Workers clearing tree branches near a cathedral in Chelm, Poland, made an unexpected discovery when they came across the remains of two children in a shallow burial pit where graves could not be marked, the government’s Ministry of Culture said.
No skeleton was buried in the box and one of the children was buried with features of an anti-vampire burial, Dr. Stanisława Gołuba, the archaeologist leading the research, said Facebook. The child’s head was separated from its body, said the pole, the skull was face down on the ground and arranged on a stone. This, along with the way the bones were facing, seems to be consistent with ancient burial methods used to prevent a person believed to be possessed by demons from leaving the grave, Gołuba said.
The bones appear to be from the Middle Ages.
The children’s remains were removed from their graves, documented and awaiting further analysis, the statement said.
It is the latest in a series of discoveries in Poland of remains buried in ways that suggest people at the time believed they were dealing with vampires or other supernatural entities.
In 2022, Polish researchers he found the remains of a woman in the cemetery of the village of Pień with a sickle around his neck and a triangular lock on his foot. According to ancient beliefs, the lock was supposed to prevent a dead person thought to be a vampire from returning from the dead. The sickle was thought to cut the neck if the corpse tried to rise from the grave.
Professor Dariusz Polinski of Nicolaus Copernicus University in Torun said this type of practice became common throughout Poland in the 17th century due to the reported vampire epidemic. In addition to beheadings, corpses were sometimes burned, stoned, or beheaded.
Six so-called “vampire skeletons” were also found in a cemetery in northwestern Poland in 2013. Each was buried with a sickle around their neck or stones placed under their jaws, said Lesley Gregoricka of the University of South Alabama who led the study. the group.
contributed to this report.