10 ms·
Poland’s ‘anti-vampire’ graves
- sacnoradhq 3y agoAnyone with taphophobia should've avoided dying in 17th c. Poland.
- Cthulhu_ 3y ago> Taphophobia is an abnormal (psychopathological) phobia of being buried alive as a result of being incorrectly pronounced dead. I mean I don't think they care per se if they're actually dead? That said, there were things like bells on wires as well for cases like that.
- sacnoradhq 3y agoApply common sense: The living have a phobia of being buried alive. And how are they going to ring a bell if they're restrained facedown? ...
- etamponi 3y agoInteresting that they use the word "post-medieval" instead of "modern"... And they mention 17th century, well after the middle ages ended. In fact, such superstitious practices were almost non-existent during middle ages: they're one of the natural consequences of de-christianization, which happened at a faster pace after the middle ages. I know I need to assume good intentions, but "post-medieval" seems just misplaced and an attempt to associate these practices to the middle ages. I thought we were finally past the times in which we demonized the middle ages. At least in Italy, several historians are finally talking about how great and important that time was. Look for "Alessandro Barbero" on YouTube for more.
- jeltz 3y agoI feel you are overstating your point. There was belief in vampires in medieval Europe too. And the origin is likely from pagan pre-Christian beliefs in Eastern or South Eastern Europe.
- Cthulhu_ 3y agoThe article mentions as much, the phrase 'vampire' is only been in vogue in the past 100 or so years; the article mentions upiór, strzyga and strigoi. Which I learned about thanks to the Witcher (the video games moreso than the books / TV show); its lore feels new because it uses older and lesser known in western Europe creatures.
- ajuc 3y agoThey were common in middle ages. And there was a reason for the superstition - rabies and other epidemics. > the natural consequences of de-christianization Poland in middle ages was less catholic than Poland in 17th century. If anything it was over-chrisianized not de-christianized in that period.
- OfSanguineFire 3y agoThe article writes: “Apotropaic graves of this sort date back to the Early Middle Ages and have also appeared in Slovakia, Hungary, Austria, and Romania.” So even the 17th-century phenomenon is but a late attestation of a practice found already in the medieval era. It is curious that you claim that such practices could only be a result of de-Christianization. In the Balkans, fears of vampires, incubi, and succubi have always co-existed happily with a Christianity that deeply permeated all levels of society.
- paganel 3y agoThe Christian practices here in the Balkans had (maybe still have) a lot of Manichaeism involved in them which people further West might not call that Christian to begin with. It's a very peculiar type of Christianity, that's for sure, and even the local high-placed Christian men are quite hesitant to talk about it. Bogomilism is, of course, its most famous form, but it has circulated in one form or other for many hundreds of years, no matter the official repressions it has faced (ever since the 10th century [1], maybe even earlier). Back to the article, the strzyga and strigoi which are mentioned there are basically Romanian words, and Romanian most probably took them from the Latin strix [2]. In fact a local species of owl is called strigă. And now back to the local Manichaeism present here, a grand-father of a friend of mine (in fact, his corpse) was unearthed at some point after his death (I think it was 7 years) and a spike was put through its (the body's) chest, so that his spirit would stop wandering among the living. Granted, that was happening in a Romanian region a little bit on the more traditional side, you won't find that in Bucharest or Cluj anymore. Also, up until very recently there was a tradition at the church in my parents' village where the most "wealthy" family in the village would have to bring a black rooster on Easter inside the church, let it loose, people would catch it and then give it to one of the poor families, so that that poor family would cook it as an Easter meal. Black roosters are, of course, not that Christian to begin with. As I said, lots and lots of Manichaeism beliefs around these parts of the continent (in many, many folk tales the Devil is on the same level as God), Middle Ages or not, it's quite fascinating. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Treatise_Against_the_Bogomils https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Treatise_Against_... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strix_(mythology) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strix_(mythology) [3] https://ro.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strig%C4%83 https://ro.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strig%C4%83
- gpjanik 3y agoCompletely incorrect, the practices were in general not very present in middle-aged Poland compared to the Western Europe. The reason for emerging anti-vampiric practices in the 17th and the 18th centuries were epidemics and folktales from Balkans, and it had nothing to do with de-christianisation which never happened (Poland has been and is predominantly Christian with rate of catholic church members being >90% even today).
