The 18 Most Painful and Demented Types of Ancient Punishment

...That's gotta hurt.

Published 11 months ago in Ouch

Though there may be plenty of ways to skin a cat, there are even more ways to drive a human to the brink of insanity — just ask anyone who was alive in medieval times. Skinning. Quartering. Yeeting someone down a hole and throwing away the key. If it's sadistic and crazy, you can be sure our insane ancestors thought of it first.

From the rack to the heretic’s fork and even the tunes of the metal band Metallica, here are 20 terrible means of torture from throughout the annals of history.

1
Brazen Bull
“One of my favorites is the Brazen Bull. You get put in a hollow bronze bull. A fire is lit under it. The metal turns yellow hot and you roast to death.”

2
Crucifixion
“Crucifixion is one of the nastiest tortures. The worst part of it is that after you flog the back of the victim, he then has to, because of the position he's in, pull himself up periodically in order to breathe, thereby torturing himself as his back rubs against the cross - and people could live for days while doing this, alternately suffocating and then being forced to do a pullup with hands and feet nailed, with their backs being flayed against the wood of the cross. The word 'excruciating' means 'out of crucifixion'. Some say impalement was as bad, for the same reasons, but I think crucifixion is pretty much in the top five worst tortures.”

3
The Breaking Wheel
“Years ago I read a description of the device on a website that made it sound absolutely horrific. Basically, you're stretched out on a wooden wheel (think a covered wagon wheel large enough for a person to fit on) and your bones and joints are smashed by hammers until they are essentially pulp. Then your limbs are wrapped around the spokes and you're left there to until you die.”
4
Rat Torture
“Definitely putting a rat inside a device (cage, etc.) on your stomach and heating up the device so that the rat would try to escape from the other side and essentially chew a hole through the device AND your stomach. mmmm.”

5
Death By Boiling
“Death by boiling, which I've seen referenced as a method of death used by Genghis Khan, King Henry VIII, and numerous other times in that general medieval period. It's known for being one of the more brutal and painful ways to kill someone.”
6
Dismemberment
“[François Ravaillac is] mostly famous for being executed in a very gruesome way by quartering through four horses dragging themselves in different directions.”
7
The Rack
“The rack, in which a person was strapped by hand and feet with ropes that would be tightened by rolling them up, away from the torso. They would be stretched more and more during the interrogation.”

8
Impailing
“One of the worst torturous deaths were staking. Wooden stakes would be sharpened from enormous logs and then inserted up a persons anus until it came out of the their mouth.”
9
The Heretic’s Fork
“It is a small device from metal that has a fork on either side. It is placed between the chest and the chin. It is an example of a larger category of torture: keeping someone from falling asleep. If someone fell asleep on the fork, either their chest or their chin would be pierced.”
10
Thumbscrews
“Thumbscrews were torture instruments. They made prisoners reveal information or ‘confess’ to crimes. The thumb was placed between the screw and the metal plate at the bottom. The screw was then tightened. The thumb could be reduced to a bloody pulp if enough pressure was applied. Prisoners were also hoisted up by their thumbs. The prisoner was often subjected to the thumbscrews before even more painful forms of torture were used. These included the rack, where limbs were stretched and broken."

11
White Torture
“Similar to regular solitary confinement, but the entire room is coloured pure white. You wear white clothing. The food, and the plates you eat it off of are white.”
12
Strappado
“The wrists were tied together behind the back, and subsequently the victim was pulled up by the wrists. This resulted in the shoulders twisting and often dislocating.”
13
Waterboarding
“Waterboarding is different from drowning because with waterboarding you are trying to breathe but you can't get any air. With regular drowning you are just going to inhale water when you try to breathe underwater, which I'm sure is awful, but its not this prolonged thing like waterboarding. People say that waterboarding is the most terrible thing they have ever experienced, I tend to believe them. You can waterboard someone for an extended period of time without actually harming them, and so in that sense you could call it a mind trick. But the psychological damage is real, no trick.”

14
Crushing
“Pressing. You lay on the ground with a board on your chest and heavy rocks are placed on it until you talk or die.”
15
Bamboo Torture
“The Chinese would cut a tightly-packed bed of bamboo to a uniform length, bind it into a bundle, then strap the victim down tightly on top of it. Bamboo is one of the fastest-growing plants in the world, and over a few weeks will grow right through a person.”
16
Blood Eagle
“I'm kind of surprised nobody has mentioned this but definitely the Blood Eagle. ‘..performed by cutting the ribs of the victim by the spine, breaking the ribs so they resembled blood-stained wings, and pulling the lungs out through the wounds in the victim's back. Salt was sprinkled in the wounds.’”

17
Lingchi
Better known as “death by a thousand cuts” this torture method involves the person in question getting cut over and over and over again until they eventually died.
18
The Oubliette
“The oubliette. Tossed in a tiny hole with zero light to be forgotten.”
19
Skinning
“Skinning is horrible too. What most people are unaware of, is that your skin is essential in keeping your body heat up. When skinned too much, people would die from hypothermia. The line between torture and execution is often very thin.”

20
Metallica Torture
Okay, this one breaks the rule here but is too strange not to include. “The US military would play Enter Sandman for hours on end to aid in the interrogation and torture of prisoners. Asked about this, Metallica's James Hetfield responded ‘We've been punishing our parents, our wives, our loved ones with this music for ever. Why should the Iraqis be any different?’”