From the 15th through the 18th centuries, Europe was a scary place, particularly if you were an elderly woman. Tension between the Catholic Church and the Protestant Church meant that religious terror was rife, bad luck was blamed on Devil worshipers, and the European witch trials claimed the lives of around 200,000 people across Germany, Sweden, France, and Britain.

Witch finders used a range of bizarre methods, often bordering on torture, to entice confessions from the accused or otherwise “prove” their guilt. Would any of these insane tests prove you guilty of witchcraft?

10 Waking The Witch

The Italians pioneered a particularly uncomfortable method for testing witches that became very popular in Scotland. We know it now as sleep deprivation. This may sound like something you have suffered yourself if you work a stressful job or have young children. But for accused witches, it was a creatively cruel trial and punishment.

The accused had an iron hoop with four sharp prongs forced into her mouth. It was then attached to the wall behind her, the effect being that she would be in pain and unable to lie down.

The men charged with guarding the witch were also instructed to keep her awake through whatever means they deemed necessary. Usually, after about three days of this, the victim would start to vividly hallucinate. When questioned in this state, the accused would recount fantastical tales of flying, turning into animals, and partaking in satanic rituals.^[1]

The witch catchers proclaimed that this was the witch “awakening” within the woman and was undeniable proof of her guilt. Those found guilty of witchcraft in Scotland were usually strangled at the stake and then burned.

9 Touch Test

In 1662, two elderly women in England were subjected to the infamous “touch test.” Their names were Rose Cullender and Amy Denny. They were charged with bewitching two young girls who had been suffering with fits.

The witch hunters believed that someone who was under the influence of sorcery would have an unusual reaction to physical contact with the spellcaster. The suspect would be brought into the room and forced to lay her hands on the person having fits. If the illness ceased, this was seen as proof that the accused was guilty.

In the Cullender and Denny case, it was said that the suffering children held their fists so tightly clenched that even the strongest man in the village could not pry their fingers open. Yet, as soon as they were touched by the accused women, the girls stopped their fits and easily opened their palms.^[2]

To test if the girls were lying, the judge had them blindfolded and touched by other members of the court. It was found that they had the same reaction every time someone placed their hands on the girls. So they were faking. Despite this, Cullender and Denny were found guilty and faced execution by hanging.

8 The Rack

Germany is usually considered to be the country that executed the most witches. During the 1620s, the five-year-long Wurzburg trials are estimated to have killed over 900 people. No one was safe from the Prince Bishop Philipp Adolf von Ehrenberg, including his own nephew, 19 Catholic priests, and some boys. Seven were found guilty of having sexual intercourse with demons before being beheaded or burned at the stake.

The accused were found guilty following confession, and torture was not yet illegal in Central Europe. The Germans had many cruel methods of forcing confessions from their victims, but the most popular was the rack.

It usually consisted of an iron frame with a wooden roller at one or both ends. The unfortunate souls had their hands bound to one roller and their ankles bound to the other. During their interrogations, their torturers would use the rollers to increase the tension on the binds and essentially stretch the accused.^[3]

The joints of the victim would eventually be dislocated and then separated entirely while they listened to the sickening popping and snapping of their own bones. Would that be enough to make you plead guilty to witchcraft?

7 Pricking

Witch pricking was once considered to be the most accurate way of testing for witchcraft. The accused would be stripped completely naked in front of the court and then shaved from head to toe. The witch pricker (a revered profession) would then seek out the “Devil’s mark” by pricking the victim all over with a thick needle.

It was believed that there would be a spot that did not bleed or cause pain—proof of a contract with the Devil. This was really a form of horrendous sexual abuse. In a society that held modesty in high regard, many women would confess just to end the humiliation.

In Scotland, a witch pricker could expect to make £6 per witch discovered. When you consider that the average daily wage in those days was one shilling, this was a significant amount.

