By skyforbes 
That Probably Never Existed
If you’ve scrolled through TikTok recently, you may have seen creators sentencing bad cooks to the “Pear of Anguish.” The name alone is enough to send chills down your spine. But what exactly is this bizarre object — and why is it suddenly everywhere online?
A Device Out of Nightmares
The Pear of Anguish is typically described as a pear-shaped metal object divided into segments. A key or screw at the base forces these segments outward, transforming the smooth form into a jagged blossom. In legend, this device was forced into the mouths, rectums, or vaginas of victims, then expanded to tear flesh from within.
To a modern audience, it reads like a perfect symbol of medieval sadism — inventive, cruel, and grotesquely theatrical.
Peeling Back the Legend
Yet the truth is far less certain. There’s almost no historical evidence that the Pear of Anguish was ever actually used for torture. The first mention of such a device appears not in medieval chronicles but in 1639, in a French text by F. de Calvi. There, the “pear” is not a tool of torture but a gag allegedly used by a criminal to silence his victims.
From there, the story shifts. By the nineteenth century, a time fascinated with both science and spectacle, objects resembling the pear were displayed in museums as “torture devices.” Their grim narrative was rarely questioned. The Victorians, eager to dramatize the barbarity of the past, helped cement the pear’s reputation as a weapon of cruelty.
Historians Weigh In
Modern scholarship has grown skeptical. Historians such as Chris Bishop argue that the pear was never designed for torture at all. Its delicate craftsmanship and mechanical fragility suggest other possible uses. In fact, Bishop argues they may have been surgical tools, glove stretchers for softening leather, or even 19th-century forgeries displayed as curiosities crafted to shock nineteenth-century museum visitors. That, we don’t know.
What we know for certain is this: no medieval court records, no torture manuals, and no contemporary evidence ever confirm its use as an instrument of punishment.
The Darkness We Want to Believe
Why, then, does the Pear of Anguish endure? The answer lies less in the Middle Ages and more in our imagination. The device fits neatly into what scholars call “dark medievalism” — the tendency to view the medieval past as uniquely brutal, a theater of barbarity contrasted against our supposed modern civility.
The pear is less an artifact of torture than an artifact of fear. It reflects not medieval cruelty but our fascination with imagining it.
A Symbol Reborn: Why TikTok Loves It
So why is this dubious object trending today? Enter TikTok’s Potluck Courtroom trend. Creators like Shaiie (@shaiie_foeva) theatrically “sentence” food creators to medieval punishments for culinary crimes. Outlandish devices like the Pear of Anguish or the Judas Cradle are named as punishments for everything from putting raisins in potato salad to overcooking pasta.
Like many myths, the Pear of Anguish refuses to fade. From lurid nineteenth-century displays to twenty-first-century TikTok memes, its pear-shaped shadow continues to expand. The device has become more than an object; it is a cultural symbol, endlessly reinterpreted and repurposed. The truth may be mundane, but the myth has proven irresistible.
The Pear of Anguish was likely never turned by the hand of a torturer. Instead, it has tortured centuries of imagination, stretching our fears, our fascination, and our hunger for the macabre. In the end, the pain it inflicts is not physical but psychological — a reminder of how easily we prefer horrors to history.
