# The 'Vampire' Woman of Pień: Why Did a 17th-Century Town Fear This Teenage Girl? *New study reveals a teenage girl buried with a sickle across her throat and a padlock locked around her big toe* By Sandee Oster · Published 7 September 2026 Source: https://archaeologyteahouse.com/stories/the-vampire-woman-of-pien-why-did-a-17th-century-town-fear-this-teenage-girl Primary source: [A unique, non-normative burial of a young adult female from a 17th-century cemetery in Pień, north-central Poland. A multidisciplinary approach](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jasrep.2026.105967) Subjects: [Vampire burial](https://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q11819992), [Vampire](https://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q46721), [Poland](https://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q36) --- ![](https://archaeologyteahouse.com/media/01a06224-35f0-71a5-a657-3fdc48c1cfec/1600.webp) *'Vampire' burial of a woman in Pień, Poland. Credit: Poliński et al. 2026* Vampires are a staple of most fantasy books, series, and movies today. We know them as handsome and beautiful immortals who drink blood, turn into bats, and can only be killed with a wooden stake to the heart. But that wasn't always the case; vampires were once feared, basically mindless beasts. Creatures people would do anything to prevent from returning to the land of the living, including reopening their graves to place stones on their chests or drive wooden stakes and metal rods through their chests. Every once in a while, such a 'vampire' burial appears in archaeology, including in 2022 when archaeologists Dariusz Poliński and his colleagues opened a 17th-century Polish grave to reveal the remains of a woman. Despite having likely originated in the upper ranks of society, in death she frightened people enough for them to fasten her toe with a padlock and place a sickle across her neck. But what made people fear her so, and how did these measures make sure she stayed put? ### The 'Vampires' of Europe ![](https://archaeologyteahouse.com/media/01a06a8f-2503-72a7-ba03-5ad63ac26b9f/1600.webp) *The top of Grave 75 and the partly excavated pit. Credit: Poliński et al. 2026* Regardless of culture or period, every once in a while archaeologists come across burials that do not follow the usual rules; these burials are often labeled as extraordinary or deviant. In some cases, the odd burials seem to hint that whoever laid these remains to rest was deathly afraid they may come back to hound them. Such graves are often termed vampiric or anti-vampiric, a rather awkward term considering 'vampire' only came into common European use in the 18th century. Before that, vampires were quite different from what you may imagine today. In the earliest traditions, vampires are corpses, usually local and often a nuisance. In Slavic tradition, the dead thought capable of returning as demons were known by names such as *strzyga*, *wieszczi*, *łepi*, or *upiór*. These 'vampires' were foul-smelling, rotting, bloated corpses (more akin to our modern zombies). They became the scapegoats for things people simply couldn't explain, from plagues to exhumed corpses whose hair and nails apparently were still growing or dead bodies found with blood at the mouth from ordinary decomposition. The aristocratic vampire was a literary invention that first appeared in works such as Byron's *The Giaour* (1813) and was consolidated in Stoker's famous *Dracula* (1897), complete with a castle, a count's title, riches, and the manners of a courtly gentleman. Graves like that at Pień (Poland) were meant to keep the corpse-like vampire at bay. Though interestingly, they don't appear often. Poland accounts for most of them, though others show up in Czechia, Slovakia, Bulgaria, and Italy; interestingly, Romania, the *home* of the vampire, isn't known for its anti-vampire burials. ### A Woman Feared in Death The woman of Pień was discovered in a cemetery in north-central Poland on a slope above the Vistula River. Back in the 1600s, when the burial was made, the landscape would have been quite different, as the Vistula ran wild and braided across a channel, creating numerous scattered sandbars and islands, until the Prussians straightened it in the 19th century. The site has been the focus of excavations since 2005, during which two overlapping burial grounds were found: one early medieval, dotted with elite chamber graves, and a 17th-century cemetery with at least 101 graves. Oddly, the later 17th-century cemetery is not mentioned in any written records and appears on no maps. In medieval and post-medieval Europe, the proper way to be buried was in consecrated ground; burial outside it brought shame on the dead and their family. Such places were typically unrecorded and would become the final resting grounds of suicides, heretics, outsiders without citizenship, vagrants, tragic deaths, women who died in childbirth, orphans, the poor, and unbaptized babies. Grave 75 lay near the middle of the excavated area, only 30–35 cm deep. It wasn't orientated east to west, as was the norm, but tilted at an angle from south-east to north-west. The remains lay on their back with the left arm pointing northeast, evidence that someone had come back and disturbed the otherwise intact body. The only surviving clothes were a strip of decorative braid around her jaw made of woven silk, silver, and silver gilt, a rather expensive piece. Across her neck lay a sickle, its blade