DID ZOMBIES ROAM MEDIEVAL IRELAND?

[ErikStenger]

According to expert archaeologists, two skeletons found in Ireland with stones blocking their mouths suggest that people feared the dead would return as zombies.

The two were among 137 skeletons found near Loch Key during digs that occurred from 2005 to 2009, led by Chris Read from the Institute of Technology in Ireland and Thomas Finan from the University of St. Louis.

The two male skeletons were buried next to each other with stones the size of baseballs deliberately placed in their mouths. One was between 40 and 60-years-old and the other between 20 and 30-years-old.

Read explains that the mouth played a pivotal role in the possibility of zombies:

“It was viewed as the main portal for the soul to leave the body upon death. Sometimes, the soul could come back to the body and re-animate it or else an evil spirit could enter the body through the mouth and bring it back to life.”

The two men were probably considered to be outsiders or dangerous people so their mouths were blocked, making it less likely they would return as zombies to terrorize the living.

Did Zombies Roam Medieval Ireland? : Discovery News

 

[Outlaw]

makes yea wonder if it happened before, and this was there solution. otherwise these people were cracked out..

 

[ErikStenger]

Slavic vampires

The Slavic people including most east Europeans from Russia to Bulgaria, Serbia to Poland, have the richest vampire folklore and legends in the world. The Slavs came from north of the Black Sea and were closely associated with the Balts. Prior to 8th century AD they migrated north and west to where they are now. Christianisation began almost as soon as they arrived in their new homelands. However, through the 9th and 10th century, the Eastern Orthodox Church and the western Roman Catholic Church were struggling with each other for supremacy. They formally broke in 1054 AD, with the Bulgarians, Russians, and Serbians staying Orthodox, while the Poles, Czechs, and Croatians went Roman. This split caused a big difference in the development of vampire lore - the Orthodox church believed incorrupt bodies were vampires, while the Roman church believed they were saints. Causes of vampirism included being born with a caul, teeth, or tail, being conceived on certain days, irregular death, excommunication, improper burial rituals etc. Preventative measures included: placing a crucifix in the coffin, or blocks under the chin to prevent the body from eating the shroud, nailing clothes to coffin walls for the same reason, or piercing the body with thorns or stakes. In the case of stakes, the general idea was to pierce through the vampire and into the ground below, pinning them. Certain people would bury their potential vampires with scythes above their necks, so the dead would decapitate themselves as they rose. Evidence that a vampire was at work in the neighbourhood included death of cattle, sheep, relatives, neighbours, exhumed bodies being in a lifelike state with new growth of the fingernails or hair, or if the body was swelled up like a drum, or there was blood on the mouth and if the corpse had a ruddy complexion. Vampires could be destroyed by staking, decapitation, execution by burning, repeating the funeral service, holy water on the grave or exorcism.

Vampire - Monstropedia