As with most jobs, it was a male profession. But that didn’t stop one woman from becoming one of the most infamous witch prickers of all time. While dressed as a man and calling herself John Dickson, Christian Caddell sentenced as many as 10 witches to death. She was eventually caught and banished to the fever-ridden Barbados. Many people didn’t even survive the voyage.^[4]

6 Spotted By Visgossar

Sweden was unique in its persecution of witches because it relied heavily on the witness testimonies of children (often the offspring of the accused), who were tortured until they provided suitably fantastical tales.

The children would be predominantly questioned about their experiences visiting Blakulla—not hell, but the Devil’s banqueting hall with a peek hole in the floor through which one could observe Hell beneath. Some of the youths would find themselves competing to fabricate the most creative stories, which would ultimately end with the execution of their parents.

The visgossar were young boys who were believed to have the power to spot the invisible Stigma Diaboli (mark of the Devil) on the forehead of the witch. Following a church service, it was common practice for the boys to point at a few women and name them guilty. These poor folks were often executed just days later.^[5]

The boys were paid per witch identified, and this meant that many homeless orphans and beggars would come forward claiming to be visgossar as a way to make easy money. Of course, the profession came with its own dangers. On several occasions, vigossar were found beaten to death by the families of those they accused.

5 Ducking Stool

Often referred to as “dunking,” the ducking stool was the most widespread and trusted method for testing a witch. The suspect was tied to a chair or with her wrists bound to her ankles. Then she was attached to a pulley and lowered into a body of freezing water.

The logic was simple. If she was guilty, she would float on the top and be put to death as a witch. If she was innocent, she would sink to the bottom and drown.

Witch catchers believed this would work for different reasons. Some thought that witches would automatically float to the top of the water because they had renounced their baptisms as a rejection of God. Others believed that witches were able to use their magical powers to float to the top and stop themselves from drowning.

Either way, it was generally accepted that the victim was innocent and would be accepted into Heaven if she drowned and died. In the eyes of the witch catchers, this was a far better fate than living as a guilty witch bound for execution and hell. Sometimes, a floating witch would be dunked repeatedly until she confessed, which was a medieval form of water torture.^[6]

Interestingly, the ducking stool was designed specifically for women only and was also used as a punishment for being a prostitute or scold. A scold was a woman who was generally considered a nuisance, who spread chaos among her neighbors by habitually chastising, quarreling, or gossiping.

In these cases, the ducking stool contraption was sometimes attached to wheels and paraded through the town on the way to the dunking site. This was to ensure maximum humiliation for the accused.

4 Weighing The Witch

Holland had a very famous weighing house in Oudewater. Women from as far away as Germany and Hungary would travel there to prove their innocence. The idea was simple. Souls are heavy burdens to bear. As a witch would not possess one, she would be significantly lighter than an innocent woman.

The weighing house had a large set of scales. The accused would stand on one side, and cast-iron weights would be placed on the other. Women of the proper weight were given certificates to prove their innocence.^[7]

The Dutch were not the only ones who believed that you could find a witch by weighing her. In Aylesbury, England, it was common practice to strip a woman naked and weigh her against a heavy, iron-bound Bible. If the scales did not balance out exactly, the woman would be convicted as a witch.

In other places in Europe, women would be weighed against stacks of Bibles. If they were not found guilty straightaway, extra Bibles were sometimes added to the pile.

3 Cruentation

If someone was accused of murder by witchcraft, they could be proved guilty by cruentation in many European courts. They believed that the soul still resided in the body shortly after death and that the body would react unusually in the presence of the murderer.

The accused was made to call out the name of the dead person, walk around the corpse, and touch the body’s sores. If fresh blood appeared, the body moved, or it began to foam at the mouth, the suspect would be considered guilty.

