Those who saw her were stunned. A 17th-century vampire burial was found in the village of Pień, about 110 km east of Kraków.
A grave recently discovered in Poland has attracted worldwide attention. Polish archaeologists said they had not found a vampire grave for a long time before this discovery.
The 16th and 17th centuries are a period in which many people were murdered on charges of witchcraft and vampirism in both Europe and the Americas. People used to be so afraid of vampires and witches that they weren’t content to kill them. Many people who were killed on charges of witchcraft or vampirism were either crushed with heavy stones, staked or burned. In addition, there were also those who developed their own method for the deceased not to return.
Therefore, we can say that the skeleton found in the village of Pień has aroused excitement among archaeologists, as it was buried in a different way than the methods mentioned above.
According to archaeologists, the skeleton belongs to a woman who lived in the 17th century. The woman was buried with a sickle over her throat in case she could come out of the grave. So as soon as the corpse lifted her head, her throat would be slit. There was also a lock on the skeleton’s left big toe. Professor Dariusz Poliński said that the lock has a symbolic meaning.
There was a large stone in the mouth of the skeleton in the vampire grave found in the town of Kamień Pomorski in 2014.1 But no such object was found in the mouth of the skeleton in Pień.
Archaeologists in the excavation team stated that research on the skeleton will continue.
Vampirism in Poland
Vampire belief was widespread among Eastern European and Slavic communities before spreading throughout the world in the Modern Age. In Poland, the 16th and 17th centuries were the period when the belief in vampirism was most widespread. According to archaeological finds, many people were killed in Eastern Europe in those centuries on charges of vampirism.
- “Vampire” Skeleton Discovered in Poland, Medievalists.net, May 14, 2014[↩]