Need Help On Torture Methods And Torture Devices

[Interference]

Originally Posted by anthorn

Its a modified chastity belt designed to give the utmost discomfort ....

I know a bloke who runs a shop that sells those. Only his runs off batteries.

Being tortured by someone you love, but they don't know they're doing it, or they don't know it's you, might be a bit nasty - especially if it reveals something nasty about them that you hadn't suspected.

Is this torture for its own sake, or is the victim expected to talk? If the former, you might get some weird paragraphs out of the torturers thinking up something to try. If the latter, you might try something purely psychological in nature. Like forcing a vegetarian to eat their own dog.

I'd suggest you decide whether you want to gross out your reader or generate maximum indignance on the victim's behalf. Then it needn't be particularly original or indeed exceptional, but deeply, deeply upsetting.

Just a thought.

[Anastasia]

Originally Posted by Winters_Sorrow

One of the nastiest torture devices I ever saw, just for it's gruesome horribleness, (who thinks up this stuff?? ) was something I saw in the London Dungeons - thankfully only an exhibit these days - and was a cage placed on the lower torso of the subject, who was strapped down, into which starving rats were placed. Then hot coals were put on top of the cage which a) heated the metal causing extreme pain and b) encouraged the rats to seek escape through the only 'soft' wall of their cage - i.e. burrowing through the subject.

That was in George Orwell's 1984.

I agree with the poster who said that it is easy to turn a torture scene into pornography - a particularly sick form of pornography (and before anyone says I'm being prudish, I've actually written erotica for publication, but that's not what I'm talking about).

I think for a good torture scene you need to think of something which is psychologically difficult to read, rather than just going for the obvious i.e. gore. Actually, I heard something on the news recently that was so horrible, it stuck in my brain for days - it happened in real life, during the Ruanda civil war, a woman was forced to hang her own baby. A truly chilling and awful act. I don't think a person who did such a thing would ever be quite whole again.

I don't know about the style of your novel, and what you're looking for, but something that causes your reader to have a cold chill down their back, rather than just reaching for a bucket (or worse - getting turned-on !), will be something that would have real impact.

[WriterDoug]

I just educated myself on one I had never heard of called the "Blood Eagle." Its usage was primarily limited to Norse culture, and it does not even sound as gruesome as some of the things the other Europeans were doing. Still, it appears to have a certain level of "finesse" to it.

From my understanding, a pair of wings are carved onto the back of the victim, and then an incision is made to separate the ribs (so that they can be pulled outward, creating what might appear to be "wings" at the mid-section.) Salt is poured into the (fairly enormous) wound, and the lungs are pulled out. This procedure gaurantees a fatality, and is maybe better left described as a method of execution than as torture.

cheers,
WD

[j. d. worthington]

Originally Posted by WriterDoug

I just educated myself on one I had never heard of called the "Blood Eagle." Its usage was primarily limited to Norse culture, and it does not even sound as gruesome as some of the things the other Europeans were doing. Still, it appears to have a certain level of "finesse" to it.

You know, I think this is the first time I've ever heard the Blood Eagle described as "finesse"! Um, I think it's pretty damn gruesome, myself; f'r instance... ever try rubbing salt in a wound? Now imagine that being done for something like this; and then imagine your lungs being pulled out through the slits.....

I'd say that, while it's certainly a method of execution, it also definitely applies as torture!

[dustinzgirl]

Originally Posted by Anastasia

I agree with the poster who said that it is easy to turn a torture scene into pornography - a particularly sick form of pornography

Thats what makes it fun.

[WriterDoug]

Oh damn, I should probably explain why I would use the word "finesse" to describe such a thing!

I suppose one needs to be in a morbid state of mind for this, but to me it seems more "poetic" and inventive than some of the other brutal executions I have read about. Maybe I just like this so much, and I want it to be in my own novel.

cheers,
WD

[j. d. worthington]

WD -- not scolding... I just nearly fell out of my chair laughing when I saw you had described it that way -- I mean, talk about contrast!

As far as the stark, powerful impact of the thing, I do have a fondness for the Blood Eagle -- but usually because it isn't described; you just have someone with that sentence passed on them, and that's enough. It's no wonder that they'd blanch if they heard those words....

