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Punish the Sinners

Teacher Peter Blasam arrives in Neilsville as suicides spread among schoolgirls. A secret medieval ritual is underway, while hysteria or supernatural forces may be driving the deaths.

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Italy 1252. Inquisition. Accusation. Fear. Torture. The guilty and the innocent dying for sins real and imagined in the flames of the burning stake. Neilsville, 1978. Peter Blasam has come to this sleepy desert town to teach its youth, and finds a mystery of mounting horror. Something is happening to the young girls of St. Francis Xavier High School -- something evil. In bloodlet and terror a suicide contagion has swept the two... while a dark order of its holy men enacts a secret medieval ritual. Is hysteria manipulating these innocent children into violent self-destruction? Or has supernatural force, a thirteenth-century madness, returned to... Punish The Sinners .

First published: 1978
Publisher: Dell Book
Pages: 416
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Book tags

Content warnings

Child Death
Child Harm
Religious Abuse / Trauma
Suicide
Torture

Missing warnings do not mean other content is absent.

Horror profile

Scary: Not rated
Creepy: Not rated
Gore: Not rated
Disturbing: Not rated
Weird: Not rated

How we calculate this

These are editorial estimates of intensity, informed by reading and review evidence, then checked before publication. They aren't star ratings, reader-vote averages or a measure of quality.

Each dimension runs from 1 (low) to 5 (exceptionally intense). A 5 is reserved for strongly consistent evidence. People experience horror differently.

Scary: Fear, tension and immediate threat.
Creepy: Unease, dread and an uncanny atmosphere.
Gore: Graphic injury, blood and bodily detail.
Disturbing: Upsetting ideas and lingering psychological impact.
Weird: Surreal, strange and reality-bending elements.

We draw a filled profile only when all five scores have been reviewed. Unrated does not mean mild. Missing scores are not estimated from genre tags or your saved taste. This profile isn't a complete content-warning guide.