Polish Vampire

Just in time for the fall season, *and* Halloween, comes the news of a recent discovery in Poland of a 17th-century “Vampire” burial.

An archaeological team led by Dariusz Polinsky of the Nicholas Copernicus University was conducting excavations around an Early Modern graveyard near Bydgoszcz when they unearthed the skeleton shown here. It belonged to a woman of high social standing — she had a costly and unusual silk cap — whose neck was covered across with a scythe. Additionally, one of her big toes had a padlock on it.

Both of these measures were likely to have been done by villagers who thought that she might have been a vampire — if she sat up in her grave, the scythe could have cut off her head. The lock symbolized that she wouldn’t be able to return from the grave.

Western Europeans were infected with fears of vampires in the 1700s, but evidence for anti-vampire deterrents existed at least a century earlier to the east. Around Poland, beheaded corpses and skulls with bricks shoved into their mouths have been found, and peasants were also known to burn dead bodies and to bury corpses face down to prevent vampires from digging out of their graves.

This recent graveyard discovery adds to the evidence, with Polinsky observing that the woman had unusually large front teeth. In fact, they likely would have protruded visibly, a feature that might have contributed to locals accusing her of vampirism.