- ajuc 3y agoYup, I'd even say in medieval period Poland was less christian than in 17th/18th century :) In 1500s at one point majority of nobility went protestant, and there was still a lot of orthodox nobles from Lithuania. Peasants were orthodox or pagan in the east, catholic in the west with some protestants, muslims and jews mixed in. In the cities there was a lot of german immigrants who were protestant or catholic depending on the city they immigrated from. Whole towns and villages were created by importing people from the west and giving them religious freedoms and tax benefits for a few years. By 1700s it was mostly gone, because the country kept fighting muslims, orthodox and protestant countries. So kings turned to catholicism and counter-reformation as uniting factor. So religion got a lot of influence.
- Tade0 3y ago> (Poland has been and is predominantly Christian with rate of catholic church members being >90% even today). Nowadays that's on paper mostly, especially that apostasy is difficult and not really worth the trouble for most. The pandemic especially revealed that many people were attending only because everyone else was.
- yard2010 3y agoThe middle ages sucked though. I hope we're not in some middle ages today.
- marginalia_nu 3y ago> de-christianization, which happened at a faster pace after the middle ages. This doesn't really agree with my understanding of things. The late medieval and early modern period was a time of increasing religious control due to the reformation and counter-reformation. This was a new kind of problem, since during most of the medieval period the biggest threat was external in the form of Islam during the crusades and reconquista, but you could send armies to deal with that problem. Heretics from within, like Jan Hus, John Wycliffe, and eventually Luther and Calvin and later the protestants were much harder to defeat with armies, since they'd crop up anywhere and erode the power of the church from within. To hold against the protestants, you needed to control what people thought, paying lip service to the church wasn't enough anymore. This is when you get the inquisition and so on. A mirror image of things were happening along the protestants since it was very important that everyone held the line when the jesuits came a'knocking. There was also a fairly strong impetus to enforce protestantism from the temporal powers-that-be, since it was basically what allowed them to cut free from the pope. Closet papists among the population was as bad thing for a protestant king as closet protestants were for a catholic pope (or catholic king).
- Mistletoe 3y agoWhy is it almost any time I see someone citing a YouTube source they are wrong?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- hulitu 3y ago> Interesting that they use the word "post-medieval" instead of "modern"... And they mention 17th century, well after the middle ages ended. It depends on hystorians. In our school was thought that middle ages ended around 1848.
- smcl 3y agoBefore you scoff and dismiss this as silly, superstitious nonsense, know this: there have been ZERO vampire incidents in Poland since this practice was adopted.
- jychang 3y ago[flagged]
- sheepscreek 3y agoLast paragraph in HN guidelines: > Please don't post comments saying that HN is turning into Reddit. It's a semi-noob illusion, as old as the hills.
- yreg 3y agoThe rule stating it is an illusion doesn't make it untrue.
- smcl 3y agoThere’s a 16+ comment discussion on whether or not an innocent, on-topic and factually correct comment is appropriate. HN is not becoming Reddit, it’s becoming more HN than ever. Personally I think it’s a little suspicious that there are HN users who appear to be attempting to discredit or silence comments praising the efficacy of a proven anti-vampire technology.
- pfannkuchen 3y ago
- TheAlchemist 3y agoThey mention the coin placed in mouths - but as far as I know, this has nothing to do with protection against vampires. It's to pay Charon to cross the river :) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charon%27s_obol https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charon%27s_obol
- etiam 3y agoNot that I know the details of medieval vampire lore, but doesn't it sort of follow that if the deceased has crossed to far side of Styx they'd be much less eligible for walking/flying/crawling/whatever around as one of the restless dead? It seems like the practice could well share inheritance with ancient Greece, but I'd be surprised if the motivating mythology would be quite the same. Wonder what the story was in ancient Poland..
