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
The Spanish Inquisition (Monty Python) in which one character mentions that they "didn't expect a Spanish Inquisition!", often in irritation at being questioned by another. The first appearance of the Spanish Inquisition occurs in a drawing room set in "Jarrow, 1912". A mill worker (Graham Chapman) enters the room and tells a woman sitting on a couch knitting (Carol Cleveland) that "one of the cross beams has gone out askew on the treadle". When she says that he doesn't know what he's talking about, the mill worker gets defensive and says, "I didn't expect a kind of Spanish Inquisition!" Then the Inquisition — consisting of