Not for the squeamish
I’ve spoken of it before. But I have an interest in ancient styles of execution. More of a morbid curiosity. It’s not that like it or anything weird like that. It just amazes me at how creative someone could be in their cruelty.
Some of these methods are just horrifying. But here’s a youtube on some methods that is mostly safe to watch.
September 5th, 2018 at 5:31 pm
When it comes to manipulating, lying, stealing, raping, torturing and killing, the authoritarian mind is every bit as clever as any.
September 5th, 2018 at 6:08 pm
My ‘preferred method’ is the Catherine’s Wheel. Take a wagon wheel, mount it on a long pole. Take the victim, break his or her leg and arm bones, weave them into the spokes of the wheel, stand the pole up with just enough tilt so that wind will cause the wheel to rock back and forth.
Survivors could find a job as freaks in travelling circuses.
Sick world.
September 5th, 2018 at 7:15 pm
Author Thomas Harris in his novel Hannibal, the sequel to The Silence of the Lambs, has a pasage in which Hannibal Lecter visits a museum torture gallery, not out of any interest in the tortures themselves, but rather out of his interest in the reactions of those who come to see the implements – – sort of a psychic vampirism, with Lecter feeding off of the emotional reactions of the spectators.
September 5th, 2018 at 7:20 pm
In Barracoon, the story of Cudjo Lewis, the last African brought over as a slave to the US, Cudjo talks about his home in Africa. Among other things he relates how they dealt with murder. The accused and the victims corpse would be taken to the village square for a trial. If found guilty the executioner would just tap him with a blade, signifying that he is now dead to the village. Then the bind him tightly to his victims corpse, arm to arm, leg to leg, face to face. And just leave him in the village square, bound to the rotting corpse of his victims until he dies.
September 5th, 2018 at 11:53 pm
The famous (infamous?) Chinese “death of a thousand cuts” was actually death of a thousand pieces. The person was dismembered little piece by little piece and put in baskets. The order of execution would specify whether the final cut — the stab through the heart — would come at the beginning or the end. If at the beginning, the corpse was still dismembered while the public watched.
September 6th, 2018 at 8:47 am
The Texas Renaissance Festival in Plantersville, TX has a (small) “Museum of Cruelty” where they have recontructed some of the implements of torture and execution and have mannequins positioned on them. Gruesome stuff.
September 6th, 2018 at 11:27 am
I think I may have seen it on History Channel or maybe read about on line about Vlad the Impaler. That seemed like one of the worst and most grusome ways to kill. The Romans devised crucifixion as a public method of execution, I suppose, as a way to discourage criminal activity which received the death penalty.
September 7th, 2018 at 11:09 am
About the worst I’ve heard of is Scaphism.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scaphism
There is also some ancient writings of some method done in Tibet and China where a person was bound in a vat of some liquid (probably a lye solution) that slowly dissolved the body.