Recently between late August and early September 2022, Professor Dariusz Poliński and a team of researchers from the University of Nicolaus Copernicus were conducting the dig when they discovered a mysterious skeleton, who had been pinned to the ground with a sickle in her throat. They unearthed the remains of an alleged "female vampire" in a 17th-century cemetery in Pien, Poland.
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| Image credit: mirror.co.uk |
The researchers did not reveal the age of the woman when she died but disclosed that a silk cap on her skull was recovered–signifying that she was of high social status.
Upon closer inspection, the woman had teeth protruding at the front of her mouth, which might have led people in the 17th century to believe that she was a bloodsucker.
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| Image credit: heritagedaily.com |
During the 18th century, vampire sightings across Eastern Europe had reached its peak, with frequent exhumations and the practice of staking to kill potential revenants. This period was commonly referred to as the “18th-Century Vampire Controversy”.
According to heritagedaily.com, one of the earliest vampiric depictions stems from cuneiform texts by the Akkadians, Samarians, Assyrians and Babylonians, where they referred to demonic figures such as the Lilu and Lilitu.
Poliński explained that the sickle was not laid down but placed around the neck in such a way, it was a custom practiced by those who believed that the dead could rise again. Commonly used by superstitious Poles in the 1600s to try and restrain a ‘vampire’.
Around the body were measures used hundreds of years ago by those fearful the dead would rise, including a sickle placed over her neck and a padlock on a toe.
The sickle would have decapitated the monster when it sat up while the padlock was commonly used in the 1600s in Poland during burial ceremonies to symbolize “the impossibility of returning.”
Previous burials have been found in Poland showing anti-vampiric customs, such as several skeletons with severed heads unearthed in Kraków, or a medieval "Vampire" skull on the Venetian island of Lazzaretto Nuovo which had a brick forced in the mouth, however, this is the first example in Poland where a sickle has been positioned to prevent ascension to vampirism.
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