Witchcraft: Superstition & Mass Hysteria in Europe and America

In Würzburg, a small town in southern Germany, in 1628, a ten-year-old boy called Hoel was forced to sit on a horse outside the church and watch while his mother’s breasts were cut off and pushed in the faces of his elder brothers as they had their skin torn off with red-hot pincers. A man of religion had to watch the youngster’s reaction as his father had a metal spike pushed through his body from his rectum and, finally, while his whole family was burnt alive. Hoel evidently failed the test because, less than a month later, he too suffered the same fate. The crime that he and his family had been accused of was witchcraft.