The Most Horrific Execution Methods Throughout History

Whether involving rats, spikes, or boiling oil, the worst execution methods ever invented prove that humans have mastered the art of torture and death.

A slow and agonizing punishment, this method traditionally saw the victim gradually lowered — feet-first — into boiling oil, water, or wax (although uses of boiling wine and molten lead have also been recorded).

If the shock of the pain did not render them immediately unconscious, the person would experience the excruciating sensation of their outer layers of skin, utterly destroyed by immersion burns, dissolving right off their body, followed by the complete breakdown of the fatty tissue, boiling away beneath.

2. The Blood Eagle

A technique ascribed to ancient Norse warriors, the blood eagle mixed brutality and poetic imagery in a way that only the Vikings could. First, the victim’s back would be hacked open and the skin ripped apart, exposing the spinal column.

The ribs would then be snapped from the spine and forcibly bent backwards until they faced outwards from the body, forming a pair of bloody, shattered eagle’s wings. As a horrifying finale, the lungs would then be pulled from the body cavity and coated with stinging salt, causing eventual death by suffocation.

3. Rat Torture

As recently depicted in Game Of Thrones, rat torture is a method ingenious in its disgusting simplicity. In its most basic form, a bucket containing live rats is placed on the exposed torso of the victim, and heat applied to the base of the bucket.

The rats, crazy with fear from the heat, tear and gnaw their way into the abdomen of the victim, clawing and ripping through skin, flesh, organs, and intestines in their quest to escape.

4. Impalement

While the image tend to depict people skewered through the midsection and then held aloft — in a manner that would almost certainly bring about a rapid death — the real process was a much longer, horrifically drawn-out ordeal.

Traditionally, the stake would be partially sharpened and planted, point up, in the ground. The victim would then be placed over the spike as it was inserted partway into the rectum or vagina.

As their own body weight dragged them further onto the pole, the semi-greased wooden stake would force its way up through their body, piercing organs with an agonizing slowness as it eventually penetrated the entire torso, finally tearing an exit wound through the skin of the shoulder, neck or throat.

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