The Skeleton Buried With a Sickle Across Its Throat & the Fear It Was Meant to Stop

A real seventeenth century grave with an iron blade at the neck and a community that did not trust its dead to stay ... dead.

Individual 49/2012 from Drawsko 1, Poland: a woman aged about 30 to 39 with an iron sickle positioned across her throat. The image records an archaeological burial, not proof that its occupant was a literal vampire. Source: Gregoricka, Betsinger, Scott, and Polcyn, PLOS ONE, Figure 1. CC BY 4.0.

Archaeologists working on a rural cemetery in Poland in 2012 discovered Grave 49 with no stake driven into its heart or a pile of bones, nor was there anything indicating that it was the grave of a vampire; instead, it contained an unsettling piece of evidence - a curved iron sickle placed across the neck of a female deceased.

The blade of the sickle was positioned in such a way, that if the deceased female were to attempt to rise, it would have severed her neck. This was not the result of an accident where a farmer had dropped his tool but instead, four additional graves from the same cemetery had had sickles laid across their neck or body. Two additional graves had stones placed over their necks and one contained a coin inside the mouth of the skeleton.

Although the people residing in Drawsko were living in the 1600’s and 1700’s, they did not use the modern term “vampire,” as is depicted in movies today, to identify these grave sites; rather, their burial practices clearly reveal their fear of the dead returning to harm them. It is unclear why the people of this village felt that way about the remains of their ancestors and why they chose a sickle to prevent this from occurring!