- smcl 3y agoYou probably want to cover your bases, IMO. If they're a vampire, ok no worries we have the little sickle over their neck. If they're not - a couple of złoty to help them on their journey in the afterlife.
- Cthulhu_ 3y agoIt's like anticonception; more measures means a lower chance of the undead running amok. I mean they're already consecrated and buried, it won't hurt to also add padlocks, stakes, coins, sickles, and (another thing I haven't seen in the article) a cage around the grave.
- TeMPOraL 3y ago> a cage around the grave I suspect this one may have more to do with countering external threats.
- Timon3 3y agoAs far as I'm aware, the common understanding is that a vampire doesn't have a soul anymore, they are undead. This is why they supposedly can't see themselves in mirrors. https://scifi.stackexchange.com/a/38468 https://scifi.stackexchange.com/a/38468 This would imply that helping the soul cross the river doesn't prevent "vampirification".
- RadixDLT 3y agoit makes sense, poland is right next to romania
- SapporoChris 3y agoPoland is not right next to Romania on any current maps that I have found. Poland is bordered by Lithuania and Russia to the northeast, Belarus and Ukraine to the east, Slovakia and the Czech Republic to the south, and Germany to the west. Romania does border Ukraine, however if you were to travel from Ukraine to Romania the best route is actually through Slovakia and Hungary.
- trwired 3y agoFun fact, you can see Romania from Poland on a good weather! [1] Also before the WWII, the Second Polish Republic shared a border with the Kingdom of Romania. Before the partitions in late 18th century, Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth overlapped with some territories making up modern day Romania and Moldova and the Principality of Moldavia was a vassal of Poland and PLC for a time. This is to say it is reasonable to imply Poland's close proximity with Romania, both in geographical and cultural sense, even though the borders have shifted. [1] - https://dalekieobserwacje.eu/rumunia-widziana-z-tarnicy-most-wanted/ https://dalekieobserwacje.eu/rumunia-widziana-z-tarnicy-most...
- f137 3y agoPoland was right next to Romania up until 1939.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- rpastuszak 3y agoI think you might want to give this a go: https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/1927594591 https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/1927594591
- jayp1418 3y agoThat's why always go with cremation. No Vampire, no viruses
- Cthulhu_ 3y agoBut also no body to rapture... actually... wouldn't said body be stuck on the padlocks / decapitated when being raptured?
- RNAlfons 3y agoMaybe we'll come back to those kind of practices. Exorcisms have been booming in Poland for quite some time: https://www.dw.com/en/why-exorcism-is-booming-in-poland/a-36739778 https://www.dw.com/en/why-exorcism-is-booming-in-poland/a-36...
- ekianjo 3y ago> Maybe we'll come back to those kind of practices We already have to pay respects to the WHO God so religious beliefs may come back in strength
- pndy 3y agoLast time I read about exorcism in the media here was in the end of 90s when people were crazy about end of the world due to end of 20th century and approaching new millennium. Those were times when such fringe things were all around us on a daily basis, next to skinheads, sects and circles in the crop. Exorcisms aren't blooming here nor are popular, or gained any widespread attention in last years.
- RNAlfons 3y agoUnfortunately this is not just some private trend. It is being driven by the Church in Poland which has a powerful connection to the Government.
- ekianjo 3y agoYou can go back much further in time than 1600s with corpses in prehistory found buried with their hands and legs tied. We dont know exactly why but the fear that the dead may rise may be a thing.
