When digging on the ground in foot, Poland, archaeologists were amazed at what was discovered: it was the skull of someone with a sickle on his neck. Investigating further, yesIt was about a vampire woman from the 17th century, and the weapon would serve to prevent if she got up.
As if it were a horror story.
It was the reality of Europe at that time, where fear of fantastic characters such as vampires and witches was the order of the day.
The teacher Dariusz Polinsky, of the Nicolaus Copernicus University, led the work, explaining to the Daily Mail details about the find.
The remains showed what was left of a silk cap and a protruding front tooth, in addition to the sickle, with the edge just above the neck of the woman accused of being a “vampire”.
“The sickle was not laid flat,” Polinski noted, “rather, it was placed on the neck in such a way that if the deceased had tried to get up…the head would have been severed or injured.”
In addition, he had a padlock on his left foot, which probably meant “the closure of a stage and the impossibility of returning.”
Europe, terrified by vampire tales, takes its forecasts
Such burial practices in the 17th century “became common in Poland, in response to a ‘vampire outbreak’,” Prof Polinski added.
Vampires were horror characters, undead who were accused of sucking the blood of the living. These fantastic stories have frightened Europeans since at least the 11th century.
Hence, many people who were accused of being vampires were executed, and ended up being buried with provisions such as that of the woman from Pien, Poland. Magazine Smithsonian, quoted by ScienceAlert, he explains that the locals believed that “vampires would rise from the grave as blood-sucking monsters.”
Polinski notes that other forms of protection against the “return of the dead” included “cut off the head or the legs, place the deceased face down so that he would bite the ground, burn him and crush him with a stone”. It was also nailed to the skeleton with a metal bar.
Nothing was enough to prevent the dead… from staying dead.