little message in web things like well no I would decode it right away yeah but would you end there thinking that it's just the message wasn't anything it was just kind of like fluff the purpose was just basically for the fun of the web dings well it depends on what the web dings translates to I know I gotta work on my message I guess all right we'll come up with a code okay uncrackable on Word document it's also around this time that when they're in the Yo's guide Camp they start to hear gunshots and prolonged fire it was just one evening and they were scared that this meant like the war what the fighting was coming towards them but it wasn't it was due to an eclipse of the moon because the townspeople believed that this was a spiritual demonic event so they were

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shooting to scare away the devil who was they believed stealing their light which informed Jones that this belief in the Supernatural was widespread and then he had the idea and well curiosity if perhaps this belief in the Supernatural extended to even the highest officials at the camp perhaps the commandant who was basically in charge of everything at this time much of the camp is catching ghost fever seances and Conjuring of spirits was happening daily every night it was peop other people in in the camp were trying to hold Sciences as well it just everyone's like ghosts this ghost that paranormal this and then in September of 1917 the plan really started to form Jones teamed up with Cedric Waters Hill and the timing is a little bit unclear of how everything played out but I'll tell the story as it made sense to me as I was listening to the book and doing my

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research so

Forming the partnership

Jones constructed the most thorough and detailed plot but he needed an accomplice he chose C.W Hill because he had longed to escape just as Jones had Jones was clever where hill was a student of magic and sleight of hand together they were a formidable team Hill had knowledge of codes and strategy he possessed qualities that would make him an invaluable collaborator he was good with his hands he could conjure he could drive any form of vehicle and was incredibly patient courageous and loyal and there's a quote he was loyal like the sea that's what Jones had written about Hill they they were they had a bromance such a bromance yeah also it's an interesting way to describe that because I feel like the sea is actually pretty untrustworthy and tumultuous and scary and

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if you turn your back on it for a second it can kill you yeah I don't know necessarily what what the uh connection was but maybe it's because you uh I don't know the C can get you place to place I don't know anyway the these two men stayed friends until their death like they they truly depended on one another through this time and they both survived yes hopefully I mean it's the greatest Escape but there were a lot of times where things got really really Bleak in this escape attempt and Jones recalled that he wouldn't have made it through had Hill not be been there with him yeah and vice versa the two partnered up and they knew that every good con starts with a story and every good con man has multiple escape plans like a second backups like backups to

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their backups to their backups there was a legend going around camp at this time that an Armenian man who had been killed at the beginning of the war prior to being killed was very fearful of the Ottomans so he buried his wealth in the town of yosgad before the Turks invaded this rumor in Legend spread around the camp and perhaps maybe encouraged by Jones but it was popular enough that the pimple covertly approached Jones once more and in a hushed voice he asked can The Spook find a buried treasure

Finding the treasure clues

Jones looks at the man and says it depends Jones starts to build this narrative a bit he starts asking some questions and he's very careful about how he does this like he wants things to be other people's ideas so he asks the pimple if he was referring to the buried treasure because Jones said he had spoken to The Spook

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the spirits about it a little bit and he watched as the pimple's eyes lit up with excitement he said that he well actually he said that we which Jones made note of we the word we um had dug in the garden trying to locate it so then he realized Jones realized the pimple was not alone in his quest which meant perhaps that the commandant was involved because if the captors in the guards are openly digging for buried treasure there's probably a good chance that the leader of all of them is aware and if he could get the common dot involved that could really help with his plan so Jones tells the pimple that he will ask The Spook about the treasure and he would do so if he could get certain permissions to move around the camp at night then again this is just like so many

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things okay so previous to this there was a revolver that was found by a prisoner just on the grounds and he decided that he could use this revolver as a part of the treasure so to speak so he decided that the ghost would discover it and lead them to this revolver and um as like an inclination that The Spook could really find the real treasure oh brilliant but this is again you said like it's a series of fortunate events in an unfortunate situation yes you know like if if he hadn't found out what what other clue would he what other path would he have chosen and would that have worked I do not know well you're you're this is like only the beginning we're gonna go on a wild ride and you're I I am very much like how did they get here so I imagine you're gonna find some confusion as well okay but also Amendment and what like Wonder

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so they have a seance and on this night

Manipulating the captors

the conversation with the spirit very ominously the spirit said the treasure is guarded by arms and this is important so every time Jones and the others spoke with the spirit they were sent into this like france-like State and when they came out of the trance they would be like I what happened like not like I don't have any memory so this is a ruse that they really had to keep up every time they had to pretend that once the Spirit came through them and they came back that they had no memory what had happened so the pimple took copious notes which is why there's records of and transcripts of what happened Jones via the spirit said that the treasure Hunters were to find the arms before the spirit could give another clue the spirit insisted that the pimple must bring a companion because Jones was hoping that he would bring the commandant and then this again like I told you that Jones is was a bit of a prankster so

