The Pit and the Pendulum and you find an appeal to the nerves by tawdry physical affrightments." The Pit and the Pendulum "The Pit and the Pendulum" is a short story written by Edgar Allan Poe and first published in 1842 in the literary annual "The Gift: A Christmas and New Year's Present for 1843". The story is about the torments endured by a prisoner of the Spanish Inquisition, though Poe skews historical facts. The narrator of the story describes his experience of being tortured. The story is especially effective at inspiring fear in the reader because of its heavy focus on the senses, such
Black Legend of the Spanish Inquisition saying: In America in the 19th century, knowledge of the Inquisition was spread by Protestant polemical writers and historians such as Prescott and John Lothrop, whose ideology influenced the story. Along with the myths woven around the execution of witches in America the myth of the Inquisition was maintained as a malevolent abstraction, sustained by anti-Catholicism. According to Peters, the terms "inquisition", "inquisitorial" and "witch hunt" became generalized in American society in the 1950s to refer to oppression by its government, whether referring to the past or the present, this was possibly due to the influence of contemporary European authors.