What the court was actually witnessing was the leaking of a liquid known as purge fluid. It looks a lot like blood and is expelled from various orifices during putrefaction. Dead bodies may also twitch slightly, expel the contents of their bowels, or even seem to “groan” soon after death. This would be seen as the person’s soul leaving the body to further escape his killer (too little, too late).^[8]

2 Have Your Witch’s Teat Discovered

If you had a pet, it was likely that a witch catcher would try to prove your guilt by seeking out your witch’s teat. It was believed that witches kept demons in their houses as pets, disguised as dogs, cats, insects, or rodents and that these familiars suckled on a special nipple gifted to the witch by the Devil.

The presence of a mole, skin tag, or unusual birthmark on the body was considered proof that the accused was practicing witchcraft and feeding her familiar in this manner.

At least 80 percent of the people prosecuted for witchcraft were female, and the idea of a Devil-made and villainous breast is a perfect example of how misogynistic the trials really were. Many breasts of the accused were subject to brutal and humiliating treatment and were often publicly exposed or even whipped.^[9]

Anna Pappenheimer from Bavaria was tortured into admitting to having sexual relations with the Devil. As punishment, her breasts were cut off and forced into her mouth and then 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”) was a medieval document published about witches, their practices, and methods to conduct trials and punish them. It was written in Latin by two German monks. For hundreds of years, it was the best-selling book in Europe, second only to the Bible.

Malleus Maleficarum stated that witches would be unable to shed real tears when put in front of a judge or even when subjected to torture. It implored witch catchers to be wary of mischievous witches who were likely to fake tears by spitting on their own faces.^[10]

During the medieval period, a lack of health care and personal hygiene meant that it was common for the elderly to suffer from what we now call lacrimal ducts. This is an infection in the tear ducts that stops the sufferer from being able to shed tears. This meant that many elderly women were executed as witches simply for having poor eyes.

Fennella is a Green Witch living in London. Blog: www.fennellathewitch.com. Instagram: @fennellathewitch

Trial and error is one of the best ways to figure things out in life. You have an idea; you test it, and if it doesn’t work, you try something different. That works well with new recipes, math equations, even relationships. But sometimes a person can test an idea that’s just terrible, and even if it ends up being a successful test, the results are still harrowing at best.

10. The Spiritualist Who Died to Prove Life After Death

Spiritualists, mediums, psychics, and others have professed for ages that they can communicate with the spirits of the dead. Science says there is no evidence to support this whatsoever, and more than one of these mediums has been outed as complete frauds over the years. Still, people want to believe and the idea perseveres. Sometimes the belief is so strong people do the unthinkable just to support it.

Thomas Lynn Bradford sought to prove the existence of life after death back in 1921 when he closed his doors and turned on the gas in his heater, letting it fill his room until he asphyxiated. A spiritualist himself, Bradford wholly believed in the beyond. He left a note stating as much that he was seeking to prove the phenomena of spirits and so his suicide was meant to be taken with a caveat – he’d be back.

He had conspired with a living partner to return from beyond. He did not. His partner, neither a psychic nor someone he’d really had a longstanding relationship with, claimed she didn’t even know Bradford planned to die. But she received no ghostly messages and Bradford failed to change science as we know it, as was his ultimate goal. 

9. Franz Reichelt Tested his Own Parachute 

There’s an old joke about what the first person to ever eat an oyster must have been thinking. Some things just seem counterintuitive, like things no sane person would never try. But when it comes to testing a parachute for the first time, eating an oyster seems like child’s play. At least gravity can’t betray you when you eat an oyster. 

Franz Reichelt was a tailor and inventor who, in 1912, felt he had designed the perfect parachute. Airplanes were still relatively new, of course, and devising ways to make them safer was even newer. Reichelt felt a devise that could let you sail safely back to earth was a great idea. And it was, in theory.

Despite having tested his inventions unsuccessfully on numerous dummies from his own apartment window, Reichelt believed the failing was not in his design but the height. So he headed up the Eiffel Tower to prove it worked. Alas, it did not and there is even a grim video of the failure as he performed the test before an audience. 

