Oubliette, anyone?

Think about your worst fear. What would it be? Being buried alive is pretty bad. And apparently that was enough of a fear for people to outfit their coffins with little bells rigged to ring if you woke up and found yourself prematurely interred.    

This fear got to me as a child whilst watching Vincent Price as Roderick Usher in Edgar Allen Poe’s The Fall of the House of Usher. His sister Madeline is buried alive to keep her from leaving the cursed house with the man who loves her. I still hear in my head the sound of her screeching “RODERICK” and the clawing sounds as she desperately tried to escape from her coffin. Not unheard of, there have been cases where coffins have been exhumed and we see claw marks from the poor soul who was not so lucky.

So imagine, if you will, the medieval castle. From the outside, they are formidable and impressive - giant stone fortresses built to house royalty and protect beautiful treasures. And for an imaginative child, here lived princesses, kings, queens, jewels, and the stories that go with them, of course, happily ever after.  

Castles walls tell stories if you pay attention. Several times I have toured the Tower of London, and I always touch the walls inside where I pick up great sadness and despair. More than that, though, is the fear that has been left behind. That’s a castle where horrible atrocities awaited those who were unlucky to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.    

Some castles appear to be fresh out of storybooks. But inside, centuries ago, castles were not at all luxurious. They were cold, damp, dark and oppressive. Those tapestries you see in museums had a practical function; they kept in the heat. The castle keep also housed vermin, stench, and intrigue. And while nobility went about their lives, very bad things happened behind the scenes.   

It didn’t take much to get you in trouble when the crown was at stake. Accusations spread like wildfire, taking out whole family bloodlines by unfortunate means. A king’s cousin could be imprisoned for merely the suspicion of seeking the throne. The punishment might be anything from a few days in a cold and dark tower to house arrest with the comforts of lords and ladies in waiting.    

But if you were a nobody – so much so that it was a waste of time to simply put you out of your misery, there was one fate that was worse than anything else. A castle wouldn’t be a castle without a myriad of ways to deal with you and your transgressions. For a while, some prisoners would be kept up in the towers, locked up near the daily activities of the family. Locked high up above ground, you would be unable to escape the smells of the food and the laughter of family as daily life carried on.    

Who could enjoy daily life while listening to the wails of a pitiful prisoner and smelling the foul stench emanating from his quarters? No one. The answer was to move the prisoners down out of the way into the bowels of the castle. This location was an ideal out of the way solution, both for storing prisoners and encouraging confessions by way of grotesque manners of torture. What is worse than the idea of a dungeon? 

The oubliette.      

Taken from the French word oublier, to forget, that is exactly what happened. Imagine getting caught doing something you shouldn’t. Or maybe not. Maybe you were merely accused by someone out of spite. You weren’t important enough for a public execution. In fact, no one even knows who you are, so no one will notice if you disappear. They drop you into an opening barely wide enough for your whole body. Above your head, the grate drops into place covering the pit, much like a trap door. It’s a slow and miserable death, meant to destroy you psychologically before you physically succumb. You will die like this, but it takes a while when locked up and forgotten. You are unable to move - not even able to raise your arms. There’s no way out, and you are well aware of your fate. In fact, death can’t come soon enough. But it doesn’t. You are still alive. You may or may not get rotten bits of food or stagnant water dropped down.  You will be so cold, standing in your own urine and excrement. It’s so dark. When they dropped you in, you broke your feet as you hit the stone floor. The wounds fester and attract rats as they begin to nibble your putrid toes, and there’s nothing to be done about it.  

  

The horror lasts far longer than you think. You might last a few weeks. But the worst is what happens to your mind.  

    

What would you think about? You may be sorry, but you are out of luck.

Drawings ©Johanna Westerman 2016 exclusively for this steemit post