From the 15th through the 18th centuries, Europe was a frightening landscape, especially for elderly women. The clash between Catholic and Protestant authorities stoked religious terror, misfortunes were blamed on devil worshipers, and the continent’s witch hunts claimed roughly 200,000 lives across Germany, Sweden, France, and Britain. In this morbid tour we examine 10 ways European witch finders tested their victims, each more bizarre than the last.
10 Ways European Witch Finders: An Overview
10 Waking The Witch
The Italians were the first to devise a particularly uncomfortable method that later spread to Scotland, and modern scholars recognise it as a form of sleep deprivation. Imagine the modern nightmare of juggling a demanding job and restless children – now picture that torment amplified for a condemned witch.
In this cruel set‑up, the accused had an iron hoop studded with four sharp prongs forced into her mouth and then fastened to the wall, ensuring she could neither lie down nor find any comfortable position.
Guardians assigned to watch the witch were ordered to keep her awake by any means they saw fit. After roughly three days of relentless vigilance, the victim would usually begin to hallucinate vividly.
When interrogated in that delirious state, she would spin fantastical tales of soaring through the night, shapeshifting into beasts, and taking part in satanic rites. The witch hunters proclaimed this “awakening” as undeniable proof of guilt, and in Scotland those found guilty were typically strangled at the stake before being burned.
9 Touch Test
In 1662, two elderly Englishwomen—Rose Cullender and Amy Denny—were subjected to the infamous “touch test.” They stood accused of bewitching two young girls who were suffering terrible fits.
The theory held that a sorceress’s mere physical contact would produce a striking reaction in the afflicted child. The suspect was forced to lay her hands on the girls; if the convulsions ceased, the accused was deemed guilty.
According to contemporary accounts, the children clutched their fists so tightly that even the strongest villager could not pry them open. Yet the moment the accused women touched the girls, the convulsions stopped and the girls opened their palms with ease.
To verify whether the children were faking, the judge blindfolded them and had other court members touch them. The same reaction occurred each time, suggesting the girls were indeed feigning. Nevertheless, Cullender and Denny were found guilty and sentenced to hang.
8 The Rack
Germany earned a grim reputation for executing the most witches, highlighted by the five‑year‑long Würzburg trials of the 1620s, which claimed over 900 lives, including a bishop’s nephew, 19 priests, and several boys.
During this era, torture was still legal, and the most popular method of extracting confessions was the rack. The device consisted of an iron frame with wooden rollers at one or both ends.
The victim’s hands were bound to one roller and the ankles to the other. As interrogators turned the rollers, the tension increased, gradually stretching the poor soul.
Eventually the joints would dislocate and even separate, accompanied by the sickening sound of bones popping and snapping. One has to wonder whether that level of agony was enough to force a confession to witchcraft.
7 Pricking
Pricking was once hailed as the most accurate witch‑detection technique. The accused was stripped naked before the court, shaved from head to toe, and then a professional “witch‑pricker” would scour the body with a thick needle, hunting for the so‑called Devil’s mark.
The belief was that the Devil left a spot that would not bleed or cause pain – a clear sign of a pact with darkness. In reality, the practice amounted to a horrific form of sexual abuse, and many women confessed simply to escape the relentless humiliation.
In Scotland, a witch‑pricker could earn £6 per witch discovered – a fortune when the average daily wage was a single shilling.
Although the trade was dominated by men, one woman, Christian Caddell, disguised herself as a man under the name John Dickson and managed to condemn up to ten witches before being exposed and banished to the disease‑ridden island of Barbados, where many did not survive the voyage.
6 Spotted By Visgossar
Sweden’s witch‑hunt machinery leaned heavily on children’s testimonies, often the offspring of the accused, who were tortured until they produced fantastical stories.
The youngsters were interrogated about visits to Blakulla – a devil’s banquet hall with a peephole into Hell itself. Many competed to invent the most imaginative tales, which frequently ended with the execution of their parents.
