“Soyjack” torture mask 200-year-old bronze torture tool from Germany.

Some torture devices, such as the rack, were real. Others were probably invented to help perpetuate the myth of the medieval “Dark Ages.”

Throughout history, people have used torture devices to punish their enemies and those accused of crimes. They have also used torture as a means of obtaining confessions or convincing the victim to give up other people’s names, even though torture does not produce reliable information. (This is not a new finding; it is something that even Napoleon Bonaparte observed.)

However, sometimes people looking back have let their imaginations run wild when it comes to torture. Historians in ancient Greece have passed down some fantastical tales that they may not have intended for readers to take literally. Additionally, people in the modern era have accused medieval Europeans of using gruesome torture devices that likely did not exist at the time, perpetuating the myth of an uncivilized, so-called “Dark Age.” Below are some famous torture devices from history, both real and legendary.

The shameless bull

The Brazen Bull is an ancient mythical torture device supposedly used by Phalaris, a tyrant who ruled part of Sicily in the 6th century BC. It consisted of a life-size bronze bull, hollow inside and with a door on the outside. The torturer would place a victim inside and light a fire beneath the bull. The fire would burn the victim to death, while an acoustic system in the bull made the victim’s screams sound like bull noises to those outside.

The story of Phalaris and the Brazen Bull comes from the Greek historian Diodorus Siculus, who lived about 500 years after these events supposedly occurred. The story, which was referenced by the Italian poet and philosopher Dante in The Inferno , is probably a myth or at least highly embellished.

The Iron Apega

One of the most fantastic tales of a torture device is the Iron Apega, also known as the Apega of Nabis. The Greek historian Polybius wrote that the Spartan king Nabis, who ruled from 207 to 192 BC, built a kind of torture robot that resembled his wife, Apega.

Polybius wrote that whenever Nabis attempted to collect taxes from someone who refused to pay, the king would invite the person to embrace his wife and point him toward the robot. When the person embraced the robot, it would drag him in its arms, crushing the victim with iron hooks hidden beneath its clothing. However, scholars have suggested that Polybius’ story about the tax-collecting torturing robot was allegorical and that the Iron Apega did not actually exist.

The shelf

The rack was a torture device used at the Tower of London, a royal palace that also served as a prison. Beginning in the 15th century, keepers working at the tower would use the rack to pull on ropes tied to the victim’s wrists and ankles. This stretched the body and dislocated the victim’s joints.

Yeoman guards used the rack against people suspected of treason and religious heresy to try to get them to confess and reveal the names of other “conspirators.” One famous victim was the English Protestant writer and preacher Anne Askew. In 1546, guards tortured her on the rack and asked her to name Protestant sympathizers. When she refused, officials burned her at the stake. Because the torture left her unable to walk, she had to be carried to her execution.

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The scavenger’s daughter

During the 16th and 17th centuries, the watchmen of the Tower of London also used the scavenger’s daughter as a torture device. The scavenger’s daughter was a metal frame that compressed the victim’s body onto itself.

The squeezing of the scavenger’s daughter was so intense that it could apparently cause the victim to start bleeding from the nose, mouth and other parts of the body. This gruesome form of torture could result in death.

The butterfly screw

SSPL VIA GETTY IMAGEST THUMB SCREWS, OR THUMBS, ARE AN EARLY TORTURE INSTRUMENT USED BY INSERTING THE THUMBS INTO THE ARTIFACT AND COMPRESSING THEM WITH A SCREW.

Torturers used the thumbscrew, another painful device from early modern Europe (c.1450 to 1750), to crush a person’s fingers or thumbs.

Similar to the rack, the screw was used by torturers as a means of punishment and in an attempt to obtain a confession. The thumbscrew was also known as the thumbkin, with many spelling variations.

The pear of anguish

The pear of anguish is a device that early modern Europeans labeled as a medieval torture device. Supposedly, a torturer would insert the device into a person’s mouth, vagina, or anus to widen the orifice, causing extreme pain. However, scholars have questioned whether these devices originated in the Middle Ages, a period that ended around 1450.

Extant examples of the so-called anxiety pear contain coiled springs, suggesting that the people who made them lived during the early modern period following the Middle Ages. These examples are of unclear origin, and there are questions about how functional they would actually have been as orifice-widening torture devices.

The Iron Maiden

Another device of incomplete provenance is the iron maiden, a mythical instrument of torture that 19th-century Europeans falsely attributed to medieval Europeans. This is because there is no evidence that an iron maiden (an upright iron coffin with spikes inside) existed before the 19th century.

The myth that iron maidens existed during the Middle Ages was probably spread by the German philosopher Johann Philipp Siebenkees in the late 18th century, who wrote about how a coin counterfeiter in Nuremberg was executed with one in 1515. The earliest known iron maidens were constructed in the 19th century and passed off in museums as medieval torture devices.