The woman, considered a vampire, was buried with a scythe placed on her neck in order to prevent her awakening.
The remains of this ‘vampire’ woman were found in a 17th-century Polish cemetery with a scythe resting on her neck to prevent her from rising from the dead and wandering the earth. Another detail is that her skeleton had a protruding front tooth . The discovery was made by a group of archaeologists led by Professor Dariusz Poliński of the Nicholas Copernicus University.
In Eastern Europe the fear of vampires has been widespread since the eleventh century, when the dead began to be buried following rituals to prevent the awakening of the dead. It was believed that some of them could find their way back to earth as monsters capable of sucking the blood of their victims. In Poland , these rituals began to take hold in the 17th century.
The find was unexpected because, usually, the classic anti-vampire rituals involved the fracture of the skull with a metal rod, the cutting of the legs or the head, the cremation or the burial of the corpse upside down.
The corpse found in Poland, in addition to the scythe affixed to the neck, also had a closed padlock on the big toe of the left foot as if to prevent the corpse itself from moving. The scythe was positioned so that if the deceased tried to get up, her head would be cut off or, at least, her neck would be injured.
- ‘Vampire’ in Poland Found Buried With a Sickle to Prevent The Rise of The Dead (sciencealert.com)
