Polish "vampires" buried more than two centuries ago were not members of the living dead, but may have been victims of cholera, according to new research.
Family members and neighbors of these victims were frightened the victims would return from the grave, in search of human targets. To keep the recently-deceased from coming back to life, residents placed sickles or rocks across the necks of victims, before placing corpses in their graves. Others would drive a metal rod through the bodies of some of the deceased, in an effort to keep people in their coffins.
Lesley Gregoricka from University of South Alabama investigated a graveyard in northwestern Poland. A few of the 17th and 18th Century graves were occupied by corpses with large rocks on their throats, or other utensils to prevent the undead from rising after death.
The question that puzzled scientists was how residents selected which corpses might return as vampires, and which were likely to stay permanently in their graves. Some researchers postulated that strangers, with their strange clothes and customs, may have been labeled as dangerous, even after death. However, it is difficult, hundreds of years after the burials, to determine which remains belong to locals, and which were those of visitors to the region.
Gregoricka discovered that among hundreds of normal graves, six were equipped with devices meant to deter vampires from rising. The researcher examined strontium isotope levels in permanent molars from 60 individuals, comparing them to local animals, in an effort to determine their geographic origin.
Analysis of DNA showed most of those buried with anti-vampire protections were from the local area. Gregoricka believes a cholera outbreak at the time may have been the driving force behind the fear of living undead. The first victims of such epidemics may have been viewed by the populace as evil, and capable of returning from the dead.
"People of the post-medieval period did not understand how disease was spread, and rather than a scientific explanation for these epidemics, cholera and the deaths that resulted from it were explained by the supernatural - in this case, vampires," Lesley Gregoricka said.
Vampire myths can be traced back as far as the 11th Century. Vlad the Impaler, a 15th Century leader of Wallachia, a region that would become part of Romania, was a bloodthirsty ruler, and the basis of the legend of Dracula.
Funerary practices could reveal information about customs and practices of the people of the region more than 200 years ago.
Investigation of the Polish grave site, and study revealing their link to ancient legends of vampires, was profiled in the online journal PLOS One.
