Workers recently stumbled upon a horrifying graveyard near the historic cathedral in Chelm, Poland. While removing tree roots for an ongoing garden renovation project at the Uniate Bishop’s Palace, maintenance staff discovered the skeletal remains of two medieval children, one of whom showed evidence of a “vampire burial.”
Though they are often featured in modern horror films and novels, folk beliefs in vampires persisted throughout the Middle Ages, especially in parts of Eastern Europe such as modern-day Poland. Numerous archaeological cemeteries contain the remains of people suspected to be vampires.vampireThe “corpses” were buried according to the customs of the time. These cruel practices included dismembering, weighting down, and fastening the bodies to stakes to prevent them from rising as bloodthirsty monsters (also known as “ghosts”). On September 12th, Facebook Post A report by the Lublin Voivodeship’s monuments preservation officer, translated from Polish, said there was “no doubt” that at least one child found at the 13th-century excavation site of Góra Celumska showed clear signs of having been treated in a similar way.
“The burial site clearly shows traces of anti-vampire practices aimed at preventing the dead from coming back to life,” Stanisław Golub, the archaeologist who led the excavation, said in a statement. Archaeology News.
In this case, those tasked with preventing vampires carried out their task thoroughly: they first decapitated the corpses, then placed the head face-down in the grave. A heavy stone was then placed on top of the torso, to “prevent the alleged devil from leaving the grave,” according to the Lublin Voivodeship’s Office for the Preservation of Antiquities. Both burials were in alabaster and tilted along an east-west axis, a common tradition of the time.
But what was particularly striking about the grave was what was missing: The child was not buried in a coffin, and was not found with customary grave goods, Golb explained. And given that no cemeteries are known to have existed near any religious sites, the accumulating evidence suggests that, at least for some period of time, local residents may have been using the area for unrecorded burials.
[Related: Mummified brains show cocaine arrived in Europe earlier than we thought.]
Medieval fears of vampires were misunderstood and often A very real health concern Communities at the time were inclined to attribute everything from widespread disease to misunderstood psychological conditions to supernatural causes such as vampirism or demonic possession. Modern forensic analysis has Cases dating back to the 18th centuryThe accused vampires were simply unfortunate victims of tuberculosis.
In the comments section of the original post, the Lublin Voivodeship Monument Preservation Society acknowledged that more precise details, such as the children’s gender, ages and cause of death, are still unknown. However, further research is likely to shed light on additional aspects of vampire history.
