DON’T MESS WITH THE SCA: Indiana Woman Uses Society For Creative Anachronism Skills To Capture Intruder:

Karen Dolley, 43, was sleeping in her bed when she heard the sound of a man’s voice in her house in the middle of the night, the Indiana Star reports. She flipped the lights on a discovered there was a strange man standing in her living room.

But Dolley didn’t cower. Instead, instincts from years of training and conditioning in Medieval combat skills kicked in. She punched the man 10 times and cornered him.

“I didn’t think I was getting good blows in but my knuckles are bruised today,” Dolley told the Star. “Hitting someone like that, it isn’t like the movies. You’re expecting it to be louder and see people jerk around, but that’s not how it happens in real life.”

Dolley owns a gun, but when she went to grab it, she opened the wrong drawer in the chaos of the moment. So she reached for her ninjato — which is a sword used in the Japanese feudal period.

She held the man at sword point until police arrived minutes later.

She began training in combat when she was 18 as a fighter for the group Society for Creative Anachronism, the Star reports. The group is dedicated to recreating arts and skills of pre-17th Century Europe.

That was a rough period, so if your skills are suitable for pre-17th Century Europe, you’re pretty good.