The skeleton of a “vampire woman” with a scythe around her neck was found at a burial site in Poland in the 17th century. According to the researchers responsible for the discovery, the remains from Nicholas Copernicus University are also… a padlock attached to one of her toes.
The study was carried out by a team led by Professor Dariusz Poliński, who told the British Daily Mail that this was an unusual burial. According to the professor, such measures were used, for example, to “protect against the return of the dead.”
“Means of guarding against the return of the dead included cutting off his head or legs, putting the deceased on his stomach, burning him, and crushing him with a stone,” Poliński said. Said.
“The scythe was not placed horizontally, but was placed on the neck in such a way that if the deceased tried to get up, he would most likely be decapitated or injured,” he said.
On the discovery, the professor’s team also found that the skull had a thirsty hood on its head, suggesting it may have belonged to a high-status person at the time of its burial.
In 2015, archaeologists in the village of Drewsko, about 20 kilometers away, found five similarly buried skeletons in a 400-year-old cemetery.
They were found with scythes pressed into the throats of an adult male, aged 35-44, and an adult woman, aged 35-39.
An elderly woman, who was in her 50s and 60s when she died, was buried with a scythe on her hip and a medium-sized stone in her throat.
Two more graves were found, both with sickles at their throats: graves belonging to an adult woman aged 30 to 39 and a young woman aged 14 to 19.
The researchers who made the discovery said that at the time it was done to “ensure the dead remain in their graves” and also “to protect the dead from evil forces.”
source: Noticias
