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Why Was The ‘Vampire Woman’ Buried With A Scythe At Her Neck?
A 17th-century ‘Vampire epidemic’ had people on edge
Published in
4 min readSep 16, 2022
The woman’s grave was unearthed when archaeologists from Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń, Poland were excavating a cemetery in the southern village of Pien. The skeleton wore a fine silk cap with gold or silver thread — and a leg shackle. She also had the blade of a scythe at her neck.
The reason for this unique burial was a deep-rooted fear of many Slavic people in the 17th and 18th centuries. There were vampires in their midst and once they died, they must stay dead.
As Culture.pl explains, “the belief in vampires, upierzs, and upiórs — as they are called today in Poland — are far more ancient and was once popular across the whole Slavic Europe, reaching also across areas populated by Hungarians, Romanians, and Greeks.”
