Brutal Ancient Torture Technique Once Used On Spies Was Shockingly Simple But Left Deep Scars

It’s the kind of thing that messes with your mind more than your body

Throughout history, humans have come up with all kinds of ways to hurt or punish each other. From simple tools to bizarre inventions, people have always found creative methods for causing pain or worse, death.

Take, for example, the infamous story of a Greek man who made a giant metal bull to roast victims alive inside only to end up being the first one roasted in his own creation. Or consider the wild method that involved covering someone in honey, trapping them between boats, and letting a swarm of insects do the rest. Pretty disturbing stuff.

But among all these complex and gruesome ideas, there’s one method that stands out for being brutally effective despite how simple it is—Chinese water torture. It doesn’t use fire or bugs, just water. And it’s been known to break people mentally.

Now, just to set the record straight—it turns out this method isn’t actually Chinese. The earliest mention of it comes from an Italian man who lived during the late 1400s and early 1500s.

That man, Hippolytus de Marsiliis, described how the nonstop dripping of water on a person’s forehead could drive them to madness. The repetition and inescapable sensation eventually led some to a complete mental breakdown.

Here’s how it worked: the person would be tied down underneath a dripping water source. They could see each drop coming before it hit their head. One drop after another, with nowhere to move and no way to stop it. Sounds simple, but it was incredibly damaging over time.

In the beginning, it probably just felt like a harmless drip or two. But as time passed, those small drops started to feel unbearable. For people forced to endure it, the pain wasn’t just physical—it wore down their mental state, too.

When the team behind MythBusters decided to test out the method, they discovered that if someone was relaxed and not tied down, it didn’t really do much. But for someone who was restrained and stressed out, the experience was way more intense and mentally exhausting.

After the episode aired, someone even reached out to let them know that the torture was far worse when the drops came at unpredictable times. Apparently, the randomness made it especially terrifying which honestly makes sense, and is kind of creepy to think about.

Turns out, that fear of not knowing when the next drop would hit played a huge role. It created this deep sense of anxiety that just kept building. That anxiety could be enough to push someone over the edge emotionally and mentally.

One guy with a leaky sink actually decided to put the torture to the test. He filmed himself lying under the drip to see how long he could last. After just thirty minutes, he said he felt ‘claustrophobic’ and was so thrown off by the water that he couldn’t relax at all.

He only made it for under two hours before calling it quits. Of course, people who were truly subjected to this method didn’t have the option to give up. They had to endure it, whether they could handle it or not.

Back in 2012, an Australian artist named Lottie Consalvo tried the torture herself as part of a performance. She went through the experience for a full seven hours.

“I went though stages of total discomfort and then to this place, I went to this beautiful place at one stage where the drops were going on my head, really cold, and then falling onto my eye, and warming up in there, and then dripping (down the side of my face) like a tear, and it felt like I was crying.” she told SBS.

At one point, she even felt like she was lying beside her late sister. It’s safe to say this isn’t something anyone should try on a whim. Seriously, don’t attempt it at home.