The visgossar, a group of young boys, claimed the ability to spot the invisible Stigma Diaboli – the Devil’s mark – on a witch’s forehead. After church services, they would point at women and name them guilty, leading to executions within days.
These boys were paid per witch they identified, prompting homeless orphans and beggars to pose as visgossar for easy cash. The role was dangerous; on several occasions, boys were beaten to death by the families of those they accused.
5 Ducking Stool
Often called “dunking,” the ducking stool was the most widespread and trusted witch‑testing contraption. The suspect was tied to a chair, or her wrists were bound to her ankles, then attached to a pulley and lowered into icy water.
The logic was simple: a guilty witch would float, while an innocent woman would sink and drown. Some believed witches floated because they had renounced baptism, while others thought they could use magic to stay afloat.
In the eyes of the witch catchers, drowning was a merciful end – the soul would ascend to Heaven – whereas floating meant a death by execution and eternal damnation. If a witch floated, she could be dunked repeatedly until she confessed, a form of medieval water torture.
The ducking stool was designed exclusively for women and was also employed as punishment for prostitution or for being a “scold” – a noisy, quarrelsome woman. In such cases, the stool was sometimes mounted on wheels and paraded through town before the dunking, maximizing public humiliation.
4 Weighing The Witch
Holland boasted a famous weighing house in Oudewater where women traveled from as far as Germany and Hungary to prove their innocence. The underlying belief was that a witch’s soul was a heavy burden; without a soul, a witch would be lighter than an innocent woman.
The weighing house featured a massive set of scales. The accused stood on one pan while cast‑iron weights were placed on the other. Those who balanced correctly received certificates of innocence.
The Dutch were not alone. In Aylesbury, England, women were stripped naked and weighed against a hefty, iron‑bound Bible. If the scales did not balance perfectly, the woman was convicted as a witch.
Elsewhere in Europe, women were weighed against stacks of Bibles; if the first weighing did not condemn them, additional Bibles were added to the pile to tip the scales.
3 Cruentation
When a murder was alleged to have been committed via witchcraft, many European courts employed cruentation to determine guilt. The belief was that a victim’s soul lingered briefly after death and that the corpse would react in the presence of its murderer.
The accused was instructed to call out the dead person’s name, walk around the corpse, and touch any sores. If fresh blood welled, the body moved, or foam emerged from the mouth, the suspect was deemed guilty.
In reality, the phenomenon observed was purge fluid – a liquid that resembles blood and is expelled from various orifices during putrefaction. Dead bodies can also twitch slightly, release bowel contents, or seem to “groan” soon after death. Early jurists interpreted these natural processes as the soul fleeing the body to escape the killer.
2 Have Your Witch’s Teat Discovered
If a household kept a pet, a witch‑finder might try to locate the witch’s teat – a mythical nipple the Devil allegedly gave to witches so their familiars could suckle.
The presence of a mole, skin tag, or unusual birthmark was taken as proof that the accused fed a demonic familiar. The notion underscores the extreme misogyny of the trials, as roughly 80 % of the prosecuted were women.
These so‑called “teats” were often subjected to brutal public humiliation, exposure, and even whipping. One tragic case involved Anna Pappenheimer of Bavaria, who, after being tortured into admitting sexual relations with the Devil, had her breasts cut off and forced into the mouths of her two adult sons before all three were burned at the stake.
1 Be Unable To Cry
The Malleus Maleficarum (“The Hammer of Witches”), a medieval treatise penned by two German monks, reigned as the best‑selling book on witchcraft for centuries, second only to the Bible.
It asserted that witches could not shed genuine tears before a judge or even under torture, warning witch‑catchers to beware of crafty witches who might fake tears by spitting on their own faces.
In the medieval era, poor hygiene and lack of medical care meant many elderly women suffered from lacrimal‑duct infections that prevented tear production. Consequently, countless women were executed as witches simply because they could not cry.
Fennella, a contemporary Green Witch based in London, shares her insights on modern witchcraft at www.fennellathewitch.com and on Instagram @fennellathewitch.