Macabre practices in Kaldus cemetery, Poland

Human remains with traces of anti-vampire practices have been found by archaeologists headed by Prof. Wojciech Chudziak from the Nicholas Copernicus University in Toruń in the early medieval cemetery in Kałdus, south-west of Chełmno. The researchers emphasised that this proves that medieval people lived in a world full of irrational fears.

One of the most interesting finds is a grave with the bodies of a man and a woman. It dates back to the 11th century, that is to a time, when Christianity was slowly developing in Poland.

"Both the man and the woman were brutally decapitated before they were buried - their heads were chopped off and later placed in an extraordinary position for Christian eschatology" - anthropologist Dr Tomasz Kozłowski from the Anthropology Department from the Faculty of Ecology and Environmental Protection at the Nicholas Copernicus University in Toruń explained.

Since the 1990s, the researcher has been running intense research on the people buried in Kałdus cemetery.