How were people impaled? How were fully grown adults raised above tall spikes and such?

The prisoner would be tied to a frame with his legs spread apart. A block could be placed under his pelvis to keep his buttocks slightly raised.

A stake about the thickness of a man’s arm would then be prepared – sharpened, but the point blunted, so as to push internal organs aside rather than pierce them, and greased. A crossbar might be added to keep the prisoner from sliding down and expiring too quickly.

The executioner would then kneel down behind the prisoner, hold the stake over his knee and maneuver the point into the victim’s anus (or sometimes vagina if a woman). According to some accounts, the orifice could be slit wider to ease the stake inside, and a herbal paste designed to stop the bleeding applied. One of his assistants would hold a board or paddle against the other end of the stake to make it easier to hit, while another assistant would use a large mallet to hammer the stake into the victim. A skilled executioner would guide the stake into the victim along his or her spine, avoiding vital organs to prolong the torment.

An alternative method involved tying a spreadeagled victim’s legs to a horse and pulling him on a stake fixed in place on the ground, but this was less precise and could lead to a relatively quick demise.

Once the stake was firmly inside the victim, he was untied from the frame, and the stake hoisted up and set into a pre-made hole by the executioners. The victim’s own weight and struggles forced him or her further down, sometimes arrested by a crossbar to prolong torture. There the condemned would be left to die of exposure, blood loss, sepsis and shock, which could sometimes take up to a week if the victim was kept hydrated and warm. Without a crossbar, the victim would eventually sink down on the stake until it came out of his shoulder or mouth.

The Ottoman Turks, Cossacks, Poles and Dutch colonialists in Batavia were known for being especially fond of and skilled in administering this punishment. It was cruel enough to be considered excessive even by most medieval legal systems, and was therefore practiced rarely and only on the most heinous offenders in most nations.

A technique sometimes used by Soviet Gulag inmates to informally punish a transgressor involved tying the victim in a fetal position with his backside exposed, gagging him with his own pants, and carrying him outside where an improvised short stake, usually a large metal crowbar, was stuck in the ground. Two or three strong inmates would then place the victim over the bar and force him down. This was called “pulling a Turk” on someone.