[littlemissattitude]

Originally Posted by WriterDoug

I just educated myself on one I had never heard of called the "Blood Eagle."

Hmmmm. I'd never heard of that one before, WD. That surprises me a bit...I've enough of a morbid enough turn of mind that I thought I was pretty familiar with the subject. Learn something new every day, I guess.

[lin robinson]

There is a difference between torturing somebody to get information or consent from them and in order to punish them. Sort of in between is breaking them down to be manageable and pliant.

Sex is almost used for the latter with females. Best done callously, mechanically, to convey that the female is just an object.

This is the best attitude for compulsion torture, also. The torturor presents as uncaring, remote, unaffectable. Part of what happens is transferring the torturee's psyche towards wanting make contact, to affect of control the cold "terminator' demeanor to anything human. personal or capable of being bargained with.

Torture for punishment purposes doesn't really have any other goal, so it can be whatever you want.

The previous poster is very right about saving genitals and eyes and such for last. Permanent damage. If you take a hammer and mash one testes to a pulp, then put the other one up on the cement block or whatever and raise the hammer, you have a person's attention. Same would go for mushing elbows or knees. Or an eye. There's a big difference between being maimed and being blind and once one eye is popped out and crushed, there remains little doubt of the resolve on the interrogator.

There's a school of thought that you can overdo it, cause the person to give up hope and therefore not comply because it won't help them. That is theoretical thinking: a person pushed past their limits doesn't reason like that. They just want it to be over, are already in the "bargaining phase" of grieving for what they have lost.

Incrementalism is effective. It just keeps getting worse until you comply. Cutting down the time available helps this. There are few things more effective than strapping somebody's ass and genitals to a hotplate, then turning it on and sitting silently without questioning while the coils warm up.

In my area the most common torture is nothing more sophisticated or cinematic than flooding the sinus passages with carbonated water like a soft drink. Shaken up first, perhaps laced with chile powder.

[pyan]

*backs out of thread hurriedly, wishing that he hadn't been curious in the first place!*

[lin robinson]

I forgot to mention transference. There is something similar to the "Helsinki Effect", in which the tortured forge emotional bonds with the torturer that can be almost like infatuation or even sexual.

[scalem X]

Indeed disturbing how many ideas come up on a thread like this, even more disturbing that I seem to have heard them all before.

Anyway I think it also depends on how 'bad' the victim can come out. If she comes out in the first place. Should you for example remove the eyelids, you'll have either a blind or deranged woman after your torture. This means if she's going to escape and such, be sure to keep her disabilities caused by torture limited.

To have someone long for death, one could after the torturing itself perform some sort of ritual like putting her head on a block then using an axe and 'fail' to execute her after the torture, this day after day. Each time with her head on the block she'll wish more and more that it was over.

I have no idea how to describe things, but reading horror will beyond doubt help. In the end horror features a lot of scenes where the victim is struck in uttermost horror, which would be applicable to the reaction to any of the above mentioned methods.

[dustinzgirl]

In one of Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series, I don't remember the exact book, but one of the Forsaken females (I want to say Lanfear, but I think I would be wrong) had a Warder in her 'dungeon' or whatever they have. The way Jordan described it eludes me, but the short of it was she touched the Warder's mind to bring him esctasy, and she kept pushing until it killed him. I always thought that would be a great way to torture people.....with the mind and imagination rather than the actual....like in Solar Babies (I think thats the movie) they had this machine thingy that when you stuck your hand in it it was your worst fear (like being covered in ants or having your flesh fall off) but when you took your hand out it wasn't real.....

I mean, you could really use that type of anti-reality torture to classically condition someone without physically harming them, either by prayer, magic or by science, effecting the mind but not the body. Then you could really own the person without destroying the person's abilities.

[scalem X]

Then you could really own the person without destroying the person's abilities.

How about just using peanuts?

[Spectrum]

Originally Posted by dustinzgirl

In one of Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series, I don't remember the exact book, but one of the Forsaken females (I want to say Lanfear, but I think I would be wrong) had a Warder in her 'dungeon' or whatever they have.

That was Semirhage. I remember the scene, too, but I can't remember in which book it was. (Somewhere in the middle, Lord of Chaos or A Crown of Swords, probably.)