What happens
Peyton Farquhar, a Southern planter, stands on a railroad bridge over Owl Creek in northern Alabama, about to be hanged by Union soldiers for suspected espionage. The episode dramatises Ambrose Bierce's short story An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge, adapted for the Escape series and first broadcast on December 10, 1947. Farquhar's thoughts wander as the rope gives way and he falls into the stream, where he begins a desperate flight through the forest toward his home. Harry Bartell plays Farquhar, with narration by Bill Conrad and Bill Johnstone.
Northern Alabama during the American Civil War, at a railroad bridge over Owl Creek and in the surrounding forest and swamp
Characters: Peyton Farquhar, Captain (Union army, tired eyes), Lieutenant Salton Stoll, Corporal (Confederate messenger), Jethro, Farquhar's wife
Listen for: The shifting sensory detail as Farquhar sees, hears and feels everything in the moment after the rope breaks, and the encounter with Jethro in the swamp
Written from the episode itself; it never gives away the ending. Every recording is remastered for the stream: cleaned of rumble, hiss and mains hum (and the old TV whine where we found it), then levelled in two passes to steady broadcast loudness, so one show is never quieter than the next.