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he's got this great grand Escape Plan going on but he's also like you know what in case the Escape doesn't work out I'm also just gonna have a little bit of fun with this and he starts teasing the captors and he basically has the spirit give these obscure requests and makes the pimple and the companion that he brings like wear funny things and have strange um tools with them just to like kind of make fun of them oh wow so how many people are in on this thing only really two people are in on the escape and a lot of people believe that Jones is actually communicating with spirits and I mean a big part of this was Jones like Jones is like if I want this to work I can't include anyone else because yeah that risks so people talking about it and it being found out okay that makes

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sense so really they were just doing making the guards do these sort of silly acts for their own enjoyment it wasn't necessarily to entertain the entire prison there were okay so then there were certain things in this that Jones was like I'm gonna make them do this as a joke so like because someone else had found the revolver so he had asked this prisoner he's like hey can I steal that revolver it's gonna be hilarious we're gonna make these guys do XYZ thing oh okay so he was still keeping everybody's belief in spook but also sometimes being like oh we'll all just pretend spook did this yeah because it's a funny joke hahaha yeah

Staging the discovery

exactly got it on September 12th the pimple brought the cook sadly not the commandant and they came to the arranged location while there Jones fell into a dramatic trance presenting as if taken over by the spirit and started giving

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commands to the two men he yelled South and Jones in a trance ran in that direction reaching a nearby field and then he plopped on the floor sat among the cabbages as the others chased after him he was putting on the performance of a lifetime he cried out what has happened where am I and then he jumped up onto his feet and yelled West and he ran off into that direction The Men followed to the spot where the revolver was buried Jones looks wide-eyed something is here I feel it the prisoners watched as the two men The Prisoner or the the pimple and the cook dug for the revolver and as it was pulled from the earth Jones swooned and fainted and fell to the ground he was so committed to it that even he truly fell and hit his head on a rock like and he bled yeah oh my gosh I mean that convinces everyone even more right because why would you inflict pain on yourself yeah

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he was taken to his bed and then later Jones came to and saw that the men had dug a massive hole where they had found the revolver because these two men were like oh if the revolvers here maybe there's treasure buried below here um and Jones looks at them pretending again that he has no memory of what had happened when they were looking for the revolver and he goes what happened did we find anything the pimple is in awe and he tells like you know retells everything to Jones he's just so deeply believes in everything that's happening and Jones panics and he's like amping up the ruse he's he's like The Spook said to do nothing more what if you have angered the spirit

Angering the spirit

and so the roots continues Jones thought that this event would lure the commandant but it did not because he truly believed that the pimple was looking for the treasure not really only for himself but for the commandant as well that like they all were in on it to split the the buried

1:00:00

treasure so for months he was trying different things to try to get the commandant to join in the seances but he wouldn't so then he decided he would make the spirit turn angry so one night at a seance when the pimple was there The Spook came through Jones so Jones via the spirit or the spirit via Jones said I am angry and it told the pimple that they that it would say nothing about the treasure no matter how many times he apologized he had angered him and then The Spook said tonight you will die the pimple was horrified begging begging the spirit no please no that night Jones slipped a large amount of I think it was chamomile but basically it was a very strong laxative in the pimples tea so that evening when the pimple awoke to

1:01:00

horrific diarrhea he believed that he was close to death and he believed that it was the spirit and one question I have because there's a lot of different parts of the story that involve Jones and Hill having access to certain drugs and medicine and I don't necessarily know how they got that I don't know I don't have the answer um but he did and so this only furthers the pimples belief that the treasure existed which is exactly what Jones and Hill wanted so as they continue these Antics Jones

Mind reading act

and Hill start start establishing a mind reading and telepathic act by developing a very intricate code that only they could decipher and it was a verbal code so basically Hill could blindfold Jones and just based on the way that he speaks Jones would know what was happening

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beyond the blindfold or like they did the the trick that was you know someone would hold an object and while Jones was blindfolded he had to guess what the object was and so Hill would guide him through a conversation that seemed so benign and not not related to that at all in order to give him the answer um Jones continued to manipulate the pimple and there is a lot of references in the book about cult leaders and how these two men were just so convincing and had taken the current situation and used it to their benefit and just made everyone pretty much bow down at their feet like it was very smart it was very calculated it was very manipulative and it worked they had everyone wrapped around their fingers and they could see that this desire for the treasure and

1:03:00

the belief in spirit was so real for all of these men that they could use them for their benefit again the commandant still has not come and joined this treasure hunt so Jones is like I'm just gonna I just I'm gonna try one more thing he told the pimple a story he said that he has only ever seen the spirit act violently once and he tells him this story of how the spook was really good in helping people find lost items until there was one man who asked the spirit to locate a lost diamond necklace for a friend but the spirit became very violent because he was upset that the man would not disclose the name of this woman friend that he was trying to locate the necklace for and it was because this lady wanted to she was in a very high social position and she did not want to be made fun of for communicating with the spirit so he's basically telling and formulating

