The grim discovery was made in an abandoned souls' graveyard in Pień near Bydgoszcz where last year the grave of a ‘vampire woman’ was also found.
The huge grave containing around 450 skeletons revealed that many of the bodies showed signs of anti-vampire practices common in Kashubia in the 19th century.
The team of researchers from the Nicholas Copernicus University in Toruń found that the body in the village of Pień had a sickle placed over its neck, which they say would have been to prevent her from returning to mortality, and a padlock on the big toe of her left foot.
Dentists from Katowice who examined the teeth of six people ‘rejected by society’ and accused of being ‘vampires’, found their gnashers were in ‘good condition’.
Having been first decapitated, the skulls in Gliwice had been placed between the victims’ legs leading some to speculate that they had belonged to people suspected of being vampires.
TFN explores the legend of a vampire that terrorised a village in the shadow of Castle Książ over 300 years ago.
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