(RepublicanDaily.org) – A mass grave containing 450 desecrated human remains was reportedly unearthed in Poland. The deceased were believed to have been accused of “vampirism” and were discovered with coins in their mouths.
The remains were discovered in the Kashubian village in Luzino when construction workers accidentally unearthed the bodies while widening a Kościelna Street, media reports stated. Koscielna Street is beside an 18th-century church.
The bodies were discovered with the skull placed between the legs. Many of them had coins in their mouths. The bodies were believed to have been exhumed by relatives, decapitated, and then reburied.
Local authorities explained that in Poland, it was once common practice to disinter the remains of a dead relative and remove their head to fight the rise of vampires. Locals in Poland during the 19th century believed that, if a family member was to die shortly after the funeral of another family member, then the family member the funeral had been held for had become a vampire.
For this reason, the dead were dug up, and their heads removed, to keep them from rising from the grave. Afterward, the family placed a coin in their mouth to “seal” their soul and give them a way to pay for travel to the afterlife.
In the case of the Kościelna Street graveyard, 20-30% of the dead were reported as having a coin in their mouth. Authorities even unearthed a woman who had been decapitated. The 19th Century locals had placed the skull of a child on her chest.
The remains of the Kościelna Street graveyard were not the only deceased people found in recent times to have been buried with such rituals. In September 2022, a team of archaeologists was digging in Pień, Poland, when they discovered the body of a woman who had been believed to be a vampire at the time of her death.
While no scholars currently know exactly why people were accused of being vampires in historic Poland, those people who were accused were “violently executed” for the accusations.
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