'Vampire child' found buried under stones as he was 'decapitated' after town feared he was 'demonic'

Archaeologists unearthed the remains of a child suspected to be labeled as a "child vampire" in the garden of a 13th-century bishop, located in Chelm, Poland.

The boy was found with heavy stones placed upon his body, pinning him down tightly to the ground. Adding to the chilling scenario, Polish authorities point out that it appears the child had been beheaded and also brutally tortured before burial .

Local Polish media suggests that the people of the time might have feared the boy as a "demonic entity," resulting in the murder .

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An expert from the Provincial Office for the Protection of Monuments in Lublin, Pawe Wira, commented that the individuals who buried the boy likely intended to prevent any "demonic entity from exiting the grave".

Wira explained, "A burial with a face pressed into the ground, cutting off the head or putting stones on the body are some of the burial methods used to prevent a person thought to be a demonic entity from exiting the grave."

Though modern sensibilities may find such practices startling, archaeologists affirm that these burial customs were not particularly rare in ancient times. Recent 2023 findings include the bones of a child, estimated to be between five and seven years old, at an archaic 17th-century burial site where the child was interred with a padlock fixed to its ankle a measure taken by relatives to forbid the dead from rising from their graves, as reported by the Mirror, reports the Daily Star .

In an eerie find a year earlier at the same site, a woman's remains were discovered with a sickle placed across her bodya superstitious practice aimed at preventing so-called "vampires" from returning. The remains of the 'vampire child' were found beside another child who had undergone a more conventional burial from the same period.

Mr Wira revealed, "Both burials are dated from the Early Middle Ages - 13th century. The dead were buried without coffins."

The team of archaeologists is now preparing to perform multiple tests on the two children's skeletons to determine their ages at their time of death. They believe that these might not be the only bodies buried in what used to be a bishop's garden, hinting at more discoveries waiting to be unearthed in the vicinity.