‘Vampire child’ with padlocked ankle unearthed in ancient Polish cemetery

Archaeologists have found the remains of a 17th century ‘’vampire child’’, who was buried face down and padlocked to the earth in a likely effort of ensuring the villagers' fears that the child may not come back from the dead.

The skeletal fragments indicate the age of the child between 5 to 7, lying with a triangular padlock attached to one of the child’s feet.

The archaeologists describe this as an anti-vampiric burial technique that was commonly used across Christian Europe dating back to the 14th century.

“Such practices originated in folk beliefs and are sometimes described as anti-vampiric,” the excavators said.

The remains of the “vampire child” were excavated from an ancient necropolis graveyard in Poland.

The "necropolis," which literally translates from Greek into "city of the dead," is also where archaeologists discovered a "vampire" woman last year, who was buried with a padlock attached to her big toe.

Archaeologist Dariusz Poliński, from the University of Nicolaus Copernicus, noted that the item placed under the foot “symbolizes the closing of a stage of life and is meant to protect against the return of the deceased, which was probably feared”, reported Daily Mail.

The rituals of the time period reportedly believed that when a person was buried face down, the dead would “bite into the ground and not harm the living,” according to Poliński.

Thirty such internments were uncovered and archaeologists believed that people who were “feared not only during life but also after death” were also buried in the same manner in the region.

“Ways to protect against the return of the dead include cutting off the head or legs, placing the deceased face down to bite into the ground, burning them, and smashing them with a stone,” Poliński said.

In another discovery, the bones of a pregnant woman with the fetus “determined to be roughly 5 to 6 months old” were also found buried in a similar way.

Poliński said he and his researchers have uncovered about 100 such graves in the cemetery. 

Vampiric outbreaks were associated with mass deaths that were unexplainable during the 14th century. People of that era thought that these vampires would hunt and kill their family members first and then the rest of the village members.