They find a “vampire woman” with a scythe around her neck to prevent her from rising from the grave.

The fear of the dead coming back shook Europe in ancient times. Vampire legends existed in Eastern Europe and the myth was already known in biblical accounts. Now a new discovery has recreated the problem. They discover the remains of a woman accused of being a “vampire” and buried in a remote town in Poland.

The remains of this “vampire woman” were found nailed to the ground with a scythe at her throat and a locked toe “to prevent her return from the dead.” In this way, they ensured that the city could not be destroyed again.

A vampire’s body

This finding is a cA 17th-century cemetery in the Polish city of Bienne. The researchers found that the skeletons had a silk cap on their head, indicating high social status, and protruding teeth. It is believed that this physical defect was mistaken for a fang similar to vampires that attack people to draw blood. Other signs that created alarm among medieval peoples were unibros. Diseases with symptoms like schizophrenia, rabies, cholera and tuberculosis.

Medieval people still didn’t understand how diseases spread. Instead of a scientific explanation for these epidemics, such as cholera, the deaths were explained with supernatural arguments, one of the options being vampirism.

About the “vampire girl”, group leader, Prof Darius Palinsky of Nicolaus Copernicus University In the nearby Polish city of Torun, he said the burial was “extraordinary”.

“Ways to prevent the dead from returning include cutting off the head or legs, biting the face of the dead on the ground,” the expert added. Burn it and crush it with a stone. The scythe was not laid flat, but if the deceased had tried to get up, the head would often have been severed or bruised.

He added that the locked big toe on the skeleton’s left foot symbolized “the closing of a stage and the impossibility of turning back”. At other times, the heads and legs of the corpses were cut off.

Harassment of women

During the Middle Ages, women were more likely to retaliate for accusations or irregularities such as refusal to marry, miscarriage or non-menstruation. “Vampire” Poland was a city of high social status, but these beliefs affected women at all levels. It was similar to the witch trials, only slightly different and created the same kind of frenzy.

Also, the church of the time was still in charge of searching for dead vampires. Signs that a person belongs to this type include the absence of body deformation. Red cheeks, blood in the mouth, or bloated corpses.

The Vampire Myth

The myth of vampires has evolved over centuries. One of the earliest references is found in the Bible. It’s about Adam’s demonic wife, Lilith, who took advantage of the weak and young. Others cite the ancient Greek myth of Lamia, a bloodthirsty demon that preys on children as well. The stories are common across the world, slipping on the scale Between zombies and transforming batsBut they usually have some common elements, experts say, like coming into contact with blood, feasting on the living and being contagious.

In Chinese stories, one way to keep the corpse still is to bury it with rice, as the living dead do nothing more than count grains of rice. Similar accounts were found in Eastern Europe, where seeds were sprinkled into graves to count until sunrise.

In the Middle Ages, vampire myths were very common in Eastern Europe.. People feared that some of the buried would return to the surface as blood-sucking monsters and terrorize the living.

It is not uncommon to find burials where a metal bar or stake has been driven through the skull of the deceased. People at the time believed this was a way to confirm The person is still dead.

In some parts of the continent, especially among the Slavs, belief in vampire legends became so widespread that it caused mass hysteria and led to the execution of people believed to be vampires. People who committed suicide were suspected of being vampires, and their bodies were mutilated to prevent them from rising from the dead.

Experts have already discovered two graves with scythes in the throats of the skeletons. It is an adult woman between the ages of 30 and 39 and a young woman between the ages of 14 and 19.

The researchers who made the discovery said at the time, “When placed in burial pits, they guarantee that the dead remain in their graves and therefore cannot harm the living. But they may also have helped protect the dead from evil spirits.”

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