Magic at War

In this occult-themed blog, published on Halloween, stage magic  and ‘black magic’ overlap. In this remarkable story, a magician and his  confederate use a Ouija board, conjuring techniques and deceptive thinking to pull off the most celebrated prisoner-of-war escape of World War One. Picking-up on this idea, a  group of British POWs in World War Two attempted to repeat this success. Ouija - The Wonderful Talking Board A Ouija board is, typically, a flat wooden board about 2 feet by 1 foot in size. Painted or printed on one side of the board are all the letters of the alphabet, the numbers 0 to 9, ‘Yes’ and ‘No’ and the word ‘Goodbye.’ A teardrop-shaped device, known as a planchette (or an upturned small glass) manoeuvres around the board acting as a pointer. The idea of the board is that two or more people sit around the board, place their fingertips on the planchette, pose a question, and watch, dumfounded, as the planchette moves from letter to lett...

Suitcase and teddy bear in hand, wearing labels with their name and age, thousands of British children were taken from their homes and evacuated to the homes of strangers during World War Two.  Civilian  casualties are tragic, but the death of innocent children was considered unacceptable.  Away from the risks of air raids and gas attacks in the cities, millions of kids lived out the war in the relative safety of the country.  Operation Pied Piper, launched in September 1939, was the biggest and most concentrated mass movement of people in Britain’s history. After the fears of bombing weren’t realised, many of the evacuees were returned home, until France fell to Germany in 1940, and bombing campaigns started with a vengeance in Britain. The evacuation plan started again. Some children returned home in the summer of 1941, after the Battle of Britain was won. When V1 rockets began falling on London in June 1944, the evacuee programme kicked in for a third time. Evacue...