8. Flat Earther Mike Hughes Tested a Homemade Rocket

Flat Earthers became internet punchlines a few years back when people came to realize there are people out there who genuinely believe the world is flat. And while many are dismissed as not being serious or, at least, not worth serious consideration, the fact is some of them are deadly serious. Mike Hughes was one such man. 

Daredevil and rocket enthusiast, Mike Hughes also claimed to believe the Earth was flat. And he planned to prove it once and for all by building a rocket, ascending to the heavens, and looking down on the flat disc of our world for himself. He’d actually had success in the past with two previous rocket launches that took him to just over 1,300 feet and then 1,800 feet. But his final attempt, in a steam-powered rocket of his own design, took place in 2020. The parachute mechanism failed, and the rocket crashed, killing him.

The tragic irony, according to his PR representative, was that he didn’t actually believe the flat earth theory at all, it was just a stunt to raise money and get press. 

7. Horace Hunley Died Testing His Own Submarine

As an inventor, you need confidence in your ideas. But a little bit of practical caution couldn’t hurt either, especially if your invention is a submarine and the year in 1863. Horace Hunley was attempting to test his own submarine by traveling under an anchored vessel when the sub got stuck in the mud. 

The 40-foot sub was operated by a crew of eight and had previously succeeded in a test run. Later, an accident caused it to dive with a hatch open, killing six of the crew. Finding a new crew was hard, so Hunley stepped up to prove his own creation was still safe and viable. He died with his entire crew.

Incredibly, the sub was salvaged and sent on yet another mission, where it became the first sub to sink another vessel in battle. It sank on the way home and a third crew perished. 

6. Troy Hurtubise Invented a Bear Suit 

No one could say Troy Hurtubise wasn’t a showman, even if the things he showed were weird, suspect, or just ill-conceived. The Canadian inventor made international headlines when a documentary about him hit the scene, chronicling his attempts to make a bear-proof suit. 

Inspired by an alleged encounter with a real bear in which the bear opted to not kill him outright, as well as the movie RoboCop, Hurtubise created a massive, awkward suit that could withstand the brutal strength of a bear. But how does a man test such a thing? He lets his friends beat him with sticks and giant logs. And a pickup truck. 

While no one can doubt Hurtubise made a suit and it could withstand remarkable punishment. When it was taken into the field for a test, he was unable to even walk in it and had to be helped to his feet. 

5. Edwin Katskee Overdosed on Cocaine 

Not so long ago, in the grand scheme of things, a lot of the drugs we considered dangerous narcotics were simply used as medicine. Things like heroin and cocaine were pretty ubiquitous in the world of pain management and that meant doctors had to have a degree of familiarity with them. Dr. Edwin Katskee was aware of the effects of cocaine back in 1936, but only in a general way. For instance, neither he nor anyone else at the time had a firm grasp on exactly how much cocaine was too much cocaine. So he sought to figure that out.

Katskee’s plan was to simply document the effects of cocaine on the human body. He would dose himself and then chronicle what he felt and experienced in a journal. Sounds reasonable enough, except since we’ve already established no one really knew how much was too much, Katskee ended up severely overdosing.

As he died, he took notes. Some were as mundane as “eyes mildly dilated” but one of the final ones, in messy handwriting, was simply “paralysis.”

The notes were written on the walls of his office and they were discovered, along with his dead body, the next day. 

4. Clement Vallandigham Died Testing a Theory of How Another Man Died

Humans love a mystery and, as the proliferation of true crime blogs has shown, we really love a murder mystery. Sometimes the need to solve one can lead to even greater tragedy. 

In 1870, Thomas Meyer was playing cards when five men burst into the room. A fight broke out and shots were fired. In the end, Meyer collapsed, dead from a gunshot wound. In the melee, no one could say for sure who had killed Meyer, but a man known to have hated him was the prime suspect. This, however, was not enough evidence for lawyer Clement Vallandigham. 

