Mass Grave Unearthed by Road Work; Some Skeletons Were Considered Vampires

There's nothing odd about a lot of graves near a church, but one church in the village of Luzino, in the Kashubia area of Poland, apparently didn't thoroughly map where their parishioners were buried. The church followed the European practice of occasionally digging up graves and storing bones in an ossuary to free up room for more graves. But during recent road work, excavators found skeletons that had been missed or forgotten- 450 of them!

The skeletons are believed to be from the 19th century, when people were afraid that the dead would rise again to cause havoc among the living. In other words, vampires. Researchers are studying the remains, and report that about 30% of the skeletons show evidence that measures had been taken to keep them underground. Many skeletons had been disinterred, their heads cut off, and their skulls placed down by the legs before re-burial. Some had rocks placed between their jaws to the same end.

Archaeologists also found three forgotten underground ossuaries containing piles of disarticulated bones from earlier disinterments. Read the full account of the grim discovery at The First News.

-via reddit

(Image credit: UG Luzino)