While working to widen a road near a church in the Polish town of Luzino, a team of workers found a 19thcentury graveyard filled with “vampires.” informed the portal Nadmorski24on June 7th.
After the discovery, archaeologists were called in to examine the 450 buried bodies. Experts said the remains, which date back to the 19th century, are those of people who were then considered “vampires.”
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In an interview with Polish website The First News, scientist Maciej Stromski said that about 30% of the graves discovered had bricks placed next to the corpses’ legs, arms and heads. Stromski also revealed the existence of coins between the dead man’s teeth. The practice was used to remove the “vampire curse”.
Belief in “vampires” in Poland
“We found examples of belief in the return of the dead from the grave that could only be stopped by decapitation,” archaeologist Stromski said. “It was believed that if a family member of the deceased died shortly after the burial, it could be a vampire.”
Stromski said the team discovered a decapitated woman with a child’s skull resting on her chest.
The cemetery where the human skeletons were discovered is in a church built in the early 18th century and enlarged after 1945.
Archaeologists concluded that the discovery of “vampires” was very likely, as burials in churches were a common practice. The arrangement of bones and objects around the dead confirms “antivampire” practices known from literature, fairy tales, and earlier research.
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