Salem’s Tot?
Archaeologists in Poland were flabbergasted after discovering the remains of alleged “vampire children,” one of which was decapitated to allegedly prevent them from rising from the grave.
“The burial clearly shows signs of anti-vampire practices,” Dr. Stanisław Gołub, an archaeologist with the Lublin Voivodeship Conservator of Monuments who led the excavation, said in a statement.
Workers had reportedly initially stumbled across the skeletons while removing tree roots for an ongoing garden renovation project at the Palace of the Uniate Bishops in Chelm, per a translated Facebook post by the institution.
They were then exhumed for examination by Golub and his team.
Based on the Earth they were found in and associated pottery fragments, the bones allegedly date back to the 13th century — a time when precautions were taken to prevent the dead from reanimating, Jam Press reported.
According to the post, one of the macabre gravesites had all the characteristics of an “anti-vampire burial” practiced in Europe at the time.
These included the fact that the child had their skull removed and was interred facedown with stones atop their torso.
“Burying with the face to the ground, cutting off the head or pressing the body with a stone are among the methods used to prevent a person believed to be a demonic being from leaving the grave,” wrote Dr. Golub.
The alleged baby Dracula was also buried in gypsum soil and oriented on an east-west axis — both common customs during the time.
The burial site also had postholes, which were likely used to monitor the graves for signs of a vampiric resurrection.
More puzzling was the fact that both children were interred without coffins or traditional funerary ornaments in a site far from any known cemetery, Popular Science reported.
This suggests that locals may have used the area for undocumented burials for a period of time.
Researchers are currently analyzing the remains to glean more insight into burial practices during the era.
Resurrection interference was commonly practiced throughout medieval Europe, particularly Eastern Europe, where lore involving vampires and revenants — reanimated corpses — was prevalent.
Unfortunately, like with the notorious Salem Witch trials of the 1600s, superstitious residents were often quick to blame everything from rampant disease to misunderstood psychological afflictions on said supernatural entities.
In many cases, some from as recent as the 18th century, those slapped with these scarlet letters were actually just suffering from tuberculosis.