Prepare to be chilled to the bone as the noose lowers over the heads of terrified criminals pleading their innocence to the very last. Necks will snap and roll; hands will be chopped off, bodies will rot hanging on the gallows, and others will be quartered and burnt after being humiliated and tortured.

Malta Oskura's next offing 'Il-Forka' is not for the faint-hearted. Following on fast after the success of the first webinar in the series that recounted macabre tales of plagues, riots, and ghostly apparitions down Rabat and Mdina's dark lanes, this feature follows the grim and ghastly history of judicial hanging in Malta.

The extensively researched webinar will be streamed live on two different dates – Tuesday 13th and Thursday 15th April, at 8.30pm to enable more viewers to participate in a question and answer session following a virtual tour where truth is more gruesome than fiction.

A little bit about the webinar’s topic

From the earliest recorded hangings, the faces behind the executioners, the public areas where the victims of hangmen gasped their last strangulated breath, to the tools of the trade, the judicial process itself, and the very last execution in 1943, ‘Il-Forka' promises to keep you riveted to your seats. Rare footage of the old gallows still found in the purposely-built private room in Corradino prison will be featured in the tour.

A deterrent and public warning as much as a punishment, death by hanging was meted out for 'lesser' crimes – by today's standards – that included theft aggravated by violence and the breaking of quarantine rules during an epidemic. Often public executions were a day out for the family and, in the absence of horror films, a source of entertainment, picnic in tow, for those with stronger stomachs. Mothers would, however, use the occasion as an educative experience for their offspring. While the condemned were hanging from their necks, children would receive a slap on the face to forever imprint that awful moment in their minds, hopefully preventing them from following the same grisly path in their adulthood.

Learn how one criminal cheated fate only for it to catch up with him in a Hollywood twist from hell. Find out what was so disturbing about the last execution held in public and discover who was rumoured to have been buried alive in 1908. Local history has never been so appallingly fascinating!

The virtual tour, approximately 30 minutes long, will be in Maltese, with English subtitles. There is a registration fee of €5. Participants are requested to register beforehand via these links, according to their preferred date: either 13th April or 15th April.