The Pit and the Pendulum 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 as sound, emphasizing its reality, unlike many of Poe's stories which are
Spanish Inquisition associated with Islam, Judaism, Catharism, and heresy in general. It was seen as a symptom of them more than as a condition or peculiarity in itself. The Catholic Church has regarded Freemasonry as heretical since about 1738; the "suspicion" of Freemasonry was potentially a capital offense. Spanish Inquisition records reveal two prosecutions in Spain and only a few more throughout the Spanish Empire. In 1815, Francisco Javier de Mier y Campillo, the Inquisitor General of the Spanish Inquisition and the Bishop of Almería, suppressed Freemasonry and denounced the lodges as "societies which lead to atheism, to sedition and to all