As Halloween nears, we turn to spirits… both in the glass and in an audacious story from the past. Join us for the true story of the most singular prison break in history—a clandestine wartime operation that involved no tunneling, no weapons, and no violence of any kind. The tools involved? A homemade Ouija board and chutzpah.
Margalit Fox, the author of The Confidence Men: How Two Prisoners of War Engineered the Most Remarkable Escape in History will take us along on this real-life high-stakes caper. As World War I raged, two British officers imprisoned in an isolated Turkish prison camp beguiled their iron-fisted captors with a tale, supposedly channeled from the Beyond, designed to make them delirious enough to conduct the prisoners along the road to freedom, with the Ottoman government paying their travel expenses. If the spirits were revealed to be a hoax, however, the officers would be shot. Fox will share the secrets of this Ouija-enabled escape, and we might just ask her a bit about her own past--she is the perfect Halloween Happy Hour guest as she is a former senior writer in the New York Times obituary department.
You’re welcome to ask questions after the talk – whether they relate to the WWI escape or what makes a great obituary!
We have asked the Ouija board for a drink recipe! We will reveal what spirits (pun intended) are included later! In the meantime, you can try out raki. This anise-scented Turkish spirit made from fermented raisins is the only alcoholic thing the prisoners had to drink, it is said to sweep “away self-control, reason and even consciousness, especially in the novice.” You’ve been warned!
Auto-generated closed captioning will be available for this program.