1:04:00

this story to imply that the commandant needs to reveal that he is involved in order for the treasure to be discovered it's I mean it's like wow and this is all based on conjecture he truly doesn't know for certain that the commandant is behind this but he is assuming that is such a risky move but holy crap what a mastermind yeah and he so he tells the pimple he was like the spirit was you know their their feelings was hurt but once the lady allowed her name to be mentioned they found the necklace at once

Engaging the commandant

so it worked what a brilliant man Jones's Jones was because just a few days later Jones was called the commandant's office this was after a year and a half in of being in Yo's God prison and trying to formulate and enact this Escape Plan oh I mean that's even more I would suspect things even less right because

1:05:00

the stamina like just the amount of time dedicated to this you wouldn't think like oh it's in this he's calculating or he's fooling us because you would think that after a couple months this guy would probably show his hand or whatever right or give up and be like you know what it's not worth it it's not working yeah or find you know a different option or try something else but no he just committed to this and was I'm gonna see it through through to the end and it's starting to work the commandant did indeed want the treasure and drums is like this first and most important and crucial part of the plan finally has been achieved so together Hill and Jones concocted the rest of the plan with multiple fail safes just in case the Escape required deception they needed props costumes a well-rehearsed script and Keen psychological awareness so step one was to get Hill approved as his partner because they had been doing a lot of the scheming behind the scenes but right now Jones was kind of

1:06:00

primarily the one involved and the commandant had not approved anyone else to be involved but the whole plan is crucial and dependent on the two of them in this together step two was to secure time alone so that they could plot and plan without anyone else finding out step three was to reinforce the Turks commitment to the treasure hunt so all of these problems were addressed when Hill convinced the camp that he was an expert mind reader and was seeking one pupil to teach these abilities to he chose Jones because Jones was already connected to the spiritual realm and this is again all part of the ruse Jones was too fast for three days which he did publicly like he didn't eat any of the Russian food but then he would go to Hill's room late at night and just Gorge um by the end of this fast Jones suddenly and miraculously had the ability to read minds and so this is the the whole code that Jones and Hill had

1:07:00

been spending months preparing even before the comment not was in on this so like they are just doing so many different things all at once and planning ahead and I mean it's it's very very the commitment level is uh very

The treasure story

respect I respect it so the Two Men start holding seances together and the commandant is just like yep Hills in wait I got it you two are you need it so then they start to tell the story of the hidden treasure and this is the story as told by the spirit as in Jones and Hill constructed at the start of the war a certain Rich Armenian who lived in yosgad was fearful of the Turks he converted his wealth into gold and buried it in an undisclosed location he told no one of its location not even his family should they be tortured for information

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instead he wrote down three clues that would reveal the treasure the first clue had the compass Direction the second clue had the distance to measure and the third clue had the spot from which to measure the man sealed each clue in a metal container added one gold coin and separated added one gold coin in each metal container and buried these three clues in three separate places he then chose three friends that he believed would survive the war and gave each of them one clue no one had all three he basically said this the story is that the man told these friends each one clue and that they were to after the war come together dig up their individual Clues and find the treasure to then provide for his family unfortunately according to the spirit not only had the Armenian died but two of the three friends had died as

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well the third friend had Unearthed his clue but without the others there was no purpose it was hopeless except here comes in except here's where Jones and Hill comes in Jones can communicate with the other side they could conjure the two dead friends learn of their Clues dig them up with their captors as chaperones of course Traverse the country find the third friend and together find the treasure for the Turks to share and Jones and Hill they're like you know what we're doing this just for you we are going to use our powers our ability to help you we don't want any cut we we have no Financial uh interest in this endeavor we just want to help you so they tell this story everyone believes that the commandant is like these men are the real deal they're gonna help us find this treasure that is so the spirit told them I think the treasure was 25

1:10:00

000 at the time which I think equals almost 2 million dollars in today's money so it was a big prize or potential very enticing yes yeah and now to move their

Sealing the deal

plot further Hill and Jones used the spirit to their advantage so basically that you know they're pretending they're in this trance that they don't have any memory of what the spirit is saying when they're in these seances and trances so they're using these opportunities to have the spirit make requests for Jones and for Hill basically saying like they need to be confined alone and they need XYZ tools to help communicate with the spirits and in Jones also what I really appreciate about this is I mean throughout this whole story Joan and his whole time in the military Jones really really cares about the well-being of his fellow prisoners and fellow British Military Officers so he even uses the spirit to ask for

1:11:00

more resources and um privileges for the prisoners that's so nice I'm glad that it wasn't just tunnel vision of using this only for his own Escape no this is another thing that I found interesting because um while this was known as the Alcatraz of World War One the the prisoners also um went skiing like they they pulled up like what yeah they pulled up and this is important because there's the the thing that will come out but they would pull up planks of wood from the houses and make skis out of them and occasionally the uh the captors would allow them to like ski up and down the hill that that is I mean I'm glad they got to do that but it just