- krapp 3y agoIf you don't know the specifics about how corpses decay, it can superficially give evidence that they can rise from the dead and turn into monsters or feed on the living - spasms, vocalizations from expelled gas, gums receding to look like fangs (often dripping with blood,) hair and nails appearing to grow (when really the skin is shrinking,) etc. There are theories that a vampire panic in early New England was attributable to misinterpreting the symptoms of tuberculosis[0]. [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_England_vampire_panic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_England_vampire_panic
- kunley 3y agoThere is a Polish writer Andrzej Pilipiuk and he introduced a concept in his fantasy-parody historical-fiction books, that all communists were actually vampires, and there was a squad eliminating them since 1920s. So maybe this is an indication, that communist movement started already in the XVII century... and the smart village guys tried to prevent it from spreading already at that time... huh PS. It is a joke. (the idea, not the writer & the books).
- ragazzina 3y agoIf anyone is interested in the subject I can suggest "Vampires, burial and death" by Paul Barber. It's repetitive but good. In fact I have discovered this book on HN.
- at_a_remove 3y agoIt is on its second edition, I believe.
- rpastuszak 3y agoHa, a few of my archeologist friends worked on this! I remember one detail regarding the decapitated (17th century IIRC) bodies they found: one would put a sickle between the head and the rest of the body. Some of the local construction site workers hired to help with digging were quite upset/scared by the view. Also, I think we can thank Austro-Hungarian civil servants and bureaucracy for the amount of documentation we have on the subject. Central Europe was much luckier in that regard than the regions farther east. Tangentially related: the WoD (World of Darkness, esp. Vampire: the Masqureade) scene in Poland was relatively big in 2010s, compared to the rest of Europe IIRC. I used to run one of the biggest bi-weekly LARPs in the region, called Totentanz, with 25 regular bloodsuckers joining the game every Sunday. Krakow, my hometown is an excellent setting for that: the medieval city moved up by one floor, so we have a tonne of old dungeons/cellars to dress up as vampires, plot against each other, and pretend we like smoking clove cigarettes.
- kstrauser 3y agoI’ve never wanted to be in my 20s again so badly. That sounds amazing!
- wolverine876 3y ago> Krakow, my hometown is an excellent setting for that: the medieval city moved up by one floor, so we have a tonne of old dungeons/cellars What does that mean? How did it come to be?
- jacquesm 3y agohttps://www.thefirstnews.com/article/the-fascinating-subterranean-world-beneath-krakows-main-market-square-23123 https://www.thefirstnews.com/article/the-fascinating-subterr...
- CapitalistCartr 3y agoSeattle did the same thing after the Great Seattle Fire. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seattle_Underground https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seattle_Underground
- irrational 3y ago> archaeologists working on a 17th-century cemetery Maybe it is just me, but 17th century seems way too recent to be digging people up. I’m into family history and I know who a lot of my ancestors were back to the 1500s and even into the 1400s. There are surely people alive right now who could trace their family lines back to some of the people being dug up.
- Swizec 3y ago> but 17th century seems way too recent to be digging people up My SO recently visited her family tomb in France. It was gone. Lease lapsed, no more tomb. Last person was buried there some 40 years ago. Church didn’t know who to contact to renew the lease, good bye.
- irrational 3y agoThat’s crazy! What do they do with the bodies?
- Swizec 3y agoOssuary. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ossuary https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ossuary I think this is fairly standard practice in much of Europe where space is scarce. Moreso in larger towns and cities than rural villages. It’s also why family tombs are common in the first place. My grandpa’s family, for example, has shared the same cemetery plot since before ww1. That’s how you fit a whole village into one little tiny church cemetery.
- HankB99 3y agoI listen to their podcast. I'm just a little skeptical of the information they publish ever since they relocated Hayward WI to MN (episode on the lumberjack competition.) It was still interesting and mostly true but I wondered how someone could (purportedly) visit Hayward WI and think they were in Minnesota.
- kstrauser 3y agoI’m thinking about this in the context of marking nuclear waste dumps. We want to leave a message saying “this is dangerous; stay far away!” to last 10,000 years. Meanwhile, the ghosts of our ancestors from just 400 years ago are screaming “do you think we did that for giggles?!” It makes me appreciate how hard it’d be to craft messaging that can survive hundreds of generations without merely piquing the interest of that day’s archaeologists.
