The horrifying mystery of the Irish vampire skeleton

A number of 8th-century human skeletal remains have been found with large stones stacked in their mouths – something researchers believe locals did to stop the dead from returning to walk the Earth as zombies.

The research started more than six years ago in what was supposed to be a survey of medieval churches in County Roscommon, Ireland.

One of the skeletons that were discovered in Ireland with stones stuffed in their mouths to prevent them from becoming zombies belonged to two male individuals, aged between 40 and 60, and the other to a young adult, probably in his twenties, who had been buried among the remains of other individuals.

One of them was lying with his head looking straight up. A large black stone had been deliberately thrust into his throat.

‘The other had his head turned to the side and had an elongated rock quite violently into his mouth so that his jaws were almost dislocated,’ he told Discovery News.

The two men were lying side by side and discovered together.

The team first thought they had stumbled across a Black Death burial ground when remains of people buried at the end of the Middle Ages had stones stacked in their mouths because they were involved in vampiric rituals.

It is thought about 3,000 skeletons buried from 700 to 1400 are still buried at the site.

The belief that zombies can return from the grave as living dead has its roots in Haitian culture, where it is linked to voodoo magic and witchcraft.

The superstition is so strong on the Caribbean island that relatives of the dead will dismember a corpse so that it cannot return as a zombie. Others will stand guard over a grave to protect the body until decomposition has set in.

According to believers, a zombie will rise up from its grave in a hypnotic trance, capable of responding to stimuli but lacking self-awareness.

Initially, archaeologists believed in the ritual of placing a stake in the mouth of the deceased to prevent slayings, where a stake is driven into the heart of a victim. Vampires were believed to spread plague and a stake placed inside the mouth was thought to prevent this. Practitioners also believed that placing a stake in the mouth of a corpse would save it.

In 2009, the remains of a 60-year-old woman with a rock thrust into her mouth were discovered in a mass grave from the 1500s on the Venetian island of Lazzaretto Nuovo.

But vampire cults did not evolve until the 16th century and therefore does not explain why stones were found in skeletons dating from the eighth century.

‘In this case, the stones in the mouth might have acted as a barrier to stop revenants from coming back from their graves,’ Dr. Read said.

The skeleton of a ‘vampire‘ buried in the 16th century has been unveiled as a museum exhibition.

A collection of bones were discovered two years ago in Northern Poland that had the tell-tale markings of a vampire burial ritual. Experts determined they were the remains of a man after the finding in an ancient cemetery in the town of Kamien Pomorski.

Now, they have been unveiled as the main attraction at the Kamien Museum of Land History, as organizers are preparing an exclusive exhibit just for the vampire. The body was found with a stake driven through its leg and a small rock in its mouth.

Vampire “experts” said the stake had been put in the body’s mouth to stop it from biting or sucking blood from victims. And the pierced ribcage and femur – carefully studded with iron spikes – was done to prevent the vampire from climbing out of its grave.