There are times when you can feel pretty glad that we don’t live in certain spots throughout history, even if lots of things which happened in the past would have been pretty cool to witness.

One thing we should be particularly glad we’ve dodged is many of the old torture devices that we’ve cooked up over the years, horrors such as the Brazen Bull.

You can learn more about that one here:

Yes, it turns out we’re quite the bunch of evil inventors when we really put our minds to it.

If you weren’t being stuffed into a statue of a bull and set on fire then you might be ‘broken’ on a wheel, dunked in boiling water or perhaps just stuffed into a jail cell and forgotten about while you go mad from the one glimpse of light and scent of food allowed to you.

Among those tortures and torments is a technique known as the ‘Spanish Donkey’, and it’s a truly horrendous way to die.

The Spanish Donkey was essentially a sawhorse with a triangle atop it, and the person in for a world of pain would be made to sit on it and wait for gravity and geometry to do their thing.

Stuck sitting on the narrow corner of a triangle, often made of metal, a person’s own body weight would soon count against them.

Often times for victims of the Spanish Donkey that wouldn’t be all they had to contend with, as they may have restraints or weights tied to their ankles in order to drag them down onto the thin edge even more.

How badly this torture technique affected a person depended on how long they were made to sit on it, with people suffering terrible pain on it sometimes becoming permanently disfigured by the torture.

If left on it long enough it even became a method of execution as a person could be killed from being left on the Spanish Donkey for long enough.

In theory a person could be cut completely in two if left on there for long enough, though they’d be dead long before being completely hacked in twain.

Inquisitor Palace Birgu via Creative Commons

If a torturer was feeling particularly devilish they might decide to light a fire underneath the victim’s feet to make them writhe and squirm atop the Spanish Donkey, which would only cause them further pain.

This torture device was even used by George Washington on his own soldiers to punish them for minor offences.

According to History Defined, Washington approved a punishment against a soldier who had been threatening people ‘to ride the wooden horse, fifteen minutes’.

A 15 minute stint would have been painful but nowhere near the time it would take to do horrific damage to a person.

17th Century French settlers in Canada recorded using the Spanish Donkey with the intention of causing lasting damage, with an account saying a man was left on it until he was ‘ruptured’.

Given which parts of him would have been in contact with the device we’ll leave it up to your imagination to work out which parts of him they were talking about.

The man who invented what is often considered to be ‘the most painful torture device in history’ was the first victim of his cruel creation.

History is strewn with examples of horribly painful ways for a person to die and even scientists have weighed in on some of the most unpleasant ways to go out.

However, there’s absolutely nobody disputing that one of the most awful fates that could befall a person was to be locked inside the Brazen Bull, and ancient device used to torture and execute people.

Created in the 6th century BC by a Greek inventor, the torture device was a hollow sculpture of a bull made out of bronze with a trapdoor fitted into it and a set of pipes near the mouth.

The idea behind it was that a person would be locked inside the Brazen Bull and have a fire lit beneath them, cooking them alive while the pipes transformed the sound of their agonising screams into bellowing bull noises.

The supposed creator of this awful torture device was a man named Perilaus of Athens (or Perillus), who built the thing and presented it to Phalaris, the tyrant of the Sicilian state of Akragas.

Phalaris was an absolutely awful person who was renowned for his appalling cruelty. It is even claimed that he was a cannibal who ate newborn babies, so he was either one of the most evil people in history or he really angered some people enough for them to say he ate children.

Despite his renowned cruelty, Phalaris may not actually have asked for the Brazen Bull as some accounts say that rather than being commissioned to make it, Perilaus instead created the horrific contraption on his own volition and presented it to the tyrant in an attempt to get on his good side.

If you think the way to make friends with a guy is to invent the world’s worst torture device for him then you might wonder if he’s a friend worth having, but Perilaus didn’t really consider that when he presented his gift to the tyrant.

Phalaris asked the inventor to get inside the bull and demonstrate how the person inside making noises would sound to everyone on the outside, but once Perilaus climbed inside to show how his invention worked he was locked inside and a fire was lit beneath him.

The Brazen Bull’s inventor became its first victim, though he didn’t die from it as after being cooked alive for a while, he was removed from the bull on the orders of Phalaris.

If the inventor was hoping that his ordeal was over then he was very much mistaken as the tyrant had him taken to the top of a hill and thrown off to his death.

World History Archive / Alamy Stock Photo

As for the bull, it stayed with Phalaris and became the tyrant’s new favourite toy and anyone he didn’t like was thrown inside and cooked alive.

The tyrant supposedly enjoyed the spectacle of the bull rocking back and forth as someone was burned to death inside it along with the noises it made, and then he had the bones of his victims made into jewellery.

Being cooked alive inside the Brazen Bull would have been unimaginable agony, and a person would have spent up to 10 minutes experiencing the horror of being roasted alive before they died.

