The Road to En-Dor

The Road to En-Dor is one of the most extraordinary stories ever told. Forbidden from escaping in case of reprisals from the Turks, Jones and Hill first tried to escape by posing as "spirit mediums" and when that failed, they attempted to get repatriated by acting as madmen. The lengths they went to - even hanging themselves - is a mind-blowing tale of human resolve.;The author and a few other men began to dabble in Spiritism - using ouija boards and glasses - and their seances, originally held to kill time during the cold Turkish winter of 1917, led to the conception of a plan for their escape. Since the dawn of man the occult - or rather peoples' readiness to believe in it - has been put to many different uses, but for sheer ingenuity none of them can compare with the one which is described in this book.;Jones and Hill convinced the Turks that they had the power of a spirit medium and could communicate with the other-side at seances - to a "Spook". They stage-managed telepathy demonstrations and soon had the Turks - and most of their British colleagues - convinced that they had supernatural powers. (Modern illusionists could learn a lot from this book, but that's another story).;Jones and Hill then concocted an extraordinary plot to persuade the camp commandant that this Spook could discover buried treasure - and use this treasure-hunt to escape from the camp. When this scheme failed, they decided to pretend they were mad. As part of this deception, they actually hanged themselves - narrowly escaping death - and were eventually moved to hospital in Constantinople; to await repatriation as lunatics.;How they kept up their sham act as lunatics for months and did not go truely insane in the process is a wonder of resolve and human endurance.