Magical Field Trip!!

        We are the granddaughters of the witches you couldn't burn.... It has been a long standing tale that my mother was a witch in her day! Witches are something that have always fascinated both myself and my daughters. Not all witches are bad and history and mythology is full of stories of them. Even Shakespeare who we all adore had witches in his plays. 

        We have read about executions of so called "witches" before but until coming to this museum we had no idea the absolute depravity of it all. We knew witches had been burned at the stake before and hung but I guess you really have to see it to understand. We went to The Medieval Torture Museum to learn how criminals and such were treated back then. We really didn't know we would find so many things about witches.  

        Out of all the exhibits this is the one that stopped her. This is the one that really made her think what it was like, once upon a time. She said the girl looked "too real" it was sad knowing that these things actually happened and how horrible it would be to have some moron yell witch and have your whole life destroyed. 

        We also saw that burning and drowning were not even the worse things that happened to people accused of so called "witch craft".  Even men were not left out of being accused either. Johann Adelgrief and George Burroughs are just two that we heard about. 

      

       Sadly though it seems mostly women were accused of this crime and punished for it. We even found children had been accused. Thankfully we never saw any exhibits on that! 

        We also found the Witches Weighing. This is something we had never heard of either and had to do some more research on that! Seeing the scale measures there are points when just about any young woman could have been a witch! I weighed 88 lbs. the day I found out I was pregnant with my first child! It was pretty crazy to learn all about how people determined if one was a so called "witch" or not. 
     

        They also had an exhibit on the famous Vlad The Impaler better known as Dracula!! He was for sure a famous one in the Medieval Ages!

        While the Medieval Ages has always been our favorite time period and we have always said we could live there, it is safe to say we have rethought that! I am sure they would have zero tolerance for my magical little girl! It was a fascinating field trip on one hand. On the other we saw the horrifying things humans have done to other humans based on fear. It is sad that this is part of any history. We learn history so we are not doomed to repeat it. It is wonderful that we are no longer ruled by silly superstitions and fears. I couldn't imagine a world where my little girl having her cats or enjoying science would turn into a death sentence.