The skeleton of a medieval ‘witch’ has been found with drill holes in her bones so she couldn’t rise from the ᴅᴇᴀᴅ. The chilling discovery was made in a Polish graveyard during excavations carried out by archaeologist Karol Piasecki.
It is thought locals were afraid that unless she was fixed into the ground and covered with bricks she would rise from the ᴅᴇᴀᴅ.
It was initially believed that the body was that of a suspected vampire, which is why it had been buried away from the main graveyard in a consecrated ground and pinned into the soil. But now DNA tests of the bones have revealed that the body belonged to a woman who would have been blonde-haired and blue-eyed, and who was tortured.
In Poland, women accused of witchcraft were reportedly typically the lovers or wives of wealthy members of society.
They would suddenly find themselves accused of sorcery when relationships turned sour or when rivals wished for them to be removed. Piasecki determined that the body had been buried between the 16th and 17th centuries.
Grzegorz Kurka, the director of the Regional History Museum in Kamien Pomorski where the skeleton is displayed, said: “For whatever reason, they didn’t burn her, but they placed her in a grave far away from others preventing her from coming back to life.”
Kurka hopes that by the end of the year his team will be able to see what the ‘witch’ looked like thanks to new facial reconstruction technology.