Literature’s Great Escapes: 6 Tales of Escape to Get Lost In

The Man in the Iron Mask print from 1789

We love a good escape film here at Krakit Vancouver Escape Game, but if you really want to get invested in whether or not the hero makes it out in one piece, a book is the way to go.

Below, we list six of the most riveting escapes found in literature.

1. The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas (1844–45)

The oldest and some would argue the best escape tale on our list. Dumas’s enduring swashbuckling adventure sees Edmond Dantès falsely imprisoned and thrown into jail to rot, only to escape and get the best revenge of all: complete and total success.

2. Papillon by Henri Charrière (1970)

It’s hard to believe Papillon is a non-fiction autobiography, but it is. Henri Charrière, another victim of false conviction, was given a life sentence of hard labour in the Devil’s Island penal colony. As nice as that sounds, Charrière plotted an unbelievable escape instead.

3. The Natural Way of Things by Charlotte Wood (2015)

This dystopic novel centres on a group of ten young women who have been kidnapped and locked up in dismal conditions in the middle of the Australian Outback. As food supplies dwindle and their captors grow ever more unpredictable, the women must find a way to escape not only their imprisonment but the harsh desert environment.

4. The Vicomte of Bragelonne: Ten Years Later by Alexandre Dumas (1847–50)

Better known as the tale of the Man in the Iron Mask, this second entry from Dumas comes from his Three Musketeers series. Though mostly about the Musketeers, the novel revolves around a real, unnamed person who spent his life as a prisoner of Louis XIV—with his face completely covered the entire time. In Dumas’s version, the man escapes (wasn’t so lucky in real life).

5. Room by Emma Donoghue (2010)

Less about the escape and more about what comes after, Donoghue’s book follows the story of a five-year-old boy named Jack, who has been held captive in a small room his entire life, alongside his mother. Until, one day, he learns the there is more to the world than the four walls he lives in.

6. Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption by Stephen King (1982)

Yet another book that’s been made into a film and yet another tale of false imprisonment and, Stephen King’s novella about a postwar banker named Andy Dufresne continues to be one of his most popular stories and film adaptations. Plus, it includes one of the most famous escape scenes of all time.

You can book your own escape adventure for you and up to seven friends in one of Krakit’s four-themed escape games here.

New Year’s Escape: Riot and Prison Break at Oakalla Prison in Burnaby

Interior view of a jail cell at Oakalla Prison (Vancouver Archives)

With snow continuing to rear its ugly head much more than we Vancouverites are used to, the only thing most of us are thinking about escaping this New Year’s Eve is subzero temperatures.

However, there was one New Year’s past when a much bigger escape happened. This escape involved 13 maximum-security prisoners—and it happened right here in Burnaby, British Columbia, just a ten-minute drive from Krakit Escape Game, in what is now Deer Lake Park.

It all began 29 years ago, on December 28, 1987, when tensions at Oakalla Prison were at an all-time high. In this atmosphere, a minor disciplinary incident acted as spark that would erupt into a full-fledged riot involving more than 100 people. It took three days for the prison guards to turn down the rioting prisoners, who smashed cells, lit fires, and made weapons out of anything they could find.

By New Year’s Eve, the rioting had spread to the east wing—where the worst offenders, including murderers, were kept. To keep on top of the escalating situation, the guards moved these max inmates to a set of underground cells that hadn’t been used since the days when Oakalla was a prison farm.

When the guards came back to serve the prisoners coffee, the inmates jumped the guards, locked them in the segregated cells, and made a break for it.

That was that, and the 13 inmates found themselves with a sudden New Year’s resolution to keep—hold onto their new ill-found freedom.

From its opening in 1912, Oakalla Prison was no stranger to escape attempts, with its inmates able to slip out from between cast iron bars, scale the razor-wire fences, and run into the surrounding forest. Some were recaptured, but some ere not. It reportedly even became a game for particularly sneaky criminals to get caught, be placed in Oakalla, and then make an escape attempt—just to see if they could. One year, there were more than 40 escapes in seven months.

Over the course of its nearly 80 years in operation, 850 inmates escaped from Oakalla Prison. Not a very good record, to say the least. The 1987 New Year’s Eve prison break was the beginning of the end for the Burnaby prison, which had been making local residents understandably nervous for quite some time. It was decommissioned and demolished just a few years later, in 1991.

You and your friends can make your own escape attempt this New Year’s Eve by booking a slot in one of our four themed escape games here: http://bookeo.com/krakit. But please, no maximum-security inmates need apply.

The Ultimate Escape Challenge: Alcatraz’s Most Infamous Prison Breaks

Alcatraz—the ultimate escape room?

The island prison in San Francisco Bay imprisoned some of America’s most notorious criminals during its 29 years of operation. A great deal of them were mobsters, many of them were murderers, and all of them were tougher and scarier than any of the spooky characters that haunt the halls of Krakit Vancouver Escape Game.

While the most famous men to ever have the misfortune to sleep within its walls are undoubtedly Al Capone, James “Whitey” Bulger, and Robert Stroud, aka the Birdman of Alcatraz, they also have something else in common—they never attempted to escape Alcatraz.

That distinction belongs to just 36 of Alcatraz’s inmates. Here are the most notorious of the bunch.

