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Why are "vampire graves" occasionally discovered in Poland?

2023-09-07 08:31:00, Blog CNA

At the end of July, during archaeological excavations near Bydgoszcz in Northern Poland, the remains of a child who lived about 400 years ago and who had special characteristics were found: his body was buried in a boat and on the left wrist was
placed a kind of large padlock.

This discovery is very unique for the young age of the deceased, but is not unusual in itself. The particular position of the burial and the presence of padlocks or other unusual objects are among the typical elements of what we sometimes hear called "vampire graves".

These objects were thought to be suitable to prevent supposed supernatural beings or evil spirits from possessing dead people and bringing them back to life, as was believed at the time to be the case. The little boy's body was found in a cemetery discovered 18 years ago under a sunflower field in the village of Pien, where about 100 ancient graves have been found in recent years.

The researcher from the department of medieval history at the Nicolaus Copernicus University in the city of Toru who is leading the excavations, Dariush Polinski, explained that it was a cemetery for poor people, or what he called "abandoned souls excluded from society". Speaking to The New York Times, Polinski said that this is the only known case of a burial of this type involving a child in Europe. However, there are several examples of adult remains buried with similar precautions.

In August 2022, the remains of a young woman were discovered in the same cemetery, who was also buried with a padlock on her big toe and a sickle between her chest and head. The causes of her death are not clear, but the sickle was supposed to cut her throat if she revived and tried to rise from the grave. Meanwhile, in Luzino, near the city of Gdansk, in the northernmost part of the country, a mass grave containing the remains of 450 people who lived in the 19th century and were buried in similar ways was discovered in June. Among other things, about 1/5 of the bones had bricks near their heads, arms
and legs, while some had severed heads, which were placed between their legs.

Maciej Stromski, the archaeologist in charge of the dig, explains that at the time it was thought that if a family member of a dead person died immediately after the relative's funeral, he might be a vampire. For this reason, after the burial, the body was exhumed and the head was cut off, to be placed between the legs.

Similar burials have been observed in other areas of Poland, as well as in Slovakia, Hungary, Austria and Romania. All Eastern European countries. The key and padlock, as well as the supine position, which was supposed to trap the resurrected dead, are characteristic of an apotropaic burial, that is, aimed at warding off evil. While they were often labeled "vampire cemeteries" or "anti-vampire" burials, they were mostly used for people who for one reason or another were considered strange, different, or unfortunate. Vampires, perceived as fantastical and immortal creatures that feed on the blood of human beings, are well-known figures worldwide.

The typical vampire that has been depicted in literature and cinema - with a frightening appearance - owes mainly to the novel "Dracula" by the Irish writer Bram Stoker. In fact, he is very different from the demons of Slavic folklore from which he also derives as a myth. In the collective imagination, vampires are a specific type of reanimated creature that feeds on the blood of humans, infecting them. On the other hand, in Polish folklore, very similar creatures called upiór (upir) and strziga, have existed since the Middle Ages.

These spirits could occupy the bodies of dead people to then torture living beings or animals, sometimes drinking their blood, and sometimes devouring their flesh and bones. In general, Eastern European folklore imagined them as beings who resurrected the bodies of dead people and who spread disease, death, and destruction.

As Stacey Abbott, author of a book on the history of legends about vampires and zombies in the 21st century, explains, in reality these terms denoted people who for some reason were considered "different", or who did not adhere to the norms of the society of the time.

Bethan Briggs-Miller, an expert in folklore and historian of paranormal phenomena, recently told the Washington Post that for these reasons they could not be buried in a regular cemetery, nor in a hallowed ground, for fear of their return. in life, resurrected by evil spirits.

To prevent this, nails or padlocks were placed on their corpses. In some cases, people pierced their bodies with wooden sticks and chopped off their legs and arms, or after exhuming them, they cut off their heads or burned them. Ebot cites as an example the case of the woman buried with a sickle around her throat, which according to him could have been isolated from her social group because of a physical deformity, for whatever habit was considered "immoral", or simply one of the prejudices many related to her gender.

Polinski also seems to agree with this, according to which these people were probably excluded from society because they were not baptized, died by suicide, or exhibited behavior considered strange. Among other things, it was believed that evil spirits could possess the souls of those who died early from epidemics. It does not seem a coincidence that most burials of this type in Poland date back to the 17th century, a period which Polinski has defined as "a century of wars, crises and an extremely harsh climate, like a kind of ice age".

On the other hand, the function that these ancient spirits had was the same as that of other entities present in cultures around the world: they were blamed for misfortune or disease at a time when viruses and bacteria were not yet known and when there was no scientific or understandable explanation for many of the things that were happening./ Adapted in Albanian by CNA