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it just like doesn't really the way I'm picturing it it just like doesn't really match with what I thought right they would be doing I mean this whole story what they would have to do it's just wild that that was that was accessible to them yeah and all these other things were accessible to them too like at the point that you brought up already is like they just had all of these materials they had access to all of these things because of this thing unless they had everybody in their pocket with the spirit which yes I guess they they did yeah because I guess like if you think about the chamomile maybe they had and in with the person who worked in the kitchen you know like how we're gonna pull a prank and say it was the spirit or the spirit says it needs this you have to give it an offering so

Simulating insanity

despite having the um Spirit ask for certain things they Hill and Jones weren't able to fully be alone and they really needed to be alone by themselves in order to plan

1:13:00

all of these things like there were certain times that they were like oh like we'll put you in this room but it was near near others and it just wasn't enough so together they decided to have themselves arrested for espionage they confessed to using telepathy to communicate messages for and of War efforts I I don't fully understand this but somehow they were convicted and through manipulation and spiritual intervention convinced their guards to put them in solitary confinement um and they would come out of these trances and they would be horrified they'd be like no we don't want to go in solitary confinement this is not what we want um which is funny because they did want to do it yeah they're just amazing actors as well incredible and apparently in general because Jones wrote A Memoir about all this he said that he and Hill when they have they needed the solitary

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confinement also because they would just in practicing this there were so many times where they would just laugh and laugh and laugh and laugh so they had to like continuously practice it so that they wouldn't laugh when they were doing it in front of everyone yeah oh how scary because oh I mean I wonder what they would have I think they could have knowing that they had everyone believing in the spirit if one of them did laugh I bet they could just blame some sort of possession right you know even if they broke character like they still had so many options to fall back they can do a lot of things yeah so Hill and Jones become probably the only people ever to be convicted of using telepathy for espionage and they were prepped they basically

Planting the clues

were like this is gonna work everything else has been working we're going to be put into solitary confinement so with that belief they set up the treasure hunt before going into solitary confinement

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Hill prepared the grounds for the treasure hunt weeks before this arrest he constructed two small tin cans with papers that contain the clues along with one piece of gold and a little bit of Ash like that and this is based on the story that they had told all the spirits and of course there was no third can because as the story went it had already been dug up so during their first winter when the skis the skiing had happened Hill would go on these trips and he used them to bury the tin cans they then go into solitary confinement and Hill and Jones start to speak in sync so the people believe that their minds had become one through this like work together with the spirit and the spirit comes through and tells the the Turks that the spirit would only divulge the treasure hunt piece by piece so one clue at a time then a new spirit came through a man

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called oo this man was apparently the spirit of the Armenian man who buried the treasure in my brain when you said oh oh I was like ooh this is the name like the way you pronounce it yeah I don't know how they came up with that name but maybe perhaps because I didn't know his name they were like let's just come up with like I don't know code names yeah whatever it was they worked so in March 19 in March 1918 for four hours the spirit starts to unfold the story tells where you know how he hit everything um that the value was it was actually 28 000 pounds and they introduced trance talk so basically they convinced the captors that they didn't need the Ouija board to communicate with the spirits the spirits could come through them and put them in a trance and basically possess their bodies um there was the first time they did that they did this they had established

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like this whole routine so basically as it happened Hill and Jones like eyes rolled back to their heads they began to Grunt and the grunt slowly turned into groans and then groan slowly turned into letters and words and then they told this story of the future and they can talk to concocted in a whole new story that basically narrated a man that looks like the pimple finding with along with other people like going through this house and reading a clue and finding and digging and pulling boxes out of a hole and finding all the

The final seance

gold so you know the pimples like in awe and they slip out of the trance and as they slip out they kind of do the reverse of what they started with so they slip from words to grounds to Grunts and then they play along with the ruse because remember that they don't remember anything when the chances happen so Hill like looks around disappointed when he comes out he's like I guess nothing's gonna happen and the pimple's like no so much has happened it did work brilliant everything they do I'm just

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blown away by this this is so much planning it's so much it's so much and I'm like like couldn't they have skipped a bunch of these steps and gone further like gone to the the end but I guess we weren't there so what do I know basically the spirit makes many requests including allowing Hill and Jones to access to certain tools and weapons and on March 31st 1918 the spirit guided the men to a local graveyard and followed the spirit to find the first clue they Hill and Jones basically threw the trance took them to a spot the spot where Hill had buried the first clue and they built a fire around this spot where Jones in his trans performed a ritual chanting loudly dancing around the fire and then pointing to a stone and yelling the stone and the men dug up by the

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stone and found the first clue days later they did the same thing with the second clue and all that was left was the third clue which was out in the world and the key to escaping this whole time that you were talking about him doing this whole like ritual and this the stone I picture Betty White in The Proposal to the window not funny it's yeah basically um yeah but it I mean it's it's hypnotizing right can't look away you can't it is the the performance of a lifetime so then okay this is where things get really confusing to me and I don't really understand what like what the reasoning or how it got to this point so basically they tried to make up this whole thing of like the third clue was out in the world somewhere they tried to get the commandant to allow them to go off outside of yosgad with with them as