Clarence “The Choctaw Kid” Carnes

Alcatraz’s youngest ever inmate was also involved in one of its most notorious inmate-guard standoffs, known as the Battle of Alcatraz. Clarence Carnes and several other prisoners seized weapons and held guards captive in their attempt to escape. It went horribly wrong, resulting in the death of three prisoners and two guards.

Frank Morris

Immortalized in the film Escape from Alcatraz and played by Clint Eastwood, Frank Morris was the mastermind behind arguably one of the most notorious prison breaks in history. He and two other inmates literally used a spoon to help dig their way to freedom, which in itself is impressive enough. The trio was never tracked down, but it’s unclear whether they perished in the Bay or made it out alive, possibly to Brazil.

Arthur “Doc” Barker

Though held in Alcatraz’s most secure unit—D-Block—Doc Baker and four other inmates managed to escape the prison and reach the island’s shore, where they began constructing a makeshift raft. The escape was foiled when the guards spotted them and, after Barker refused to surrender, opened fire, killing him and wounding one other.

John Paul Scott

John Paul Scott has the sole distinction of being the only Alcatraz escapee to make it to the San Francisco shore by swimming. He was also one of the last prisoners to escape from the infamous jail, along with Darl Lee Parker, after cutting through bars with a makeshift saw. Both were captured and re-incarcerated shortly after escaping.

Famous Prison Escapes Part 1: Jack Sheppard

Prisons are designed to keep the unlawful detained. They are built to hold the most cunning criminals, offering them no chance of freedom. But in every cell designed to constrain, is an opportunity for escape.

This week, the Vancouver Escape Blog is travelling back to the Eighteenth Century for a look at one of England's most famous escape artists: Jack Sheppard. Shepard was a small-time criminal who hated confinement. He escaped from prison a total of four times, five if you count the time he broke into a low security facility to free his wife.

Shepard's first breakout was from a temporary holding cell at St. Gile's Roundhouse. It took the young criminal just three hours to free himself after being confined. His first escape went without a hitch and utilized two methods that would become his MO for future flights.

First, instead of looking to the heavens in defeat, Shepard gazed at the ceiling for inspiration. He realized that the timber ceiling was far weaker than the iron bars on the windows. After making a considerable amount of noise, Sheppard smashed his way skyward, finding himself on the roof of the building. He then used his bed sheets to repel down the side of the Roundhouse, a technique that he would use for a number of descents in future escapes.

Once on the ground, Sheppard joined the crowd of onlookers who had come to investigate the sounds of demolition. He pointed at the roof to distract their gaze from the obvious chains around his ankles. Once their eyes were diverted, he made his way through the gawkers and hightailed it out of there.

Freedom lasted less than a month, before authorities again captured the unlucky criminal. This time he was with his lady, who was also taken in for aiding and abetting. The couple was detained together in the same cell, a romantic gesture, but one the guards would soon regret. Within days, the couple had filed through their hand constraints. They removed a bar from a window and used their bed sheet to climb down to the ground floor. Once in the yard, they were faced with a 22 foot-tall gate. No one knows how, but Sheppard managed to get himself and his rather large wife over the wall before the authorities were alerted. And a legend was born.

With notoriety, came a few haters from the underworld. A competing crime baron sold him out and Sheppard was once again arrested and sent back to prison. He was sentenced to death, but before his hanging, his cunning wife came to visit one last time. Even before her arrival, Sheppard had loosened the bar to the visiting window. Once his lady was in the adjacent room, she distracted the guards while Sheppard squeezed himself out of the viewing window. With women's clothes, brought by his wife, Sheppard dressed in drag to escape.

Again, freedom was short-lived and within a week Sheppard was arrested and sent back to prison. After his captors twice recovered filing objects from his cell, Sheppard was transferred to the 'Castle' room, considered the most secure cell in Britain. He was strapped with leg irons and chained to metal staples in the floor. He bragged to his jailers that his locks could be easily picked and the guards doubled his constraints.

A prison riot provided a distraction for his fourth and final escape. After picking the locks on his chains, Sheppard crawled up the chimney, removing a steel bar that blocked his way. Arriving in the room above, he then broke through six steel doors, finally reaching the prison chapel. From here he climbed to the roof, but was met with a 60-foot drop. With few alternatives, Sheppard retreated back the way he came, down the chimney and back to his cell, where he retrieved his bed sheets. With his repel gear in hand, Sheppard returned to the prison roof and made his way to the roof of an adjacent house. Without waking the occupants, Sheppard broke into the building and slipped down the stairs and out into the night.

But once a criminal, always a criminal and within a week he was again back to his plundering ways. He robbed a pawnshop and made off with all the accoutrements of a man-about-town. With a wig, a black silk suit, multiple rings and a silver sword, Sheppard lived his last few days of freedom drinking and womanizing, before being captured, yet again.

Taking no chances, the courts quickly sentenced him to death. He was chained to 300 pounds of weights and left under permanent watch. Two weeks after his final capture, Sheppard was escorted to the gallows. Before leaving the cell, a prison guard discovered a pen-knife; Sheppard's final escape was thwarted. He died after a 15-minute dangle from the hangman's noose. His body was crushed by on-lookers as the mob surged forward after his limp corpse was cut free.

Sheppard became a hero to the people, inciting art, songs and dramas that recounted his daring escapes. A poor criminal, but a master of flight, Jack Sheppard is the first escape artist to be honoured in the Krakit Breakout Vault of Fame.