- gowld 3y agohttps://99percentinvisible.org/episode/ten-thousand-years/ https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/ten-thousand-years/ > Bastide and Fabbri came to the conclusion that the most durable thing that humanity has ever made is culture: religion, folklore, belief systems. They may morph over time, but an essential message can get pulled through over millennia. They proposed that we genetically engineer a species of cat that changes color in the presence of radiation, which would be released into the wild to serve as living Geiger counters. Then, we would create folklore and write songs and tell stories about these “ray cats,” the moral being that when you see these cats change colors, run far, far away. 10,000 - Year Earworm to Discourage Settlement Near Nuclear Waste Repositories (Don't Change Color, Kitty): http://emperorx.bandcamp.com/album/10000-year-earworm-to-discourage-settlement-near-nuclear-waste-repositories http://emperorx.bandcamp.com/album/10000-year-earworm-to-dis...
- kstrauser 3y agoCatchy little horror story!
- ramblenode 3y ago> They proposed that we genetically engineer a species of cat that changes color in the presence of radiation, which would be released into the wild to serve as living Geiger counters. This would seem to fail as a long-term plan due to genetic drift and natural selection. Presumably, there is no reproductive advantage to the cat in expressing fur color that indicates radiation. In the absence of selective pressure, the phenotype will gradually disappear as the radiation expressing cats mix with non-expressing cats. Since humans won't be actively maintaining the phenotype in the population against genetic drift (the opposite, in fact, since they avoid the cats) then over hundreds or thousands of years there will be no indicator cat phenotype.
- bdcravens 3y agoWill humanity be digging up our graves in 400 years in the interest of archaeology?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- mzs 3y agoPadlocks are also found in old Jewish cemetery graves in Poland (p. 131): https://www.researchgate.net/publication/312873550_A_Habit_of_Providing_the_dead_with_padlocks_against_the_background_of_Ashkenazi_funeral_rites https://www.researchgate.net/publication/312873550_A_Habit_o...
- rcarr 3y agoIf we take the metaphorical view of vampires as those that feast on the blood of the young to extend their own lives then as a planet (or at least in the West) we have never been more infested - how many people are dying young, through overdose or suicidal hopeless, or otherwise having their life force drained through sky high rents and stagnant wages so that boomers can carry on living the high life? How many young people killed themselves during pandemic lockdowns, lockdowns that were in place mainly to save boomer lives? There’s also the related zombie concept - how many dead, uncompetitive and mismanaged companies, banks and pension funds are we keeping alive through government bailouts, which are again, essentially draining the life force of the living to feed the dead? I also like “What We Do In The Shadows” (tv show version) extension of the metaphor to the “energy vampire”, which is essentially a criticism of bloated bureaucracy which is another one of the modern monsters draining the life out of us all. I don’t think these terms were ever meant to be taken literally by those who created them but as platonic ideals to describe personalities and systems, but the education level and lifestyles of the time were so barbaric, primitive and rooted in physicality that the majority struggled to comprehend them as such.
- chc 3y agoThis is also the origin of the "stake through the heart" trope. The stake was originally meant as a way to hold a vampire in place, just like these instruments.
- RadixDLT 3y agoBram Stoker Claimed That Parts of Dracula Were Real https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37144560 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37144560
- gowld 3y agoBe careful about interpreting artifacts: https://onlinecampus.fcps.edu/media2/Social_Studies/WHGII_2010/Era1Topic2/Resources/Motel_of_Mysteries.pdf https://onlinecampus.fcps.edu/media2/Social_Studies/WHGII_20... https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Literature/MotelOfTheMysteries https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Literature/MotelOfThe...
- classified 3y agoSadly, having a copper coin in our mouth will not be enough to ward off Chrome and Edge.