

Apotropaic Practices and the Undead: Deviant Burials in Post-Medieval Poland - benbreen
http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0113564

======
doug1001
we don't get too many vampire-related posts on HN; the OP here is from a
scholarly journal and describes particular burial practices in medieval Poland
intended to prevent "re-animation" of the dead. Vlad Tepes (aka "Vlad the
Impaler", whose castle still stands in Brasov, Romania) is not surprisingly
mentioned in this article. Another nugget from this article, "uber" was at
that time (perhaps still is) the word for "witch"

the article's findings--various attributes of these irregular burials--are
summarized in spreadsheets available for download, so that you can cross-
tabulate deviant burials by for instance, the presence of iron bars on the
coffin, whether the corpse was decapitated, and so on.

