POW's and a Ouija board

[Folkal Point]

Many years ago when I was at school in the 1960's I read a children's book which was about English POW's in a camp who used a home made "ouija" board to make contact with some kind of benevolent spirit who helped them plan an escape by giving them information they could never have found.

This was before the term "Ouija" was used, and certainly before most people had heard of this sort of thing. It was a kid's book and it really freaked me out, 'cos I thought it was all true.

Anyway, I always had it in my head that it was made into a film. So I just googled the info and found that someone has submitted an virtually identical story and it has been published on a BBC website.

Anyone else ever come across that story? I would estimate that the book might have been published in the 1950's.

I reckon it would have made quite a good film back then.

Cheers

[CaptainWaggett]

I can't help you with the novel but ouija boards / planchettes were hugely popular long before the 1950s, their heyday probably being WW1. One of the Mapp and Lucia novels (Lucia in London) has a huge section devoted to the planchette. I suspect it's the sort of activity POWs might well have got up in real life to though perhaps not with quite such lucky results

[Moor Larkin]

It could be an extension of this supposedly true story from WWI

http://www.lulu.com/shop/eh-jones/th...ct-174034.html
THE ROAD TO EN-DOR is the most famous of the escape books of the First World War. The author, a young Welsh officer, was one of the starving garrison of Kut-el-Amara. When the town had surrendered to the Turks, after a long siege, he was marched 500 miles to Yozgad prison camp. Here in 1917 he and his Australian companion, Lieutenant C. W. Hill, devised the extraordinary plot of deception and intrigue which brought them untold suffering but eventually gained for them their freedom. This plot centred on the use of a ‘Ouija-board’ and the fostering, among their fellow prisoners and their Turkish guards, of the belief that the two men were really in touch with a ‘spirit medium’ which spelt out messages at séances. They succeeded in completely hoodwinking the Turks allowing them to bring about their escape.