14 DAY TRIAL // A team of archaeologists carrying out excavations in Poland claim to have unearthed several vampire graves.
The graves were first discovered close to the town on Gliwice by workers laboring on a new roadway.
Rest assured, no real vampires were resting at this site. On the contrary, what the workers and the archaeologists actually found were decapitated bodies.
Information shared with the public says that the heads of the people buried in this location were separated from the rest of the body, and carefully placed on the supposed vampires' legs.
Archaeologists maintain that this used to be a common way of dealing with dead bodies that people feared might return as vampires.
As Live Science explains, the decapitation was merely a way of making sure the dead individuals presumed to be vampires would remain in their graves forever, and not return to torment ordinary folks.
Historians say that, many years ago, people living in the Slavic lands often believed that certain individuals were vampires.
Most of the time, such accusations followed natural disasters or calamities for which people felt the need to find a scapegoat.
However, it also happened that vampires were blamed for deaths that, at least at that time, appeared to have no rational explanation.
Researchers are unable to say which of these situations has led to the decapitation of the bodies found in Poland.
What's more, the alleged vampire bodies discovered in this country have not been buried with any jewelry or some other artifacts, which is why archaeologists are unable to determine the time of their death and burial.
Cases of people accused of being vampires and treated as such were most common during the first decades of the Christian era.
This was because, when Christianity first emerged, pagan beliefs were still widely spread. By the looks of it, it took people quite a long while to give up on them.