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Between the 15th and 18th centuries, Europe was a frightening place, especially for elderly women. The conflict between the Catholic Church and the Protestant Church fueled an atmosphere of religious paranoia, with misfortune often being attributed to witchcraft. The infamous European witch trials led to the deaths of approximately 200,000 individuals across Germany, Sweden, France, and Britain.
Witch finders employed a variety of bizarre and sometimes torturous methods to extract confessions or ‘prove’ guilt. Could you have been falsely accused and subjected to any of these outrageous tests?
10. Awakening the Witch
The Italians pioneered an especially uncomfortable method of testing witches that later became widespread in Scotland. Known today as sleep deprivation, it may sound familiar to anyone who has experienced the effects of stress or caring for young children. For accused witches, however, it was both an excruciating form of trial and punishment.
The accused had an iron hoop with four sharp prongs forced into her mouth. It was then fastened to the wall behind her, causing her great pain and preventing her from lying down.
The guards assigned to the accused were instructed to keep her awake by any means necessary. After roughly three days, the victim would begin to experience intense hallucinations. In this altered state, she would recount bizarre stories of flying, shapeshifting into animals, and participating in satanic rites.
The witch hunters claimed that this was the ‘awakening’ of the witch inside her, and it was seen as irrefutable proof of her guilt. Those found guilty of witchcraft in Scotland were often strangled at the stake before being burned.
9. The Touch Test
In 1662, two elderly women in England, Rose Cullender and Amy Denny, underwent the notorious ‘touch test.’ They were accused of casting spells on two young girls who had been suffering from fits.
Witch hunters believed that someone under the influence of sorcery would react unusually when touched by the spellcaster. The suspect was brought into the room and made to place her hands on the person experiencing fits. If the fit stopped, it was taken as undeniable proof of the accused's guilt.
In the case of Cullender and Denny, it was claimed that the afflicted girls had their fists so tightly clenched that even the strongest man in the village could not open their hands. However, once touched by the accused women, the girls stopped their fits and opened their hands with ease.
To determine whether the girls were lying, the judge had them blindfolded and touched by other members of the court. It was revealed that they had the same reaction every time someone made contact with them, proving they were faking. Nevertheless, Cullender and Denny were still found guilty and sentenced to death by hanging.
8. The Rack
Germany is often considered the country with the highest number of witch executions. During the 1620s, the Wurzburg trials, which lasted for five years, are estimated to have claimed the lives of over 900 people. No one was safe from the wrath of Prince Bishop Philipp Adolf von Ehrenberg, not even his own nephew, 19 Catholic priests, or several boys. Seven individuals were found guilty of engaging in sexual acts with demons and were subsequently beheaded or burned at the stake.
The accused were typically convicted after confessing, and torture was not yet prohibited in Central Europe. The Germans employed various cruel methods to extract confessions, but the rack was the most infamous.
The rack usually consisted of an iron frame with one or two wooden rollers at either end. The unfortunate victims had their hands bound to one roller and their ankles secured to the other. During their interrogations, the torturers would turn the rollers, tightening the binds and stretching the accused's body.
The joints of the victim would eventually dislocate and in some cases, be completely separated, all while they were forced to hear the sickening sounds of their own bones popping and snapping. Would this be enough to make you confess to witchcraft?
7. The Pricking Test
Witch pricking was once believed to be the most reliable method for identifying witches. The accused would be completely stripped naked in front of the court and shaved from head to toe. The witch pricker, a respected profession at the time, would then search for the 'Devil’s mark' by pricking the victim with a thick needle all over their body.
It was thought that there would be a spot that neither bled nor caused pain—evidence of a pact with the Devil. This practice was essentially a form of horrific sexual abuse. In a society that valued modesty, many women would confess simply to end the humiliation.
In Scotland, a witch pricker could earn £6 for each witch they discovered. Considering the average daily wage at the time was only one shilling, this was a substantial sum.
Like most professions of the time, witch pricking was male-dominated. However, one woman defied the norm and became one of the most notorious witch prickers in history. Disguised as a man and calling herself John Dickson, Christian Caddell sentenced as many as 10 witches to death. She was eventually caught and exiled to fever-ridden Barbados, where many of those sent there perished during the voyage.
6. Spotted By Visgossar
Sweden's witch hunts were distinct in that they heavily relied on the testimony of children, often the very children of the accused, who were tortured into providing wildly imaginative stories.
The children were primarily asked about their experiences at Blakulla, not hell, but the Devil's banqueting hall, which had a small hole in the floor through which one could supposedly see Hell beneath. Some of the children would go so far as to compete to create the most elaborate tales, ultimately leading to the execution of their parents.
The visgossar were young boys believed to have the ability to detect the invisible Stigma Diaboli (mark of the Devil) on a witch’s forehead. After church services, it was common for the boys to point at certain women and declare them guilty. These unfortunate women were often executed just days later.