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chaperones um but apparently there was resistance I'm not really sure so Jones and Hill had to revert to a Fail-Safe in which they were like if we simulate Insanity perhaps we can be brought to there was a psychiatric facility in Constantinople and I think they had heard that those had who had become mentally insane were then sent back to their home country so

Plotting a psychiatric escape

again Logistics here get a little bit confusing because they were leading the men on the treasure hunt but also trying to be admitted to a psychiatric ward so I'm not I again it's a little bit confusing I'm assuming plan a was to lead them to the treasure and then something happened and so they had to go to plan B but disaster struck because and maybe this is why plan a didn't work but like I said no one else in the camp knows of their plan to escape so a friend of

1:21:00

Jones gets really concerned and he hears that Jones and Hill are gonna go out of Camp to find the third clue and he gets so concerned that he goes to the commandant and says no no like the man are too weak he so he basically is concerned that Jones and Hill are gonna get executed once they find the treasure oh so he didn't he didn't know what was going on no he had no idea and he was concerned for his friends oh that's I know and so he was like they're too weak because I mean they were basically starving themselves as a part of the ruse to be like oh the spirit doesn't allow us to eat and it's taking over us so drones and he'll turn to plan B which was to be taken to the psychiatric facility their plan was to go insane and the doctor O'Farrell who was a British uh doctor in the war shared different psychiatric illnesses for them to take on Jones was to develop partial paralysis with dementia and delusions

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and Hill was to come down with acute religious Melancholia they started writing wild paranoid letters to Turkish rulers to steal their Insanity diagnosis they claimed that they were being poisoned and the food was being poisoned and someone was trying to kill them um they tried to convince the commandant to certify them crazy and send them to Constantinople um and then once that happened all I needed to do was convince the doctors in the ward in Constantinople that they were that they were mentally insane and then send them back to Britain

The journey and the butter

so on April 24th of 1918 they held their very last Seance and Yo's God and the spirit demanded that the commandant give the British prisoners of War give give the British pows prisoners of War more freedoms so this was like the last thing before Hill and Jones left they were like before we leave let's make sure we give all of our our brothers some

1:23:00

some better life access or better freedoms things what um the spirit also told the pimple I mean the poor pimple like truly won his nickname poor pimple the poor pimple truly the nickname and he believed in this so deeply and Hill and Jones are truly just basically making a fool out of the man because at the at the last Seance the spirit comes through and tells it tells the pimple that his skills were being wasted at Yo's God that he had the potential to rule the entire world and he should he has so much more to give than just being the translator at Yo's God and he believes it like you know like this man is like you're right I I do believe I do deserve better I can help and so he yeah so then um that's so sweet they're all getting a

1:24:00

little pep talk from the spirit yes you can do anything you can be anything you can be anything um Helen Jones act insane and had to keep this up day and night in order to appear actually mad like they are so invested they're method actors at this point they're fully embracing this ruse and again it's hard I'm like I don't really know who is in on what and how the how this relates to the treasure because the commandant and the pimple and these people are still very much believing in the Treasure Hunt but I think there was an element of like oh these two men are going crazy maybe we send them to a psychiatric ward to get help so that they are better and then can help us find a treasure I believe that that's what it was um so they take off to Constantinople and had requested very strange supplies

1:25:00

um one of the strange supplies being 500 pounds of butter um again I do not know why I think I don't know maybe it was like to sell along the way and make money um this is reminding me of grocery State Penitentiary when the that one criminal that escaped folded himself into a box and wrote what was it it was like 96 pounds of beef yeah that's how much you weighed that's kind of what I thought this was going to be when you first were talking about it I was like oh butter like they're just gonna pretend to they're I thought they were gonna squish themselves into like a 400 pound vat of butter I just like slip themselves out once they're all buttered up yeah I really I I think it was just kind of a buzzword and I still don't understand the place it has in the story but it's here they

Faking a hanging

that they are they're heading to

1:26:00

Constantinople with 500 pounds of butter um and this is a long journey so during the the journey Jones and Hill continue to be taken over by the spirit and then when they're not taken over by the spirit they are acting you know crazed and and Manic and like they've lost their minds and apparently it was really really hard to be diagnosed mentally insane so they were like we have to do something we have to do something that's even more extreme we have to make it look like the spirit is trying to kill us so they stop at a hotel um along the journey apparently they stopped at one hotel that didn't have what they needed so they became possessed by the spirit and the spirit was like I am unhappy with these accommodations and they moved to a different Hotel

