Had fun this past week? Exercised your imagination cortexes and jacked in to the groove matrix? Well, to hell with you. Actual Hell! Consensus has been reached, dark pacts have been sealed in blood and ink, and by the cruel voices forcing their way through the meat of my throat I declare Thunderdome to commence!

Your prompt: A moment of historical horror. The knowing alchymist shall take one part Horror and mix thusly with one part Historical Fiction, until the sepia remuneration of the brutally real mates grotesquely with what man was not meant to know. Taketh thou a moment in history, a fixed time or event, and write it septic with shadow - the horror mayest spring from the moment, from its context in history, or from any other source, so long as it maintains its fixed point in the unremembered past and terrifies with each shivering syllable.

But all the Devil's contracts bear a catch: The wary wizard knows that to neglect his research is to flirt with things worse than those damnations with which he is familiar. Research your work. Get a solid grounding of what actually occurred, so that a casual Googling won't display anything out of thematic scope.