Selección Terror: Torturadas

About this issue

This 1978 Spanish pulp horror novel titled "Torturadas" (Tortured) by Ralph Barby follows Sandra, a young woman institutionalized in a girls' reformatory. The narrative depicts her violent outbursts and forced sedation by sadistic female guards, followed by her transfer to a mental institution. The central sequence describes Sandra's apparent participation in a satanic ritual where robed, skeletal figures extract her living heart from her body while she remains conscious. She is then dressed in ceremonial black robes and forced to pour the contents of a silver chalice over a dead fetus on an altar, which ignites in supernatural blue flames. The account concludes with Sandra experiencing visions of falling through demonic eyes and inhuman sounds. The remainder shifts to a framing narrative where a woman named Angie plays the recorded testimony to a skeptical physician, Dan Lastman, presenting the impossible account as genuine rather than hallucination.