1:27:00

yeah this is how much power the spirit has yeah and so during the Seance the spirit tells the men the the captors the Turks to leave the room and when they but to return within a certain amount of time or when they hear a queue and so while the men leave the room Jones and Hill grab rope that they had had the spirit ask for before they left Yo's God and they trigger warning they truly go through the action of hanging themselves they tie the ropes they put them around their necks they step off the table in which they had practiced this many times in their solitary confinement just to understand the pain and they were like holding on to the Rope to to have less pressure but they experienced all this had the captors not come back in on time on in

1:28:00

the queue like they 100 would have died so they step off the table luckily the captors come running in On Cue and take the men down the men come to and and are horrified and the captors realize the spirit is trying to take over and kill these men so again giving some validity to this Insanity plea wow I'm just I'm just blown away I look I have no what do I even say right this whole thing I'm just blown away I it's almost it almost is unbelievable yeah as I was researching I was like how it's one of those things where like if you watched it in the movie you'd be like wow they really tried to add way too many teachers yeah like they didn't need all of this but I guess yeah May 1st they arrived in

Hospital surveillance

Angora and got on a train to Constantinople they loaded their tiny third class compartment with all the

1:29:00

luggage and immense bag of flour and what the two men Jones and Hill called the BBB the bloody box of butter they arrived at the psychiatric ward in Constantinople and they expected to be there like you know feigning Madness for maybe six weeks because they had to be under constant surveillance so they were like okay we can convince them in a matter of six weeks but they ended up being there for six months and it very nearly killed them and very nearly actually drove them mad they the doctors there basically I think they were used to people trying to con their way into these Insanity pleas and and diagnoses so they would try to trick them they would watch them like Hawks and see if they broke and so for six months Jones and Hill truly had to be on

1:30:00

consistently they were tested I mean keep in mind this is a time where like psychological care was very very on the border of torture if not torture they were injected with shots they were interrogated they were you know abused physically and mentally they were interrogated together they were integrated separately and I mean another thing the the brain is so incredibly powerful that for that amount of time to convince themselves that they were experiencing something I'm surprised that they would be able to come out of that because who's to say their brain wouldn't just fully take over and be like this is my reality now and all of the things that they were once faking is now real I mean they nearly did six months of that plus all the time that they had been doing this ruse before that it's almost two and a half

1:31:00

years but after six months after Jones was on the verge of confessing and if it weren't for Hill he says that he would have confessed but because they had gone through this together and they had each other he stuck with it they finally convinced the doctors that

Escape and aftermath

they were truly insane and finally fooled the doctors to send them home um apparently Hill went home first and then Jones followed shortly thereafter and they reconnected when they both were in Britain and this the wild part is this whole concoction this whole plan this whole Escape took two and a half years and they were finally released and sent back just a few months before all of their brother officers were released from yosgot because oh my God but apparently but you don't know that

1:32:00

going in like you don't know if you're going to be killed if you're going to be kept forever yeah you have to do something and there were sadly some men at the yoast God camp who did die and I'm not necessarily sure of what causes but so had they stayed there would have there could have been a chance that they died as well Jones and Hill remained friends Jones wrote A Memoir called The Road to Endor which was made into a film by Neil Neil Gaiman in 2008. Jones um sadly did start to develop dementia and Hill went to visit him and basically it was like really they spent like four hours together and Hill decided he was not they were they both decided that they would never see each other again because they wanted to remember one another as they were in this like great plan of escaping um Jones died I know Jones passed away in

1:33:00

1942 I think he was like 57 years old and uh Hill lived until 1975 the best part of the story well there's so much there's so many good parts and this is also kind of kind of sad is that the pimple and all of the captors all the Turks that were at the camp still believed in the Treasure they would the pimple specifically would

The truth about the treasure

write letters to Jones after the war and say like oh my God we're ready to look for it like can you communicate with the spirit again can you help us find it we've all gone to Constantinople to try to find it and Jones was like did he ever tell them or did he just let it become their own lore I think he let it I mean why would why would he have any desire to continue like he didn't continue to communicate with the pimple um and and I do feel like it's important

1:34:00

to note that there Jones was a bit anti-semitic and in his Memoir does like talk poorly on the pimple because he was Jewish like he's not very nice to him so there's just a lot of negative energy between the two men but I have no idea what happened to the pimple I think he still also believed that he had this higher ability and could rule the world and he had the potential and he wanted the spirit to help guide him to it so there was no treasure but these two men Jones and Hill escaped with the use of a Ouija board with the spiritual Realms assistance whether or not well despite the fact that they were putting on what might be the greatest con I've ever heard of this I mean again I have no word because this is just so wild I know and it's just like I'm thinking of so many different movies

1:35:00

and if you combined like 10 movies into one it would be this story but this needs to be I want this to be a movie it should be like a well well I don't know if it could be a movie it should be like a five season television show I agree well I I haven't seen The Road to Endor

