Disir
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Need to get rid of a pesky vampire? Thanks to Hollywood, you probably know the drill: Wear garlic around your neck, don’t go out at night without a cross, and for Pete’s sake, never invite a debonair stranger into your house. Remember, you can tell if someone is undead by whether they have a reflection in the mirror, and if things go south, make sure you have a wooden stake or some means of decapitation handy.
Actually, these fiction- and film-driven fantasies bear little resemblance to the centuries-old beliefs and practices that some Polish villagers turned to in an effort to ward of the misfortunes that befell them. By excavating graves from a 17th century Polish cemetery, anthropologists are finding that people attempted to protect themselves from the occult using vastly different methods than those portrayed in horror films.
“Two hundred years ago when they had no TV, books or very limited access to education, they just created a second world,” says Marek Polcyn, an adjunct anthropology professor at Lakehead University in Canada who has coauthored several studies on “deviant” burials in the rural village of Drawsko, Poland. “They often referred to the world they had known from oral tradition which very likely was rooted in beliefs reaching back to pagan times—an alternative world to explain the things happening around them which they couldn’t understand.”
Polcyn’s work describes one female body discovered with a sickle across her pelvis, a rock on her neck and a coin in her mouth. Four other bodies were found with sickles strewn across their throats. While Polcyn said in one study that sickles have been discovered in excavations in other countries like Slovakia before, burials with sickles across the throat are rare during this period. He says the practice could corroborate with historical knowledge of folk tales and beliefs about creatures that rise from the dead to commit evil deeds and bring misfortune to the living.
“Throughout the world, people believe that sharp tools, iron—anything that was created by fire, by hammering, had anti-demonic properties,” Polcyn says.
Read more: Burials Unearthed in Poland Open the Casket on The Secret Lives of Vampires | Science | Smithsonian
The article is actually better after these first several paragraphs.
Actually, these fiction- and film-driven fantasies bear little resemblance to the centuries-old beliefs and practices that some Polish villagers turned to in an effort to ward of the misfortunes that befell them. By excavating graves from a 17th century Polish cemetery, anthropologists are finding that people attempted to protect themselves from the occult using vastly different methods than those portrayed in horror films.
“Two hundred years ago when they had no TV, books or very limited access to education, they just created a second world,” says Marek Polcyn, an adjunct anthropology professor at Lakehead University in Canada who has coauthored several studies on “deviant” burials in the rural village of Drawsko, Poland. “They often referred to the world they had known from oral tradition which very likely was rooted in beliefs reaching back to pagan times—an alternative world to explain the things happening around them which they couldn’t understand.”
Polcyn’s work describes one female body discovered with a sickle across her pelvis, a rock on her neck and a coin in her mouth. Four other bodies were found with sickles strewn across their throats. While Polcyn said in one study that sickles have been discovered in excavations in other countries like Slovakia before, burials with sickles across the throat are rare during this period. He says the practice could corroborate with historical knowledge of folk tales and beliefs about creatures that rise from the dead to commit evil deeds and bring misfortune to the living.
“Throughout the world, people believe that sharp tools, iron—anything that was created by fire, by hammering, had anti-demonic properties,” Polcyn says.
Read more: Burials Unearthed in Poland Open the Casket on The Secret Lives of Vampires | Science | Smithsonian
The article is actually better after these first several paragraphs.
