“Other ways to protect against the return of the dead include cutting off the head or legs, placing the deceased face down to bite into the ground, burning them, and smashing them with a stone,” Poliński told the New York Post.
Though other standard anti-vampire burial methods included a metal rod hammered through the skeleton, the remains in Poland were found with the sickle across the neck and a padlocked toe to restrain her.
The padlocked big toe attached to the skeleton’s left foot, Poliński told the Daily Mail, likely symbolized “the closing of a stage and the impossibility of returning.”