turned towards her throat, and on her left big toe someone had placed a padlock; once locked, though, it had opened after burial (proof she came back from the dead? No, no, the old locking mechanism simply broke over time.) She was female, aged 17–19, had no signs of trauma or disease, nor did her body indicate she lived a life of heavy labor. Her maternal DNA indicated she was likely of Scandinavian origin, though her tooth chemistry showed she grew up locally, and finally, a dark green stain was found in her mouth. ### Padlocks and Sickles ![](https://archaeologyteahouse.com/media/01a06687-f72e-7b4c-ba76-6ce0a02ddfcd/1600.webp) *Drawings, a photograph, and an X-ray of the padlock found in Grave 75. Credit: Poliński et al. 2026* The padlock was odd; it did not lock anything, save for itself around the woman's toe. This suggests it was a ritual. Across Poland, a post-medieval Ashkenazi Jewish burial custom emerged in which Jewish individuals were buried with padlocks. It may have had something to do with the final shutting of earthly life, locking the dead so they could not come speak or carry affairs of this world into the next. It was also said to ward off demons and help stop plagues. But the woman was unlikely Jewish, as the cemetery itself is probably Christian (specifically Protestant), and it was not permitted for Jews to be buried outside of Jewish cemeteries. The lock's shape is also dissimilar to those used in Jewish burial customs at the time. However, it does resemble some padlock examples that have turned up in some Christian cemeteries. It is possible that even if the woman herself was not Jewish, one of the burial customs passed between these communities, including adding a padlock to block communication with the dead, or act as a charm against an unlucky event. The sickle is far less ambiguous, and similar sickles have been found across central Europe, but the habit of laying one across the throat seems to be distinctly Polish. One such grave at Jaksice actually had the sickle lodged in the deceased woman's neck vertebra. The practice might have been an attempt to prevent the dead from rising, with the iron blade in particular angled so that if she did resurrect, she would cut her throat and die properly this time. The sickle was made from iron and birch, alder, or maple; iron and birch were thought to help protect against demons and witchcraft. As for the green copper stain in her mouth, it wasn't a coin, as coins leave only faint stains, suggesting something bigger, more copper-rich, was lodged in her mouth, and based on the padlock and sickle, it was probably something meant to keep her at bay. But why do all this to her in the first place? The cap she wore was made of silk, silver, and gold; something reserved for aristocracy, nobility, and rich townspeople; she was no peasant. At the same time, her diet was heavy on grains and vegetables similar to some of the poorest individuals buried alongside her (though this may have been a sign of the times with failing harvests in the Little Ice Age, war and epidemics raging across the country; many an aristocrat went hungry too). Perhaps it was her Scandinavian origin; was she an outsider to the locals? But her tooth chemistry suggests she grew up there, suggesting her family had settled in the region one or two generations earlier, so she may well have been considered local. We may never know the reason she was feared. --- In 2022, an unusual grave was opened at Pień: a young woman with a sickle at her throat and a padlock on her toe. Osteological, isotopic, and genetic analysis has since established her age, her ancestry, and where she grew up, but not why she was feared. Perhaps it was the age at which she died, the manner of her death, her behavior in life, or something that would leave no archaeological trace at all. Perhaps it was a combination: a foreign young girl died in some mysterious circumstances; to the locals, this was a bad omen. She was buried on the outskirts, then someone reopened the grave, perhaps to add the sickle, just to make double sure she did not return. But all of this is speculation based on analogy and folklore. Why do you think she was considered dangerous and what purpose did the padlock have?  *Let me know what you think, and if you'd like to support this blog and the person writing it, you can *[*chip in once, monthly, or yearly.*](https://archaeologyteahouse.com/support)* Only if you'd like to.* ### References Poliński, D., Zagrodzka, M., Grzybowski, T., Borrini, M., Lynch, P. A., Cybulska, M., ... & Czyżewski, Ł. (2026). A unique, non-normative burial of a young adult female from a 17th-century cemetery in Pień, north-central Poland. A multidisciplinary approach. *Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports*, *74*, 105967. [https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jasrep.2026.105967](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jasrep.2026.105967) Skóra, K. (2016). A Habit of Providing the dead with padlocks against the background of Ashkenazi funeral rites. *Fasciculi Archaeologiae Historicae*, *29*, 131-145. [https://doi.org/10.23858/FAH29.2016.014](https://doi.org/10.23858/FAH29.2016.014) ## Common questions **Was grave 75 the only strange burial at the site?** No, several dozen non-normative graves have been uncovered at Pień. **How was the grave dated?** Radiocarbon dating gave a calibrated range of 1515 to 1800 CE, with the mid-17th century as the most probable window.