Archaeologists working at a site near the city of Pień in Poland. recently unearthed a relic of the so-called 18th century vampires in Eastern Europe.

In a small cemetery, they found the body of a woman who had been buried with a scythe around her neck and a lock on the tip of her left foot.

As reported Daily heritagethe reports of the alleged vampires have arrived its peak in Europe was in the eighteenth century, together with exhumations and stables.

The vampire woman who haunted Europe

This tomb find dates back to the 17th century, before the fear of vampires reached its peak. However, the experts have it clear whoever buried the unidentified woman went out of their way to make sure she didn’t return from the dead.

University professor Nicolaus Copernicus Dariusz Poliński explained that, depending on the position of the body and the scythe, the intention was to behead the woman if she tried to rise from the grave to terrorize the living.

“The scythe was not placed in a horizontal position, but on the neck in such a way that if the deceased had tried to stand up, it is very likely that they would have cut off his head or injured it,” Poliński told the British media. Daily mail.

Records of undead myths in Eastern Europe date back to the 11th century.but in some regions the myths were so believed that they caused hysteria among the people. This has led to many allegations of vampirism against those who died prematurely, especially by suicide.

This hysteria became so prominent that, at the end of the 17th century, throughout Poland strange burial practices in response to a vampire “outbreak”and many bodies were posthumously mutilated.

“Other ways to protect yourself from the return of the dead are to cut off his head or legsplace the deceased face down so that they bite into the ground, burn it and crush it with a stone, “explains Poliński.

Interestingly, the vampire woman discovered by the Nicolaus Copernicus University team he also wore a silk hat, a luxury item in the 17th century. This indicates that he probably had a high social status in his community.

This supports more recent theories that thePeople labeled “vampires” during this period were not strangers or newcomers to cities that aroused suspicion. and distrust of the locals. Rather, they were the same premises.

A similar discovery in northwestern Poland several years ago also offers more information on how and why the residents performed these strange burials.

The other vampire women and men

According to Smithsonian Magazine, in 2014, researchers discovered six other skeletons, each with a scythe placed on their bodies, in a grave in northwestern Poland.

After conducting a biogeochemical analysis of the bones, they made a surprising discovery: The six “vampires” were all from the area and not, as previously believed, strangers that citizens would be wary of.

“These individuals were not suspected of becoming vampires because of their non-locals identity, but rather were wary in an additional social context as members of the local community,” the researchers reported at the time.