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.

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.