Reflecting on the con

movie by Neil game guyman why do I say like that Neil Diamond I don't know oh it's a movie so we can watch it oh it is yeah maybe I'll download it for my flight because I'm very curious now yeah this is just so interesting I want to see a picture of these guys um there are I have to find one there yeah there aren't in the well we should put one in the YouTube video yeah I mean I don't know I don't know what to say the whole thing is I'm just lost for words I know and I think if I were

1:36:00

in their same position I don't know that I would be as smart and conniving as they were I mean even too like you talked about luck but at the same time there were things that didn't go to plan and they were just so quick thinking and knew the people that they were manipulating so well at that point that they could pivot to entirely different plans and all why while not telling any of their their other friends like that would be the hardest part I think is only having each other to confide in and not telling all of your other friends especially when some of them are concerned for you right concern for your safety and you just want to reassure them but that is a huge risk to your own safety and your whole future risk could kill you yeah yeah but they made it out

1:37:00

kind of agreeing with you we're definitely agreeing with you where it's just there's so many wild turns in this story that don't make sense to me but clearly

Marshall's story introduction

these men are incredibly smart to convince an entire camp that they were communicating with the spirit world to convince their captors that there was a treasure and and they used they used what was already given to them like this rumor of the legend already existed and so they built off of that they the idea of spiritualism existed so they used that to their advantage and it's just man I don't have that ability raised about well maybe you do no I'm just curious about these two men and how their relationship developed too because you have to have so much trust in someone

1:38:00

to do this for as long as you do I think there was a bit they both had to have the same amount of like stamina and creativity and trustworthiness and bravery and just they had to really just always be on the same level so apparently when Hill got to the camp and again there's so much more information in the book that I didn't include here apparently when Hill first got to yosgad he like had already tried and failed to escape and so he had a desire to escape when he got there like he realized that none of the people there were they were all non-escape like they were not pro Escape they were like we're just gonna wait it out we're gonna live here and just keep our heads down and do what we're told and he was like what I I want to escape and so then I think Jones separately had the same want desire to escape and he saw

1:39:00

um how Hill was prac like well practiced in Conjuring so I think it was just seeing qualities in one another I don't know who approached you first but anyway I think they just saw these uh good traits and used that to their advantage and look it all worked out for them now we get to talk about them and they're miraculous yeah ruse I hope people enjoyed this story as much as I did because I just thought it was so I was reading there were moments where I was having to remind myself to Blink and breathe because I was like well and then I was like should I be saying something should I react but I was just so stunned yeah all of the details and it's like what do I even say because the next thing you're going to say is going to be just as shocking if not more like how didn't they layer this plan together I know I know okay

1:40:00

I knew because you had told me that this was this wasn't an authentic use of a Ouija board for this story it was it was a forgery yeah Ouija board ghost so I went looking in our inbox for some real Ouija board experiences and I have one called summoning a demon with a homemade Ouija board and my first sleep paralysis experience that sounds scary

A demonic Ouija encounter

yeah right it is so let me do it right hello Corrine and Sabrina my name is Marshall from the mysterious Wasteland of Ohio I wanted to wait until I was caught up completely descended my story currently on episode 128 but if I wait any longer I will forget so here it is thank you when I was 15 myself and a couple other friends were obsessed with all things paranormal we wanted to be paranormal investigators so bad one day we were

1:41:00

walking around after school when we walked past an abandoned house we decided to go in and check it out just like stupid teenagers and we were hanging out there for a while mainly mainly lingering around the first and second floors eventually we made our way to the basement there wasn't much to see down there well except for the enormous pentagram crudely painted on the floor not much to see there it's a giant Altar for worshiping demons yeah what that's when my friend Juan decided hey let's summon a demon he pulled out his knife and found a plank of wood in the pile of junk in the corner of the basement he started carving out a Ouija board while me and friend too were beginning to rethink our friendship with friends it's a good time to do that once it was done I went to the kitchen and I found a glass cup that we could use as a planchette Okay Marshall you're

1:42:00

immediately saying that you're questioning your friendship and then you actively participate by finding other pieces to you sometimes you get carried away you do you get you just along for the ride yeah we sit around the board placing our fingers on the glass we started asking the usual questions is anyone there can you talk to us yada yada keep in mind the wood board is carved on and it's not all that smooth we asked if someone was watching us and the glass shot over to yes like it moved so violently that my fingers almost fell off then without us asking another question it started to spell out our friend one's name after that we quickly said goodbye and got the hell out of that house three days later the fire department was at that house for an unexplainable fire that started in the basement the fire was contained the house was

1:43:00

repaired and sold like six months later but after the experience we all started to have stuff happen to us separately I started having nightmares and Trigger warning for suicide where I would see different versions of myself die by Suicide oh no no friend two started having violent mood swings going from quiet and calm to absolutely enraged in a matter of seconds and seemingly no trigger friend one whose name was spelled out on the board started going through a terrible bout of depression and began to self-harm after a few months of being affected by whatever was there it all stopped I don't know if it got bored of us or if it's just watching and waiting I'm 25 now I still occasionally feel like I'm being watched now for my sleep paralysis experience oh God yay in 2020 I had to quarantine two weeks before I

