The Woman Buried with a Sickle
In a village cemetery in Poland, archaeologists found a woman buried with a sickle across her neck and a padlock on her toe, to stop her rising from the grave.
What was reported
In 2022, archaeologists digging in an old cemetery in Pień, a village in northern Poland, uncovered the 17th-century grave of a woman. An iron sickle had been laid across her neck, and a padlock had been fastened to the big toe of her left foot.
The finds were quickly called a 'vampire burial'. Nearby, the team later found other graves with similar precautions. In 2025, a forensic artist made a reconstruction of the woman's face, and the team nicknamed her Zosia.
Explanations offered
In early modern Poland, people feared that some of the dead could return to harm the living, and graves like these were meant to stop it: the sickle to cut the dead if they tried to rise, the padlock to 'close' a stage of life. Archaeologists think the woman may have been feared for being different in some way, though why isn't known. Burials like these are found across Central and Eastern Europe.
- When
- Buried in the 1600s; found in 2022
- Where
- Pień, Kuyavian-Pomeranian Voivodeship, Poland
- Witnesses
- Archaeologists from Nicolaus Copernicus University
- Status
- Confirmed
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