The Truth About the 400-Year-Old ‘Vampire’ Buried With a Sickle Across Her Neck
· Vice
You may have already met Zosia. She’s been dead for over 400 years, but you’ve probably even seen her face. In late 2024, researchers used her remains, along with 3D printing tech and a heap of modeling clay, to reconstruct what she would have looked like.
But we still didn’t really know who she was, outside of the fact that she was found in an unmarked burial site in a small village in northern Poland in 2022. She had been buried in a field with others who were feared to have been either vampires or demons, and as such was buried with a padlock on her foot and an iron sickle across her neck. Thanks to further research, we have a better idea of who she actually was, and a vampire certainly wasn’t it.
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New research published in the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports finally gives us a better sense of who this alleged vampire actually was. She wasn’t an ageless, bloodsucking monster. She was just a girl. Only somewhere between 17 and 19 years old when she died.
The 400-Year-Old ‘Vampire’ Was Actually a Teenage Girl
The burial site near Pień contained 101 graves from the 17th century, many with, let’s say, unusual precautions intended to keep the dead from rising again. Zosia’s padlock was attached to her big toe, and a sickle was positioned across her throat. The logic here seems to be that any attempt by her to get out of the grave would end with a swift decapitation.
Researchers think she was probably a local, though her DNA hints at possible Scandinavian ancestry. The evidence also suggests that she came from a wealthy family, as fragments of silk near her skull contained pure gold and silver threads, which is a degree of fanciness not found among the average villager.
Interestingly, even though she was suspected to be some kind of literal monster, there is no evidence that she died from violence or any disease. The researchers think some kind of illness or famine swept through the area, so these unenlightened folks blamed her for it. This was not uncommon in 17th-century Europe, though the modern concept of a vampire came a bit later.
Zosia was no vampire. She died under circumstances we don’t fully understand. But we know enough about the era and its burial rituals to piece together the tragedy of her fate at the hands of people who thought that because a few people got sick, or some crops that grew in, it had to be the fault of an evil magical young woman whose corpse needed a few security measures applied to it, you know, just in case.
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