The mysterious case of the vampire from Poland: “She was perceived as a demonic being”

At the cemetery in Pień, Poland, the dead were forbidden to return; the living made sure of it. Local residents buried their relatives face down, with heavy stones placed on their chests, arms, necks, or between their thighs, and with chains on their ankles or sickles at their necks. All this to prevent vampires, the undead, or creatures of the night from returning to bring plagues and diseases. The first undead appeared in fiction with The Vampyre by John William Polidori in 1819, decades before Bram Stoker’s celebrated Dracula (1897). In the reality of Eastern Europe, however, the Slavic word was used a century earlier. In 1725, the Austrian newspaper Wienerisches Diarium already mentionedvampirevampires to describe medical reports of alleged cases of the undead in Serbia and Hungary.

In Poland, 103 17th-century graves were discovered with bodies showing burial anomalies that could be explained by anti-vampire practices. This is pointed out by Dariusz Polinski, lead author of a study on these practices published in the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports. The case of Zosia, a wealthy young woman, is the most peculiar of those analyzed so far: a girl found with a sickle at her neck and a chain on her foot. “She was likely perceived as a demonic being,” Polinski asserts to ARA.

“The post-medieval [17th-century] cemetery of Pień was used primarily to bury local rural inhabitants, most likely members of a Protestant community. However, it seems there were exceptions to this pattern, among them the burial of Zosia,” the doctor details. Zosia suffered the scourge of having a “bad death,” a term used for cases related to illnesses or sudden deaths that caused terror among the region’s inhabitants. “Atypical burial practices involving the placement of objects in graves were identified mainly in young people, including children,” he explains. In 2022, when archaeologists unearthed Zosia—the name given to the skeleton—, the macabre state of the body attracted international attention and captured the production of the documentary Fields of Vampires, which followed the research team to find clues that would explain the fierce desecration of Zosia.

A pagan cemetery

The Pień site, near Dabrowa Chelminska, began to be excavated in 2005. Polinski and his team have unearthed tombs used for about four generations throughout the 17th century. There are no crosses, no medals, and no devotional objects. The cemetery is located in an area where Lutherans and Mennonites who came from Germany and the Netherlands lived with a predominantly Catholic Polish population.

What distinguished Pień, however, was not the beliefs; it was its geography. The cemetery stands far from the village, on a slope, near a crossroads, far from any church or chapel. People rejected by the community were buried there, whatever the reasons. Heretics. Foreigners without roots. People who died in a way considered tragic. “They were, probably, burial sites for individuals rejected by society, regardless of their social status, who were probably feared even after death,” write the authors of the study.

A child buried face down. A skeleton in a crucifixion position. Stones placed around a skull, as if to prevent it from moving or biting. And, here and there, sickles and padlocks. Another child—found in a neighboring grave—appeared decapitated, with the skull placed between the legs and an “anti-vampire” padlock. “We currently estimate that at least a dozen of the excavated tombs show atypical funerary practices, including measures intended to protect the living from the dead”.

A second profanation

Death was not the end for Zosia. The young woman was exhumed some time later to ensure her permanence underground, by applying further anti-vampire measures to her skeletal remains. “The sickle was added after the grave was reopened, and there is no doubt that this happened before the skeletonization process had been completed,” the researcher says. The motive, never determined with proof, can only be suspected. “To protect the living from the influence or harmful actions of the deceased, who seems to have been perceived as a demonic being,” reiterates Polinski.

During the 17th century, the inhabitants of the region lived in “extremely difficult conditions,” marked by the so-called Little Ice Age. Furthermore, Poland went from being a refuge of religious tolerance to becoming an indestructible bastion of Catholicism due to the success of the Counter-Reformation, which, with the support of monarchs such as Sigismund III Vasa, reversed the pluralistic trend. Constant invasions by non-Catholic foreign powers, such as Lutheran Sweden and Orthodox Russia, sealed the Polish national identity in the Catholic faith.

“The decision to desecrate the grave [to include the sickle at the neck] could have been made by Zosia’s relatives or by members of her immediate social circle, perhaps under pressure from other people. We do not know who carried it out,” points out Polinski. After the reopening of the grave, her remains were not desecrated again. The sickle around her neck was placed “carefully, with the blade facing her neck,” as if it were someone who held her in esteem. “The people involved feared the harmful influence they attributed to Zosia and, at the same time, maintained a certain degree of respect for her,” he details.

The researchers reiterate that these are mere speculations. What does seem clear is her social position. Near the skull, there were remains of silk with pure gold and silver threads, probably from a hat or a cap. Not even on the funeral garments of King Sigismund III Vasa or Queen Constance of Austria, buried at almost the same time in Krakow, was there a presence of pure gold threads, according to the same study. Zosia, whoever she was, was from a good family, but not even her noble status could save her from the atavistic fear of demons, plagues, and creatures of the night.

The cause of her death is still a mystery. A previous study claimed that Zosia suffered from a hemangioma on her sternum, a vascular tumor that could have caused her great pain and a visible deformity in her chest. However, the new analysis has not found any trauma or pathology that explains her death. Polinski notes that "so far no case" of suicide, violent death, trauma, executions, or poisoning has been identified among the bodies in Pień.

"Although death was, in a way, a normal part of life in this difficult period, our research has confirmed that the fear of certain deceased could be very intense," explains Polinski, who will continue the excavations with his team in Pień. The specialist confesses that the number of atypical desecrations at the pagan cemetery "may increase as we move forward." New publications are planned, which "will eventually lead to a complete monographic study of the post-medieval cemetery in book form" to collect all atypical anti-vampire cases.

Currently, the investigation continues with very detailed studies of each skeletal remain of selected individuals, including Zosia, of course. However, Polinski is realistic about the results. "Only time will tell which questions we will not be able to answer in the end, and unfortunately, there will be answers that will never come," he concludes.