1:44:00

went back to work week one was nice I was able to catch up on some reading in video games and I watched the entirety of Steven Universe and Steven Universe future and I cried so hard during the finale wait I keep seeing clips of that show and I really want to watch it I don't know it okay let's watch it sounds like we're gonna cry at the end so there's a little spoiler for us week two was when the boredom set in I'm not the biggest fan of taking naps because I always wake up cranky but I decided to sleep some of the day away I fell asleep pretty quick and I had the dream where I was being chased by Shadow creatures it was pretty terrifying yeah right when I closed myself into a house in the dream I woke up my eyes were looking around but I quickly realized I couldn't move my body I started to panic I heard stories of sleep paralysis and was so scared that I might see something but what made this horrifying wasn't what I saw but what I

1:45:00

heard oh no as I tried to get my body to move I began to hear voices screaming my name and banging and clawing at my door this went on for what felt like an eternity until I finally was able to wiggle my toes and slowly get control back of my body I didn't know auditory hallucinations

Sleep paralysis hallucinations

were a thing and holy what a horrible way to find out yeah anyway thank you for keeping me entertained throughout my shift listening to YouTube tell stories helps the time go by so much faster and I'm so grateful to you both and this amazing podcast after I was completely caught up with another spooky podcast and that's why we drank I began looking for a new podcast to binge and I came across this podcast and was immediately hooked yay keep up the great work stay spooky see you on the other side thanks Marshall um Marshall what the heck I wonder if that sleep paralysis experience and the voices calling Marshall's name that is I think a dumpster truck

1:46:00

happening so did you hear that um not the demon coming from us because it was I like vibrated this whole building um but I wonder if that's connected to the spirit or the dark energy that has been following perhaps watching since that day in the basement yeah oh I know because the fact is that they said that they still feel like they're being watched right and this is years later the experience in the basement happened as a teen Marshall is now 25 and if this feeling is consistent then it doesn't feel like that that thing really went anywhere Perhaps it is just dormant I don't wish it to be I hope it's not I hope Marshall can be safe from this entity and that maybe it's just like a freak nap sort of situation and that yeah future

1:47:00

naps won't be won't it's like terrifies on them yeah um I don't know that Ouija board experience I mean if anyone needed a reason to not use a Ouija board this story once again gives you a good reason not to and uh especially not if the

Final thoughts on Ouija boards

basement you're doing it in has a pentagram no yeah and it's like this is a great example of sometimes it can feel like it will be fun and it can quickly turn not fun right like you don't think it's a big deal but Marshall said that they weren't really using the Ouija board that long right like they were just asking a few basic questions and it very quickly started moving on its own spelling out its friends spelling out their friend's name yeah and then affected each of them individually in a horrific way so don't do it

1:48:00

just say no just say no to Ouija board unless it's going to get you out of uh prison yeah unless you're truly Faking It for your own well-being and safety but then at the same time here's another thing okay what if that Ouija board situation in your story in the jail still opened up some sort of portal because they never said goodbye it's very powerful even if you're faking it even if you're with your friends and you're like pushing it around and you're like my name is Diane and I yeah died because I farting too much you know and all the like 12 year olds are like hey hey whatever yeah you're still opening the board you are I yes I I do Wonder because there were so many people using Ouija boards and doing these seances at Yo's God I wonder if some of them were real and just because whether they were just you know so

1:49:00

invested in it they I mean they believed all of it right so maybe some of them were real because Jones was not the only one holding these seances I don't know um but Jones and Hills at least were not real but poor martial there's was well that was a long episode thank you for joining us and bearing with us no that was so good that was so good this is one of my favorites really I loved it yeah it was so interesting it's just so fascinating I had never ever heard of it before and it combined like some of my favorite things history and I don't know cons I guess I like cons them all criminal activity yes jailbreak really jailbreaks maybe I escaped from a prison one day or one life one day one day maybe you're manifesting it maybe

1:50:00

gosh it's time to say goodbye on YouTube comment below what you think Sabrina will go to jail for you can find us on all social media channels and if you're enjoying our show and if you enjoy any other podcasts out there please read and review on iTunes on Spotify wherever you listen it really does help so does Word of Mouth yes that helps a ton and we do hope to see you at our live shows yes bring your friends that's part of the pyramid scheme you gotta bring people in uh and then we'll also see you on campfire stories on patreon and then we'll see you twice next week with uh more episodes and we will see you oh wait oh oh we are so excited we have a new editor Christina who is absolutely incredible and we're so

1:51:00

excited crushing it next episode beginning shout out to Christina because everyone deserves to know how badass Christina is in the amount of work that Christina is putting in to our podcast and also we need to hit up Christina to see if she has some ghost stories which she definitely does because she has a few podcasts of her own yeah so maybe maybe we'll maybe we'll get to hear from her soon yes okay now we will see you on the others side