Poles went into a panic after the ominous news was published.
Archaeologists excavated the remains of a six-year-old child, managing to exhume only half of the body. The other part was missing. The gruesome find was discovered in a 17th-century cemetery in the village of Pien, Poland.
Myths surrounding the undead and vampires date back to the 11th century in Eastern Europe, and it is not uncommon to find skeletons bearing the marks of these superstitions.
In Eastern Europe, stories of people who died and then returned to the world of the living later were widespread and were often blamed for sudden deaths and accidents. According to legend, vampires make life unbearable and terrifying for the living by causing mysterious deaths and destroying villagers’ crops.
It’s not the first time scientists have excavated a cemetery believed to be vampire, but the discovery of such a small child’s skeleton treated in this way is believed to be the first of its kind.
The child, believed to be around six years old, was found buried face down so that if he woke up, he would bite the ground instead of sucking the blood from living people, the Daily Mail reported, citing the Times.
The leg of the vampire child was bound with a padlock, which was intended to make it difficult for him to leave the grave, or to make it impossible at all for him to return to the living. His neck was jammed with a sickle, which ensured that when the vampire stood up, he would kill himself. Archaeologists also discovered that after the burial, the body was partially exhumed and the upper half removed, presumably to be destroyed.
Team leader Professor Dariusz Polinski of Nicolaus Copernicus University in the nearby city of Torun told the Times that the child was clearly “very much feared”, but it was not clear exactly why the child was believed to be a vampire.
The child had a silk hat on his head, which shows that he had a high social status, as well as a characteristic protruding tooth, reports Fakti.bg.