Vallandigham studied the case and came up with a new conclusion. Witnesses had heard a muffled gunshot before Meyer drew his own gun. What if he had accidentally shot himself?

Vallandigham proceeded to test his theory, working with gunpowder residue and other evidence. And he believed he had proven it happened as he suspected, which he sought to demonstrate to a friend.Unfortunately he mixed up his own empty gun with Meyer’s still loaded gun and shot himself during the demonstration.

Amazingly, a second man, in recounting what happened to Vallandigham, also shot himself dead. But the man originally accused of shooting Meyer was acquitted, though he too was shot dead a few years later.

3. Nicholas Senn Filled His Own Butt with Hydrogen 

Have you ever heard that you can find a leak in a tire by spreading soapy water on it to see where the bubbles form? It’s a simple trick that can help you patch up a flat. But what happens when the leak isn’t in a tire so much as a colon? Well, there’s a trick for figuring that out too and one doctor discovered it by shooting hydrogen gas up his own butt.

Dr. Nicholas Senn was treating patients during the Spanish-American War and was faced with a serious problem. Bullet wounds that perforated the intestines were very hard to treat. Finding perforations was difficult and if the wounds weren’t treated promptly, a painful death was sure to follow. Senn devised the idea of locating the wounds by filling the colon with a harmless hydrogen gas.

Senn first tested the experiment on dogs and all the ones that survived recovered well. This, of course, implies others didn’t survive. But to determine just how well the method worked, he did it to himself as well. 

Though there was discomfort, he determined it wasn’t all that bad. And he went on to use the technique to great success, saving a good number of lives until the invention of the X-ray. 

2. An F-11 Pilot Shot Himself Down 

The movie Top Gun assured us all that pilots have the need, the need for speed. And speed is definitely the name of the game when it comes to military aircraft. A MiG-25 can reach speeds of Mach 3.2, giving it a world record for speed. And with each new supersonic jet comes a test pilot who has to see how the thing handles when it’s going faster than the sounds of his screams when something goes wrong.

Back in 1956, Navy pilot Thomas Attridge was testing the new Grumman F-11 Tiger. He was doing a weapons test of the jet, which was able to reach supersonic speeds, something its predecessors had not been able to do. 

At 20,000 feet above the Atlantic, Attridge fired the 20mm cannons as he dove to 13,000 feet. From there, he kicked it into supersonic speed and headed straight down to 7,000 feet to fire off another round. And that’s when someone shot him. 

Something tore through the windshield, and he dropped speed to try to head back to base. The engines were failing and what he initially thought had been caused by a bird proved even stranger. In his rapid descent, the F-11 outpaced its own bullets. He got ahead of them and shot himself down.

A mile from base the plane crashed, but Attridge did survive. 

1. Michael Smith Got Stung By Bees on Purpose

Aposematism is the name for the mechanism by which a living organism lets you know it’s dangerous just by looking dangerous. Poison dart frogs are all brightly colored to let predators know they’re bad news and insects like bees are striped in the same fashion. Animals know instinctively to avoid these things. But humans? Sometimes our own intelligence can work against us and we seek out danger instead of avoiding it. Consider the case of Michael Smith. 

Smith studies bees and has a PhD in neurobiology and behavior. His research deals with how bee colonies work but, along the way, he’s suffered one or two stings. Stands to reason, right? And during one session in particular, a bee made its way up his shorts and stung him in a very sensitive place. But the unusual thing was that, for Smith, it didn’t hurt as much as he thought it would. And that got him thinking, what is the most painful place a bee could sting a man?

No one else had a definitive answer, so he conducted tests on himself. He began subjecting himself to stings, dozens of them, all over his own body in places like the top of the skull, the nipple, and the armpit. And his findings led him to one painful conclusion. A bee sting directly on the nostril is the most painful of all.