The tyrant’s reign came to an end in 554 BC when he was overthrown and killed by being placed inside his beloved Brazen Bull.

That wasn’t the end of this awful torture device, as historical records note that the Carthaginians nabbed a Brazen Bull from Agrigentum, the Roman city built atop the ruins of Akragis, while the Romans later nabbed it back.

This might be one of the most gruesome methods of torture in history, and given the, let’s say seasoned, track record of the human race, that’s no easy feat.

Originating in medieval Germany, this method was once widely used to punish criminals and the enemies of those administering the torturing.

Rats are already enough trouble today, whether it be rummaging through rubbish, scouring for food, or if you’re unlucky enough, running around your home.

But the way they were used to torture people is one that proved to be a horrible way to die.

How did Medieval rat torture work?

Traditionally, it starts by placing rats (sometimes starving) on the exposed abdomen of the individual, before trapping them in a cage.

Then, pieces of hot coal would be placed on top of the cage, to the point where rats wouldn’t be able to bear it and try and escape by eating away at the person’s skin.

They would scratch and chew away at the unfortunate victim’s flesh, eventually eating their way through to the person’s organs, as the victim would scream in pain as they were getting ripped apart from the inside.

But believe it or not, that’s not the worst variation of it.

Sometimes rats would be burrowed inside victims’ bodies, so they could eat their way out.

But it doesn’t stop there.

20th century examples of rat torture

In Argentina during the 1976 to 1983 military junta, Jewish political dissidents were singled out for particularly horrific treatment, including one sickening variation on the rat torture method.

Survivor Daniel Fernández told a CONADEP (National Commission on the Disappearance of Persons) that a torture method called the ‘rectoscope’ was used.

It consisted of inserting a tube into the prisoner’s anus which a rat would crawl down and burrow inside them.

In Chile, under Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship (1974-1990), it is reported female prisoners had rats inserted into their vaginas.

According to one prisoner, Lux de las Nieves Ayress Moreno, her captors aimed to infect her with toxoplasmosis through the gruesome torture so she would never be able to have children.

Thankfully, she was treated after her release, and went on to have a daughter.

X

Below the post about the method on X, formerly Twitter, people were horrified at the method.

One user referenced a scene in 2022’s The Batman, where this method was used: “That scene from The Batman had me shivering for a month.”

Another said: “The torture methods came up with are so wild.”

A third put: “This is the most horrific death I could imagine tbh.”

On 22 March, a British runner became the first woman to ever complete a ‘sadistic torture race’.

Before this year, only 17 people had managed to complete the annual Barkley Marathons since 1989.

The race in Tennessee is well-known for being, well, challenging to say the least – with it being difficult to get into in the first place.

Once runners have actually secured a spot, The Barkley Marathons see them face a whopping 100 miles with 60,000 feet of ascents and descents.

The equivalent of more than twice the height of Mount Everest, they have 60 hours to do five loops of the route.

Jasmin Paris took part in the ‘Fun Run’ of three loops back in 2022 before attempting the full thing last year. And when she returned this March, the mum-of-two was feeling ‘good’ and like her ‘training had been better’.

The 40-year-old spoke to LADbible about her incredible achievement, revealing her darkest moment during the brutal 60-hour challenge.

She underwent intense training consisting of early morning runs, strength classes and plenty of time on the StairMaster but she gives a lot of credit to ‘self-belief’ getting her through.

But for the Edinburgh vet, the darkest part of the ‘beautiful’ and ‘friendly’ race came during the fourth loop as after doing it so many times ‘you know you’re gonna have to do it all over again’.

“You’re really tired and still feel that you’ve got a real way to go and I ended up really struggling to eat on the fourth loop,” she explains.

“I felt really sick and inside, all my guts were really hurting. I just wanted to curl up on the floor in the forest and stay there so it was pretty hard to keep going.”

And yet, despite being in pain and feeling so tired, Paris still had the belief in herself that she could do it.

Paris had a three minute ‘power nap’ before the final loop. (Simone Luciani @escoacorrere/Instagram)

Before facing the final loop, she managed to get in a three minute ‘power nap’.

“I don’t think I really slept though, but I sat in a chair with my eyes closed,” she recalls.

Despite the lack of sleep and experiencing ‘hallucinations’ she was also having ‘lots of laughs’ and snacking on pizza. It was only during the very last kilometre that Paris began to doubt herself.

The clock was ticking down on the Barkley, and she didn’t think she was going to make it to the finish line.

She only doubted herself at the final km. (Simone Luciani @escoacorrere/Instagram)

“Inside I thought I’m going to give it everything, I’m either going to finish or I’m going to collapse – I was that committed,” she said. “I just emptied myself out completely. I did believe I was going to do it and that stayed with me all the way through but that last kilometre I doubted.”

And her mindset worked, Paris completed the Barkley Marathons in the nick of time – securing the amazing achievement in 59 hours, 58 minutes and 21 seconds.