The boys were paid for each witch they identified, so many homeless orphans and beggars would claim to be visgossar in order to earn some easy money. However, this job came with its risks. On multiple occasions, visgossar were found beaten to death by the families of the people they had accused.
5. Ducking Stool
Commonly known as “dunking,” the ducking stool was a widely used and trusted method for testing whether someone was a witch. The accused was strapped into a chair or had her wrists bound to her ankles. She was then hoisted and lowered into freezing cold water.
The reasoning behind this method was simple. If the woman was guilty, she would float on the surface and be condemned to death as a witch. If she was innocent, she would sink to the bottom and drown.
Witch hunters believed in this test for various reasons. Some thought witches floated because they had renounced their baptism in a rejection of God. Others believed that witches could use their magical abilities to float and prevent themselves from drowning.
Regardless of the outcome, it was commonly believed that if the victim drowned, she was innocent and would be welcomed into Heaven. In the eyes of the witch hunters, this was seen as a better fate than living as a condemned witch facing execution and damnation. At times, a floating witch would be submerged repeatedly until she confessed, which served as a form of medieval water torture.
Interestingly, the ducking stool was exclusively designed for women and was also used as a punishment for women accused of being prostitutes or scolds. A scold was a woman considered troublesome who caused discord among her neighbors through constant reprimanding, arguing, or gossiping.
In such cases, the ducking stool was often mounted on wheels and paraded through the town on the way to the dunking site, ensuring maximum humiliation for the accused.
4. Weighing The Witch
Oudewater, in Holland, was home to a famous weighing house where women from places as distant as Germany and Hungary came to prove their innocence. The premise was simple: Souls were seen as heavy burdens, and since a witch was believed not to have one, she would weigh noticeably less than an innocent woman.
The weighing house was equipped with large scales. The accused would stand on one side, while cast-iron weights were placed on the other. If a woman’s weight matched the accepted standard, she was given a certificate of innocence.
The Dutch were not the only ones to believe that weighing could reveal a witch. In Aylesbury, England, it was common for women to be stripped naked and weighed against a heavy, iron-bound Bible. If the scales didn’t balance precisely, the woman was convicted as a witch.
Elsewhere in Europe, women were weighed against stacks of Bibles. If they weren’t declared guilty immediately, additional Bibles were sometimes added to the pile to ensure a conviction.
3. Be Unable To Cry
The Malleus Maleficarum ("The Hammer of Witches") was a medieval text that focused on witches, their practices, and how to conduct trials and punishments. Written in Latin by two German monks, it became one of the best-selling books in Europe for centuries, second only to the Bible.
According to the Malleus Maleficarum, witches were believed to be incapable of shedding genuine tears when before a judge or during torture. It urged witch hunters to be cautious of crafty witches who might fake tears by spitting on their own faces.
During the medieval era, poor health care and hygiene were common, leading many elderly individuals to suffer from a condition now known as lacrimal duct obstruction. This condition prevented people from producing tears, leading many elderly women to be executed as witches simply due to their inability to cry.
2. Have Your Witch’s Teat Discovered
If you owned a pet, there was a strong chance that a witch catcher would attempt to prove your guilt by looking for your witch’s teat. It was widely believed that witches kept demons as pets, disguised as dogs, cats, insects, or rodents, and these familiars were thought to suckle from a special nipple given to the witch by the Devil.
A mole, skin tag, or unusual birthmark on a person’s body was often taken as evidence that the accused was practicing witchcraft and nourishing her familiar in such a manner.
Around 80 percent of those prosecuted for witchcraft were women, and the concept of a Devil-given evil breast perfectly illustrates the misogynistic nature of the trials. Many of the accused women’s breasts were subjected to harsh and degrading treatment, often being publicly exposed or even whipped.
Anna Pappenheimer from Bavaria was tortured into confessing to having sexual relations with the Devil. As punishment, her breasts were severed, forced into her mouth, and then into the mouths of her two adult sons before all three were burned at the stake.
1. Cruentation
In many European courts, if a person was accused of committing murder through witchcraft, they could be deemed guilty by a practice known as cruentation. The belief was that the soul remained in the body for a short time after death, and the body would display strange reactions when near the murderer.
The accused would be forced to call out the name of the deceased, circle around the corpse, and touch the body's sores. If fresh blood appeared, the body moved, or foam emerged from the mouth, the suspect would be pronounced guilty.
What the court was actually witnessing was the release of purge fluid, a substance that closely resembles blood and is expelled from the body during decomposition. Dead bodies may twitch, expel waste, or even appear to groan shortly after death. These signs were misinterpreted as the soul escaping the body to flee from its murderer—though, of course, this happened far too late.
