The Graves Of “Vampires” In Poland
Miroslav Blicharski/AlexsanderThis skeleton was found with a sickle across her throat, a sure sign that her contemporaries believed that she was a vampire.
Though stories of real vampires like Arnold Paole and Peter Plogojowitz were well documented by officials who witnessed their exhumations, many accused vampires were dealt with by villagers without the authorities looking over their shoulders. To understand the breadth of this, you only have to look at recent archaeological discoveries of “vampires” in Poland.
While excavating a site near Pień, for example, archaeologists uncovered a shocking sight: a female skeleton with a sickle laid across her throat and a padlock on her toe. As experts explained, this was a preventive measure to keep the “vampire” from rising from the dead.
“The sickle was not laid flat but placed on the neck in such a way that if the deceased had tried to get up most likely the head would have been cut off or injured,” Nicolaus Copernicus University Professor Dariusz Poliński explained to the Washington Post of the hair-raising find.
Maciej StromskiA headless skeleton in Luzino, Poland, which was apparently decapitated to keep a “vampire” from rising from the dead.
The more they looked, the more “vampire” graves the archaeologists found near Pień. Most recently, they uncovered the grave of a child with a padlock on its ankle. The child had been buried face-down, which was likely another preventive measure to keep the vampire from rising from the dead.
A similar discovery was also made in Luzino, Poland, where archaeologists found a graveyard full of vampires. Many had been dug up and reburied, and some were decapitated. Many of the dead had coins in their mouths, and others had bricks laid near their arms and legs.
In Polish lore, vampires are like zombies — corpses that can rise from the dead. Thus, measures like laying a sickle across a grave or putting bricks on a skeleton were meant to keep them buried securely in the ground.